I think I’ve forgotten whatever social skills I once had – and I’ve always been an introvert, always the kind of person who heads straight to the bar immediately upon arriving at any large social gathering because I need…

  It’s a strange feeling, waiting for a hurricane that may or may not come. Time is lived in between the track/intensity updates at 4 a.m., 10 a.m., 4 p.m., and 10 p.m., time in which your plans keep shifting…

  I’ve really been trying to be positive lately. Last week, I was upbeat about not losing power; last month, I was looking forward to restarting virtual school; six months ago, I was desperately hoping for a quarantine because it…

  I still remember Hurricane Cindy. My now-ex-husband and I were in town for the Fourth of July holiday in 2005, and it had been decent weather outside when we borrowed my dad’s truck to drive Uptown to visit a…

  I still remember the day that my child-free-by-choice friend came over, looked into my kitchen, saw my sink piled high with dishes, and exclaimed, “My God! How long has it been since you did your dishes?” I side-eyed him…

  I don’t necessarily think of myself as deeply Southern – although I have worn a hoop skirt, eaten fried okra and black-eyed peas and all manner of greens, and have a decided fondness for seersucker and monograms – but…

  It’s safe to say at this point in the pandemic (a phrase I never really expected to write), I am both weary and wary. I’m weary of … well, all of it. I’d really love to hug my friends…

  “Don’t even bother reading the paper,” my dad told me on the phone yesterday. “It’s all bad news. The coronavirus is everywhere. No one cares about teachers, as usual. And on top of it all, some kind of snails…

  On March 13, while driving home from our last normal day and staving off panic, I told Ruby, “This is all going to be fine; we just need a good, solid schedule.” The next day, while my kids slept…

  There are a lot of things that I think are fun to argue about. Some of them are incredibly low-stakes and yet still get me fired up. For instance, a couple of years ago, I was in a Facebook…

  As the anxious mother of two anxious daughters, I try to share as much hard-earned wisdom and life tips as I can. One of them is that dreading something is almost always worth than the actual thing itself. When…

  There are, clearly, more pressing issues in the world right now than my usual topics of baking, parenting, and grammar. Trying to write about summer camp or cupcakes or semicolons seems embarrassingly trivial in the face of what’s happening…

  It’s entirely possible that you’re not as crazy and neurotic as I am – for your sake and the sake of the wider world, I certainly hope so – but when deciding on a name for my children, I…

  Georgia turned 7 on May 30, 2019. On May 31, 2019, she began planning her eighth birthday party. This, I think it’s safe to say, was not part of how any of us planned it. Back when the lockdown…

  Change is hard. No one can deny that. But change can be good and exciting. Right now I’m taking a step forward in life and I’m hoping it will be a great new experience. I’m not going to lie…

  I’m all about the quarantine trends – I’ve either embraced them, have always done them, or plan to do them soon. Sanitizing, hand-washing, bread-baking? All in. Sourdough starter? Yep, bubbling away happily in the back room, started it six…

  The highlights of my week – and this is sad but true – are thus: I found a completely addictive and fun color by number game that I can play on my phone while I supervise my younger daughter’s…

  The days are blurring for me now, more than ever before. April has somehow both lasted forever and flown by too quickly. I mark time by the days I know the trash and recycling go out – and by…

  Things I’ve learned in the past three weeks: How to make sourdough bread How to change the humidifier bottle on an oxygen concentrator in the dark How to teach multiplication facts to a 7-year-old with ADHD and anxiety in…