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Narrative
At my college, we offer regular, semester-length classes (sixteen weeks) along with a different option: the eight-week class. The eight-week option was created to help our students pack as much learnin’ as possible into the shortest reasonable time frame. One would be justified in having reservations about the eight-week classes, as our students often have…
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Thirteen Years Since the Blue Moon
You better believe I’m trotting out this old chestnut for its yearly airing. If there are any new readers out there, this’ll be a new one, but for many of you, it will be cause to muse, “Wow, another year’s gone by already?” For me, I like to re-run it because then I’m motivated to…
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A Time to Every Purpose
In the last weeks of his life, I would talk to my dad on the phone frequently. He was in Montana. I was in Minnesota. It was January, and at the same time his heart and lungs were deteriorating, my body was busy helping those same organs grow inside the baby I’d been carrying for…
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Feel Like Whistling Even With a Shoe Full of Slush
Didn’t February last about seventeen weeks? And then Daylight Savings slammed into our bodies–which were already trying to figure out how to get through a day without drooping. What’s more, we’re in the midst of a snowstorm here today, currently racking up 6-10″ new inches on top of the existing white mounds. Spring is approaching,…
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As God Is My Witness, Each Individual Shall Tote His Own Weary Load
Behind our house, across the alley, there lives a cohort of quasi-charming renters. Moving in after several disastrous previous occupancies, this group of young men demonstrates that young folk renting a house together don’t have to be feral beasts lacking even the most basic notion of boundaries. I mean, seriously, there’s a reason I regularly…
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Hope All Your Tricks Are Good Ones
In line with my dislike of holidays and “planned happiness” is my aversion to greeting cards. For me, a pre-packaged sentiment drummed up for pay by someone who hates her job isn’t heartwarming. Nor is the fact that the sender found himself so unable to frame an original thought that he willingly shelled out $3.00…
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Ode an die Freude
By the time I finished my first decade of life, I had learned to walk, run, ride a bike; play piano and flute; jeté like a big-boned ballerina possessed; babysit; and play Boggle. Also, I had boobies and was on the cusp of menstruation. By the time I finished my second decade of life, I had held…
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You Asked for It (Well, Two of You Did): How to Achieve a Style Equaled Only By Its Substance
Women too often lead with apology. I have vowed to break that culturally inculcated habit and not apologize for my behaviors unless I’ve just vomited in your daisies or hit the reset button on your Furby. Thus, I will not lead with apology here. Instead, I will celebrate my inner She-Ra by boldly stating, with…
