I tell my husband tidbits about the kids because part of my strategy to get him to relocate to Swarthmore is to keep him feeling close to us. I tell him my younger son is winning more on his video game than ever before because the Internet we get from living above Dunkin Donuts is so much faster than on the farm. Read more

People who love their career are people who will always figure out how to love their work. There are people who love to work and people who love to do other things. Read more

I take anti-anxiety drugs. I say that so I can deny that they also function as anti-depressants. Because I think I’m too old to still be depressed from a traumatic childhood. But it seems logical that any parent who is also the breadwinner would need anti-anxiety medicine just to get out of bed every day knowing the income has to flow until the kids are out of the house. Read more

I coached this guy Tanner who invented a thing to make milk flow smoothly in tubes and now he’s a millionaire tech CEO. During his fifteen-year marriage he’s scheduled sex with his wife, on a calendar, a year in advance. He was surprised to hear other couples do not do this. Read more

The people with the most grit are really poor or really neglected and they overcome those circumstances. But why aspire to that? We glorify it like life is one big Horatio Alger story. Read more

ComPsych is this place that puts out research about how employees feel, and it turns out that feelings are generational. At least at work. Which is what ComPsych specializes in. Read more

Everyone who said that me moving with the kids to Swarthmore would be the end of my marriage is probably right.

And while I’m at it, all the people who told me to stay away from the farmer when we were dating — you were probably right too.

And the people who say in the comments section that I don’t know how to do intimacy. I guess you were right also. Because clearly I’m having trouble. Read more

What justifies relocating a family?

I am cooking but it’s in a slow cooker. I’m resisting my rental apartment oven because I have a $12,000 oven at the farm that no one is using, and maybe that wouldn’t be so frustrating to me if I didn’t also have  $35,000 piano at the farm that no one is using. Read more

I am writing this on my new dining room table, in my new apartment in Swarthmore, PA. We live above Dunkin’ Donuts, and I told the kids absolutely no buying a donut ever. But I bought a few coffees there as a goodwill gesture for using their Internet which thank goodness filters up to our apartment.

The kids think it’s totally incompetent that we’ve been here four days and still do not have our own Internet connection. They do not recognize we also don’t have pots and pans and sheets and shampoo. Read more

© 2023 Penelope Trunk