-
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…
-
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,…
-
Making the Case
While there are sparks in my marriage, they’re of the “Baby, you so hot I gots to dab the nape of my neck with a moist sponge just to keep off you” variety more than “You swollen gonad, the very sound of your voice is like the tines of a fork screeching down a…
-
Blind-sided and Gobsmacked
It was just a regular day, suddenly sucking. Very fatigued that morning, I managed to dress myself, even hooking my bra–not just letting The Ladies dangle and flap in the wind. I even managed to apply a little slap and hairspray, getting in costume to mimic an adult. Exiting the house, the door slammed…
-
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…
-
Una Mas Mindy
The new semester looms, and while I attempt to ramp up the performance energy that is required to stand up in front of 25 dull-eyed under-the-table texters and actually get them to look towards the front of the room occasionally, I find myself missing last semester’s crop of students already. I mean, I was used…
-
Surprisingly Inferior Tamales
I intend to type short, declarative statements. We just got back from 12 days in southern California. I had virtually no Internet access there. So I missed blogging and reading and such. But I put my feet in the Pacific and watched whales leap and had a ginger lemon mojito. I got by. Now…
-
Who’s Your Daddy?
Back in the 1980s, I did the college gig all traditional-like. Squirming and chafing in Montana, I hit eighteen and began the countdown to flight. When the time came to start college, I viewed the 1,000 miles separating my new campus and my hometown as “a headstart on a life where I don’t work in…
-
She Had Eight Weeks to Work on Her Final Essay, a Period of Intense Craftsmanship That Resulted in This Opening: ‘Are kids still talking to their parents? Well, some are but most don’t talk the old fashion way or the way they should, they now talk to their parents through texting and emails and once in a while, if you are lucky, a phone call (most likely from a cell phone)’
Gasping, flailing, wiping gunk from my eyes, I’m surfacing, turning my face up from the mass of research papers that has consumed my energies in recent days. Students have told me that Americans are obese; water is scarce; language is overly casual; music should be freely downloadable; smoking bans are good; coral reefs are dying;…
