My grandmother, Betty Lou Heintz, nee Brown, would have been 87 years old today. She died nearly 18 years ago, when she was only 69. I realize that in the larger scheme of human history, 69 has more often than not been an impressive age to which to live. I, at 44, […]
Bookmarking stupid New York Times and Santa Fe New Mexican editorials that make me scream and want to write blog posts about, then not having the time to do it.
Trying to organize my desk and all my homeschooling papers. Organization shall set you free – except when you are a truly sick OCD sufferer […]
Before I had children, I had no concept of the power of a mother’s love. Truly, it can overcome almost anything. The example I am about to give is mundane, and many of you will laugh at me, but I’ll risk your ridicule and relate it anyway.
I am not afraid of snakes, or […]
In both senses, literal and figurative.
Literally, I’ve been down with a brutal stomach flu, hence no posts in the last few days. As luck would have it, my husband was out of town, so I was on my own with the kids, and pretty much let the three eldest run wild and trash the […]
I almost quit blogging last week. So often I feel pressed for time, unable to find the time to write the kind of thoughtful posts I’d like to write, and unwilling to write too many of the sort of stream-of-consciousness quickie posts I can dash off between diaper changes and dinner prep. Other […]
When I told people that Portia was sleeping through the night, I had a feeling I might jinx it. Sure enough, she woke up hungry at 3:30 this morning. If that had been the only nocturnal disturbance, it would have been okay, since she’s only three months old, and infants are expected to […]
I’ve finally gotten used to my progressive bifocals. At first I felt as though I’m walking in a pit, and they threw my depth perception off. I’m still careful backing out of parking spaces, but I don’t feel as disoriented as I did. Switching back and forth between the regular glasses and […]
Thanks to all who have checked the site looking in vain for new posts. This is the longest I’ve gone without posting since beginning. Multi-tasking is something I’m usually good at, but this week, not so much. Portia is sleeping through the night, God bless her, but I’m still unaccountably tired. It’s been a difficult […]
Naturally the man I hired to come do yardwork today didn’t show up. This happens quite often around here. I call a handyman or road grader or some other tradesman who placed an ad or put up a flyer and arrange to have him come do some work, then the guy doesn’t show. […]
One reason I haven’t posted (besides the four ever-present reasons to whom I’ve given birth) is because I’m trying to fathom exactly what’s going on economically in our country. This crisis is huge, complicated and difficult to understand. It is so easy to manipulate statistics to paint one party or the other as […]
Not one post for over a week, then I finally resurface for a catty two-paragraph fluff piece about a sex scandal. Where is the substantive piece I wanted to write? Maybe something about the always entertaining Jerome Block, whose opponent Rick Lass I met last week. Lass seems like a nice fellow, […]
As I was reading Maureen Dowd’s cleverly titled column “Ich Bin Ein Jet-Setter” about Barack Obama’s world tour, the phrase “he will have to successfully complete a number of tasks” jumped out at me: yet another split infinitive appearing in what is arguably our nation’s most illustrious newspaper, The New York Times, written by […]
Portia Louise Russell and her exhausted but deliriously happy mother came home from the hospital on Sunday, and it’s taken this long for me to get around to writing about it.
First, the name. Portia is the name we had in mind when I wrote my earlier post about baby names, but I was keeping […]
I’m off to the hospital (the one without the nursery) for my c-section in the morning, so there won’t be any posts for at least two days. Hopefully day three will find Baby Sis and me back home again, and if I feel up to it, back at the computer.
Please say a prayer for […]
For many years I’ve given regular thanks to God for creating coffee. I’ve loved coffee since I was a teenager. I drank it black and doing so may well have saved me from obesity. I love food, and the battle between my appetite and my vanity would have been a pretty evenly […]
When you blog, you never know who’s reading, unless they comment, and most don’t, since the number of comments on my site is a microscopic fraction of the number of hits I get each day. A friend from an e-mail list mentioned today that she knew how I felt about car DVD players since […]
We’ve driven past the Glorieta, NM, battlefield memorial scores (if not hundreds) of times, but today we finally stopped. It’s a makeshift memorial, on private property and maintained by the owner, who has been kind enough to put in nice, flat trails and even to make little makeshift concrete seats and benches under some […]
One of my husband’s friends gave him a hard time because I “slammed” him in my blog the other day. I was dumbfounded, since the post in question didn’t mention my husband, and my comment was a general one about how mothers tend to feel guilty for frittering away time on the internet instead […]
Is there a mother who doesn’t feel like this is her once in a while? When we yell at the kids over something stupid and feel like a complete jackass afterward. When we sit like a zombie surfing the internet instead of reading to our children like we promised ourselves (or God forbid […]
Sometimes I think my husband loves this little beast more than he does me or any of our daughters. Why? Because she loves him with a selfless devotion that would be sickening in a human being, and obeys him instantly and without fail. The dog is indifferent to me, and obeys me […]
Age has been on my mind more than usual lately, probably because I’m 43 and about to have a baby. Because I had children relatively late in life, I’m in the position of being in a playgroup where I’m old enough to be the mother of some of the other moms – if I’d […]
Remember that bit from SNL back when the show was still funny instead of filthy and Franken was still a comedian instead of the Democratic nominee for a U.S. Senate seat? Well, it reminds me of parenthood, because children are every bit as narcissistic – or more, if possible – than Franken’s character in […]
Contemplating the maternal urge to nest the other day, I started thinking about what feminist theorists derisively term essentialism, the idea that there are essential differences between men and women. I heard this term for the first time my first semester in grad school, when the USC History Department’s mandatory seminar for first year […]
What do you mean you don’t HAVE a nursery?????
This was my dumbfounded response when I toured the maternity ward (the only one in Santa Fe) where I’ll be delivering next month. The hospital where I had my other three children had one, and since all my deliveries were c-section and I wasn’t […]
If Romeo and Juliet had been called Ethelbald and Hildegarde, would their names be synonymous with romance?
Names have been on my mind lately, since we have to choose one for our fourth daughter next month. Our first and third daughters have traditional, mainstream names, Elizabeth and Theresa, and we didn’t catch any flak about […]
Saw this first on Melissa’s blog, and followed the link to The Simple Woman, a blog I’d never seen before, to find that 82 other bloggers have put it on their blogs, so I thought since I was up and sleepless I’d jump on the bandwagon.
FOR TODAY, June 4, 2008…
Outside My Window…it is dark. […]
This is a new blog, and very much a work in progress. I am still getting to know WordPress and trying to figure out the quirks in the theme I’m using. My “About” and “Contact” links, which were on the sidebar yesterday, have disappeared today. Until I figure out how to get […]
I’ve asked myself that question for several years now, hesitant to join the countless multitudes already offering their unsolicited opinions on everything under the sun. Probably not, but I wanted to start one anyway. After all, what makes my unsolicited opinions any more superfluous than anyone else’s?
So why didn’t I? For one […]