I don’t recall too many back to school things growing up. I vaguely remember shopping for school supplies at Venture. Being the 3rd girl out of 4, I got mostly hand-me-downs. I do remember the typical front porch picture with my neat pigtails with bows. Yes, at one point in my life, I actually wore…

When I was in college, my older sister asked me to run the mini-marathon (13.1 miles) with her. No problem! I play college basketball; I can run 13.1 miles no sweat. Plus, I was never the fastest player in sprints but the more sprints we had, miraculously I just would keep my pace and become…

I’ve been reluctant to post about anything lately, because I knew it would manifest as a tired and grumpy rant. And let’s be honest, who wants to hear me complain? I’m not the one with cancer! I’ve probably rewritten this 50 times in the last couple weeks. Writing about my wife fighting cancer unleashes a…

My dad took a sabbatical during the summer of 1990 and it was the best summer I can remember as a kid. We rented a house in Upstate New York, close to our cousins and we stayed the whole summer. The drive out might have been another story. We loaded up our conversion van for…

I remember being in my 9th grade English class with Mrs. Bickell and before we read Romeo and Juliet, there was a survey about yourself. You know, questions trying to engage with Shakespeare and 17th century English culture. One of the this or that questions was: are you spontaneous or planned? As a 14 year-old,…

The dinner table is a funny thing. As a kid, I remember our table being about manners, being polite and having decorum. Clearly I grew up with all sisters. Now, my dinner table is never short of loud farts and burps. Some battles are not worth fighting. Even still, many of our families infamous memories…

Round 2 went something like round 1. The time at the cancer center was longer because I was scheduled for 7.15am but the nurse practitioner who approves my chemo drugs doesn’t get to work till 9am. So I was hanging out, reading. After my chemo got approved, all went smooth but was just a long…

Round 2 went something like round 1. The time at the cancer center was longer because I was scheduled for 7.15am but the nurse practitioner who approves my chemo drugs doesn’t get to work till 9am. So I was hanging out, reading. After my chemo got approved, all went smooth but was just a long…

Music has always been important to me. To be clear I have zero musical ability of my own – the depth of my talent was working the sound board at church for a few years 😂 But my dad has been a musician for most of his life (his band played at Liz and I’s…

I grew up in a small suburb in Illinois about an hour south of Chicago called Frankfort. Looking back, I loved it. I could walk or ride my bike pretty much anywhere. Tons of kids to play with. But in the summer, nothing was better than going to the pool at Camp Manitoqua. Even now,…