sum of the parts

“Wait. Is Granny sticking her hand in a dryer fire when you were little the reason you nag everyone so much about cleaning the dryer vents?” “I am everything that has happened in my past plus generations of genetic memory.” “Does that mean yes?” “Yes.”

dairy farmers love us

If you are lactose intolerant, don’t stand anywhere near our refrigerator. We’ve got mozzarella, swiss, colby, sour cream, cheddar, cream cheese, sour cream, whipped cream cheese, flavored cream cheese, sour cream and whatever pretend cheese is used for cheese sticks. Did I mention sour cream? There are three containers of sour cream. There were more, […]

useless behavior patterns

I make stickers of cartoon panels and stick them in my planner. When I had an office, comic strips covered the bulletin board. In college, I glued comic strips into my textbooks. In high school, I thumbtacked cartoons to my walls. In middle school, I kept a favorite strip in my pocket. In elementary school, […]

Monday in list form

Youngest child wakes feeling too puny for school. Spend morning failing to accomplish anything because sick child needs a drink, snack, blanket, remote, cat, etc. Leave sick child on couch with big brother in charge of him. Go to sick child’s school to make copies for his teacher. Zone out and end up at Target […]

Graduation: The Sitcom

Baccalaureate episode: Mom, Tween and Graduating Teen raced off to the store to buy a replacement for Graduating Teen’s conveniently “missing” tie and a black slip for the Mom who could never remember that her only slip was white until she was in the process of getting dressed. Mom and Graduating Teen met at the […]

just in case

“Sweetie, M and I have a pact that whichever of us survives the other will do a favor for the recently deceased. Since she lives in another state, she’ll probably send someone to the funeral to take care of that favor. If a stranger at my funeral says that they’re here for M, thank them […]

fleeting moment of clarity

Lately, I have been feeling like Stretch Armstrong in a taffy pulling machine. It is frustrating, exhausting and demoralizing. After a day of obstacles and roadblocks, I sat still for an hour this evening. Sitting, in that environment that didn’t belong to me, I realized that I allow things beyond my control to control my […]

random things on my mind

I need to paint the front door, but it’s mosquito season and I don’t want the inside of the house to be the box in a bug spray commercial. I also don’t want Doug building another ‘clean room‘ before we’ve repaired the staple damage from the last one. Hmmm. I need to find a place […]

sliding off

Like an ancient rag doll, my skin is sewn with nerve stitches, to the muscle shell that contains the skeletal cage for gooey organ gears and every so often, a twinge announces the popping of a stitch or three.

not-so-great mysteries

In the past two days, I stripped all the beds and laundered *everything. When I went to re-make all the beds, I had one extra twin mattress pad and a missing full size mattress pad. Did I have a twin mattress pad on a full mattress? It doesn’t fit now, so how could it have […]