Do you feel like you hear about anxiety in kids and teenagers more than ever before? I just don’t remember hearing about my friends or classmates dealing with anxiety when I was growing up. 

Granted, I know there was considerable stigma surrounding mental health back in the day, so surely there was plenty of it happening, considering all the brown plaid that parents were dressing their kids in, and I guess we didn’t hear about these struggles because people just didn’t talk about it. 

As my son came off the ice yesterday following his hockey game, he looked at Mark and me, shrugged up one shoulder a bit and gave a, “meh, what are you gonna do?” expression.

They’d lost another game - they've had plenty of experience losing this season, which has been hard on the team’s morale.  

Except for my child’s.

He still comes off the ice with a smile.

It drives Mark insane.  

“It would be nice if he was just a little more competitive,” he’ll say.

You know I’m all about cutting corners, right? But I also want to present my family with meals so delicious, I’ll forever be one step above whoever my boys marry someday. 

That my boys will always show gratitude for their sweetheart making them a meal, but that they’ll also give an invisible-to-the-naked-eye shake of the head while thinking - deep inside - “My mother would be horrified if she could see this.”

That, no matter how much butter or sugar is involved, every recipe is sub-optimal in comparison to what they grew up with.

Of course, I know the likelihood of this is close to nil, considering that - to this day - I still have to make an alternate meal for my youngest, just like most people do for their toddlers, despite my sweet baby angel closing in on 143 months old.

Having given birth to my first-born on Texas Independence Day, March 2nd, it’s only natural that I’d be somewhat of a Texas history buff.

But alas, I am not.

History buff? Yes. Texas history? Meh.

I really only know about these historic sites because my dad IS a history buff - all the history, and I grew up being dragged around the state to visit these places, and they were always accompanied by a long and mind-numbing lecture, which I only now can appreciate.