Your child joins your life.
You don't join theirs.

Columbus Day weekend. No PTO required. A ninety-minute flight from San Diego to Sacramento, friends who picked me up from the airport, and a homecoming game at Cal. I hadn't been to a game in years. My friends suggested I come up and finally see the new stadium and I said yes without thinking too hard about it. That was the whole decision. I went to Cal. When I was there, Cal football was genuinely good — the PAC-10 was something, the players went on to the NFL, I cared in th

One PTO day. That's all it cost. Memorial Day weekend is three days. But the Friday before it is a dead day at work and everyone knows it. Take Thursday afternoon at minimum, burn Friday, and you have five days away for a day and a half of leave. I have done this math so many times it's automatic now. The calendar has these windows everywhere if you're willing to look for them. One strategic day of PTO before a long weekend resets you as completely as a week. Sometimes more,

How one night in the woods reminded me who I was. I found out I was pregnant and cried. Not because I was unhappy — I wasn't — but because I had a list. Kilimanjaro was on it. A lot of things were on it. And suddenly the timeline felt very uncertain. I hit my birthday that October with a 10-week-old and postpartum fog thick enough to lose yourself in. When my husband asked what I wanted for my birthday, I didn't want a dinner out or no physical gifts or a spa day. I wanted on