Sophie and I got our nails done on Saturday. Hers never take as long as mine so after she’d finished, she parked herself at the front desk of the salon and flirted with the young man who books appointments; he helped her download Pokemon Go and they exchanged Snapchat handles. As we walked to Trader […]

I’m going to begin this blog post the way I’ve started countless blog posts before. I’m going to to tell you a secret. Book publishing is hard. Okay, that might not be much of a surprise, but it bears mention. It’s really fucking hard. You spend a hunk of your life writing this thing (in […]

Dear Sophie, You know, I have been writing this blog for the last 8 years — I started it on your fifth birthday, to document your year in kindergarten — but I’m not sure I’ve ever actually written to you, only about you. So today, in honor of your 13th birthday, I thought I’d write […]

I don’t hear it so much anymore, so I was surprised. “I’m so retarded!” a brand-new employee said the other day, struggling to open a door with a new key card. We were coming back from lunch, and as we walked to the security office to get the key card, I’d winced a little, thinking […]

The other day I opened Sophie’s school backpack and noticed she had a new set of folders — shiny, carefully labeled with each of her classes and in her favorite themes, kittens and nail polish. Her aide did it. She didn’t ask, or make a big deal out of it. She just did it, knowing […]

I rolled over this morning and noticed it on the floor, an old VHS tape, “Educating Peter” scribbled on the label. I really should shove that in the box, I thought, rolling back the other way to avoid morning and the inevitable ouslaught in the wake of a vacation. Or, I suppose, I could watch it. Last […]