Last night we went out to dinner at a low-key sports bar/restaurant. As we ordered, a family appeared: an extraordinarily pregnant mother, a father, grandparents and what appeared to be twins about three years old. One was wailing on the way in, and later there was whining, running around, jumping on… Read full post »

It’s a familiar story: young men barely out of high school are horsing around with a car/loaded gun/case of grain alcohol/unsafe balcony or some combination thereof, and one of them ends up dead. In the local story it was two 20-year-old “men” fooling around with a loaded pellet gun… Read full post »

Earlier this week a Facebook friend posted both a status and a checklist indicating that various things are “Facebook Abuse.” These things include, but are not limited to, “overposting,” and “inspirational quotes.”  This person objects, specifically, to the po… Read full post »

First, the confessions: I have not read any of the Shades of Grey books. Not so much as a pale, dove color or the darkness of charcoal has entered my readerly consciousness. (Aside from a snarky round-up of purple snippets). Also, I admit that I am jealous of their success, and… Read full post »

So I started to write this as a Facebook status, and then I thought about all the people who might read it and judge me for it. I had wanted to say that I was uncharacteristically angry today, that little things that I could usually ignore or forget are growing like… Read full post »

I have never in my adult life been what I think of as a Nature Girl. I hate camping, and anything that involves jumping across slimy stones in the middle of moving water while other people wait with increasing impatience. My role models, during my formative years, tended to be snarky… Read full post »

I do not have gout. I have only one of the risk factors, and I’m working on that one. My friend Betsy, nearly twenty years my junior, certainly does not have gout, and my slender, healthy, athletic virtual friend Susan does not have gout. Despite the fact that all three of… Read full post »

This is not the first time I have written on this topic. Apparently it is my soapbox, and my message to the world; my epitaph will read “She Was Slow, But Man Was She Deep!” I will not give up, I will not cave in to a world of sound bites… Read full post »

 As I clean house this morning, I keep finding traces of her. Clumps of her fluffy, blonde hair (she was a shedder) and a plastic food wrapper she had quietly spirited out of a trash can and into a corner for private licking. I already removed her food bowl, hung… Read full post »

In the recent past I have twice opened articles on Major Famous Website because the title promised to give me information or ideas that were genuinely worth my time; in both cases the actual piece was best categorized as “Whining about White Girl Problems.” I do understand the need for ed… Read full post »

It was really just going to be too much trouble to do a Passover Seder last year. My mother is Jewish, and we grew up with an annual Seder at my grandmother's house in Ohio, but these days we are just all sort of Professionally Busy.  My brother (a doctor!)… Read full post »

I try to be a grownup, a big girl, a person present in every moment and accepting that life is not all puppies and rainbows. Because, truth be told, it’s not. It is, in fact, this complicated freaking rollercoaster which is best handled with calm, no expectations, and appreciation for everythin… Read full post »

I was recently asked to write a piece for a fairly well-known national website. I was honored, and writing the actual, substantive post was fairly easy; I do it all the time. The problem, the thing that made me worry and sweat, was the requested “bio.” Being a clever girl, I… Read full post »

Truth is stranger than fiction. Really, it is. I have always found that to be a trite and specious sentiment, but now I know that the world is littered with scraps of total bizarreness which, when concentrated in the emotional and public hothouse of a hospital, come together to form a… Read full post »

I am driving in the dark, through pouring rain.  There is a tornado watch in effect until 3:00 AM, and every flash of lightening illuminates a sky potentially filled with funnels and chaos. I’m following my brother, my eyes fixated on his tail lights, my hands gripping the wheel and my… Read full post »

As you may know, I like to view my very-nearly-fifty-year-old self as all hip and early adopterish. I have an unnatural dread of youngsters snickering as I hold up my new-fangled thingamabobber and look at it over the rims of my glasses, saying something like “tell me again,… Read full post »

I see the car almost every morning when I drop Sam at the High School. It’s a grey, economy compact with a bumper sticker that says “Wheatland Music Festival.” Wheatland is a weekend festival of folk music and traditional arts that takes place not far from here.… Read full post »

It’s funny, really; I was as excited as a kid about this whole Leap Day thing. It was going to be this great, bonus day to be filled with reading, thinking thinky things and (to be honest) hanging around on Pinterest letting myself get distracted by bright shiny pictures. It was… Read full post »

Yesterday I looked at my left hand and observed that I was wearing several brightly colored Friendship bracelets and holding my first letter from The AARP. I’m going to turn fifty soon. Maybe it’s time to grow up. Maybe it’s time to cut loose and enjoy the hell out of my… Read full post »

The Sunday nights of my childhood, at least four years of it, were spent sitting hard against the footboard of my parents’ bed watching “Upstairs, Downstairs” on Masterpiece Theater. For a child who spent summers in England, read Burnett, Enright and Nesbit, and… Read full post »

 I have talked the talk about letting children be who they are. I have spoken articulately about it, advising other parents with my face screwed into a knot of sincerity and compassion. I have written about it. “We do not own them,” I have preached, “give them roo… Read full post »

Last Thursday, I went to the Palace of Auburn Hills. Lest you should imagine a summer home for Henry VII, with crenelated turrets and a moat, the “Palace” is a gigantic indoor arena on the outskirts of Detroit. It is the home court of the Pistons, but Thursday night it… Read full post »

Two years ago, I wrote a post about what I’d learned in thirteen years of marriage. Today marks our fifteenth anniversary. Although I woke up with my hideous bite splint in my mouth, I was pleased to find that I was still married, and that my husband still loves me and thinks I’… Read full post »

It began with a familiar sensation; I couldn’t align my upper and lower jaw to close my mouth tight. My teeth didn’t seem to line up right, and I couldn’t force them into the customary alignment. I will tell you this: when your teeth don’t line up right in the safe… Read full post »