The Big M has long had a dream of owning a Corvette. To help make this dream a reality, he sold his nice truck and used a portion of the proceeds to buy a less nice truck as his daily driver so as to free up funds for the dream car. Our boy has been very involved in the process. Every time Dad takes out his wallet, an eight-year-old voice […]
Yesterday I saw about the cutest thing I’ve seen in a while: my 8-year-old boy dressed up in his brand-new Cub Scout uniform for his very first Cub Scout meeting. He was so proud in his new cap and blue shirt and shorts with the scarf and belt and matching socks. I had spent part of the afternoon applying all of the required insignia. And there was a lot. He […]
My husband and I were talking yesterday about the powerful visual and aural story that the show Mad Men puts on the small screen. We got to talking about one scene from the first season in particular, where Joan and Roger are at the St. Regis Hotel, and she realizes that the relationship is not what she had wanted. There’s a very powerful feeling of loneliness and alienation conveyed, especially […]
I haven’t written part two of the essay. Part of the reason is that I’ve been distracted by something more important, but the other part is that it’s hard and I’m still struggling to overcome my academic laziness. I am not proud of this. I like to hope that announcing my weakness will motivate me to overcome it. I see it as similar to telling everyone I’ve started a diet. […]
In 1942 in California, John Steinbeck wrote a novel called The Moon is Down. Meanwhile, World War II raged in Europe, North Africa, and the Pacific. 1942 was a dark year. The Reich was rising. Storm troopers under the command of Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist Party had captured and now controlled Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Holland, Belgium, Norway, France, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, and Greece. A little Jewish girl in the Netherlands […]
How is it that — thanks to children — I no longer have a gag reflex at the sight of someone else’s vomit, feces, or urine, but I about lose my mind when I see crayons on the carpet? Entropy is the natural order of things, so why am I so irritated when they trash my house? I don’t feel disrespected. They’re just doing what comes naturally. But the clutter, […]
Mom sent a corrected copy of my Texas map drawn from memory in the Story Time post. Classic!
It’s raining and the kids are watching The Sound of Music, so I’m going to amuse myself by telling you a story about my plane trip from Seattle to Austin. I found a journal that I was intending to use for story writing. Instead I will illustrate this story with the journal. *ahem* “Why I Hate Flying” by Lynn The Big M and I told the kids during our 3,245-mile […]
We didn’t have a lot of time to hang out in Memphis during our whirlwind tour of nine states in nine days. We had a quick lunch, and then looked for a nearby park to let the kids blow off some steam before pressing on another 3 1/2 hours to Nashville. I found a place called Memorial Park, which turned out to be a cemetery. Weirdly, it also turned out […]
My little daughter dumped all the money out of her purse onto the living room carpet this morning. It was mostly coins and one-dollar bills. She counted slowly and carefully. Her brother poked his hand in periodically, trying to sneak away a coin or two when she wasn’t looking. When she did look at him, he tried to invent a multi-dollar fine she could pay him for some imagined slight. […]
Flabby Brain 