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 grade, lon

Do you remember when forever was a summer? When only the sprinkler held us accountable. When our souls were fed on popsicles and bologna sandwiches.  Now we're the ones feeding to others dreams and gluten-free nuggets. But you and me and our banana-seat bicycles, we used to fly down the gravel road so dusty we left waves baking in our wake.  We caught tadpoles in the creek and watched as they grew legs, then we laid on the red plaid blanket under a rain of fireworks. Colors so vibrant against the vast black, they didn't seem real.  We sailed on station wagon road-trips, vinyl back seat hot on our thighs, no air conditioning, just our hand dipping in the headwind. Sunshine so bright in our eyes, we were blind to adulthood. So how did we get here?  We fell through all those weeks with sunburned cheeks and ice cream melting down our small wrists. We played gin rummy all day with nothing else to do but sing along to the radio, and time got lost. When fireflies made the whip-long gr

Do you remember what I was like back then, a food stamps kid so out of place among the shiny glass towers and $150 designer jeans and yet you hired me despite the uncertainty in my eyes and my lack of marketing experience but I guess I write a good cover letter and I can still remember how expensive the stores smelled and the Alamo-shaped facade of the building where I cut my teeth and I wanted so much to be as cool as you, so devil-may-care with your tinted glasses lenses and longish hair and gravelly voice and not a one of my business classes ever mentioned how much swearing there'd be in a creative office but not me I never said the right thing, never fit in, never rocked to the easy rhythm of belonging even that summer when most of the building went to happy hour every Thursday and I learned how to drink with all the young up-and-comings in Midtown and Deep Ellum and Lower Greenville and you used to rib me joking asking if you could buy my first and last drink because I'd h

It began on May 1 with an email saying a request had been made to change my Facebook password. I hadn't made that request. More of these emails followed in quick succession, a few minutes apart. It was like being in labor, but instead of me birthing a baby, a hacker was spawning fraudulent access into my thoughts, locations, photos, and feelings.  With every email I got, I clicked on the blue square that said "This wasn't me." But that didn't relieve these troublesome pains. Instead, an email was delivered that said Facebook had detected a suspicious login near Seattle - 2,400 miles away from where I sat.  To increase security, I have two-factor authentication (2FA) on my account - with every login, a code is sent to my cell phone that also has to be entered to access my information. But somehow the fraudulent login didn't trigger a code, and the 2FA didn't prevent the hacker from getting in.  So I requested a security code from Facebook, got into my accou

Did you know you can do less?  It's a secret you won't find on social media or in organized moms groups, but it's true. Did you know that when your children have to be at outdoor soccer practice for two hours, and it's cloudy and windy, you can let them go practice in the chilly evening air while you stay in the car and read a book?  You don't have to pace on the sidelines for two hours to keep warm while your sweet child runs ladders or practices defense, oblivious to your existence, under the tutelage of a volunteer soccer coach.  You can sit in a comfortable seat in the warm air of your car and immerse yourself in a good story. Nobody will even try to stop you.  How to survive soccer practice: don't And when it's time for the Easter Bunny to make its appearance, did you know you can do less there too? You don't have to buy a toddler pool and fill it with books and Legos, pool toys and two-pound chocolate bunnies. You don't have to stuff 100 bright