Fact: The San Luis Valley is the largest alpine valley in the world, surrounded by mountains in all directions.
Fact: Our average growing season is a whopping 90 days.
Fact: July and August are generally the only frost-free months out of the entire year.
In case I’m being vague here, this place is in a perpetual state [...]

I have a niece who for the longest time referred to pickles as “shupet.” Like filet or valet or CABERNET. In fact, for the first five years of her life Megan spoke the most adorable make-believe FRENCH I’ve ever heard. Megan is now 13 and there isn’t A TRACE of foreign in her day-to-day speech [...]

When it comes to parenting, you’ve got to know when to hold ‘em. Know when to scold ‘em. Know when to walk away. And know when to run to the therapists. I’ve got it all down pat. EXCEPT the scolding part. This is where my kids would roll on the floor laughing like people who’ve [...]

So I have started this new THING at dinner called “What would you do?” Because I’m always trying to find a way to inject a life lesson when my children are NOT in trouble, NOT tuning me out, and NOT crying so hard that my platitudes about how you should “never ever NEVER grab a [...]

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Sitting between my grandmother’s legs, her fingers intertwined in my clean, moist hair, my eyes pulled back into painful slits as she braids the ponytail sitting high on top of my head, I quickly learned [...]

I live in that small town in southern Colorado recently afflicted with salmonella in the water, and I would probably be remiss if I didn’t blog about what this experience has taught me.
1) It takes approximately four 16.9 fluid ounce bottles of water to boil a package of spaghetti.
2) [...]

I am not religious. And I’m not really interested in celebrating the Hallmark holidays, either. Add to this an aversion to candy and an inherent laziness when it comes to decorating/cooking/shopping/costume-making, and you end up with a person who doesn’t appear to do very much in the way of “celebrating.”
This would be a non-issue, [...]

I recently read an article in the New York Times about a documentary that was made with four- and six-year-old little girls who were given the opportunity to ask a panel of scientists, therapists, and various experts questions they had about SEX, everything from how babies are made to what is AIDS and homosexuality… because [...]

Some people look out their office windows and see high rises, maybe a school yard, a Zen garden or something as grand as Lake Superior. Some people don’t have an office window and are now cursing me for pouring salt in THAT wound. But I’ve recently realized that sometimes a windowless office might be the [...]

I was recently asked what I have against shopping malls. “What are you, some kind of commie?” “You have something against capitalism?!” “Don’t you know that malls are what make the world go round?!”
My answers:
1) Stay on topic
2) Sort of, but we’re talking about my aversion to MALLS
3) Isn’t that taught in seventh grade [...]