We know the expression. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions. What else do we know? The web can be a hotbed of hate, an open forum for letting loose all the nastiness we wouldn’t dare to inflict in person. Comments on the web provide anonymity for some, a sense of distance and […]
Money Matters
My favorite skinny jeans have a tiny hidden pocket. What’s inside it? A small lip gloss, and a neatly folded twenty. An emergency stash. I feel better knowing that it’s there. My other jeans? Generally, there are two or three dollars in a back pocket, along with metro tickets – just in case. And I […]
Isn’t it the month for a Mad Girl’s Love Song?
A little something different for a Spring weekend, whatever the weather? Sylvia Plath’s Mad Girl’s Love Song is one of my favorite poems from my teenage years. Recently, something reminded me of the words, “I think I made you up inside my head,” and I found myself searching out this classic example of the villanelle […]
Anger or Impotence
While visions of Reality TV and sexual athletics may be dancing through my head in the early a.m. – as I am extricating myself from dreams – within a few minutes of brewing my coffee and scanning a few headlines, other thoughts quickly take precedence. In keeping with yesterday’s theme – the “human” side of […]
Tipping the Scales
Are you impetuous when it comes to decision-making, or do you weigh all the factors and carefully consider consequences? As my son and I reflect on his college choices, I ask myself to what extent I might influence his decision-making. All things being equal – financially – would I leave the choice up to him? […]
Weepy
Good things are happening. Some I’ve written about, and others, I haven’t. I’m trying to process them, to manage them, to make adjustments. Some days I think I’m doing okay. Other days, not so much. Most of the time I have the sensation of treading water, sliding beneath the surface, gasping for air, then forcing […]
Stella Dallas
It stopped me cold, and I couldn’t change the channel. It was Barbara Stanwyck, in 1937’s Stella Dallas, a film I hadn’t seen in years. It’s the story of a working class mother who manages to marry into money, leaves her husband, then raises her daughter under difficult (and questionable) circumstances. Years later, when the […]
Time on Your Hands?
Spare time? Are you kidding? What do you do when your friends or partners can take time off, and you simply can’t? When your schedule is bursting at the seams, even on the weekends? What if you feel like there’s never time to catch up, to take stock, to plan productively, much less to snooze, […]
Stilled By the State of My World
She rarely speaks, usually nodding her head and smiling. This morning she talked to me, loading my weekly groceries into the trunk. Her English is poor, but comprehensible. She looked troubled. My Neighbor, Myself She has been working as a bagger at my local supermarket for 10 years. She is a single mother, mid-thirties. Her […]
Sixth Sense
I thought it was over. In fact, I was certain of it. I have two meticulously penned grids that resemble handwritten spreadsheets. They’re taped to the fridge. There are labeled folders, one for each school, filled with notes and documented conversations, all neatly date and time stamped. I had polished off the highest priority item […]