I’ve finished Free-Range Kids by Lenore Skenazy, and I’ve been trying a few things to make my kids more independent. I feel sort of like Bill Murray’s character in What About Bob: “Baby steps to the elevator. Baby steps I’m on the elevator. Baby steps…” We’ve done Walking to the Mailbox Alone and now Hanging Out at the Church Carnival With a Fistful of Game Tickets and Without Hovering Parents. […]
I’d like to extend a warm welcome to all of y’all coming over from Free-Range Kids. Please take a look around, and if you like what you see, come back to visit! I’d like to say “thank you” to Lenore Skenazy, first for her excellent book, and second for re-printing my post (below) on her site. I’ll be posting again about Free-Range Kids (the book) in the next couple of […]
I’ve been one of those hyper-paranoid mothers who cringes when letting her seven-year-old son use a public restroom unattended by a parent because there is sure to be a serial molester lurking within, just waiting for a kid to pounce on. But The Boy is nearly eight, and mommy can’t drag him into the Ladies’ Room anymore, so I let him go off on his own with warnings not to […]
I ragged on Dan Brown a bit in my last mention of The Lost Symbol. After reading it, I’d like to give him props for attempting to do something extremely difficult: seek out the universal truths demonstrated within six millennia of human history and distill them into a pop-fiction adventure. I get the sense that he buys into the idea that there are absolute truths out there and that he […]
I’m back in beautiful central Texas, arriving just in time for The Big M to take off on a business trip to Santa Fe. In honor of our recent air travel (and because I don’t feel like drawing anything tonight), I present to you a wonderful drawing done last week by The Girl: Isn’t that just the most wonderful airplane ever? She told me that Mama is flying it. I […]
Today is Talk Like a Pirate Day. It seems apropos that I am in Savannah, the literary home of Captain Flint, the oft-referred-to and never-seen star of Treasure Island. The treasure, you see, was Flint’s. He had buried it on an island and then died in Savannah some years before Jim Hawkins and Long John Silver, et al. went after it. Treasure Island is a lovely book. I read it […]
I’m going to Savannah, Georgia tomorrow with my sissy! We’ll be staying in a carriage house and eating lots of fried food beneath live oaks dripping with Spanish moss. In honor of the occasion, I picked up Dan Brown’s latest excretion, “The Lost Symbol”, which was released today. Why Dan Brown, do you ask? Picture me reading “The Lost Symbol” in beautiful historic Savannah: Now picture the reality: me reading […]
The Big M has really taken to his MMA training. For those of you unfamiliar with MMA, it stands for Mixed Martial Arts, which is approximately a combination of kickboxing, jiu-jitsu, and wrestling. The Big M now throws a beautifully terrifying jab-cross combination and was working on his round kick yesterday. The round kick is designed to take out the opponent at the rib cage or at the knee. (Or […]
A dear friend from my college days at Texas A&M University majored in agronomy. When people asked what that meant she would reply, “Soils.” Only in Lez’s East Texas accent it came out, “Souls.” I was reminded of that after reading about Norman Borlaug. Norman Borlaug saved a billion lives. That is not a typo. He saved a thousand million human beings. How is that possible? Dr. Borlaug was a […]
In the morning before I get up I like to read the daily prayer/information of the day from Universalis. This is an on-line publishing group that puts the Liturgy of the Hours, mass readings, and other Catholic information out into the ether for public viewing. I get it on my cell phone. When it’s a saint’s day there’s usually some straightforward explanation of what the person did to earn sainthood. […]
Flabby Brain 