I was raised with a long list of conservative Dos and Don’ts of life. I abided by most. The ones that made sense, “don’t let your lips touch the spigot when drinking from a public water fountain,” were easy to follow. The questionable ones, “stay away from that mentally unstable girl/boy that always gets into [...]
Christmas 2006 - it seems like only yesterday… and I say that with no fondness whatsoever. My partner and I packed up all of our Christmas presents and flew to Pittsburgh with our children (ages 5 and 15 months at the time) to spend the holiday with my partner’s family. Traveling at the holidays is always [...]
Money is the leading cause of fights in relationships. You don’t need any fancy statistics to prove that. You can tell it’s true simply by looking at couples you know. Even if they’re getting laid a lot, they’re squabbling about how to spend that hundred dollar windfall they just got from playing little lotto. Here’s [...]
When I was 24, I took my girlfriend, Luisa, to meet my mom for the first time. Luisa wasn’t the first girlfriend I’d brought home but my mom still wasn’t happy about the “girl” part. Despite that, Luisa and I drove the 7 hours from Minneapolis to Kansas City and, right before we arrived, I explained to [...]
It only took about 5 dates (if that) for me realize that I didn’t like my future husband’s mother. She was mean, y’all. No, really. Mean. Also? Scary. She didn’t like me back, so it’s cool. We pretended to like each other and one day we just kind of meant it. Fake it til you [...]
A family is like a corporation. Except everybody loves each other and stuff. But, mostly, there’s a lot in common between businesses and families. There are tasks: financial reports, HR management, and, in some scenarios, pink slips and filling open positions. There’s something clinical about this parallel, but it’s true. For example, everyone who’s a [...]
When you have been in a relationship for a very long time, priorities shift. Romance changes. You become more practical. Sure, you could fight the natural progression towards tedium but why not honor it instead? Some people might call this giving up and to those people I say, “Who asked you?!” So, I am designing a new line of note [...]
As of Sunday, 173 of you voted on my husband’s hair. That’s a lot of people caring about a stranger’s hair. And this is why I like you. I mean, I get it. It’s like if reality TV had a baby with the internet and was then abandoned and raised by a Choose Your Own [...]
I bet you didn’t know how much you were helping my marriage. Remember that time we discussed how much my husband pees on the floor? Guess what? He moderately cleaned up his act and his pee streams. Hooray for passive aggressive internet shaming! But our work is not complete. We have another battle to fight [...]
Up until several months ago my life was a perfect model of balance (*cough, cough*)—a model of perfect balance until a certain friend and her husband introduced me to some goofy game, the premise of which involves enraged birds, aloof swine, and flimsy-looking structures begging to be knocked down. Some friends. This game—this stupid, trivial, [...]
After thirteen years of wedded… uh, bliss… there’s a new man in my life. Don’t run and call your momma, yet. It’s not quite as scandalous as it might have seemed at first glance. My husband shaved his goatee for the second time in the thirteen years I’ve known him and he is a new [...]
People of the Internets, my family needs you. We are a house divided, and everyone knows that a house divided cannot enjoy a picnic together. Our problem centers around the classic American cuisine: the peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Or rather, the problem centers around the peanut butter and peanut butter sandwiches that my husband [...]
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