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 exercises…
I typically love a good portmanteau, so I’m not sure why I have such a visceral dislike for the word “listicle.” I guess I am opposed to it from a journalistic standpoint, as it just seems… well, lazy. It’s lazy to just…
Excerpted from Eve Crawford Peyton’s blog, Joie d’Eve, which appears each Friday on MyNewOrleans.com “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…
Excerpted from Eve Crawford Peyton’s blog, Joie d’Eve, which appears each Friday on MyNewOrleans.com With Ruby recently starting seventh grade, I have been going back in time to my own middle school experience. I remember the excitement of getting a…
Excerpted from Eve Crawford Peyton’s blog, Joie d’Eve, which appears each Friday on MyNewOrleans.com. 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…
Excerpted from Eve Crawford Peyton’s blog, Joie d’Eve, which appears each Friday on MyNewOrleans.com It goes so fast. Everyone says it, typically folded in with some “cherish every moment” drivel that I never feel like listening to because “every moment”…
It is a constant source of amusement to me how very different Ruby, my somehow-now-12-year-old daughter, is than I was. In school, I loved English and struggled with math; she is the exact opposite, making high marks in math and…
I recently headed out to Pensacola, anticipating a pleasant mini-vacation with the girls – we’d have a cozy night in the hotel before dropping Ruby at her roller derby clinic, and then Georgia and I would explore until she was…
There are many life problems and concerns on which you don’t necessarily want advice. People feel compelled to give you advice, particularly, it seems, on issues relating to pregnancy and child-rearing, but often you don’t actually need or want it. Struggling with infertility? People…
I sometimes joke that Ruby is the person in infomercials. You know, the person who is completely flustered by the idea of spreading a blanket over their lap or buttoning a blouse. The person who encounters catastrophe by opening a…
I’ve always defined myself as a dog person. For most of my life, I’ve had a dog. When a friend asked me, more than 15 years ago, what I’d do if I found myself at age 40 unmarried and childless,…
It’s May in New Orleans, otherwise known as “Have all the good summer camps filled up already?” season for parents. Well, I’m here to tell you … probably not yet? There are still openings at all the camps I just…
Take your daughter to work day
A tribute to the woman who taught me how to be a working mom
Top must-do activities for families.
Tips for Carnival for the Under-12 set
When you just need to get your kids fed.
Remember the glory days? When you didn’t wear out the keypad connecting to a real person? After a four-year stint as a restaurant review columnist and a customer-support/quality-control manager with IBM, I consider myself the Queen Bee in recognizing quality…
Adults who played high school football remember all their broken bone injuries as badges of honor. Closed head injuries rate less respect, though mothers remember best. “My son Richard played football for Jesuit in the 1990s and as I remember…
Look what Mr. Smith hid in the dining room. You can’t tell him we found it,” was the secret my grandmother shared with me. It was the 1950s and my maternal grandmother always called her husband – my grandfather –…
Ed note: The names of the two patients and the physician mentioned in this article are pseudonyms, but all the case histories are real.Nell Hightower, a diabetic with hypertension and arthritis, rolled into the emergency room several years ago with…
