I was 25 years old when I covered my first election day.
I worked for a small chain of weekly suburban newspapers, and my beat was the largest in the group—and the most Republican. The citizens of this small town voted regularly and predictably, with very little dissent.
Not at that time a very political animal, I [...]

In August it will be two years that we’ve lived in East Central Illinois.
We left behind the water and the trees and everything familiar to begin our beginning in the middle - four years into our marriage, with one child in tow, my husband went back to graduate school as a full-time doctoral candidate and [...]

My mother made me a skirt to wear on my twelfth birthday.
My parents took me out - alone, without my sister and brother - to a very fancy grown-up dinner at a restaurant with white cloth napkins and tablecloths. I ordered baked ziti (still my favorite to this day) and afterward, we went to a [...]

Of all the things I could have passed down to my daughter - brown eyes, a love for reading, bad teeth - I never thought she would get my knee-jerk need to apologize.
I’ve been apologizing for as long as I can remember. When my parents argued, I thought it was my fault; I apologized. My [...]

One person or another in our household has been laid up since Thanksgiving.I’m beginning to think that we’ve offended the universe in some very serious way, bringing upon us plague after plague. My plague, of course, is of a different sort, with morning sickness that lasts all the livelong day.
We’re a barrel of laughs, I [...]

Winter is the worst time to be a parent who stays at home.
Typically, I would also be working, writing a weekly column for a travel site that is preparing to launch. But the preparations are keeping my editor busy right now, and with 13 columns stored up in her files, I am not needed at [...]

The Poo wound up in my bed again last night, and we slept the night through wrapped around one another. I finally rolled over this morning and groggily opened my eyes, taking in dark sky and gloom of the bedroom.
Looking at the clock, I expected to see a number like six or seven.
Instead, I jerked [...]

I’m elbow-deep in mixing bowls and shortening, trying hard to get my holiday baking done. Sidetracked by a ill-advised stay back east with family and a dreadful journey home, I’m also suffering from a very bad case of bronchitis, which my doctor says is borderline pneumonia.Ah, the holidays!
Anyway, I was busy screwing up the gingerbread [...]

I have a whole new appreciation for my mother these days.
I can never remember a time when our house wasn’t clean. She always had a batch of fresh cookies in the jar, and she sewed countless outfits for special occasions: Halloween costumes, orchestra concert ensembles, a skirt for my 12th birthday celebration. Dinner was always [...]

I’m still wrapping my head around the notion that Christmas is right around the corner. I long ago came to loathe, hate, despise, absolutely dread the holiday season.The traveling is so difficult, and in order to make sure all the extended family members get to see their grandchild at during the 12 days of gifting [...]