September 3, 2015
Kryptonite
I posted this on Facebook last night and thought maybe I should put it here, too, for my non-Facebook readers:
• • •
August 18, 2015
Mean People Suck
I almost had such a good day today.
• • •
August 12, 2015
Open Mic, the train station, and my left foot
I went to Open Mic last night, as usual, and was blown away by the words shared there, as usual.
• • •
August 5, 2015
National Days of Ridiculousness
M called us on the way home from work yesterday to announce that he had just heard on the radio that it was National Chocolate Chip Day. Naturally, as soon as he came home, we opened the bag of chocolate chips and celebrated as we made dinner.
• • •
August 1, 2015
How MODOT drove me to insanity today
I was all set to pick up Zoe from camp today. All ready. We made plans to meet the other parents on the school tennis courts at 1 p.m., leaving immediately for the 50-minute drive to camp with time to spare on the 2 p.m. pick-up time. We left promptly at 1. Ten minutes later, I was screaming inside my head.
• • •
July 30, 2015
My missing piece
I miss my little girl. She’s away at camp and I am not with her and I feel as though I am missing an appendage.
• • •
July 29, 2015
Wash, dry, fold, help
Our church participates in a program called Room at the Inn, where once a month we host families who are struggling with homelessness. It’s temporary, emergency shelter. We have a spacious youth house next to our church, and a huge team of volunteers from our parish serve as hosts and hostesses each month. The guests are served a meal and given a clean, comfortable place to stay. Room at the Inn offers many, many other resources to these families, and our church has been a Night Site for years. Every month in the parish bulletin I would see the long list of names of people who selflessly give of their time and energy. I thought about helping, but I didn’t feel like I could commit to anything. How could I give up such a large block of time when I work full time and have an incredibly active family?
• • •
July 28, 2015
Catching Up (or…The Completely Random and Bizarre Thoughts I Have)
My alarm went off this morning and I hit snooze, as usual. And then I laid there and watched the block of sun shining through a transom window creep across the wall and around the corner. And I thought about how now that I know where the pin is in my left big toe I can feel it, even though before my first follow-up appointment yesterday when I hadn’t seen my foot since before the surgery I couldn’t. And I wondered if the small muscle on my right leg, just above and to the inside of my kneecap, is spastic for a reason. Blood clot? Leg muscle cancer? Parkinson’s? And I thought about the stuff I needed to get finished at work today (harsh edit of an obituary that was a.) too long and b.) written entirely in passive voice to the point where I was tempted to make a drinking game of it and knock something back every time I read the word “was” only to realize that if I did that I’d be polluted by the second graph). And I wondered how Zoe is doing, away at Girl Scout camp, and wondered how much longer the Girl Scouts would be able to offer resident camp since numbers appear to be declining and how sad that would be for whole generations of girls to not experience everything I got to. And then I realized that I wanted to start writing again.
• • •
May 15, 2015
Odds and Ends on a Friday
I think there may be some sort of nuclear Miracle-Gro site outside of my office window. It’s the only way I can explain the fact that every damn day the maintenance guys are out there cutting the same patch of grass over and over. It’s not a normal amount, people. I have sat in my office (on my more unproductive days, obviously), and watched the lawnmower guy create crop circles in the lawn. Round and round he goes. Dude. It’s cut. Move on.
• • •
May 12, 2015
The power of words
I think the thing that amazes me most this week, besides learning that the Latin root of “graduation” means “to step off,” is that the ancient art of writing can still be so fresh and new and creative that it blows my mind. It also gives me a huge inferiority complex, but that’s a whole ‘nother blog post.
• • •