Remaking my idea of ‘home’ feels like building sandcastles at the sea’s edge. Yet, despite all the shedding, reimagining and redefining I do, there are pieces that stay.

This is my Uncle Frank. I spoke to him for the last time on Saturday. He apologized that he wouldn’t be around to read my book when it was finished. We laughed about the name of his high school mascot (the Authors) and said how much we love each other. A Mozart concerto played in the background. On Sunday, after a morning with family, Uncle Frank took his final pill.

If you’re kicking yourself because we’re 10 days into January and your New Year’s Resolutions are quickly becoming the microphone for your inadequacies, let me throw you a Get-Out-of-Jail-Free card. I almost died this morning during my new “self care” routine. Maybe we all need to calm the f* down.

These are the words that were shouted at @heyitsbriancook as we crossed the street last night on our way to meet friends. The driver, angry that we crossed without the light, screamed and honked at us, then stopped his car to really get into it. That’s when he labeled Brian with that age-old slur of a ‘Harvard professor’. We laughed the rest of the walk and I offered to buy B a sweatshirt at the Harvard Co-op. But when I woke up this morning thinking about it, I wasn’t laughing.

I’m typing this on the first desktop computer I’ve owned since the 90’s, on a desk stocked with Uni Ball pens and my glitter collection, in my very own office with my very own door. I’ve been dreaming of this moment for months.

For the second time in two weeks, I have accidentally super glued my fingers. The first was in trying to glue the handle back onto my rice cooker after the cord wrapped around my leg, dragging it off of the counter, causing it to smash on the floor.

I’m one of those people who finds a loose thread on my favorite shirt, the kind that dangles so seductively and yet threatens to destroy the item that I love, and I pull it. Maybe not all the way but definitely until the garment is irreparably damaged. This is exactly what I did with my own mental health the weekend they reversed Roe vs. Wade.

In my last post Pride, I noticed (after re-reading my work at least 25 times) that I had committed the crime of gender bias. This was truly an ironic piece of work given that Pride is an article that newly announced to the world my transgender son. I asked my readers if they too found the error. None of them did.

The bravest act I’ve ever witnessed was at a gas station off a highway in the middle of nowhere California.

Yesterday my kid got in the car, and before we were even a mile away from school, he was sobbing in the passenger seat.

For the past few weeks, while I’m driving back from dropping a kid at school or attending a final meeting, I find myself winding my way through the hills of Oak View and crying.

Sunday, I spent several hours sitting with a friend at a bar. And while that last sentence was my most used excuse in my 20’s for why I hadn’t called my mother in months, it happens to be a now rare event.

We are on Day 4 of a teen mental meltdown and we are exhausted. The tears, the silence, the blind fear gripping her by the ankles, dragging her down. It takes every ounce of strength I have to hold onto her, pull her up and out, back into the light.

In about two weeks, the Home and Garden Television Network will be calling to tell me I’ve won their Dream House Sweepstakes and the people of Warren, VT are waiting with open arms.

I’m a 50 year old mom. Occasionally, I’m up for a good “whoa, this chick’s mess is about 1,000 degrees hotter than mine” show. This is how I found myself watching Netflix’s new series, “The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window”.