Ever since I can remember, I've been plagued with terrible motion sickness. Just like your favorite holiday movie title, I've been sick on Planes, Trains and Automobiles. Don't forget about boats. Forcing me to sit on a boat in the waves ranks high on my top nightmares list. 

Recently, my motion sickness has been EXTRA bad. Like run-out-of-my-barf-bags tucked-in-the-fetal-position-on-the-airplane-bad. As you can imagine, this isn't a very feasible scenario while trying to manage six kids. While I've dealt with this situation my whole life, I felt like I had crossed the line of "normal" and needed to find out what *might* be wrong with me. 

My doctor recommended a trip to an ENT. I also made an appointment with a neurologist. It felt good to be doing "something" towards solving this problem just having the appointments booked. 

I walked into the ENT with high hopes that she'd have the answer. ANY answer. 

After a quick conversation...

My sister and I used to love dumping our candy loot on the ground and organize it into categories right after Halloween. My sister would tear through her candy, but not me. I'd eat a few pieces and save the rest to eat over time so I could torture her with a Reese's in the dark days of February. 

As a kid, I also loved meeting my friend on her bike so we could ride into town to the local pharmacy where I would buy my favorite candy. My friend and I would swap sweets and laughs on Saturday mornings. 

Going Trick or Treating with our kids last night reminded me that sweets and candy were a part of my childhood. My favorites, Twizzlers and Reese's, still bring a little thrill with the first bite. But there was a period of time during my dieting days where I wouldn't go near candy. Too much sugar, too many "empty" calories, and not even close to a "clean" food. 

If you're staring a pile of leftover candy in the face this morning and feeling nervous instead of...

One of my friends likes hosting parties at her house because she can simply leave when she's tired. Everyone's had a few drinks and nobody even knows she's gone. She's become a pro at the French exit (leaving without saying goodbye). 

Lately, the toys at our house have been guilty of this French behavior. 

Let me explain. We moved to a new house a few weeks ago which meant that I got (painfully) reacquainted with all the, errrr stuff, that we own. Don't get me wrong, I love getting rid of things, thanks to my friend, Shira Gill***, and even did a massive pre-move sweep. Despite my best decluttering efforts, I still ended up with five trunk loads to our recycling center. 

It was that fifth load that was the toughest. I was struggling with getting rid of a few bigger toys that our kids use periodically, but had sentimental value. Our playroom at the new house is smaller than our old house and things were just feeling cluttered. After an exhausting few...

A friend of mine was raving about her looks-like-I-was-in-the-kitchen all day cranberry chicken that only takes 15 minutes to make. Cranberry sauce, a stick of butter, and some spices get mixed on the stovetop and then poured over the chicken. A magical 30 minutes later, your gourmet chicken comes out of the oven and your kids are ready to sign you up for Top Chef.  

She had me at the 15 minute prep time, but I let her go on about how it tastes so good and smells so delicious (insert gesticulating arms). But, she lamented quietly, it’s not very healthy with that stick of butter. 

I thought about what “health” really meant to her (and maybe you) at that moment.

Health didn’t mean having a meal on the table for her family to enjoy each other’s company and conversation.
Health didn’t mean gaining back minutes or hours of food prep time so that she had more time to do what she needed/wanted that night.
Health didn’t mean eating...

I’ve found myself doom scrolling on Facebook lately. 

We’ve recently moved which has prompted a flurry of activity on Facebook marketplace. I normally don’t like to hang out in Zuckerburg’s world, but I made the exception so we could unload our stuff. 

Whenever I check one of my “for sale” listings, I inevitably see the first story in my Facebook feed. Those evil geniuses know how to suck you down their rabbit hole. It really is hard to stop at that first story and the doom scrolling begins. 

Yesterday, the top post was from a friend who had my scrolling thumb hovering in mid-air after I read her announcement: “day one ready to reset, no gluten, dairy, sugar, wheat, coffee or alcohol for 30 days wish me luck!!!”

My heart sank as I read the over 60 comments which sounded mostly like this:

“You got this!”

“Good luck!”

“Gooooood for you!”

“Get it girlfriend.”

“Yay!...

A friend of mine just sent me this text:

"I was thinking about you this week. Do you still work as a nutritionist? I would like to lose xx pounds, but more importantly learn how to eat and how to maintain my weight!"  

After getting over my cringe-worthy reaction to my past work as a nutritionist who solely focused on weight loss, I shot back this reply:

"Hi! Actually, I work as a diet recovery and weight neutral coach helping women who DON'T want to diet anymore. Diets really only work for a tiny fraction of people and they can often make health worse in both the short and long term. LMK if you want more info!"

My friend, like so many other women I've talked with replied with this: 
"Yes! I want to change my way of eating and not diet anymore!" 

Here's where things are starting to sound familiar, aren't they?

I pipe back in with:
"I really don't work with women who have an underlying goal of weight loss. Health and weight are very often falsely tied...

When I was growing up, there was nothing I loved more than walking through the Target aisles in early August filling up our shopping cart with everything shiny, pointy and new. Crayons, pencils and colored pencils all sharpened to perfection and markers ready to make their fresh, bold strokes on the page where my favorite. All those blank, wide open pages of mead notebook paper just waiting for their lines to be filled!

I'm not sure if the thrill of filling our cart was more about the promise of the new year, or holding something new and that was just mine. I literally could've spent hours curating my supplies. 

As we get back to school, I'm reminded of wandering Target aisles and remembering that I used to get a similar surge of adrenaline while embarking on a new eating "plan". 

All the diet/lifestyle "supplies" seemed fresh, new and exciting. A "protocol" that seemed equivalent to picking out fresh crayons because following this plan was going to lead to the promise of...

The cicada's evening chorus filled the dark night air as I opened the wash machine door for what seemed like the fiftieth time today. At least I had insect company as I stared down the two dozen plus freshly washed masks. 

If you’re anything like me, you almost forgot about wearing masks for the past two months of summer. Luckily, we were largely outdoors and with fully vaccinated friends or family so everyday didn’t feel like a maskmergency. It was my own joyful mask amnesia or masknesia as I like to say. My partial, not total, memory loss of daily mask wearing felt blissful. 

But, here we are, Delta variant on the rise or peaking in many areas of the country, school looming around the corner, breakthrough infections and cooler fall and winter temperatures on the horizon. 

My heart sank a little as I assessed my mask mother load. Don’t get me wrong, I love masks. If there was a community badge offered for civilians willing to remind people to put on...

Our kitchen table was full of our six kids plus two more of the kid's friends. A summer storm had turned the skies a dark gray with lightning flickering in the distance. We all sat cozy inside and, despite summer dinners being tough to get on the table, tonight we had even managed to cook some market fresh corn on the cob. 

As dinner came to a close, our kids started asking what was available to quench their sweet tooth.

"You guys have sugar in your house?" gasped one of our guests. 

The other guest chimed in with "we literally keep no sweets in the house and the closest thing we have to something sweet is powdered sugar. If we bought anything sweet, it would be gone in one hour". 

Both kids lamented about their moms being "bad" shoppers and always wished their dads would go to the store since they bought more of the "good" stuff. 

I was happy to give the kids Bark thins (thank you, Costco) and everyone left the table happy and satisfied. 

Of course, I...

I rounded the corner from the pool bathroom to hear my friend shouting to my husband that they were bringing ice. Running toward the scene, I found my son on his hands and knees with blood pouring from his mouth and my husband crouched next to him. 

Last month ended our thirteen year run of having no stitches for any of our kids. Two hours, a lost baby tooth (thanks, seesaw) and three stitches later, my son and husband left the ER with every kid’s dream prescription: lots of popsicles and ice cream. He smiled through his swollen lip at the prospect of all day frozen dairy and happily ate ice cream or a blended ice cream drink for lunch and dinner that first day. 

Something typical happened though, at dinner on day two of unlimited ice cream, he looked kinda green in the face. 

“Buddy, do you want that ice cream anymore?” I asked. 

“No, mom, no more ice cream”. He groaned.

His body is pretty smart and so is yours. When given carte...