I Have News For You
I have news for you (9th century Irish) I have news for you: The stag bells, winter snows, summer has gone Wind high and cold, the sun low, short its course The sea running high. Deep red the bracken; its shape is lost; The wild goose has raised its accustomed cry, cold has seized the…
Silent Night
We had snow today. And a Christmas concert. And did I mention poison ivy? (That would be me.) And I have finished an entire draft of my novel and am now laboriously working my way through revisions. (Shhhh. Don’t tell anyone.) Which all goes to explain why this post is late. And also, why it…
Tis the Season to Overdecorate
When I was a little girl, it wasn’t Christmas until my mother dragged up the nativity music box from the basement. It was a big plastic replica of the manger scene, complete with cow. When you wound the key in the back it played Silent Night, and it smelled like a cross between a new…
Thanksgiving Gift
I spent 45 minutes in line today to get my turkey, and another few minutes at the garage getting air put in my tires, and I cannot tell you how grateful I was to be able to do both things. Sometimes in the rush of the holidays (shopping! baking! and my ‘favorite,’ cleaning!) it’s easy…
Don't Think. It Can Only Hurt the Ball Club.
We had a chance to take a last-minute trip last week, to Ireland. When we were lucky enough to go two years ago, I had plenty of advance notice. That meant I checked out the six-disc audio book on Ireland’s history, signed us up for online Irish lessons, collected movies on Irish culture, and basically…
Money Where My Mouth Is
There are lots of things I keep meaning to do lately, but never seem to get around to actually doing. That’s particularly true when it comes to my writing community. It seems there’s always something else more pressing (deadlines, soccer games, homework help, actual sleep) or that requires the same financial resources (again, soccer fees,…
Redirect
Hey there! Do you read Writer Unboxed? No? You should. If only because I had a very depressing post planned for today, and then I remembered that nooooo, I couldn’t write that because I had a much more optimistic post about storytelling scheduled to be up on the Writer Unboxed web site. See? WU already…
Muscle Memory
I have terrible muscle memory. Ages ago, the first several times I tried aerobics, I always went left when everyone else went right. When I rode, my biggest fear was rarely the size of the jumps — it was doing them in the wrong order. (From personal experience, I can tell you there are few…
An Open Letter To Someone Who Just Turned Twelve
Whenever we see babies, I always think (and sometimes say) how much I wish you and your brother were still that age. If I say it aloud, someone — usually a stranger — will tell me I don’t mean it, that (insert age here) is a lovely age, too. Here’s a secret: I do mean…
Walkabout
Today two things happened: I realized I didn’t have a blog post planned, and my daughter thought the dog looked like he wanted an adventure. I will never say anything about blog posts in the dog’s hearing again, so help me. My kids go to two different schools now, in two different towns with different…
