Wrap your head with this material...

When I was a little girl, I befriended a little old lady who lived several houses down on our street. She was in her nineties and rarely left her house. I don't even remember how I met her now. I took to heart the lessons I learned in church and checked in on her from time to time. She was on Social Security and barely scraped by. She was very frail and could hardly walk to the end of her driveway and so the mailman came to her door. It was a small town and people did things like that. I remember the trouble she had lifting her arms to comb her long, silver-streaked gray hair. She had crocheted toilet paper roll covers that made her tissue into dolls with full skirts. Once, I "helped" her make pasta. I remember how she stood, her walker next to her and her table before her, and with slow deliberation, cut the layers of pasta. I don't remember how it tasted or what else we did with it. Just the act of her impossibly small frame leaning over the table to cut it. I wan...

Writing is an optimistic endeavor in which you are wooed by some bitch-ass muse who gives you an idea and floats a few bars of music ahead of you singing sweetly "I'm right here." And so you think you can write it all down and it'll be poetic and beautiful and fast. The grind of getting it all to work is the dirty work she doesn't tell you about. I could really smack her with the broomstick I'm using to chase all the details around with. If I win the battle, I'll be releasing "Between Families" sometime around Christmas. If the victory is delayed, it might not be until 2014. More on that later. I talk too much about parenting. I know I do it. I hate that I do it. I love that I do it. I want to be sure to be a person outside of parenting. A person you don't have to talk to about your kids or your sore spots in order to relate. I want to. But most of my life is parenting. Most of my mind is parenting. It's making writing pretty hard. Be...

A group of puffins is called a loaf. Ha! Puffin loaf. Whales tan. You're only supposed to space once between sentences when typing. Me? Twice. Trying to stop. it. 2 spaces wasted 13 pages of my first draft of my novel. Isn't that just the craziest? Dogs can smell under water. They use dogs to find people when they've drowned. They're called cadaver dogs. Eerily, I learned this just before all the flooding started in Colorado.

Why do people homeschool?Sure you think it's because they have religious preferences or are crazy xenophobes or have kids with specific learning needs or because the parents are concerned for their child's safety/well being at school where there gangs/drugs/sex/etc. But really? It's because they can NOT bring themselves to get the kids out the door every morning. They're getting away with something here. I thought you should know.

The smell of cardemom makes me want to cry. I picture being in my aunt's kitchen and the way the smells all mixed: cardemom and coffee and something cooked long and perfectly during the day. Onions and bread? I wonder if that coffee maker still sits in that kitchen, if my uncle uses it now that she's gone? I remember the yellowy stains on the white plastic of that coffee maker whose light always, always glowed red. It's a wonder the light never burnt out. I'm teaching GED in addition to Composition classes at the community college. I love it. It's in the basement with coffee and cookies. Which is good because it's past my bedtime and I need coffee and cookies after 8:30. I taught someone the shape of writing Monday. Some of the students need to learn how to structure writing or how to avoid a sentence fragment. Some were just kinda punks in school that have a test to take, but others... well I wonder what happened there. Others need to learn when to use a co...

Magnus turned 3 today. He's rocked my world in these past 3 years. It was just 3 years ago that we found out he was a he. Just over three years ago I had no kids. That blows my mind. Here's what I love. I love his enthusiasm. The other day, he called me into his room in an emergency kind of voice to announce that "The sky is BLUE." We stood at the window watching the clouds allow blue sky to peek out at us and I felt how exciting a peek-a-blue sky could be. I love seeing the world through his eyes. Some of our current favorite activities/games are: WrestleWrestle, him running the length of our house before knocking me over with a hug, puzzles, window-paint markers, dance party (where he gets to stand on the kitchen counters and dance,) and endless goo-goo noises and fake-sneezes at Gavin to make him laugh. He now stops before explaining things, even beginning sentences with a slight smack of his tongue against his teeth that tells you he's slowing things dow...

I was at a coffee shop today anxiously looking back and forth between my kids and the coffee and trying desperately to be aware of EVERY part of my surroundings (sometimes I'm over-the-top neurotic,) when I almost stumbled over a really good looking man in a wheel chair.  He'd obviously had his legs amputated.  With sandy blonde hair and an infectious smile, he was all-American good-looking, wholesome and all that, with a really beautifully developed upper body.  And I could totally picture what he'd look like if his bottom still matched his top.  He'd have been taller than me and I would not have met his gaze.  I don't usually make eye contact with good-looking men. We each stumbled around each other, politely excusing ourselves and I, for once in my life, did NOT say the dumb thing I was thinking which was "Do you want to dance?"  I'm working on my novel again. I wrote it in 2007 & 2008 and haven't touched it since.  Which is a weird thin...

The nice thing about having such a verbal child is that he even talks in his sleep.  So you get to learn what he has bad dreams about.  "I want to go over there." "I want to have my eggs in a bowl." "I want to eat the food on mommy's plate." "You wouldn't hold my hand." "You wouldn't let me jump in puddles on the trail."

I'm eternally picturing my kids' behavior as adult problem-behavior.  Like when Magnus was a baby and would crawl over and bite your toes, I pictured him as one of those weird people on the subway that grabs women and deepthroats their feet.  Yeah. So today, Magnus and Gavin and I are in the car waiting for Rob to grab condoms from the store and Magnus is chattering away.  He explains that he will grow up.  And when he grows up he will go in the beer store with dad and me and he will buy beer for daddy.  But Gavin won't come.  He'll wait in the car and cry. Then he tells me for the third time that he has to pee.  So I take him out of the car and let him piss on the wheel well of my subaru.  Instead he pisses all over his pants, hand, my wheel well, and the concrete.  He thinks this is hilarious.  And I picture him a drunk college kid, still driving my Subaru and pissing all over himself while a friend goes in to buy more beer....