Category: teen years
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The Disordered Brain
The Ginja Ninja approached me recently to ask a question. She has a friend, she explained to me, who may need someplace to stay for a while. Her friend struggles with mental illness, her friend’s parents don’t believe in mental illness, and as her friend turns 18, she may find herself on the street as…
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Nurturing Men
I haven’t yet watched the ad. You know the one I mean, the one with the well meant intentions that went off the rails. Look, the underlying concept is sound. Men need mentors. Men, societally speaking, don’t have a lot of healthy male role models. Look at the statistics. We live in a world of…
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Tea and a Game Review
The Ginja Ninja and I have been talking about doing this for months. We’ve drunk a lot of tea, but haven’t had the time for a game until today, when she came to me and said ‘I’m making tea and I cleaned off the table. You pick the game.” Given that we’ve only got 4…
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Making a Gear Shift
My daughter and I were talking recently about learning to drive. She’s very excited about it, at the same time concerned over getting it right, and we were talking about shifting gears. I don’t know, she told me, when I need to shift gears. And how many gears are there? Four, five? We got the…
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Curmudgeon’s Corner: Teens and the Mall
Written by Sanford Begley Teens Hot Topics Wife Unit (WU) is normally great to shop with. When we arrive at a store she has a list and we go get it. A little browsing through what is on sale, especially clearance, and we are on our way. The sole exception to this is a Hell…
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Is this… Morning?
I think I overdid it yesterday. Between spring rising, and house guests at the end of the week, I’d decided it was time to do a big cleaning. So today I’m sore and stiff and just a wee bit cranky. Did I mention I have midterms all this week? Yeah. So I’ll be studying. However,…
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How to Write Realist YA: Part 2
Once again, I am joined by my unnamed guest blogger in the final part of his insightful article on the problems besetting young adult fiction. I deeply appreciate all the effort he has put into writing this, and no, really, this isn’t me. I’d be bragging if it was! You can find the first part…
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Free Story by Pam Uphoff!
It’s not mine, but I have talked a good bit about YA reads that are good, clean books. This fits the bill, and it has AI’s, sentient pets, a T-Rex, and lots of action. All that, and it’s free today, this week, so go scoop it up and enjoy, or give to your kids to…
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Being an Odd
I was thinking this morning, as I was folding towels and realizing I need to replace some, that most of my life is boring. Most of all our lives are boring, really. I mean, you don’t want to hear about my towels. But when we start talking to people, we talk about the interesting parts…
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Motherhood, and reflections.
I wrote something a while back. A long while, given that my youngest child is now six, and he wasn’t even born when I wrote this thought down. It still rings true, now, and it’s a good reminder to me as my eldest will be a teenager in less than six months. I still need…