This is Cordelia at the ice rink, where the three big girls and I have been spending quite a bit of our time lately. Skating is great exercise, and great fun, but it eats into my writing time.
As if I didn’t have time management problems enough, my husband and I are going to take up [...]
At the moment, I can be thin or I can be interesting, but I cannot possibly be both.
This is Portia’s new hobby.
It’s only fun if she has on her clothes and, ideally, her shoes as well.
Therefore, anytime I fill or drain the bathtub, I need to stay in the room, or post a guard.
Regrettably, the guards (the older girls) are the sort that would get themselves and their fellow soldiers killed [...]
I have nothing in particular to say about Raphael’s School of Athens, but uploaded it just because I like it, and just because I can.
If I was going to write something interesting, it would be about my insane fellow countrymen who think we should all have to take our shoes off to get on planes, [...]
The post title is pinched from a chapter title in one of Friedrich Nietzsche’s books. I cannot remember which one, because I had time either to look it up or pinch and upload a picture of philosophy’s bad boy, but not both, so I chose the latter.
And yes, that means that I can now [...]
Go ahead and try to take it…out of my cold, dead hands.
Obviously, I figured out how to get a new photo onto the blog, since Portia was a little bitty baby when my technical difficulties began. I still can’t upload pictures to the blog, but I can upload them to Flickr or Picasa and then [...]
You’ve seen this picture before. You’re not seeing a new one because I have been unable to upload new images to my blog for many, many months now, and it’s really got me, well, blue.
It used to be so easy. I’d press the “insert an image” icon, and then click the “Choose files to upload” [...]
Not the rich other half, or the poor other half, but the other half that has two children. What’s the average for American couples now? 2.1 children? 1.9? Something like that. This week, I have 2.0 because 2.0 of my 4.0 are in California with my husband. The house is quieter. The laundry doesn’t pile [...]
Just a quick note to let my readers know I haven’t taken leave of the land of the living. It’s been a very busy couple of weeks. I’ve done some reassessment of priorities, and have really focused on getting our schooing routine in order and, to a lesser extent, getting my exercise regimen going again. [...]
My posts have been few and far between lately, compared to my output a few months ago, say. This business of educating one’s own children is a responsibility that’s been weighing heavily upon me of late. When you homeschool, and your kids turn out to be ignorami, there’s nobody else to blame. That’s some pressure, [...]
The personal — On the bright side, no one in my house has swine flu yet. On the not quite so bright side, my washing machine died with a load full of sopping wet, not-yet-clean clothes inside.
The political — I’d say Chris Christie is going to win a big, fat gubernatorial victory, wouldn’t you?
Ricardo Leon [...]
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Posted 30 October 2009
† Brigette Russell
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Politics
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Tagged: 1990 pages, Chris Christie, CNN, Facebook, fat, health care bill, hotel, Inez Russell, laundry, Nancy Pelosi, New Jersey, Rename Rick Sanchez, Ricardo Leon Sánchez de Reinaldo, Rick Sanchez, Taos
My friend Tanya Van Dyke, that’s who. She’s doing it through St. Baldrick’s, an organization that raises money for childhood cancer research. It works like this: someone, like Tanya, agrees to shave her head in order to get her friends and family to donate money to St. Baldrick’s for cancer research.
Personally, you couldn’t pay me [...]
That’s me this week, still trying to get our school routine back on track after the vacation. There just isn’t a lot of creative energy left over for writing. Oh, and you didn’t miss the NMI link; I took this week off, the first time I’ve done so since I began writing the column.
I’m [...]
Today I woke up in my own bed again after ten nights in various hotel beds, couches and air mattresses on the floor. My back will take a few days to recover, both from that and from far too many hours in the car. I’d give just about anything to spend the morning at home, [...]
In the information age, having too few computers with online connections is an even greater hardship than having too few bathrooms. Here, belatedly, is the link to my column at NMI this week. It’s about Obama and the Olympics (and old story by now) and my take on it may surprise you.
There were so many blog [...]
Or at least every weekday. That’s what they say. They. You know they, right? I’m not sure exactly who they are, but they probably have fewer children than I do. Or they might have more, but they are guys, and have wives to go along with all those kids.
This week, my four children and I are [...]
This is the title of my NMI column that ran yesterday. Normally it runs on Tuesdays, but they ran it early. I wanted to leave the Allen Weh interview as the top story on Monday, so I did not link to the column until today.
Coincidentally, a commenter on the Weh interview linked to his [...]
My NMI column this week. I have more to say on the topic — and related topics — but I was in Albuquerque with the kids all day and am dead exhausted, so will wait until they’re asleep to write it. Unless I fall into an exhausted sleep the minute they’re in bed, in which [...]
I wrote this long, grim post several days ago, but as often happens, had to leave the computer before doing a final proofread and hitting “publish” and then was too busy to get back to it. The news stories discussed are a few days old, but the sentiments are timeless.
It’s hard not to be a [...]
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Posted 09 August 2009
† Brigette Russell
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Parenthood § Religion
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Tagged: Assyria, bad news, Crusades, Diana Schuler, evil, George Sodini, Holocaust, Kenneth Leon Mills, King David, man's inhumanity to man, Psalms, Sennacherib, Tiglath-Pileser III
The other day I mentioned we’d been to Old Salem to see how the Moravians lived, but that day we would be hanging out at the pool. Well, we’ve done a lot of hanging out at the pool since then. Normally, I like to do a lot of culturally enriching type sightseeing when I travel, [...]
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Posted 27 July 2009
† Brigette Russell
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Tagged: clothing, Gilda Radner, Hawaii, heiau, human sacrifice, Moravians, North Carolina, Old Salem, poi, Roseanne Roseannadanna, swimming pool
No post yesterday because I was at Old Salem seeing how the Moravians lived in the olden days. My daughter Elizabeth is having a wondeful time with her friend Jane, enjoying being one of a pair of big girls instead of the eldest of four little ones. I am still getting over the fact that [...]
I haven’t lost interest in my blog; I’ve just been busy. On Tuesday my eldest daughter and I leave to visit Cathleen and Patrick O’Hannigan in North Carolina, and I set Monday as the deadline for getting my book proposal in the mail to a publisher.
Which book? Why, the book I had practically finished a [...]
Seriously. I have wasted more time on Facebook the past few days than I can believe. Maybe wasted isn’t the right word, because certainly it’s nice being able to keep up with what your friends and family are doing, but still, I really did blog a lot more before I started spending so [...]
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Posted 09 July 2009
† Brigette Russell
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New Mexico
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Tagged: Blogging, Brothers Karamazov, Dostoyevsky, Ecclesiastes, evil, Facebook, Grand Inquisitor, Madrid, mass psychosis, Michael Jackson, mourning, nothing new under the sun
I missed it! I can’t believe I actually missed my own blog anniversary. My first post was May 19, 2008. I remember four days later, during a busy week when I had houseguests, and started writing this post, but never finished it.
I haven’t been finishing much lately. Only the necessary things. [...]
What’s kept me from the computer lately is that one of my friends and her children are visiting from out of town this week. This means we now have six children in the house, but the other night we had two other friends over, who also have six children between them, for a total [...]
I’ve always had a completely open – you might even say liberal – comments policy. I wanted a free exchange of ideas on this blog. Unfortunately, my forum has turned into a bully pulpit, where a small number of left-wing radicals who despise everything I stand for mock my political and religious beliefs, [...]
Remember that Metallica song, “Nothing Else Matters“? It came out in 1991, when I was young (well, younger anyway), newly married, without the marks of time that Estee Lauder and I have done our level best to undo, and above all, without children.
That song has been running through my head because I spent Tuesday [...]
Yesterday I drove down to Albuquerque for the Christian Association of Parent Educators (CAPE) annual convention. Last night some of the other Santa Fe homeschooling moms and I went to dinner, and when the hostess asked, “Do you need any children’s menus?” I can’t tell you the euphoria I felt saying, “No!”
Isn’t [...]
I’ve been trying to get a new blog post out for days, but it’s the wrong time of year for getting anything done — anything but taxes, that is. Every time I have a spare moment to sit down and write, my husband calls with another request for financial information. We go through [...]
When my husband and I were on our honeymoon in 1991, the hotel where we stayed kept showing the same movies on cable over and over. One of those movies was Young Guns II (1990), starring Emilio Estevez as New Mexico outlaw Billy the Kid. Several times in the movie, when Billy pulled [...]
President Obama being too tired to entertain British P.M. Gordon Brown was a hot topic around the blogosphere last week, but because I had something in common with Mr. Obama, I didn’t post about it. You see, I was too tired.
My children are 7, 5, 3 and 8 months and, being a deranged lunatic [...]
Today marks the debut of my column in the New Mexico Independent. My political commentary will be published every Tuesday, a lone conservative voice meant to bring some diversity of opinion to a publication whose other columnists….well, let’s just say it may be no accident that the commentary is on the left column of [...]
Tired after making tacos and ice cream sandwiches for lunch, chicken fajitas with rice, beans and guacamole for dinner, and lots of ziplock bags full of spaghetti sauce, chili, beans, and chicken breasts in garlic-lime marinade for the freezer.
Happy that yesterday I finally made a dent in the avalanche of papers on my desk [...]
I use this expression rather often and semi-ironically meaning Before Children rather than Before Christ, so instead of constantly putting (Before Children) in parentheses after I use it, I decide to give it its own post I could just link to in future and save time. Because as a mother of four and borderline [...]
Your regularly scheduled dose of my political pontifications has been delayed. I am drowning in a sea of things that needed to be done yesterday or the day before or the week before. I’m dying to write about this Illinois state senator I saw on Hardball last week, but if I don’t get [...]
He was a sweet, golden-haired boy, and his mother had kept him pure. Then I came along. I, with my worldly daughters. We, experienced in the ways of the flesh — the ground and re-formed, battered and deep fried avian flesh — gave a little boy his first bite ever of fast [...]
I’m taking a break from politics to write about my trip to beautiful downtown Riverside. Riverside is actually a rather pretty place, and one I’d never been, except to drive through on the 10 freeway. It’s about 60 or 70 miles east of my usual haunts, but my uncle and aunt moved out [...]
In New Mexico, we have to drive everywhere. We live miles from anyplace, but now we’re staying at my mother-in-law’s place on Sunset Boulevard in Pacific Palisades, and we can walk everywhere: grocery store, drugstore, bookstore, restaurants, library, park, church, anywhere we want to go. Because we walk, I only buy the groceries we need for the day [...]
I’m online. Oh, thank God. Haven’t had internet access for over 24 hours and now understand how crack addicts feel when they can’t score. Moved from one vacation stop to another, and there is no internet where I’m staying. I have 15 minutes now, but no more until sometime tomorrow, if then.
It is really hot [...]
Killing Mother Earth I am. Or so says Harvard physicist Alex Wissner-Gross as reported in the Times Online. Gosh but they report interesting stuff. Found the story by way of this interesting blog which I found in turn on Foxfire’s blog (though she linked to a different story. So anyway, here’s the scoop:
Performing two Google [...]
Another day, another wild ride on the freeways. Why is it that so many drivers seek to turn a simple lane change into a psychotic game of automotive chicken? I drove in this city for 25 years, and don’t recall ever being as nervous on the freeway as I have been this trip. But then LA wasn’t [...]
Yesterday was FUBAR. I won’t go into details, because a) complaining doesn’t help, b) nobody wants to hear complaining, and c) when little kids are involved, [expletive deleted] happens. Since I try to focus on the positive and be the kind of person who doesn’t annoy people, I’ll focus on the things I’m [...]
I’ve been on the road the past few days, so haven’t been able to blog or even read until now the raging battle in the comments section of my last post. I’m back in LA, sitting by an open window — an open window! in January! — watching the little savages play under a lemon [...]
A friend from high school, one of only two I’ve kept in touch with, recently joined Facebook and sent me a friends request. She’d been Googling other friends from long ago, and it suddenly occurred to me that if anyone who knew me 20 years ago or more was looking for me, they’d have [...]
Just found this website, thanks to my husband’s investigation of his family tree. This is the grave of his great-grandfather, who was apparently quite the pillar of the community in Ida Grove, Iowa. This is the grave of my great-great-grandparents in Cotopaxi, Colorado, which unfortunately doesn’t include the obituary information that appears on [...]
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 [...]