Category: birthdays

  • Recipe for a Headache

    My life policy of Don’t Get Harried is inviolate. Also, I lie a lot, especially on Mondays, when zipping around and feeling always eight minutes behind is the norm, and my life policy is brutally, repeatedly violated. The policy of Don’t Get Harried is predicated by the fact that doing lots isn’t part of my…

  • Husband as Muse

      A few weeks ago, I danced over to Jazz’s blog and enjoyed a welcome surprise: her post that day had been hand-written. It startled me how much I liked seeing her handwriting and not just her typing; it reminded me of the individual behind the blog; it gave me a glimpse into her Herishness.…

  • She Ought to Be in Pictures

    Nine years ago, a piece of my heart started to live outside of my body. Or, as my pal Pammy puts it, “Having children is like being held hostage by the world; you’ll do anything the universe demands to assure their safe passage.” Girl slides safely out of my passage. In her first year of…

  • I Have Called Upon Your Goodwill and Patience Frequently In the Past, But Never Moreso Than Now, When I Have a New Toy

    I woke up on my birthday last week and was gifted with a digital video camera, already loaded with this message: Don’t worry. Groom knows he is the whitest boy on the planet when it comes to carrying a tune and/or dancing. Since he excels at all else, it is only fair that he be…

  • I Live in Zoo. Word On the Streets Is That I Smell Like a Monkey. Even More Tragically, I Look Like One, Too

    Wednesday was my birthday. The cool thing about my announcing this today is that now you aren’t compelled to chime in with a “Happy birthday!” You’re off the hook, toots. Because it was yesterday! And now it’s over!! So nothing you can say or think can change how it was!!! C’est fini!!!! Keep your kind…

  • Ashen, Ashen, I Bawl and Fall Down

    For the event of Niblet’s birth, we bartered for the services of a local doula (if you can’t buy the time of a lesbian who works at the Environmental Protection Agency for the price of a gallon bag of frozen pesto and a six-course feast including hand-made butternut ravioli…then it’s time to kvetch about the…

  • Species: Dinkus Dorkus

      So have you ever thought to yourself, “Well, now, Martha, hasn’t it been an age since we’ve had a nice photo with the kids? And looksie-looksie: we seem to be at that rare moment in time when everyone is clothed and within yodeling distance of a bath! Yes, let’s do.” Clapping your hands together…

  • Mockingbirds and Tortoises

    Damn Darwin. Were it not for his meddling ways, I’d still be catching a daily nap just before–okay, more honestly, during–“Oprah.” But he just had to go to the Galapagos and stare at all sorts of birds and turtles. Then he wrote that thing. And suddenly, everyone was in a tizzy, wanting to roar at…

  • Unwrap This

      Roughly forty-one years ago, on March 25th, my mom didn’t know what to get my dad for his birthday. Somehow “a child” seemed more creative than “a Mickey Mouse necktie.” So on my dad’s 32nd birthday, my mom, spinal-blocked but fully conscious, pushed me out of her girl bits. Half an hour later, she…

  • The Twelve-Inch Scar

      Five years ago, on January 17th, I made one of my students vomit. I hadn’t even assigned “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” either. Rather than yacking up her lunch as a reaction to Coleridge’s opium-induced writings, she barfed out of affection and empathy. See, this student came from a background so sketchy, so…