I went on sabbatical yesterday afternoon. It was extremely out of character for me, but I have been out of character for a while now. I’ve been working even more than usual, sleeping less than usual, and feeling more drained than usual. Last week it all seemed to hit me at once and I walked around on the verge of stress- and exhaustion-induced tears for days. I had the strong desire to take a road trip somewhere, anywhere. Just…away. That’s why, when I ran into a friend of mine while running errands and she noticed that I was so tightly-wound and subsequently offered up her lake house as a possible…
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When Type A + Type A = Type B
In yet another example of how time flies and how surreal it is to have grown children, we moved D into his first solo apartment over the weekend. He hasn’t lived at home full time for four years now (!!!!), spending the first three years in the dorm and this past year in a house with several of his friends. After graduation they all started to go their separate ways and he needed to find his own place. Jim and I drove up to Wisconsin to help him move, and we were secretly-not-so-secretly thrilled to find out that he had rented a truck the night before and had friends help…
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#BlogHer14: It Was About The People
On Sunday night I returned home from San Jose, California and the tenth annual BlogHer conference. This was the sixth BlogHer conference for me—the second as a team member—and while it was exhausting, it was also just SO GOOD. I’m still recovering, in fact. Reentry, the adjustment back into my everyday life, is the very worst part about attending this conference for lots of us; for me it begins when I say goodbye to my friends and continues as the exhaustion—which has been building for months and approached breaking point last week—sets into every pore and then doesn’t leave for days. FOR DAYS. I expect to regain the ability to…
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Ten Years Ago #Selfiebration
This year, BlogHer is celebrating the tenth anniversary of its annual conference and in honor of that milestone, there are lots of activities going on around the Selfiebration hashtag. Last week, BlogHer’s Executive Editor Julie Ross Godar asked, “Where were YOU ten years ago?” If that’s not a great blog post prompt, I don’t know what is. Ten years ago, it was 2004. (See? I can do math.) My life was completely different in so many ways from what it is at this moment. Let’s start by talking about me and the internet ten years ago. I used it only for email and…well, I think that’s about it. I had…
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Golden Year
We just had a whirlwind weekend in Tennessee, celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of my parents’ wedding. To mark the occasion, they decided to renew their vows, and it was really so sweet. The Fab Five (Jim, D, J, my sister and me) made the trek from Chicago—we wouldn’t have missed it!—and we were thrilled to be a part of it all. There were twenty-six of us filling the living room in the home of my parents’ good friends from their temple. Jim, D, J, and my uncle held the poles for the chuppah and my parents’ rabbi performed the ceremony. My parents held hands the majority of the time, my…