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 [...]
This week I had a revelatory moment. It struck me as I was walking into a building and caught a glimpse of my reflection in the plate glass. I saw a smartly dressed woman with a laptop bag slung over her shoulder.
“Where have you been the last three years?” I asked the mirror image as [...]
It doesn’t happen often.
But, it happens.
It’s not going to stop.
Ever.
“Excuse me,” is how it begins. When I have a loaf of bread in hand, examining ingredients and calorie counts. When I’m loading my car in a windswept parking lot. When I’m at the community center watching my girl leap and jump and twirl.
“Would you mind [...]
I’ve lost things lately:
my favorite plastic sports bottle, a souvenir of my snow camping experience
my sterling silver hoop earrings
my mind
Also, I’ve lacked focus:
Literally. I need bifocals. I’m pretending I don’t. The faking it isn’t working anymore and it’s making me look feeble. I hope that explains all the typos in my comments around the blogosphere. [...]
“It’s not your fault.”
This is what friends and family reassure me when I start to think that resigning my job almost three years ago put us in the black hole we are in today.
Who knew everything would fall apart in two years? They ask.
You would have been out of a job anyway, they assert.
Your children [...]
…I’m easily manipulated by small gestures like bouquets of clover tucked into bud vases.
… I am living in the longest days of the year. Yet somehow I find myself with very few hours to get things like blog posts written and dinner cooked.
… I have a work project that needs some attention, a 3-year-old who needs [...]
Every year beginning in August, one of these sets up shop between our front porch post and a hanging potted plant. Every year.
It’s not the same spider because I generally squish the August visitor sometime around mid-September when I cannot stand it any longer. When I get entangled in its ever-expanding web. When I humiliate [...]
