Fourth Grade, age 9 - “The Greatest Gift” Essay winner, alongside Wendy Foskett and Sam Foos. Picture in the paper and a fat check for ten dollars. You can’t tell from the black and white Times Herald photo but I wore a lilac sweater and hot-rollered hair. Everyone else was looking at the camera, I was staring down at my money. Fifth Grade, age 10 - Campfire Camp girls standing in front of the bank. I forget the name of the bank even though I had my first savings account ther

We picked up trash on Saturday. My husband signed up to be a team captain for the Friends of the Petaluma River Clean Up Day. He's a do-gooder. I want to want to be a good person, but I'm really not. The rewarding day of do-gooding and beauty communing with waterfowl was nothing like I had imagined. The reality involved walking along a dry section of riverbed picking up moldy loaves of bread and poop-stained underwear. Seriously, I picked up more than one pair of soiled under

I went to the beach by myself after getting done arguing with my children. Why do I keep doing that? I’m supposed to be the adult. I kind of mad-drove the whole way. I wasn’t road raging just rage-sulking, like mentally driving through dark neighborhoods etc. Chemically, I couldn't shut it down, the total catecholamines were flooding my blood stream and I couldn’t stop feeling mad. so I went to Stinson and the first thing I saw on the beach was like this giant swordfish or l

Sometimes when you’re overwhelmed by a situation, when you’re in the darkest of darkness, that’s when your priorities are reordered. Black out snow socks I woke up in a stranger’s apartment. It wasn’t a hook up. I was fully clothed and asleep on the couch under a linen duvet. But something told me I wasn’t where I was supposed to be so I ran home in the snow I fled the apartment in my socks. My thoughts were swirling in the snow globe of my brain in such a way that shoes s

I’ve told this story about two hundred times this week but someone stole our car on Sunday night. Grand theft auto. I don’t imagine it was actually grand, it was a ho-hum theft auto job I’m pretty sure. I’m curious who stole it. Was it like amateur criminals or like someone who’s part of a huge ring and it's like their day job / night job to hotwire people’s cars? I had my writing backpack in the trunk which isn’t a huge loss since the zipper was splitting and I can’t read an

I wanted to jumpstart my writing projects this year so I checked out a new writing workshop offered by Moxie Road Productions. It was a day full of writing with breakout sessions and connection with other writers. Best of all, I left with "an actionable plan and the inspiration to begin." (I stole that line right from their website.) As lame as it sounds, taking fifteen minutes to write out a simple plan and scheduling time directly into my iPhone has made a huge differenc

OMG, my niece won! I am related to royalty. Congratulations to Miss Box Butte County Fair Queen, 2017, Dani Carter.

I liked the big raindrops in summer, how they sometimes steamed on the asphalt when it got hot and rainy all at once. I remember hiding from nature in our orange basement on Mississippi Avenue and in the cellar on East 8th Street. I remember the police scanner in our living room and the emergency broadcast system beeps and warnings all through tornado season. I remember mom trying to save a sparrow during a storm and how I simultaneously wanted her to help the bird and race i

I create logistical nightmares. For example, we are parrot sitting for my mother in law, dog sitting for three weeks for a friend, cat...

I’m afraid if I go back to work full time and get this job I’m going to fail really badly. I like to console myself by imagining the...