• If My Rack Doesn’t Give Me a Black Eye, the Catholics Will

      The other day, Duluth was coated with six inches of new snow (I hate it when old snow falls–it’s all crochety and hunchy, hollers at me me to get off its lawn, and wears black socks with sandals when it mows), which means my winter attitude has been reinvigorated. See, I only hate winter […]

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  • Win One for The Mommy

    When I was about 25, I attended one of my mom’s college reunions with her. Beyond this being a sad, sad commentary on the state of my twenties (Problem #1: I spent most of that decade dating a guy in his forties who just wanted to stay home and watch Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes […]

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  • In Which I Act Like I Invented Portland

     Although life has been beddy, beddy good to me, the last month has tested my fortitude. Men with scalpels hacked at my husband’s Special Softies; rain on top of snow turned the immediate world to ice; Niblet was diagnosed with shingles; I have—ewww!–ringworm; and our fish is depressed. Of late, I have felt that the […]

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  • Hey, Anonymous: From Your Mouse Clicking, I Have Intuited That You Like Me; You Really Like Me

    Last fall, in a boffo bit of log-rolling, I nominated a colleague for an online teaching award, and she nominated me. Mostly, we were thinking, “Excuse me? Did someone say free trip to either Oregon or Florida?” What neither of us realized at the time was that a condition of accepting the nomination was making […]

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  • Musee Des Beaux Burglars

      There’s a famed regional photographer in these parts named Jim Brandenburg; he gets a lot of cred for being the best nature and wildlife photographer around. Admittedly, if you have a taste for foxes emerging from cattails and bison sporting icicle beards, Brandenburg is your shuttershooter. His photos are crystalline and mystical and make […]

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  • Brabeaten

      Contractually, I’m required to hold a certain number of office hours each week, during which I am available to students, ready to answer their questions, comb through their rough drafts, soothe their wounded souls, listen to their tales of unwanted pregnancy and court dates. Contractually, I am supposed to be buzzing and pacing and […]

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  • When It Rains, It Pours Barf From the Upper Bunk

     I love typing blog posts, you know. It’s way big many muches of fun. However, it takes some time, and that I don’t have this week… …now that The Flu has moved in, and we’re all fighting off low-level nausea, the likes of which I last felt when watching Steven Bochco’s Cop Rock back in […]

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  • And He Hasn’t Even Heard Ethel Merman Yet

    Generally, unless our orange-jumpsuited kids are off using pikes to stab at garbage in highway ditches, we don’t turn on the tv during the daytime hours. Really, there’s just dummm stuff on all day, and their little developing brains need to be applying themselves to more important work than watching Thomas the Tank Engine, work […]

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  • Starring Goofus and Gallant

      A few days after his surgery, Mr. Jocelyn’s Groom hit the skids emotionally, a not uncommon occurrence as the body detoxifies from all that anesthesia and hospital food. In the face of day after day in bed, with two more weeks before he’s allowed to take a soothing bath, and a month or more […]

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  • Four Days Out, and It’s Still the Size of a Whoopie Cushion

    Last week, possessed by all-too-familiar body image demons, I got in a funk, wherein I stomped around and moaned to Byron, “I just can’t lose these damn seven pounds. You know I want to blame it on my tortoise-like metabolism, but, yea, it might be more honest just to label it my Wine Weight. Poop, […]

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