A few years ago, my 74-year-old mother came down from Minnesota to help me for awhile. My gall bladder had been removed and my body was none too pleased with the situation: a surgery gone wrong. I was wracked with pain and bruised from my ribs… Read full post »

As I changed from my work clothes into my gym clothes today, hiding in the far corner of the locker room as usual, I noticed that my ribbed knee-high socks had left vertical lines all up and down my calves. Nice, I thought. Should’ve worn smooth ones.… Read full post »

Mammogram: one of the least sexy words in the English language. But there I was at the imaging center this morning, bright and early at 7:45, prepared not only for that procedure but also an abdominal ultrasound, for which I had fasted. Hungry, itchy (no lotion… Read full post »

Arizona is having a particularly warm winter, but still: when I crawl into my recliner at night to watch TV, I want a blanket. I want to cuddle under the blanket, cozy and safe, and pretend that it’s cold and wintry outside, like back home in Minnesota.… Read full post »

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I hate my mail-order prescription service, Express Scripts. Though I’m required to use it because it saves Big Brother at work big bucks, there is nothing at all “express” about Express Scripts. This huge pill-delivery company just happens to be located about five miles from… Read full post »

On Saturday, the last morning of 2011, I hated myself. It was leftover self-loathing from the night before, when I realized I had run out of our usual pet food.

I knew we were low—any pet owner should know when the supply is dwindling and it’s time… Read full post »

My first job was plucking gray hairs off my mother’s head, nickel a hair. I was eight. She would sit on the couch and I would stand behind her, picking through her black hair for offenders. I’d find a gray one, pull it out by the… Read full post »

One terrible time, my parents left me at camp.
I gripped my teeth and tried to make friends.
My mom had equipped me with postcards
addressed to herself.

I hadn’t been alone or by myself for years, or so I thought.
I didn’t know what alone… Read full post »

For my dad.

My parents are both alive and well, busier now than they were before my father retired. Much of their time is still spent guiding their children back to safe territory. They’ve driven cross-country at a moment’s notice to help one daughter climb out… Read full post »

Have you ever wished that your wife
didn’t have parents? That she was a leftover
test tube baby, waiting for you on a shelf,
then grown and ripened just for you
right there at the breakfast table.

But wait: an honest young girl from down the street wants to… Read full post »

Today was a day of spills. It began in another time zone, as most days do, when a woman who was awake earlier than I was went to her computer and posted the following on Ratemyprofessors.com: “Maybe if you got a boob job, you could keep a man.”

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I have always been an early-to-bedder. This trait flies in the face of every time I have danced on a bar, shimmied my butt on a dance floor, gotten married, and eaten pizza with a best friend at 2 a.m. Those were the late acts of… Read full post »

I went to a Catholic school with grades kindergarten through eighth, and while Catholic schools have the reputation of sheltering their students from the harsh cruelties of real life, the only people that my school sheltered were the white boys who got expelled from public school for… Read full post »

I was doing laundry this morning…ever so carefully as usual. I picked up a damp cotton t-shirt that’s a little tight on me and snapped it hard to stretch it out. I took it by the arms and pulled them apart to accommodate my Horsewoman’s… Read full post »

The third major writing unit in my version of English 101 is called “Persuasive Letter”. For this unit, students must choose a particular audience—a neighbor, for instance, or a friend—and write a letter to that person in hopes of changing his or her mind about something… Read full post »

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Since I work from home most days, I can hear any commotion going on outside: the schoolbus rumbling down my street, people on their way to work rocketing over our speed bumps, Waste Management picking up everybody’s recycling bins and dumping a thousand splendid beer cans and… Read full post »

My black cat Lucy—three years old now, adopted from the pound—came to me with a confession last night.

“Yes Sweetpea?” I said as Lucy settled down on my chest as I lay in bed, trying to read a book. No more of that though: Lucy’s innocent and sweet… Read full post »

A student asked me yesterday if she could smoke her electronic cigarette in class. None of my standard facial expressions seemed appropriate for the situation: not my frustrated face, not my withering look, not even the one I save for when I try to appear open-minded but… Read full post »

With men out of my life for the time being, the house clean and papers graded, I have no excuse to prevent me from doing yardwork. I put on my yardwork clothes: Daisy Duke shorts in case any cute guys drive by, a tight tank-top in… Read full post »

My refrigerator broke last week, about the same time my heart did. It lost its cool slowly, kind of like me: water puddled on the kitchen floor, frozen pizzas drooped, soda cans started sweating. I was aware that something was amiss on Sunday night, but decided… Read full post »

Every semester at this time, my class moves away from personal writing to persuasive writing. It pains me to even write that, for what is persuasive writing or speech without a personal touch? What is persuasive speech without risk and trouble.

There’s a class period every… Read full post »

You can’t think of anything funny, so—to save yourself from a negative day—you go inside yourself to dig up what might have been funny in the past.

You can only think of yourself as the butt of jokes, the one who made everyone else laugh.

When you were five,… Read full post »