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I Think I Need a Good Plucking. I Said PLUCKING, You Guttermind.
In seventh grade, I played flute, piano, and bassoon. I took ballet and modern dance several days a week after school. I sang in the children’s community choir. Simultaneously, in seventh grade, I believed KC and the Sunshine Band had created something revolutionary with their “Boogie Shoes.” I thought Shields and Yarnell redefined the boundaries of…
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Well, Jane, It Just Goes to Show You, It’s Always Something
Remember how Gilda Radner used to play Roseanne Roseannadanna on Saturday Night Live? Even if you’re too young to remember it, maybe you could humor me and use your incredibly taut and pert breasts to type out a comment of, “Yes, Jocelyn, I do remember Gilda Radner playing that character. She was very fubby.” (see, you mis-type…
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Sono Così Emozionante
You are very clever, youse. In our recent guessing game of “Where in the World Will Sabbatical Take Them?,” quite a few commenters came very close, or even rightly named, our family’s likely port of call for our upcoming travels. Here’s the summary of how we got to our current perch: 1) Jocelyn was born. …
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Deep in the Heart
Some of y’all might remember that my sister flew me to Denver last October so’s I could help her organize her stuff. Upon my return from that fun weekend, I posted something on Facebook about it…only to have a pal from college reply, “I would totally buy your plane ticket, if you’d come help me…
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Doldrums Antidotes
1) Antidote #1: Get a good night’s sleep, which is exactly what I did the night of my previous post; when I woke up nine hours later, cobwebs had cleared, and a song–not a dirge–beat in my heart. This, in turn, meant I had to spend a fair amount of time in the kitchen that…
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Lots of Landmines; No Metal Detector: Part the Last
A few years ago, I tuned in to a documentary about life in the Alaskan bush, where there are no roads, no stores, no schools. In particular, I was impressed with a 16-year-old girl who lived in the bush with her parents; in one memorable scene, she loaded up her sled, hitched up her dogs,…
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Lots of Landmines, No Metal Detector: Part the Third
With each successive child, it becomes harder to keep World at bay. The door that cracked open with Child #1 gets shoved even wider with Child #2, Child #3, and so on, until the barrier is blasted off its hinges to expose an entire startled-looking family licking Cheeto gunk off their fingers. The humbling that comes from giving way and giving…
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Lots of Landmines, No Metal Detector: Part the Second
If that bitch, World, isn’t open to negotiating with parents and insists on staring down the well-intentioned sleep deprived, hands on its Costco-shopping, NASCAR-jacket-wearing, Miley-Cyrus-twitching hips, then maybe the compromises have to take place elsewhere. Like within the well-intentioned sleep deprived. Certainly, new parents have a few blissful months–even years–in which their personal values dominate, in…
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Lots of Landmines, No Metal Detector: The First of Several on This Topic
When a child is born, the parent enters into a decades-long negotiation with the world. The script for this give-and-take reads: Parent, puffing out chest: “Surrounded by a loving village of friends and family, my child will never question that she is loved.” World, yawning: “Fiddlesticks.” Parent, still confident: “I will provide steadiness and an open…
