Ugh. I am so tired, and there are dishes to do. The Big M is on another business trip and our fridge is deliberately (mostly) empty in anticipation of a trip to Dallas this weekend, so I decided to drive through for supper. All of you with kids probably are familiar with the arguments that go on between them when it comes to choosing a place. And, unlike The Big […]
I have been extraordinarily tired this week. I love to read Proust when I’m tired. Who is Proust? you say. I’m assuming you are asking this because you are normal and don’t go seeking out 19th-century French memoirists to read. Marcel Proust (Prooooooost! Imagine how beloved he’d be as a football player with a name like that.) is known for his novel-in-six-volumes, In Search of Lost Time. (The real title […]
The Boy gave me a calculating look and tilted his head ever so slightly. “Mom, Weight Watchers is offering a month free if you join now.” Ordinarily he’ll parrot any number of things he has seen on TV, often with a barely contained excitement that verges on exuberance. “Mom! Did you know that you can refinance right now with GiantBankingConglomerate.com and save hundreds of dollars on your mortgage payment?!” Never […]
I really have made a good-faith effort to exercise my brain by reading Plato’s Republic this week. I’ve picked it up, carried it around, even gotten through the first half of Book VII. But it is sloooooow going. I don’t know if it’s the drowse-inducing weather, the demands of kids and dog and household, the stress of coping with an out-of-town spouse, or just that it requires so much concentration […]
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 […]
Flabby Brain 