My kitchen floor in Atlanta still has a faint, neon-orange stain from the Great Fanta Flood of April 2024. It was my son Leo’s third birthday, and I thought I’d be smart by saving five bucks on some discount-bin paper goods. I bought these thin, translucent napkins that looked like they were made of recycled…
I stood in my sun-drenched Austin kitchen last April, surrounded by a sea of red cardstock and a very confused Golden Retriever named Moose. My niece Zoe was turning seven, and her only demand was a “fancy ladybug” party. Not just any party, but one where everyone looked like a “glitter bug.” Finding the perfect…
My living room floor disappeared under a sea of red tissue paper and tiny plastic lightning bolts last Tuesday night at 11:30 PM. I was three cups of coffee deep, surrounded by nine half-filled brown paper sacks, trying to assemble the perfect superhero goodie bags for kids without going bankrupt or contributing more plastic to…
My kitchen floor looked like a glitter bomb detonated in a Hallmark factory on Saturday, May 18th, 2025. This was the aftermath of my daughter Maya’s 11th birthday, an event I approached with the same nervous energy a cat shows a vacuum cleaner. I am a single dad in Atlanta who usually considers “clean socks”…
My kitchen floor still has a faint green stain from the time I tried to hand-paint a fifteen-foot Creeper backdrop in October 2024 for Leo’s 3rd birthday. I spent six hours searching for the best banner for minecraft party while nursing a lukewarm coffee and trying to keep the toddler from eating the glue sticks….
The humidity in Houston during March is a specific kind of swampy that makes construction paper curl and kindergartners particularly feral. I was standing in the middle of Room 204 last March 12, clutching a stack of spiderman birthday plates like a shield while twenty-one five-year-olds hummed with the electric energy of impending sugar consumption….
I stood in the middle of my kitchen last April, ankle-deep in blue iridescent tinsel, wondering where my life as a single dad in Atlanta had gone so horribly sideways. My daughter, Maya, was turning seven, and she had informed me—with the terrifying clarity only a first-grader possesses—that her party needed to be “colder than…
My living room looked like a Pepto-Bismol bottle exploded, and honestly, I wasn’t even mad about it. Sophie turned nine last Tuesday, and in our house, that meant one thing: Barbie. Everything had to be pink, sparkly, and “aesthetic,” which is a word 9-year-olds use way too much these days. Living in suburban Portland, I’m…
It was raining, obviously, because May in Portland is just April with a better publicist. I was standing in my kitchen on May 12, 2024, surrounded by fourteen half-glued paper fish and a very insistent 9-year-old named Leo who decided he needed his fishing invitation for kids to look “rugged but cool.” Suburban life is…
Twenty-two second graders in a small classroom with floral napkins and lukewarm chamomile tea sounds like a recipe for a workers’ compensation claim. I know because I tried it on May 14, 2025, during our end-of-year “Polite Society” reward day. My classroom smelled like wet cardboard and frantic desperation for three hours because I made…
