I could teach a course in… Boiling Water: Turning the kettle on 25 times before you get around to making one cup of tea. Abandoning Footwear: Leaving your shoes all over the house so others have to hop, skip, and jump around them. Wine Bluffing: Pretending to know what great wine tastes like when the […]
Top 5 Fridays (or Wednesdays)
5 Ways Blogging Is Like Parenting
When I launched this blog 17 months ago, my first post was entitled “How Starting a Blog is Like Having Twins.” Now, 170 posts later, I feel like I’ve been living in Blogville for a while. In fact, because the world of blogging is relatively new compared to when Neanderthals grunted their way around, I […]
5 Tips For Traveling Without Children
A long time ago, I posted 5 Tips for Traveling with Children (#1 was “Don’t”), but now it’s time to move beyond that (since my spawn can walk and talk), to something a lot more relaxing: traveling alone. Recently, before my trip to Hollywood to abduct Colin Firth attend Oprah’s After Oscar Party, I did […]
5 Lowlights of Christmas
I am thankful Christmas comes only once a year; so, I imagine, are the drivers of recycling trucks. And as my holiday bonus, no one puked this year, and I am eternally grateful I didn’t have to sleep with The Vomitator and play catch-the-acid-chunks like I did last year in an RV in Arizona. Instead […]
5 Ways To Do Christmas on the Cheap
We don’t spend a lot of money at Christmas. Sure, our spending increases, but only slightly. There are many reasons why we do Christmas on the cheap: I’m far too practical to want to make our bank account hemorrhage more than it already does; I despise shopping; I grew up having simple yet intimate holidays […]
Five "Best of 2010" Toys That Really Suck
Black Friday approaches, like an SUV-sized pothole that threatens to eat our credit. Yes, the Friday following American Thanksgiving is the biggest shopping day of the year in the U.S., which means bank accounts will be suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder before a single Christmas stocking gets stuffed. In honor of this retail harbinger […]
Choosing a Blog Name and a Motto: Reminiscing
This past week marked one year since I began blogging. That’s roughly 110 posts, 1400 comments, and 29,000 hits since I wrote my first post, How Starting a Blog Is Like Having Twins. And, just like we considered lots of names for Vivian and William (such as Elizabeth, Eva, Acacia, Helen, as well as Isaac, […]
The 5 Stages of Grieving for an Absent Mother
I went to a fantastic writers’ conference 700 miles from my home two weeks ago. For me, the weekend away was rejuvenating and exhilarating. For my husband, it was exhausting. For William, it was…well, we don’t really know. For Vivian, it was grief. Thankfully, she expresses herself through art. Here, then, are the five stages […]
Halloween, the Day-After: 5 New Terms
It’s the day after Halloween, so it’s time to listen to Christmas music. But before we suffer through Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, I thought we may wish to add some new words to the Halloween lexicon. Here are my 5 suggestions for new Halloween terms: Hallowhiner: a parent who openly complains about this event, like […]
5 Reasons Halloween Reminds Me I’m a Slacker Mom
I used to like Halloween. I grew up with a dress-up trunk every bit as magical as a Narnia wardrobe. To top that, I had a grandma who sewed costumes – from a Dutch girl and an Indian girl to an astronaut and a caveman — in an era when the term politically incorrect hadn’t […]