The hardest part is getting started

It’s frigidly cold right now; cold enough for me to drive to pick the boys up from school, when they normally walk home. While I was waiting at the junior high, two girls walked by in the snow, purple and shivering, dressed in ripped skinny jeans, light jackets, and running shoes with no socks. Girls! It’s minus […]

Fifteen minutes of fame or writing or something.

Last week was pretty hectic, so I was looking forward to a fairly open week in which I could get a lot of writing done and, in general, relax a bit. Unfortunately, I did not actually look at my calendar in that burst of optimistic feeling, and I am having an OMG it’s Wednesday already and […]

The End of the Book Fair Lady

That sounds a little ominous, doesn’t it? It’s not the end of my time on this planet – I hope! – but it is the end of my Reign as Book Fair Lady. Eighteen book fairs, people. I have done eighteen book fairs, although to be honest, the New Book Fair Lady (HI HAYDEE) has […]

Abbie’s Favourite Cookies

On the radio last week, they were having a contest to win tickets to see Brian Wilson – of Beach Boys fame – in concert. I actually thought that Brian Wilson died a long time ago, which is the reason I am rarely, if ever, upset by celebrity deaths. I often think that the death […]

Women’s Health Week in the Boyhouse

You guys, it is Wednesday already, and in one week, February will be over. Over! February feels like it just started, I have four months left before both of my children are junior high students, one month before I have a teenager, and six days until my very last book fair, all of which are […]

I have one simple request: to have sharks with fricking laser beams attached to their heads.

This week has been a seemingly endless series of irritations, both of the minor kind and of the more sweeping variety, and I have been – possibly due to Female Cyclical Emotional Upheaval – unable to keep my usual Om Shanti outlook and am instead empathizing with Cersei Lannister. Yesterday, I felt that I, too, could […]

Renaming The Boyhouse to The Sugar Shack, at least for today

There is no question that I am not gifted artistically. I am a person who couldn’t, say, draw a car without having a car directly in front of her and even then it would be a strange, stickman-like car. Things that normal people might find easy are terrifyingly difficult to me, like gift wrapping or […]