It has become clear to me why the Xbox was given its name. Since arriving in our house on Christmas Day 2008, Xactly 3 months ago today, its powerful siren song has turned our sons into: Ex-guitar players Ex-readers Ex-explorers of the nearby woods and waterfall And it has turned Chris and me into Xasperated, Xhausted, deeply [...]
Today we’ll quickly revisit a couple of topics from the recent past. 1. The winner of the bad restaurant names is reader Tracie, who nominated Scales and Tails in Tallahassee. She will receive a vintage Florida tea towel, which I happen to know she will like. 2. The theme of Chris’s men-in-drag dance line last weekend was [...]
Self-employment has its benefits as well as its stresses. Often, the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. A regular paycheck, fabulous benefits, and an extra fat envelope at Christmas casts a glittering allure over the prospect of being someone else’s employee for a change. That’s why I’m considering applying for a job [...]
The debate rages on, with this article in the new issue of THE ATLANTIC entitled “The Case Against Breastfeeding.” I read every word. The author concludes that breastfeeding ends up enslaving a woman, which is actually kind of hard to argue with, and that the much-touted benefits of breastmilk are actually unproven and/or negligible. But enough about the polemics of breastfeeding. I happened [...]
Ah, spring, when a young man’s thoughts turn to….chugging a lot of beer, dressing in drag, slathering on garish makeup, and prancing onstage before hundreds of hooting neighbors. That’s my husband in the white skirt with the good legs, third from left. The group includes captains of industry and a tugboat captain, a doctor and a contractor, [...]
Last Monday, enough white stuff to make a Snow Day. This Monday, enough snowdrops to make a Great White Way. Unfortunately my camera can’t do justice to this scene, but I hope you get the idea. The snowdrops have naturalized and spread like crazy across what was once a winding lane. They just go on and on and on and [...]
Playwright Horton Foote died yesterday at 92. From the Hartford CT Courant: “The Texas-born Foote won his first Oscar for the screenplay of 1962′s Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird,” which starred Gregory Peck as the honorable lawyer Atticus Finch, and his second for 1983′s “Tender Mercies,” starring Robert Duvall as a struggling country singer. [...]
Snow day! In celebration of the fact that I don’t have to do the school run, dressed in my flannel PJ pants, a hoodie, and my husband’s loafers from the mudroom, here is my favorite nightmare tale of what can go wrong when you’re not dressed properly to drop the kids in the morning. One day [...]
As I recall, little boys are obsessed not only with superheroes and cars and firemen and guns, but also the concept of jail and bad guys. As they get older, few places loom larger in their imaginations than the mythical place called Juvie. When we drive by our local Juvenile Hall en route to the indoor [...]
All of us except Malcolm, who is too young, went to one of Philadelphia’s best kept secrets on Friday night - this annual show. Think of it as the University of Pennsylvania’s answer to Harvard’s Hasty Pudding Club, except that Mask & Wig puts on a hilarious show each year, also involving drag, instead of giving a pudding pot parade [...]
