I've been a parent for 18 years. And something about being young when I started makes me crave validation. Tonight I officiated graduation, as I do every year, for 2000 other people's babies. It broke my validation-seeking, young mom heart to do it knowing I will never get tpo be the proud mom. No way C is going to sit through a graduation ( Read more... )

I am far away from where I usually am, and it makes me look back at myself on the left over there. The woman I'm sitting next to, who was a missionary and who now wants to see Greg Mortensen speak and wants me to tell her that her daughter, who is a vegetarian even though she was raised in a Nirobe mission.

Who has thoughts about how much process info to include in the dissertation ( Read more... )

I've been watching, and I want to let you know. It's not just bleached and teenaged girls whose necks twist to see themselves in department store windows anymore. Just last week I saw a young hispanic male, description out of a police report, sagging jeans, and starched work shirt buttoned to the top; he had one collar point turned up like a ( Read more... )

I don't know who taught me to write from my physical body, but when I sit down to do this it's a literal gut check - how is my breathing? How do my muscles feel? How are my feet? Writing meditates me from my head to my whole self and let's me fill my skin ( Read more... )

Seattle grey outside. You don't see this anywhere else that I know of - maybe in Alaska, they have this kind of sky but I doubt it. Deep grey, rich grey like you're looking into mounds of silk velvet, and everything is strangely upside down. Fifty shades of grey, a hundred even, but they're all just shadows of the same cloth. It makes me want ( Read more... )

Do not underestimate the volume capability of nine thirteen-year-old girls. Nor the angst potential. One sits on the back of my couch pulling her purple tank top down to cover where her pants fail to come up over her crack. She has worn holes in the tank, though no one is behind her and no one can see. Another one apologizes for her present, ( Read more... )

So I'm wearing socks with pointy-toed sling backs. They are argylish socks. I think I may be crossing a line, but I'm trying to make my birthday shoes (which I hoped for, dreamed of since July) comfortable. My trusted coworker says the little footy nylons are not OK, and I despise knee-highs. I suppose I should purchase some suitable socks, but ( Read more... )

Why am I so sickened by Palin parading her disabled infant and her pregnant teen onstage during the RNC to show the world how happy and strong and well-adjusted a woman can be while raising fucked up children? I don't know, maybe I, who am writing a very public essay for a book right now about my own disabled infant, have suddenly come to care ( Read more... )

Hey ( Read more... )