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, […]
Pucker Up
How much do you know about your teenager’s social life? How much does he or she know about yours? I can’t remember ever catching one of my sons in a furtive lip lock. (I suspect that both are smart enough to retreat to the leafier areas of our yard, to their rooms, or to a […]
Losing Elizabeth Taylor
Elizabeth Taylor – screen legend, world-renowned beauty, Oscar-winning actress – has passed away. She died today, of congestive heart failure, at the age of 79. Like most who recall her in Butterfield 8 or Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, we think of her exquisite face and voluptuous body, her smoldering sexuality that heightened extraordinary […]
The Morning View After a Win
“It’s all about the glasses,” he said. I shot him a glance. He grinned. “How can you type without looking?” I just smiled. And kept typing. Like a little Cheshire cat with a cup of coffee by the bed. “If you pass me my glasses I can see what you’re doing.” “I’m not sure I […]
Flop House
I tripped over shoes in the living room. It was dark, and the shoes didn’t belong to either of my sons. This is not new. The body on the couch was longer and broader than usual, mumbling good morning as I covered him with a fallen comforter and went to my younger son’s room and […]
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 […]
Spotlights
One of the first things I did when we moved into our home was to install spotlights. I love the vibrancy of the art hanging on my walls. It reminds me of friends, of places I’ve lived, of people I know and care about. It inspires me to continue writing and working and setting goals, […]
Romance Fitness
Spring, with its indefinable je ne sais quoi. And it has me thinking about taking risk, about lifestyle change, about romance. Let’s be honest. Sex is accessible to most of us, if we really want it. But romance is a different story. It’s a matter of the heart, whatever your marital or parental status. It […]
Drugged
It’s going to be a coffee morning, and an herbal tea afternoon. Thanks to last night. Now, now. Nothing exciting, though I do feel hungover. In fact, last evening I took an over-the-counter cold medicine and called it a night, early. The hours that followed? Miserable. Best I can tell, I had a bit of […]
Am I Repeating Myself?
“I think you have the most productive form of A.D.D.,” he says, giving me his cutest look – the one that worked when he was a child, and still does. I feign a pout as he and his friend laugh. “I love you, too,” I say, standing on my tip-toes as he bends down. I […]