At the first Thanksgiving I celebrated with my future husband-to-be, my future in-laws whom I love dearly served turkey, mashed potatoes, and corn. And maybe rolls. That's it. And I said, "That's not Thanksgiving. That's just Thursday." Where were the exotic, calorie-laden dishes that only appear once a year? The puzzling mincemeat pie, the savory dressing, the sweets like cookies and chocolates and pastries? That's more like it. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. Perhaps it's an unconventional choice, but one that makes sense given that I grew up playing jump-rope with the poverty line . My family didn't host or attend cook-outs on Labor Day or Memorial Day, and never bought fireworks on Fourth of July. Christmastime was often excitement tinged with disappointment and forced merriment I didn't enjoy. But Thanksgiving Days were full of delicious once-a-year foods, thanks to community pantry donations that made our food stamps go farther .  Leadi...

  Don't. I really mean it. You think it will be fun, but it won't. You think it will be all family bonding, laughing while inexplicably wading through a vat of uncooked corn kernels, sipping cider on an outlandishly oversized, rough-hewn wooden swing while gazing at one another lovingly. It will not be like that. It will be hell on a farm, which is already a kind of hell, with goats scream-bleating at you and children getting rub-burns on snot-slick plastic slides after losing their squares of scratchy carpet and expensive small-batch caramel corn flying everywhere and $50 for a lumpy pumpkin you have to hack off the prickly vine yourself and someone will cry. Someone is always crying. Sometimes that someone is you. And there is no alcohol for purchase at this farm. Stay home and stream a movie instead. Microwave popcorn is fine.

Almost five years ago, I gifted the world a list of Things I Never Thought I'd Have to Say , an ongoing collection of utterances that made me pause and think, "WTF did I just say to my child?"  Gems included please don't lick the dog , we don't cook our friends , and  don't high-five him in the face. Since 2020, I have said dozens more of these bizarre sentences to the two small humans who live in my house and follow me around, asking for snacks and screen time.  Because parenting is weird. Any time you try to teach another person what shouldn't be eaten, how to be kind to others, and also how to act in public, things are bound to get muddled. It's time for an update of what I've said.  Strange sentences about food Please don't put Goldfish in your ears Don't hit yourself in the face with carrots. You have cranberry sauce on your glasses. Please don't put hot dogs inside your pockets. There's no reason to ever take syrup into the ba...

I carried a pink lunchbox every day.  Bumpy and thick, the molded plastic was designed to keep the contents cold during sweltering Texas school days. The outside had horizontal furrows, too narrow to stick my finger inside, but I traced them anyway like they were Braille and I was trying to understand life. The inside of the lunchbox featured separate compartments for a sandwich and chips, plus a Thermos or can of Coke (it's all called Coke in Texas).  Actual lunchbox, photo courtesy of eBay But on this day there was no drink, and the lunchbox was considerably lighter at the loss.  It must have been the end of the month, because at home we had run out of whatever I usually brought to drink in the school cafeteria. There would be no trips to the grocery store until my dad got paid, our next booklet of paper food stamp coupons arrived, or we found time and gas money to visit the SoS Spirit of Sharing pantry in the next town over. It was the late '80s, either 3rd or 5th grad...

This week, the powers that be announced Bed Bath & Beyond is closing for good. The news wasn't surprising, but I still feel disappointment. It was a store for seminal changes in life. Going to college, moving into your first apartment or home, getting married, getting divorced - any situation that required starting anew.  With its closing, a few generations of consumers lose a store closely tied to our milestones and memories. We're left with only the part that is Beyond. BBB was often the go-to place for buying (or registering to get gifts of) towels, storage options, organization, bedding, small appliances, dishes, cookware, and more. With the help of his mom, my husband bought several cart-loads of items there when he purchased his first home just before we met. We registered there for wedding gifts, most of which we still use 15 years later.   Local columnist and author Connie Schultz recently  shared a poignant story of shopping at BBB after a divorce. Shor...

Into every family vacation, a little misfortune must fall. Here's how to tell when it's time to end your beach vacation: 10. A wave steals husband's sunglasses  9. Backs of your hands get sunburned 8. Found a tick in the 6-year-old's hair 7. Somebody mentions the alligators at the state park, "but they don't bother you none" 6. Husband loses his hat 5. 9-year-old throws tantrum that we never let him do anything (while holding a boogie board, standing in the ocean, on vacation) 4. Sprained your ankle 10 minutes into a trip to the beach 3. 6-year-old gets stung by a jellyfish, has complete freak-out melt-down screaming on the beach 2. You run out of Blue Bell ice cream 1. Electricity goes out at the resort when it's 93 degrees outside These, my friends, are sure signs that it's time to pack it up, at least until next year. 6-year-old: "Are we going to take any ice cream home?"  

A few weeks ago, my neighbor's infant daughter had an allergic reaction of unknown origin. She landed in the ER with hives and swelling, and my neighbors felt worried and overwhelmed. Understandably so. Raising a child with serious or potentially life-threatening allergies adds an extra layer of unpredictability and fear to parenthood. It's like having unmarked landmines in your back yard, and telling your kid to go outside and play. Your mission, should you choose to accept it. It's been almost six years since my son was diagnosed with food allergies to virtually all tree nuts, peanuts (FYI, peanuts don't grow on trees and aren't actually nuts), and sesame seeds. Thankfully we've never endured a second allergic reaction, but we're always ready just in case. This is how we manage his food allergies: Always carry emergency epinephrine When he was 10 months old, I gave my son some peanut butter and he developed a mild case of hives. Our pediatrici...

Andy Williams had it all wrong . Thanksgiving is the most wonderful time of the year. Unless you're a turkey. As a poor kid growing up in rural Southeast Texas , Christmas was hard. While my parents fought over the "right" way to string lights on an anemic artificial tree, our seven television stations broadcast non-stop messages of unaffordable presents and unattainable family happiness. Toys R Us burst with more games, more toys, oh boy. Homes dripped with decorations and lights. Everyone was happy and nothing ever went wrong (except for that time Kevin got left home alone). Even the long-distance phone commercials were sappy and soaked with the kind of togetherness my parents -- mostly estranged from their own families in the Midwest -- didn't long for. I couldn't relate to most of what surrounded me. Walking the tightrope that is the poverty line, my family wavered on and off of traditional welfare. The government provided cash benefits back then for ...

He broke out in hives. Anywhere that he'd touched the peanut butter - his fingers, the inside of his hands, around his mouth - turned deep pink and sprouted dozens of white bumps, no bigger than the head of a pin. People frequently ask me how I knew my son was allergic to peanuts. Simple. At 10 months old, I gave him peanut butter, and he broke out in hives. Two months later at his 1-year well child appointment, I mentioned the episode to his doctor. The hives combined with ongoing eczema earned us a referral to a pediatric allergist. At that appointment, they covered his back with needle sticks laced with common allergens - peanuts, wheat, milk, eggs, soy, pollen, animal dander, mold, dust, and more. It was a grueling 20 minute wait while he sobbed and wailed but we couldn't put our arms around him for fear of cross-contaminating the samples. Growing welts confirmed what we already knew: he had spring and fall environmental allergies, and he was allergic to peanuts. ...

Oh, I was smug. I was haughty. I was positively vainglorious . "Mmm, yes, that does sound difficult," I would tell other moms. "I wish I knew what to say. My little cherub, heart of my heart, organic apple of my eye, is just a wonderful eater. He has fruit and vegetables with every meal . We just don't have those problems." Once upon a time, I had a child who loved food. Life was beautiful all the time. Sunshine and rainbows hung over my immaculate home. A unicorn grazed lazily in the front yard. And inside, my child was happily eating whatever I put on his plate. Green beans. Italian meatloaf. Ripe, red strawberries. Homemade three-cheese mac-and-cheese with cubed organic chicken and a crispy Panko crumble topping, baked in a cupcake tin to form perfect single servings. He was a red-blooded American male, and he liked to eat. For a while, anyway. It turns out that the older kids get, the more opinions they have, and the more they want to exercise thos...

In the summer of my seventh year, my family landed in Southeast Texas. We had driven there in a distressingly orange Volvo station wagon with sticky vinyl seats and a "way-back." Inexplicably, my mom called her Betsy For a few years thereafter, each month during summer vacation my brother, my mom, and I would climb into the family car and head to town to go grocery shopping. (At the time, "town" consisted of three stop lights, three fast-food joints (the McDonald's didn't come until 8th grade), and one set of railroad tracks that separated us from the grocery store). It was 98 degrees in the shade and the car's air conditioning hadn't worked since the turn of the decade. Three miles with the windows down can seem like three lifetimes when you're not even 10 years old.

It's June. Look out -- summer is coming. Ah, yes, summer in Ohio...those approximately 12 days in late July, when the temperatures creep up to a balmy 84 degrees and Lake Erie averages about 72 degrees. If you go, don't forget to bring a wet suit for wading -- the water's about 6-10 degrees colder than Livestrong.com recommends for vigorous exercise . Even triathlon competitors wear wetsuits in water colder than 78 degrees. There is no way this Gulf of Mexico girl is taking a relaxing dip in that. Instead I will chill on our newly outfitted back deck, which now features a large cantilever umbrella to shield my fish-belly white skin from the sun and a 36-inch ottoman on which to prop my feet. My happy place All that I'm missing is a fruity adult beverage. Unfortunately, my knowledge of alcohol ends at how much rum to put in a Captain and Coke. So when I need an easy fruity drink recipe, I yell one of my favorite battle cries: To Pinterest! I type in the wor...

One of the biggest questions I've had while pregnant (besides " what the hell am I doing? ") has been how big is the baby right now ? It's incredible that a human starts out smaller than a speck of dust, then weighs almost an ounce -- about as much as a slice of bread -- by 13 weeks gestation. At 20 weeks, halfway through baking, she weighs less than a pound but at 40 weeks she'll be more than 7.5 pounds. That's some serious growth in a relatively short amount of time. For some reason, books and websites insist on offering a visual of a fetus's size by comparing her to fruits and vegetables. I assume this is to further drive home the point that I should be eating healthful foods full of vitamins and minerals, and not half that bag of mini chocolate-caramel-pecan turtles I polished off about 20 minutes ago. The first problem with the fruits and vegetables scenario (besides their lack of chocolate and caramel) is that I don't know what half of them are...

I've made the difficult decision to get rid of the kid. For a few hours a week, I mean. I believe some women are cut out to be stay-at-home moms, while others are not. I am not. (see  here , here , and here ) I do the best I can, but lately we've got a case of the Terrible Twos combined with Second Trimester Hormonal Rage, plus a dash of the Terrible Thirty-Fours thrown in for good measure. I need a break, because I'm miserable and it shows in my parenting. I figured that if I can get a little time way from my sweet cherub who occasionally grows horns, life would be better for everybody. Besides, there's a strong possibility I'll need part-time help when the new baby comes and everyone we've talked to says it's better to get the older kid used to being away from mom now, instead of during the turmoil that is bringing a newborn into the house. It's not necessarily in our budget, but it's worth saving my sanity. When we interviewed a local daycare,...