My living room looked like a pixelated crime scene last March 12, 2025, when my nephew Leo turned four and decided he needed a blocky paradise in the middle of Austin. I had exactly ninety-one dollars to my name for decorations and snacks, a Frenchie named Barnaby who thinks anything round is a personal challenge,…
Living in Austin means my social calendar is usually a chaotic blur of taco trucks, Zilker Park meetups, and my golden retriever, Barnaby, trying to eat everyone’s discarded breakfast tacos. But nothing prepared me for the absolute intensity of planning a budget construction party for kindergartner needs when my nephew, Leo, turned five on March…
My son Liam turned five on April 12, 2024, and that was the day I realized I am a terrible judge of paper products. We were in our backyard in Atlanta, the humidity was already starting to crawl up your neck, and twenty-two kids were vibrating with the kind of energy you only see in…
Maya stood at the edge of the water at Emma Long Metropolitan Park, her 12-year-old attitude momentarily melting into pure, unadulterated joy as she realized I actually pulled it off. It was June 14, 2025. The Austin heat was a thick, wet blanket pressing down on us, but the “beach” at the lake was buzzing….
Stovall Elementary gets humid in April, and by the time my class of twenty-four kindergartners finishes lunch, the room smells like wet pavement and lukewarm chicken nuggets. I usually lean into bright, loud themes for our classroom blowouts, but this year, I needed something that wouldn’t make my head throb before the three o’clock bell….
Twenty-two second-graders in a single classroom during Houston’s peak humidity is a recipe for disaster, especially when you add lukewarm hibiscus tea and sticky macarons into the mix. I have spent fifteen years teaching at a local elementary school here in Texas, and if there is one thing I have mastered, it is the art…
I remember the original Y2K. I was twenty years old, wearing a neon green puffer vest, and genuinely worried that my microwave was going to gain consciousness and start a revolution. Fast forward to March 12, 2024, and I found myself in the middle of a different kind of crisis in my Atlanta living room….
March 14, 2025. The day my East Austin bungalow turned into a hostile territory of sharp plastic. SXSW traffic was snarling up I-35, the humidity was already creeping toward an aggressive 80 percent, and my older sister Rachel was having a full-blown meltdown on my vintage velvet sofa. She had a massive joint birthday party…
March 14, 2026, was the kind of Austin afternoon that starts with a breeze and ends with everyone sweating through their linen shirts. My best friend’s daughter, Chloe, was turning ten, and she had specifically requested a theme that felt “grown-up but still cute.” We landed on “Some Bunny is Ten.” I spent three weeks…
Last March, I found myself standing in the middle of a backyard in East Austin, surrounded by twenty-five adults in rhinestone fringe and boots, clutching lukewarm ranch water. My best friend Jess was turning thirty, and she wanted a “Nash-bash” vibe without the flight to Tennessee. We had the boots. We had the hats. But…
