My 1500-miles-away daughter said to me recently: “You should write a post about me. And about how school is hard. And about how adulting is hard.” And my first thought was, “Oh, sweets, it gets so much harder.”
What Happens When You Say ‘Yes’
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When I was a kid, I had a Wonder Woman outfit. Not the cheap plastic-y kind you get from a Halloween store today, but a homemade, kick-ass one: blue shorts with ironed-on white stars (unevenly cut out by my seven-year-old hands), a white t-shirt with red stripes, and a length of twine wrapped around a belt loop for a magic lasso.
Best of all: bullet-deflecting silver bracelets my brother Tim cut for me out of an empty Continue reading
Like It or Not, Let the Colors Swirl
This is a weird time. It’s sad and scary. It’s colorful and creative. It’s overwhelming and enlightening and stimulating and freeing. And exhausting – mustn’t forget exhausting.
My daughter left for college last month. She is a couple thousand miles away, and let me tell you, it’s just weird. It’s a big deal, but not necessarily in the way I thought it was going to be.
The Crouton Conflict of 2019
Being the cooking superstar that I most definitely am not, I was as surprised as anyone when I recently discovered the joy of making my own croutons for salads. Unfortunately (like always, when it comes to cooking), I’ve stumbled upon some major obstacles.
How hard can it be to make a salad, you ask? Here, I offer two exhibits from the Nastu household Crouton Conflict.
Exhibit A. “You Should Have…”
I go to the store and buy a delicious-looking loaf of French bread, crusty on the outside, soft on the inside. I’m planning to let it get stale so I can make croutons the next day. Continue reading
How to Use Your Friends
Show of hands, please: When you have a long list of things to accomplish, who finds it impossible to decide which task to start with because they all seem equally important? Would you rather eat glass than make a phone call to, say, the accountant or pharmacy or doctor’s office or utility company?* Do you sometimes hop out of bed with obscene amounts of optimism and a plan to accomplish a Superman-sized list in a single bound? And by dinner, do you feel like a miserable failure because you have 14 pages of things left to do and you’re as tired as a toddler after her first day of preschool (and just as weepy)? Continue reading
Tell Oprah to Shit Up, and Other Sunday Wisdom
I had nothing to say today. So I was trying to write about how I had nothing to write about when – ta da! – my brain did what it does best. That is, it got distracted and wandered off without supervision and got into trouble. So now I have something to write about after all, which is great even though dinner is ruined.
Continue reading
He Can’t Toast Bread but Manages Miracle Brownies
I’ve never been the kind of mom who has a plate of warm cookies waiting on the counter for my kids when they come home from school. Certainly I’ve made plenty (okay, a few) batches of cookies in the past 18 years, but mostly any sweets we have in the house come straight from Safeway’s cookie aisle. My own mom was the same: she made a pretty good chocolate chip cookie from time to time, but usually it was Oreos or Nilla Wafers after school, and I never felt neglected. Continue reading
