I spent a while in my backyard this afternoon raking, scraping, digging and picking up. The yard looks horrible but it’s a major improvement on this time last year, when there was probably four times the amount of buried (and bare) trash among the tree-weeds and plaster-dirt.
Behind the garage, there is a narrow alley of […]
My daughter was just looking into a spinning light-up toy we have. “Mama,” she said, “I see your future. You’re gonna become a famous blogger, and you’re going to become a celebrity, and you’ll be rich!”
How does that girl know just what to say?
Earlier today, she was editing photos she took last weekend of Barbie […]
River got laid off from his job on Monday this week. We’re still trying to get our feet under ourselves. No severance pay for him, but one more partial paycheck. Meanwhile, the need to continue to make payments marches on. The house we bought, our first, which seems like just yesterday. The pre-school for our […]
For the last few years I’ve felt like the private investigator of my own life. I’m searching, patiently waiting, looking things up, trying to remember who this person is I’m researching. Who was she before she got married? Who was she before children? Before this move, that relocation, this drastic life-changing moment?
On the radio this […]
Something about this time of year makes me want to abandon all knowledge and possessions and just wander off into the woods to see if I can survive. Days go by and I’m not sure if I remembered to eat, or if the sun actually rose. Sometimes it’s because I was focusing so hard on […]
I am glad to see news that reinforces the idea that women in labor are the ones who often know best what to do about being in labor.
There is nothing like having the urge to push, and being told not to push, to dehumanize a person, and potentially foul up a birth. Also, being told […]
This Chinese beach sign merits close study.
Link via Ariped.
I visited a school presentation today that included my two elementary-school-age children. It was a Christmas story of sorts, presented by a public school that professes to embrace diversity and not to observe religious holidays per se.
I watched song after song of Christmas cheer. A Jewish parent next to me said that last year, she […]
My five-year-old son tells me, “When I’m asleep, my mind is sleeping. When I’m awake, my mind is awake. When I’m sad, my mind is sad. When I’m happy, my mind is happy. When I’m mad, my mind is mad. Every time I talk, I can see my mind. When I said that, I saw […]
One of my favorite newly-discovered authors, Robin McKinley, produced a book in 2003 called Sunshine. I had savored her earlier young-reader novel The Hero and the Crown last winter and have since been searching for the sequel, The Blue Sword, at libraries. When I ran across Sunshine at my local library a couple of weeks […]