My Jenn-eration

The weather is gathering that bite that always comes by late October. Truly, fall can just take your breath away. It creeps up on you, leaves slowly changing. And then one day you open your eyes to the most beautiful picture you’ve ever seen. And before you can wrap your arms around all that intense beauty, it just up and blows away on you. Fall is tricky and fickle like that. Just when you fall for it, it’s gone. And everything is bare and white and stripped and cold. I know that’s coming, but I’m still stuck squarely in a world of bright reds and harvest yellows, carved pumpkins, and apple ciders and that amazing rustling and crunching sound that seems to just pop under your feet. Somewhat ironically in the midst of all of this color and warmth, I have been feeling a bit more bare and stripped these past few days. To see something you write go “viral” as has happened with Distracted Living, is a strange and disjointed feeling. It is both amazing and terrifying. I feel much the...

Last week, I almost killed my daughter. It started off as really any other week ever does. My husband had been travelling pretty much non-stop for nearly the entire month. Whether we wanted to or not, we were all falling into a fairly regular rhythm without him, at least Monday-Friday. With school and activities and for better or worse, the days seemed to move rather quickly but by evening all three of us were stretched thin. Collectively, we all seemed to peek at maximum crabbiness somewhere around 6pm. It was shortly after this time last Wednesday night that I brought the kids upstairs to help them get washed up for bed. My daughter had an upset stomach for most of the day but I hadn’t thought much of it. She was otherwise happy and playing and generally herself. I did know that she was very tired. Still, we were a good hour and a half from her usual bedtime of around 8pm. I put her in the bath and let it start to fill and left the room to go start the shower for my...