More Than Enough

Recently, I made the brilliant decision to have the kids cook dinner once a week. We subscribe to a meal kit service and some of the recipes are fairly easy. Working together, my 8 and 5-year-olds can usually make the 15-minute-meals in less than an hour. They enjoy it, and it’s one less thing I have to do. It’s also teaching them some life skills, maybe.

On Tuesday, they were making tacos and I was patting myself on the back for my parenting genius.

My 8-year-old assigned the 5-year-old to tortilla duty. Toasting the ready-to-cook circles of dough is his specialty. At a moment when they seemed to have everything under control, I stepped out of the room for, I don’t know, two minutes.

To be clear, stepping out of the kitchen while a kindergartener is cooking is not something I’d recommend as a pediatrician, but there is no way to tell this story without confessing that pediatricians are, in fact, humans. Also, He has made approximately 800 tortillas in his life, it did not seem like an unreasonable thing to do.

Anyway, I was summoned back by two slightly elevated and mildly panicked voices. Not “this is an emergency” level shrieks, but there was definitely “something is amiss” energy emanating from my children.

Seconds later, back in the kitchen, I was relieved to see there was no smoke or large flames. No one was injured. My 5-year-old however held the knob to the stove in his hand.

He had been trying to turn off the stove. I do not know why he decided he was done, he had only made three tortillas for our five-person family—but that was not my most pressing question.

The knob in his hand was.

In general, if there is something that needs to be twisted, my son will turn it the wrong direction. I often wonder if it is because he is left-handed, but it is probably just that he is five. Anyway, when he tried to turn the stove off, he predictably twisted it counter-clockwise instead of clockwise.

When the flame remained on, he pushed harder—ripping the internal gas valve system out with the knob.

Like the Hulk.

He hopped off of his white IKEA step stool and handed me the knob.

With the gas stuck in the on position, I stared at the flame and contemplated my next steps for a moment before suddenly becoming unsure of the safety of the situation.

I ushered the kids outside to eat their tacos.

For thirty minutes I tried in vain to turn off the gas, first to the burner, then to the stove. Eventually I called Jawad and asked him to leave his evening meeting early.

After another 45 minutes we eventually turned off the gas for the entire house.

I was drenched in sweat by the time we finally joined the kids at dinner to eat tortilla-less tacos. The three kids had, of course, by this time consumed the only three tortillas that had been cooked.

We wrapped up dinner and everyone took lightning fast cold showers. With the gas off, there was no hot water.

A functional workout, followed by a low carb dinner, and a cold shower almost sounds like something someone might do on purpose.

This week at work I flipped from days to nights and back to days again. I worked on two presentations with slide deadlines that actually already passed (a theme in my life), and I accidentally volunteered to be a room parent for not one, not two, but all three of my kids’ classrooms.

This sounds ridiculous because it absolutely is.

On the whole, though, I’m committed to doing “B-minus” work across most of the domains of my life. Turns out you can get a lot done when you decide you do not need to excel at anything in particular.

Occasionally though, you do have to take a few cold showers.

All of this is by way of explaining that I didn’t do much writing this week.

This wasn’t necessarily an intentional choice. Writing is not something that feels like a chore to me. It’s not a task on my to-do list. It mostly just happens.

But some weeks it doesn’t.

Diastole is the relaxation phase of the cardiac cycle. It is when the muscles expand and allow the chambers to fill up before contracting again.

Maybe our brains need that too.

Not that I was doing a whole lot of relaxing this week, but sometimes we just need to let things flow in. Process them a bit before sending anything back out.

So this week I’m re-sharing a few things I’ve written that you might have missed and reminding you all to come join my next civic co-working group.

A kind Jenn-Air technician came out Thursday. It took him two hours to stop the gas from flowing to the broken burner. But he did it and now we’ve got three burners and hot water.

And today, this feels like more than enough.

See you next week!

A few days ago, one of the trainees who was with me during a particularly bizarre legislative visit last Spring reminded me about “the kid in the corner”. I dug up this piece about him, and the power we have that we may not recognize.

Hope, in Contrast

·

Feb 13

Back in September, I wrote about 5 things that gave me hope. It landed. So I wrote another list in October and again in November.

On Wednesday morning, my oldest noticed me gazing out the window at the sunrise. I hadn’t really even realized I had stopped to stare. The view of the sunrise from our front porch is particularly beautiful in the Fall. It’s still one hundred degrees in Texas but the earth is shifting closer to a new season. I wrote this piece last fall about the seasons of democracy. As we gear up to elections and then a new legislative session in Texas, I can’t help but think back on all of the seasons we have weathered.

Last but not least, we hosted our second civic co-working session this week! It’s low key and everyone is welcome. It has been so inspiring to hear what everyone is working on. Join us for the next one!

New to my writing?

Start here!

·

September 19, 2025

Where some kids go to camp, others spend their summer scrubbing other people’s toilets.

It’s the best place to understand what this is and why it matters.