I stepped on a rogue yellow plastic brick at 2:14 AM on a Tuesday. The sharp plastic corner dug directly into my heel, sending a shockwave of pure agony up my leg. I stood there on one foot in the dark of my Atlanta apartment, cursing silently. That was the exact moment I realized I…
Portland rain was aggressively pelting the kitchen window on March 12th. I was staring at a pile of crumpled pink tissue paper, a dangerously hot glue gun, and exactly ten blank white paper sacks. Pulling off my youngest daughter Chloe’s 4th birthday meant I desperately needed to assemble the perfect gabby dollhouse birthday goodie bags…
I spent three weeks hyper-fixating on tiny plastic cows and galvanized tin buckets. My nephew Leo was turning three on October 14th, 2023. Since my golden retriever Buster shares the exact same birth week, we threw a massive joint backyard bash right here in Austin. The Texas heat was still lingering around 85 degrees. The…
Glitter is the enemy of the Houston humidity. I learned this the hard way on October 14, 2024, standing in a sweltering backyard with eleven sugar-fueled three-year-olds. I am Ms. Karen. I teach second grade, but I get roped into throwing at least six classroom and family parties a year because I own a heavy-duty…
I am currently on my hands and knees, aggressively scraping dried, neon-green buttercream frosting off my dining room floorboards. It is Tuesday afternoon. The party was three days ago on Saturday, May 14th. My youngest son, Leo, just turned four. But since he desperately misses his old preschool friends from last year, we decided to…
Portland rain is relentless in March. My basement always smells slightly of damp cardboard and old laundry during the spring. But on Friday, March 15th, 2024, I turned that dark suburban dungeon into a makeshift Jurassic research facility for fifteen extremely loud eleven-year-old boys. Finding the exact right dinosaur candles for kids was strangely the…
I still have a faint red stain on my driveway from the great Sno-Cone disaster of May 2023. Portland rain usually washes everything away, but artificial cherry syrup is apparently invincible. I learned this the hard way last spring when my sister begged me to help her pull off the ultimate first birthday for my…
Sweating through my favorite vintage Braves t-shirt on a sweltering Saturday afternoon in Atlanta, I stared at a giant, deflating foil shark. My son Leo just turned 12. Instead of video games, paintball, or laser tag, he and his middle school buddies demanded something entirely different. They wanted ironical nostalgia. Finding decent outdoor baby shark…
Sweat was dripping off my nose onto a half-inflated flamingo at 6:15 AM on a muggy Atlanta Saturday. My daughter Maya was turning seven. Fourteen screaming second-graders would be arriving in exactly four hours to tear apart our backyard. I was broke. I was exhausted. I had absolutely no idea how to make pool party…
The rain was aggressively hitting my Portland living room windows on October 12th last year while I desperately tried to tape paper palm leaves to my ceiling. I was sweating. My fingers were glued together. My youngest son, Leo, was turning 5. He wanted an ocean theme. My oldest, Chloe (11, but swears she is…
