Chris and I went to Atlanta last weekend. I had a couple of Vault parties in The Big City, and he tagged along to make it a date weekend. Friday night, we went out to eat at Taverna Plaka with Chris’ former roommate and Roommate’s Girlfriend. If you’ve been hanging around here for a while, […]
She Loves Them Yeah, Yeah, Yeah.
My Mom continuously serenaded me during my formative years. (Later, she apologized for this, as she was quite afraid that she had crippled my musical abilities. Her High School choir teacher had, after all, asked her to please just lip sync.) But instead of kid’s songs (although she sang those, too), her shuffle was usually […]
The Star of Egypt.
“You know how they make very nice, expensive replicas of Harry Potter wands and stuff?” “Yes…” “Well, I want to get Ali something like that for Christmas – something special just from Daddy.” “Umm…a wand?” “No, no, no. Not Harry Potter – something Princess related. I want to get her a real-feeling, heavy piece of […]
The Art of Storytelling.
Ali has begun filling all of our car rides with long, meandering stories with intensely complicated and slightly psychedelic plots, characters popping in and out with no introduction, and with endless subplots with no resolve. She has graciously offered to guest blog one of these high quality stories, with the stipulation that I do the […]
Treasure Heads.
My Mom has a special sort of Homeschool-Mom-Genius-Gene that I really, really hope I inherited. She was able to expertly turn everything into a learning experience, yet somehow make it extraordinarily fun at the same time. (Okay, most things were fun. Finding my little brother’s dissected frogs in brown paper bags in the fridge was […]
Smashing Misconceptions Right and Left.
I was around six years old. I was hanging out at the ball park with my group of little friends – aka all of the little sisters who were bored to death while their older brothers played YET ANOTHER baseball game. We were standing around behind the concession stand and admiring the clouds. One of […]
The Day He Received His Third Nipple.
Chris, upon changing Noah’s clothes for bed… “Um, how did Noah get a third nipple?” Well, you see, it’s a long story, babe. It all started with a successful mall trip. Too successful, really – I should have been suspicious of the trouble headed my way. I had managed to make it to two stores […]
The Euphoria of Burlap to Cashmere.
I had a moment of indescribable elation this past Wednesday. I was on my way to get my hair cut, enjoying one of those solo car rides I just talked about with my Pandora blasting music, and I was loving every song it was choosing. Thumbs up, thumbs up, thumbs up. Then a very familiar […]
Tiny Bits of Grace.
Ali has an absolutely precious Sunday School teacher named Miss Bobbie. She is about my parent’s age, has grandkids the age of my kids, and is currently undergoing chemotherapy. …yet she still has the energy, somehow, to wrangle and teach a group of four year olds every other Sunday – and constantly be bubbling over […]
The Awkwardly Intense Busybody Club.
The Public and I have had a challenging time lately. It all started with the Checkout Lady at Michael’s – remember her? The only explanation that I can think of for what has happened since then is that she was so worried about my disdainful care of my infant that she called together an urgent […]