When we moved into this house last year, the back of the yard was basically a honeysuckle forest, a dense wall of green stretching across the hillside. We couldn’t even walk through it to get to the dogs if they wandered back there, and all that thick growth was ideal tick habitat. With two dogs … Read more
Some days it isn’t the big decisions that wear you out. It’s all the little ones. What’s for dinner? Should we go somewhere this weekend or stay home? Do I answer one more email or call it a day? None of those decisions are especially important. Yet by the end of the day, they can … Read more
Looking back, July felt like a month of doing things a little afraid, a little unprepared, and going anyway. We took our first Amtrak trip and weren’t sure how any of it would go.Tom sent a message to a band we’ve loved for years and didn’t expect anything back.I wrote about two of the hardest … Read more
It’s the last week of July. I just looked at the calendar and realized we’re four days from August. I seem to have this realization every year. Summer always feels longer when it’s ahead of you than when you’re living it. We’ve had a good summer. We took the train to Chicago, went to a … Read more
Last Tuesday wasn’t the day I planned. Work ran long. I came home tired. The workout I’d mapped out wasn’t going to happen. A few months ago I probably would have skipped it entirely. I’d tell myself I’d do it tomorrow instead. Instead I did a shorter version. And then something hit me. I don’t … Read more
What are you training for? It’s a question I’ve been thinking about differently lately. I don’t exercise because I enjoy every workout. Some of them I enjoy. Most of them I just do. I exercise because I want to keep saying yes. What “Yes” Actually Means Yes to hiking through a national park without having … Read more
The first trauma I was called into, I was afraid. I wasn’t afraid I’d fail. I’d simply never been in a room like that before. Fear doesn’t mean you can’t do it. I know that now. I didn’t know it then. A man who had been shot, bullet lodged in his T-spine. When I got … Read more
Here’s what we’re reading in July 2026 — and I’ll be honest, I didn’t notice these four had anything in common until I’d finished all of them. They all ended up pushing me in the same direction. Die With Zero — Bill Perkins I almost skipped this one because I assumed it was mostly about … Read more
Ten weeks in. We missed a weekly update. We didn’t miss the work. We’re Spending Less Time Negotiating The biggest change isn’t that we’re doing more. Before, a busy week usually meant movement disappeared. Now there’s always a smaller version that keeps us going. The decision about what that looks like has already been made. … Read more
We live here. Long enough that the Gateway Arch became part of the skyline instead of somewhere we actually went. Then Tom’s boss and two coworkers came up from Dallas for a work trip. We planned the kind of evening we’d put together for visitors — the Arch grounds, dinner at Ballpark Village, a Cardinals … Read more