Social responsibility
I was at a social event a while back, outside of my neighborhood, with people I sort-of know but don't know well. It was a small gathering.At one point I was talking about Eldest and her job search...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Choral beauty
Eldest came home late Wednesday night and left for college again this evening. She's flying out to California on Thursday for a job interview on Friday, then back to school on Saturday in time to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Green Blocks approach to life
Coming home Sunday night from the final performance of Honk! (featuring Little Guy in his first lead, and Snuggler in a main character role) I had a mental image of the departure board at Penn Station,...
View ArticleA new year, considered.
To tell the truth, I didn't much like 2013. It wasn't as bad as 2011, true. But the series of back-to-back crises and overlapping crises (many of which, frankly, I didn't write about online) was...
View ArticlePerspectives on human experience
Every now and again things happen in life that are a bit unsettling. I don't mean bad-news stuff, but events that take me outside my normal worldview and cause me to re-realize that my perspective is...
View ArticleWord of the day: Lapse
lapse noun \ˈlaps\: an occurrence in which you fail to think or act in the usual or proper way for a brief time and make a mistake: an occurrence in which someone behaves badly for usually a short...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Birthday news
Today was my birthday. It started auspiciously: Andrew announced, "I caught you a mouse!"This was good. We have been battling mice for six months, and though the battle has been in our favor for a...
View ArticleControl, self-control, and what to do when it's lacking
One of the more useful skills I've acquired in the past decade (or perhaps mostly acquired; I'm still inconsistent) is the ability to live with uncertainty. This is something that was not on my bucket...
View ArticleWe have news
We will be moving.Not far, probably. But we have to sell our apartment. We'll rent, we hope, in a neighborhood just north of here.Several times a day Little Guy blurts out, "I'm distressed!" Andrew is...
View ArticleA lot to do, a bit at a time
I've been busy spackling, purging closets and assessing ceilings to see what needs to be done before putting the apartment on the market. In a way this is stress-relieving: I've long had this cool idea...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Self-reliance, ceilings, and learning
We've had workmen in the apartment all week. I hired them to fix the ceilings, a job I am utterly unwilling to do. A lifetime or so ago I spackled every joint in every piece of sheetrock in a three...
View ArticleBoxes
Way back when Little Guy was in kindergarten, I went to parent-teacher conferences. As I sat down in the pint-size chair, the teacher smiled and said brightly, "You have a really out-of-the-box...
View ArticleFour questions, many answers, lots of links
The quirky and wonderful Magpie has tagged me for a blog tour titled, "My Writing Process". This is not the type of thing I usually do, but hey -- it's worth a try. Maybe I'll learn something. Or...
View ArticleTiles
A while back some of the tiles in the shower fell off. Clunk. It was not the first time this had happened, but the first time it had happened when we were about to put the apartment up for sale. I...
View ArticleMagic Wands (and Lack Thereof)
Some of the kids have been feeling cranky. Others are blue. The reality that Eldest will be leaving the nest for good in two weeks to build her own life elsewhere is hitting. She is an amazing big...
View ArticleClik here to view.
In which we do many things, all at once
There was half a day last Thursday when I thought my brain had finally imploded. You see, on Friday some of us were going to this:Yes! She has graduated from MIT!But of course not all of us were going....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Problem solving, and moving on
As I shlepped home from Trader Joe's about a month ago -- a huge bag on each shoulder and one slung across my chest -- two subway lines and a five-block walk, I thought, "Next time I need to take a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Hope.
The graduation was great, though not your usual event. It's different at a therapeutic school.I sat in the audience, aware that every single person in the room had known deep suffering: every student,...
View ArticleThe positives of negative space
In the late 80s and early 90s I worked in marketing, mostly in the money management sector. It was a time when there were few women in that field, and young professionals were continually told to find...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Readiness
My eldest turned 20 last week. It was the first time she wasn't been home for her birthday, her first year of living in another part of the country, on her own.Back when she left for college, two weeks...
View ArticleWork
I went to hear Twyla Tharp speak last week. I came away thinking, "That woman is fearless."I'm sure she's not. She's driven, which is a different thing. When you're driven toward a goal, things that...
View ArticleRuts
It seems to take me an inordinately long time to ramp up to the fall schedule. Why this should be, I don't know; I have fewer kids around now, and the ones that I have are (with one exception)...
View ArticleScenes of neighborhood city life
The elderly woman walks down the sidewalk, dog leash in hand, ancient dog ten paces behind her (not on the leash). The dog stops, arthritis having halted his progress.His owner pauses, kicks her leg...
View ArticleLight and Dark
Yes, it's been over a month since I posted anything. I've been shuttling back and forth across the country dealing with various family crises, most of which I've been asked to keep confidential. I can...
View ArticleForty years in the desert
I think a lot about the Israelites wandering in the wilderness. It occurs to me that one benefit of the fifth decade of life is that one can nod and say, "Yes, well there are things it takes forty...
View Article
