I met with my Other Book Club this morning. I call them my Other Book Club because they are my second book club from a chronological standpoint– ie., the order in my life in which I became involved in them– and because I’ve written about my first book club (Vlaardinger Boeks) here before. It is […]

We were leaving the Museum of Life and Science last Monday, William’s birthday. On the way out, we had to pass the strategically located gift shop. There, standing just outside the entrance, was a display of mugs. The mugs were brightly colored, and each bore a name. The idea, of course, is to find one’s […]

Why use highlighter? Why? Why cover the page in garish color, smearing crookedly the lines of text, painting them orange, yellow, purple? Yes, purple. They make purple highlighter. Why, when using highlighter, must we highlight So Much of the text? Why do we highlight Nearly Every Line, so that, in reading, one’s eye is drawn […]

The children and I had A Day today. The weather was glorious, for starters, and that always helps. It has been beautiful here lately, temperatures in the mid-eighties and the humidity gone missing. Deep blue skies and those wispy clouds that make the sky seem so much higher. The locusts continue to sing, but the […]

Everett loves the cat. Loves her. I think he likes her coziness (she is Very soft), and her purring, and her contentment. These things match his own Love of the Lap, and Holding, and affection. This morning, while he anticipated breakfast in the warm sunlight, he admired his cat and commented to me, “I don’t […]

William has had his head in a book. He finished reading one of his birthday presents, The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes, and has decided to read it again. And he is also reading Scholastic”s version of The Revenge of the Sith, because it’s the only one of the movies he hasn’t seen yet, because he […]

I am tired tonight. Too tired to write anything here, despite the fact that I have a list of postings just waiting to be written. But I have spent the majority of the last two days remodeling the boys’ bedroom, and that task, though only half-finished, has exhausted me. I have tried several postings already. […]

I had a writing afternoon on Friday, which means that I stole a few hours from my day-job as Mother and went to the coffee shop to write. I had an iced coffee and my iPod, and was listening over and over again to the song that helps me focus, hopeful that I could produce […]

If I don’t have something that I Absolutely Must Do the minute I get up, so that all my thoughts are bent on that thing– if I don’t have that, then my brain is almost immediately Besieged on waking. Does this happen to you? When I wake up my brain is a newly dug hole […]

All week I have suffered a glut of anxiety in the pit of my stomach. It wakes me early, out of peace, already firmly lodged in my conscious mind. It hassles me and impedes my thinking, it destroys my appetite and impairs my mood. I hate it. I know why it is there, mostly. And […]