At 28 weeks pregnant, I flew eleven hours to London, took a three-hour train ride up to the north of England to attend my grandmother's funeral, then roadtripped another eight hours up to Scotland with my dad and sister to drop the latter back at university in time for her final exams. Somebody page Richard Curtis, because this sounds like a Britcom movie I'd pay to see. 

Continue Reading

Continue Reading

Happy Christmas Eve!

Continue Reading

As I climbed under my duvet just shy of 2am on Tuesday morning, I realized that out of the last twelve nights, I'd spent exactly one in my own bed. That sounds rather scandalous and exciting, until I clarify that most of them have been spent in other people's spare bedrooms. Wait, that still sounds kind of scandalous and exciting. Huh, except maybe not so scandalous. Or exciting. 

Continue Reading

Wait, wait, wait—before I have an important update about mascara, I have an important update about the ear balls. Thank you all for being so kind about the ear balls—and also for being game enough to refer to them as ear balls in your comments, which made me cackle with glee every single time—but it turns out that my mother doesn't have ear balls after all. No ear balls! It's a negative on the ear balls! Instead, it has been determined that she has something with an even crazier name.

Continue Reading

I don't know, Internet. You think you've had your parents all figured out for the last 32 years, and then you go home one weekend and they own a croquet set. 

Continue Reading

Quite honestly, I can barely stand to watch this video anymore since it took me seven bajillion hours to make it and if I never hear the opening bars to Paul Simon's Graceland again it will be far too soon, but if you don't mind the fact that you're going to get the chorus stuck in your head for the next two weeks, here's something that captures pretty accurately the trip I took with my parents and sister last week to Memphis, Tennessee.

Continue Reading

My Christmas stocking contained both deodorant and concealer, which leads me to believe that Santa Claus is telling me to take a hint. Then again, my brother Tom received tooth-whitening products from no fewer than two separate family members, one of whom was me. (We don't only give each other personal hygiene items for Christmas, in case you were wondering. Nope, they work quite well for birthdays as well.)

Continue Reading

A couple of weeks ago, I received an email from my mother, the closing line of which was this: "You must ask Tom about his almost-romance with Pippa Middleton. He was doing so well with her and then he blew it!"

Continue Reading

For my dad's 60th birthday last week, I wanted to do something really fun. My dad and I talk a lot about the past---nostalgia runs in our blood, I think---and we both love to reminisce. Inspired by Jordan Ferney's Postcard Birthday Poster, I started batting around an idea: what if I could get everyone from my dad's past to contribute a memory they had of him? What if I had all those people send their memories to me, and then I put each one into an envelope---sixty total, of course---and had him open them, one by one, on his birthday?

That would be a lot of memories, right?

Continue Reading