The pressures of parenthood seem to congeal around a holiday like grease on a ham. We *should* put the chickens in their matching dresses. We *should* achieve a lovely family picture. We *should*dote on the kids (at least not park them in front of a video). We *shouldn’t* let them eat too much sugar. The…
Chicken Little keeps catching me putting her drawings in the recycling bin. She never once considers that I’ve done it on purpose. She always assumes it’s been a mistake. “Mommy, you accidentally put this in there,” she says, holding it out to me. “Whoops!” I say, and stick it back on the refrigerator. This is…
I have been reading Malcolm Gladwell again: his first book, The Tipping Point. It’s an examination of the factors that kick off epidemics of disease, thought, trend, etc. I am just not getting into it like I did Blink and Outliers. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the book. The copy is full of great…
One of the reasons I burnt up my book was that it was taking me away from my chickens. It takes incredible focus to keep 225 pages in my head. One side effect is that everything else starts to feel like a frustrating distraction: Captain Daddy, my paid writing assignments, the laundry, my taxes and…
After nine years with the same yoga instructor, I recently jumped ship. Not because of dissatisfaction—I love my longtime teacher—but because of reanalyzed cost-benefit ratio (popular in this economy, yes?). Her class is offered once a week for $12/session and I found a place where I could go any of seven days a week for…
One of my Anonymous Commenters likes to reply to my posts with poems (See “Guts”). I am not much of a poetry person, but I like her approach. Often her chosen poets speak better than I to whatever theme I aimed for. Every now and then something really hits home. This one by Lucille Clifton,…
Strange things happen once I start to edit my manuscript. 1. Excuses slip away. Not enough time? I steal time. From chores, from writing assignments, from my chickens. Even from cocktail hour. Not enough motivation? There’s too much. I can’t focus on anything else. I work on my book all of the time. When I…
A friendly Sunday-morning plug for my friend Suzanne Burns’ poetry chapbook “Vacancy”, now available from Pudding House Press. She’s brilliant, has an uncanny ability to nail the absurd, and does her best writing from midnight to 3 a.m. That’s pretty much all you need to know. The prose-poems in this chapbook are fabulous. Even…
“Jiggle jiggle! Mommy, know why your bee-hind jiggles? Because you’re old!” Chicken Noodle made this declaration two days ago after sneaking up on me in my closet, getting dressed. I couldn’t help it, I laughed like Homer Simpson. Ha HA! Perhaps the sensible reaction would be to tear at my hair in lament. But I…
Simply mentioning my book for the first time in months set off an internal maelstrom capped by complete panic in the grips of which I considered quitting writing and getting a job at the mall. This reaction would be amusing if it weren’t so predictable. Since the first, seamless, innocent draft, the thought of editing…
