Author: Eve Crawford Peyton

  Every year when the calendar page turns over to December, I have the same initial thought that most Americans have – the only significance December held for me for 26 years: “Oh, hey, it’s almost Christmas!” This means buying…

It’s almost Thanksgiving, so this is a story about a pie. Well, not just a pie. A pie and a long friendship. Jordan and I, we sometimes joke, met three last names ago (or two marriages each ago) – in…

  My almost-teen daughter, Ruby, stepped in front of the TV while I was simultaneously pedaling frantically to nowhere on my exercise bike and trying to watch Ina Garten make something obscenely rich and fattening for the holidays. (“My mom…

  I never really wondered where I’d go to high school. If I got in, I was going to Franklin. If I didn’t, we’d worry about it then. I got in, so that was that – and I had four…

  In most things, Ruby is nothing like me. A natural extrovert, she loves parties, people, team sports, cheesy inspirational messages, sleep-away camp, and group hugs – all things that range from making me vaguely uneasy to making my skin…

  The internet is fond of telling me that I, born in 1980, am part of a micro-generation known variously as Generation Catalano (for the dreamy Jordan Catalano of "My So-Called Life"), the Oregon Trail Generation (for the ubiquitous video…

  Another day, another boil order. As the kids say, “I can’t even.” Two things happened Saturday related to the Sewerage & Water Board. First, I got a bill for $286 for a single month. The typical U.S. family spends…

  My older daughter is very into the word “aesthetic” these days. I’m sure it’s something she picked up from Instagram, but suddenly, everything is an aesthetic. VSCO is an aesthetic. She wants a certain aesthetic for her birthday party…

  I’m not normally prone to bouts of self-pity. Yes, I have bad days like everyone else. Sure, I get frustrated and overwhelmed and lose my temper from time to time. (OK, a lot of the time.) But I don’t…

  “I can’t wait till I have my own room,” Ruby said wistfully the other day. Her stepbrother, Elliot, is a senior this year and will be going to college next year. Since she was maybe 8, she has been…

  I can’t be the only one – please tell me I’m not the only one – who starts a holiday weekend with such joy on Friday night only to find myself praying for the normalcy of the school-work routine…

  As Ruby starts her first full week seventh grade this week, I have been going back in time to my own middle school experience. I remember the excitement of getting a locker and the (much more short-lived) thrill of…

  I’m always melancholy at the end of summer, an old habit that never left me even though I am no longer the one who has to go back to school (if only because now I never leave). I’ve bought…

  Do you ever have those days where you’re scheduled for a full day of pre-start-of-school professional development and you have to still do your full-time job and you’re somehow president of the PTA at yet another school and your…

  All at once, I am eager for summer to end and I never want it to end. I love the pace of summer. I love the extra daylight. I love not having to worry about homework and quizzes and…

  For all of my childhood and adolescence, I was tiny. Not just short – although I’m 5-foot-nothin’ – but tiny, like size 0, make-jokes-about-how-I-skinny-I-am, count-my-ribs tiny. I gained weight in my early 20s at my first sedentary desk job,…

  Three years ago, I had a total bummer Fourth of July. You know how they say if you fail to plan, you plan to fail? I guess I failed pretty solidly. I had no plans to watch the fireworks,…

  Before I had kids, I would talk about my dog when my co-workers complained about their kids. “Jordan slept like crap last night,” my officemate Cathy would say by way of explanation while refilling her coffee mug for the…