When people learn I can speak Spanish, their first question is, “Are you fluent?” And for a long time, my answer was no. I speak Spanish well, I reasoned, but I was hardly fluent. If I have to tell a story about my hopes, dreams, fears in the past, I get tangled in the verb …
Don’t Wait to Change Your Life
When my husband and I got married, we bought a house. Along one side of the house was a covered area where you could have a table in the shade. Only the covering was infested with termites, so the owners removed it before we finalized the sale. Just the covering, not the poles and beams. The …
Why we should bother with the third world
My family and I spent six months in Argentina in 2013. Here’s a vintage post about what we can learn from countries off the beaten (first world) path. Why bother going to the third world? If a country isn’t famous for anything but revolutionaries or poverty, is it worth the trip? Before I answer this question, …
Moving? Feel At Home in Four Steps
This post originally appeared on The Happiest Home in 2013. Two months ago, we said goodbye to a house our whole family loved. As we packed, I ached: I knew I’d miss the brilliant natural light in the master bedroom, the wide-open space of the downstairs, the snug backyard where my daughters set fairy tables. …
One thing I never really knew about Steve Martin
Steve Martin was once a beginner. You might be thinking, “well, duh.” But wait a minute. Imagine Martin–the same Steve Martin that won Grammys, hosted SNL, wrote books and screenplays and starred in movies–as a wobbly kid biking into Disneyland to get his first job. A messed-up teenager copying others’ jokes. A failing comedian thinking …
When You Have to Mother Your Own Body
For a long time, my approach to insomnia was to fight it. Oddly, engaging in battle while trying to sleep did not help things. I concocted careful rituals: Earplugs, of course, and also a face mask. A fan to drown out any remaining ambient noise. Breathing and counting. Shifting positions once, twice, ten times. A …
When “No” is really “Yes”
One of my friends didn’t like the title of this blog. “I’m working on saying “no” more,” she said. “I think I say yes too often, and I end up doing things I’m not passionate about.” We were on the playground, our kids leaning back on a tire swing, lolling crazily from one side to …
life isn’t an on/off switch
I like checking things off lists. Dishes? Check. Returning emails? Check. Meeting goals? Check. There’s a cleanliness to a completed task, a finished goal, a project brought to fruition. But I’m realizing that the most important things in my life can’t be checked off. Because there isn’t a point where they’re done, or finished. They …