Truth

Sent this to Washington Post's On Parenting

They're looking for short snippets on parenthood.

Knowing when to harness and when to release. Understanding the push and pull of care-taking, the need to pry one's fingers off while keeping a sharp eye on what you're doing. Making sure you know that I do what I do from a place of love, not a nefarious pool of would-be control. The words that cannot properly express this. The emotions that show themselves when I cannot explain them. You, in the chair, wondering. 

A little snippet

I’d greeted the first two men I’d loved with bared teeth. The third got a genuine grin.

Was he the love of my life?

COOL, I responded, THOUGH WHY YOU’D RATHER SHIT IN THE WOODS THAN NOT DRINK WITH ME IS DEBATABLE.

He sent back an emoji: the face with hearts for eyes.

Oh, Jesus.

Thing is, I rarely believed I was attractive to anyone. Adam was an exception, and not merely because he was my husband. He had a way about him that made you know he was into you. It wasn’t a leer, but it also wasn’t entirely innocent. It was hot.

Why wasn’t that enough?

There are worse things ...

Than a husband who says: "I want you to be happy."

Than a kid who sings: "Love yooou," when you leave the house.

Than two completely and totally insane dogs.

Bisnow Commercial Real Estate News

I've accepted a full-time offer as a custom content writer with Bisnow. The company is fully remote and has unlimited vacation ... so I guess that means I need to renew my passport, stat!

Gack

I'm writing about the guys I've loved. I mean, that's what this entire manuscript is about. And I'm sitting here practically in tears because of how shitty I've been to all three of them at one time or another.

4:30 a.m. snippet

Emotional affair. The words had the gravitas of something grown-ups did, an old-fashioned thing, like those key parties they played in the 1970s, maybe. All the suburbanites would go to some random bourgie party and swap off keys and whoever matched up got to hook up. I learned all about it from seeing The Ice Storm.

Emotional affair. A phrase that sounded like something straight out of Psychology Today, maybe, or some hoary textbook that you were required to read in junior year of college. Thing was, it was accurate.

Emotional affair. Break it down and you had the entire meaning right there in those two deceptively simple words. You could have a fling with your body, a relationship of the soul. Very often those two did not connect. All I knew was that I’d slept with guys whose last names could not easily recall, but I had never removed a piece of clothing in Jack’s presence and yet he held the power to so easily wound my heart.