“That robin’s been working hard on a nest here, I’ve been watching her for days,” my husband told me as he handed me a cup of coffee one morning in May. As our family’s de facto lunch-packer, coffee-brewer, and kid’s-breakfast-maker (I’m so lucky), my husband spends a good hour in …

It was March, and I was in about week 4 of my depression. I have always had a tendency toward depression, though in the last few years I had been pretty consistently happy. But then that kid shot up a high school in Florida. Of all the social media outlets, …

I’ve sentenced my family to a year of community service. Let me explain. At the end of 2016, my husband and I bought a house. I mean, it’s the kind of house we feel like we never want to leave. Granite countertops, hardwood floors. We have a great view of …

It started, innocuously enough, with a Facebook post in 2014. As an avid Facebook follower of my favorite fiction writer, Elizabeth Berg, I knew that though she usually was based in Chicago, she was spending that year with her best friend at her Mill Valley, Calif. home. I’d already taken …

December is always a particularly meaningful and contemplative time for me. There’s Christmas — about which, I confess, I’m absolutely obsessed, am always immersed in by November 1, and find its trappings immensely joyful — and the whole end-of-a-year thing; but also, I was born in December. Now that I …

I’ve always been an active classroom volunteer at my daughter’s elementary school, but last year, as the changes with the Nevada School Wellness Policy started rolling out and I heard the desperate call for new board members on the school’s parent-faculty association, I decided that I wanted to be more …

On New Year’s Eve, some family friends came over to celebrate, and while our daughters played together, we four parents drank wine and talked about parent things. Somehow the subject of guns came up, and how this other couple owned a gun. She spoke up immediately. “By the way, I …

Initiate a conversation about politics these days and you’re likely to elicit eye rolls or an “ugh” from your friends. I have several friends with whom the entire subject is strictly off limits. I used to be one of them. But I’m a writer and English teacher, so pardon me …

About two years ago, I approached my husband about my stress over our mountain of debt. “Something has to happen, we have to pay off this debt! It’s keeping me up nights!” I told him. We resolved to start paying them off, one by one, and living on a strict …

On my morning walks on the hills around my neighborhood in Sparks, I’ve lately been disgusted by an increasingly familiar sight. New houses. There’s nothing particularly disgusting about houses, per se. And while I consider myself pro-environment, I’m honestly not thinking to myself, “Oh, isn’t that awful, all that unspoiled …