Yesterday I was doing some editing and talking on the phone, when I was told to look at the news. A man had taken hostages at the Discovery Channel just outside of Washington, DC. There was a gun, and possibly explosives. I got off the phone. I put on CNN. I watched, and then had [...]
Read Full Post »
Did you attend the Fletcher School of Diplomacy? No? How about the Parental School of Hard Knocks? The Dating School of Hard Knocks?
Any of these might serve as some assistance. You know – in those sticky situations when a friend needs to hear the truth. A hard truth. One that will hurt, and there’s nothing [...]
Read Full Post »
I don’t know when it happened, exactly. Whether I flipped a switch, or the lighting changed more gradually, as if a dimmer had slowly illuminated a new space. But I recognize that it happened some time ago, and it feels like a natural process – inhabiting this territory where the focus is off my experience [...]
Read Full Post »
Posted in Entertainment on Aug 30th, 2010
Bigger than life, flashy, flawed. Cagey, corrupt, capricious. We love our television heroes, and our anti-heroes. Big screen or small screen, we escape into fictional lives, finding points in common, or nothing in common at all.
Mad Men is the perfect example of this phenomenon, as the Emmy award winning drama (again, just last evening) continues [...]
Read Full Post »
Unguarded
I have been writing from an unguarded place, and I do not do so often. I am uncomfortable here; my survival depends on privacy, and my own ability to maintain a certain distance from approaching realities in order to persevere – the clarity of facts and figures, debt and expenses, and the clock ticking, all [...]
Read Full Post »
Posted in Morning Musing, Parenting, Travel on Aug 28th, 2010
It’s here. Again. A day of last minute laundry and packing, goodbyes, airports. The house, suddenly so quiet, as my teenager prepares to fly back to college. To begin his sophomore year.
It was an evening of more loads of wash than I can count, the heap of luggage in the living room finally emptied, in [...]
Read Full Post »
Posted in Lifestyle, Other Stuff, Parenting on Aug 27th, 2010
We’d been at it for several hours, side by side, each of us on our laptops. Spread on the small ottoman pressing against my knees were stacks of old tax forms. On the chair beside me, two more folders with notes and figures.
We actually began the process days ago, but I couldn’t continue, and my [...]
Read Full Post »
I am the face of the aftermath of divorce, the aftermath of layoff, the aftermath of defeat. I am the face of invisible illness, of piercing isolation, of daily hide-and-seek.
Would you know me if you saw me?
I am your neighbor, your colleague, your sister; I am the woman who yells at the cashier [...]
Read Full Post »
Posted in Lifestyle, Parenting on Aug 25th, 2010
Believe me, my kids are no angels. They try my patience, drain my stores of energy, gnaw at my sleep, and keep trashing the space I’ve been trying to organize for months.
Kids driving you crazy?
I adore my sons. I write about them often. They do me proud, they challenge me, they have good hearts. My [...]
Read Full Post »
The tale of 104-year old heiress, Huguette Clark, caught my fancy last week. Not only is this woman’s story rich with history, but it raises an extraordinary number of issues that are relevant to each of us as we deal with critical decisions in life: who to trust, minimizing family squabbling when we are gone, [...]
Read Full Post »