“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…

  Three years ago, I made a summer “bucket list” for myself and my kids. It included going to the beach, having a picnic, making this cake, and going to White Linen Night. I went to the beach with my mom…

  When people find out I work at a school, the first question they invariably ask is, “Do you get summers off?” The answer is no, but that’s OK with me. With the students and most of the teachers gone,…

  Ruby leaves for camp on Sunday, which means I am deep in the weeds w/re: packing. Just like last year, I have a sense of what she needs (thin towels, three bathing suits, 10 pairs of shorts, a sweatshirt,…

I held out as long as I could. I didn’t want another dog. I didn’t think my heart could take it after losing my first baby, Loki, twice (once in the divorce and then for good when he died of old…

  When I found out my first daughter, Ruby, was due at Christmastime, the logistics of her birthday were the last thing on my mind. I learned I was pregnant with her about a month-and-a-half after a 14-week loss, and…

  It’s a well-known fact that this city loves its traditions: Red beans on Monday. King Cakes on Jan. 6. Bonfires on the levees. There are blogs I could write again and again: Must-eat Jazz Fest foods. Mardi Gras survival…

  I think about the future of journalism a lot. In fact, I work with the future of journalism a lot. Some kids already have the fire in their bellies to be the next Woodward or Bernstein. Some kids already…

  When I was in high school, “spring break” was something I watched on MTV but never experienced. Whether it was by design, I still don’t know – the rumor was that they only gave us three days off so…