as true as taxes

One always hears about the calm before the storm, but our personal little disaster seems to have happened in reverse order. As described in my last post, I had a panic attack (followed by several others) at the thought of impending financial doom, replete with gasping, shriveling up on the kitchen floor in the throes [...]

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hope for better things

I’ve never thought of myself as a yeller. In fact, I’ve mainly been a pretty meek and mild person, only becoming outspoken with people I’m close to or at cocktail parties after one too many “just to relax” drinks. When we were first married, arguing with my husband was impossible, because he would yell or [...]

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hushed and silent

Cleaning out the attic today, I found myself going through boxes of old baby clothes and baby toys. I don’t really know what I’m hanging onto it all for, as we’re really not having another child (though Monsieur Shriek is as hopelessly conflicted about it as I) and while some of it can be given [...]

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more of gravy than of grave

So I’ve been reading Little House on the Prairie to my kids (well actually just to the older one, though the younger is putting up a good show of listening — ie covert nosepicking) and I’d forgotten the stunning lengths people had to go to in those days just to procure food.
I was thinking about [...]

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great expectations

Yesterday our house was a supernova of misery, with me struggling to get work done, the kids struggling to make the world’s largest umbrella out of popsicle sticks and tape, and my husband struggling to not lose every last shred of patience in his possession. The rain keeping us all inside plus the few hours [...]

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please sir, could i have some more

After one has spent considerable time and attentiveness to getting pregnant, one becomes reflexively habitual about noticing signs and symptoms that could point to anything other than the monthly scarlet drip. Recently I had some highly unusual things appear in unmentionable places, unusual enough to make me wonder if our birth control had somehow failed. [...]

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strange, varying strings

Tomorrow we pack up the car and drive off into the wilderness for a week, a vacation I’ve very much been looking forward to, one where internet tubes are scarce or nonexistent and there will be an abundance of entertaining items such as trees and rocks and water and not much else. A vacation where [...]

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rolled upon by the lonely feelings

If April is the cruelest month, then June is just one big, unforgiving clusterfuck. I won’t whine too much here, because it’s over and we survived and really, how fascinating can delayed flights and illness and rain actually be anyway? When we perish of the swine flu which I am certain has plagued us lo [...]

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fraycation, day 9

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times… it certainly was the dampest of times.

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all the pulses

My thoughts lately have been steeped in morbidity, and I can’t seem to help perceiving the world as infused with risk and loss. It’s been a few weeks of things going wrong, all kinds of terrible, and instead of summoning the huevos to weather it all with optimism, I’ve found that it is easier to [...]

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