What does one say when the family unit is gathered around the Christmas tree, after having finished a meal, and the matriarch unexpectedly hauls out a circa-1975 Barbie doll trunk and opens it?
Perhaps one keeps quiet for a moment as memories flood the brain. Not recollections of childhood innocence, but those of a more devious [...]
“You must do everything that frightens you, JR. Everything. I’m not talking about risking your life, but everything else. Think about fear, decide right now how you’re going to deal with fear, because fear is going to be the great issue of your life, I promise you. Fear will be the fuel for all your success, [...]
I’m not sure what Christmas means to me anymore.
To my children it’s a wonderful time of year filled with wishes and cookies and Santa Claus and sparkly things.
To me, it’s a Dickensian mix of shadows cloaked in chains, bacchanalia, sprigs of holly and Tiny Tim’s enduring hope. Christmas music, particularly Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker Suite” and [...]
I recently discovered San Diego Momma and I’m glad I did. She does some great things on her blog, including PROMPTuesday. Today is my first time participating. Today’s prompt: “What’s the grossest thing you ever did for somebody because you loved him/her/it?”
After the initial phone call, the mad scramble to pull myself together and drive [...]
I base many of my parenting decisions today on things I did as a teenager.
That is why my almost-16-year-old lives in a box in the basement.
Well, not yet. Soon. She’s going on her first big night out with another teenager in a car. Alone.
I’m worried. I sound like my mother did in 1980 when a [...]
I hope my husband is happy.
He thinks that I’d dump him for Jack White, that I’d run away to live in the hills of Tennessee with the former furniture upholsterer turned guitar god with the penchant for dressing like a dandy, channeling Delta Blues musicians and crafting guitars out of wood, a nail, a glass [...]
To: Sibling in town for the holidays
From: Your stressed-out sister
Re: Our lack of any quality time together other than over pre-Thanksgiving dinner cocktails and post-dinner mumblings between pie and coffee
Relationships are a two-way street. While you are the out-of-towner, remember it is your vacation time and not mine. You happened to visit during a time [...]
It is almost impossible to fathom how I earned that little black and white NaBloPoMo badge down on the right sidebar of this blog. That widget means I posted every day for a month in November 2008. Thirty posts in 30 days. I posted seven times this November.
Does it matter? My philosophy is post as [...]
