Month: September 2008

  • Like Finding a Grain of Broken Rice in a Particularly-Soggy Bowl of Shredded Wheat

    Blissy. That’s an apt word for how I felt during my run on the Superior Hiking Trail last week. Maybe Glimmery. Possibly Elysian. Having my feet off asphalt, dodging rocks and roots, listening to the creek burbling nearby, I very nearly wanted to whip up a quick fire and cremate myself right there and then, […]

  • Free Launch

    At some point in my twenties, my desire to have children became incontrovertible. Uh-HUH. I wanted kids. Fo’ sho’. This certainty necessitated a messy break-up with my 46-year-old vasectomized boyfriend of six years. I’m sorry, Jack. You had not the sperm I needed. Plus, you were kind of emotionally shattered and full of scary landmines. […]

  • She Couldn’t Pour Water Out of a Boot If The Instructions Were on the Heel

      A few weeks ago, I was driving a van load of kids towards sweet treats. In addition to massaging the New York Times crossword puzzle, pushing back my cuticles, and pouring Malbec down my gullet, this is what I do. I drive the small people. Towards the ice cream. Right around the Lake Street […]

  • Jesu, Joy of Jocelyn’s Retiring

    On the surface, Johann Sebastian Bach was just another poncy wig-wearing composer. But beneath the wig lurked something more menacing: the ability to derail promising futures. And perhaps lice. If he’d been born even a year sooner or later, I might actually have a high school degree today, and a high school degree, as popular […]

  • Wherein Jamie Lynn Spears Breaks My Bank

      Every time they want an increase in their allowance, the kids pull this kind of emotional blackmail. Niblet’s all, “But I’m scawwed at night and need someone to sleep wif me.” Damn that Zoey 101 episode the kids watched, where the dorm was haunted by a malicious and creeping slimy green mist. Niblet knew […]

  • The Chicken/Egg Conundrum, Mammarily Speaking

      For me, the underlying question is this: Was it Bristol Palin’s massive Double Whammies that first attracted the Hockey Hunk who knocked her up? Or did her sideboard of melons develop later, as a result of said knock-upage? If so, and she was pancakeish in the chestal region pre-baby-baking, does this lack imply she […]

  • A Childhood Well Lived

    At the end of a summer vacation, these are knees I trust. They show evidence of tumbles from the monkey bars trips down the new brick path scrounging in the garden for ripe plum tomatoes falls off the scooter bang-ups on the soccer field and one, random poke with the evil end of a kids’ […]