I started on this journey twenty-four years ago, plus a few months. With the birth of my first child, I knew my life had been inalterably changed, and it was wonderful. What I never thought about, through the years of having four children grow from babies to active children to teens and then into adulthood,… Read More A Mother’s Purpose
This is a story from four years ago. Sometimes life with teens is richly rewarding in deeply peculiar ways. I miss my girls at the same time I am SO proud of them for being independent. So the story behind the spider in its personal forcefield I was told as I’m getting up one morning.… Read More Force Field Spider
It’s funny, the little things that parenting entails. I was talking to the Little Man the other day, about when he really was my little man. “I used to make airplane noises to get you to eat.” I told him. “Really?” He’s sitting next to me in the car, and out of the corner of… Read More Mae Ploy
The First Reader and I were sitting on the front porch sipping coffee and waking up, when I started quizzing him on military colloquialisms. He rubbed a hand over his face, standing his hair on end, blinked at me, and pointed out he’d only technically been in S4. See, this is why I need… Read More Porch Musing
This morning as I was sitting here looking up a recipe for crystallized violets I was thinking about the way children grow. I should elucidate. The Jr Mad Scientist is turning 18 in a few short weeks. For her sixth birthday, I believe, I decorated her birthday cake with violets from the garden. That… Read More Violets in a Storm
I keep thinking I’ll manage dictation in the car. I have a voice recorder app downloaded on my phone, and in theory… in reality I forget about it, or I’m too brain-dead to compose, or like the last two days (what is it with this week? I’m driving very carefully today) there was snarled… Read More Ninjas and Furbies
Part of my morning routine during the weekday involves making sure the teen boy in the house is fully conscious. He’s quite good at playing possum, so I’ve gotten equally good at being annoying and persistent. The exchange sometimes sounds like this: knock, knock knock. From within: moans knock, knock, knock “I’m up.” … Read More Slowly we rise
I’m feeling like perhaps I’m reaching some semblance of routine. It will take weeks, if not months, for me to be fully trained and comfortable at the new job. It’s just different enough to be a fresh challenge in ways I hadn’t anticipated… and the cold office isn’t helping any. I did go out… Read More Equilibrium
August is trembling on the brink of existence, and with it comes the end of summer. The Little Man goes to high school, the Junior Mad Scientist is already planning her curriculum for her senior year of homeschool, and the Ginja Ninja is working like a fiend to save up and move out. The First… Read More Parenting is Hard
I know you all know how I am about work. I know it, because I get teased about it. So you’ll be happy to know I took the weekend off, mostly. The First Reader and I drove down to my Mom’s place, dropped off the Little Man (I need to talk blog names with him… Read More R&R
I seem to keep coming back to the fatalist’s view of the world, and rejecting it. I had a conversation with a friend at work the other day, where she informed me that early on, her teachers taught her that life sucks, and then you die. You can’t win, she told me. Only the one… Read More Life is Pain, Princess, Eat Cake
It’s been a weird old life. It certainly took twists and turns I could never have predicted from my teens until now. I don’t think of myself as being haunted by my past – I have regrets, but I have the insight to know that the blessings in my life would not have happened had… Read More Laying Ghosts to Rest