Diary of a Tired Mom – The Please No More Words Edition

It’s been a weird month for me. My subconscious wants to write very badly – I have dreamed about writing blog posts multiple times in the past month. And those dreams have not been limited to when I was asleep. When I got my first dose ever of “the gas” at the dentist, I was […]

Blogging: May Cause International Friendship.

I regularly struggle about this blog. Besides the fact that blogging is a dead art, I have less to write about than when my kids were tiny, I have less time (thanks, kids, for not napping anymore), I have more varied interests that take up my time (running, hiking, photography, reading), and it’s harder for […]

Origin Stories.

Every year about this time, I write a post similar to this one. Then I don’t publish it, out of concern that my words would be misread or misunderstood. This year I decided to go ahead and hit that publish button. For the past ten years, the constants of my life have been that I am a writer, a mom, […]

On Nuts and the Blogosphere.

Like you, my inbox has gotten its usual case of severe Winter Flu. It’s a pox, really. A Plague. Every retail establishment I’ve never been interested in is sending me multiple emails a day about their Black Friday Deals and their even better Cyber Monday deals and their EVEN BETTER final sale prices and their […]

The Great Questioning.

Ninety-three percent of the relationship between a mother and her children is comprised of answering questions. The same questions. Over and over and over. They never tell you that in the parenting books. Or at the hospital. “This is how you change a diaper…and here’s how you get them to latch on…and you need to […]

On Neighborliness: A Cautionary Tale.

It’s been three weeks since I may or may not have killed my new neighbor’s chicken, so maybe it’s okay to blog about now. Time heals all wounds and all. (Except for fatal ones. On poultry.) Chris and I are very dedicated to neighborliness. In our last neighborhood, we had a lot of those super […]

A Matter of Taste.

We live adjacent to a really nice part of town. “Adjacent”, in this context, is a synonym for “undesirable”, and that’s fine. Our quirky little neighborhood is unincorporated and we embrace that unincorporation. Without silly zoning rules to hold us back, we have such fineries as skateboarding half-pipes and 400-600 white pigeons in portable buildings […]

The Tearing of the Veil.

If you ask Ali what she’s going to be when she grows up, she’ll tell you that she’s going to own a bakery (and that she’s an artist). The bakery is a big deal to her, and we have many urgent conversations as to the particulars of running the business, as she’s deeply consumed with […]

Because Everybody Needs a Hero.

Every city needs a hero. Every mother in every city needs a hero. And sometimes, it greatly helps to fantasize that the very person causing half her angst is. That. Hero. That he’s been around since the beginning, quietly watching over shoulders, fixing problems and savings lives. No, the very beginning. No! The Very Very […]

On Seeking Frobriety.

It’s something I know I need to do. For myself. For my family. For our ability to continue to function as normal human beings. We need space between us and Frozen. We need to admit that we are powerless over Let it Go and that our lives have become unmanageable with frozen fractals all around. […]