Jan 18 2018

Is There Room for Triviality in a World Like This?

Is There Room for Triviality in a World Like This?

I’ve battled an epic case of writer’s block these last several months. It’s not that I don’t have ideas — I do, dozens of them, phrases strung together into haphazard lists on my phone and in the notebooks littering my house. It’s that none of them seem important enough.

Facebook and Instagram and Twitter teem with unspeakable tragedies, news of unrest, and political platitudes. Where social media was once a scrolling stream of family photos and status updates, its purpose now has been emphatically redefined: effect changeIf you’re going to speak, write, wear, or think anything, you’d better be making a statement.

This is such a vital and honorable intention.

Obviously, the method itself has flaws. People — LOTS of them, people you personally know — freely admit to blocking and unfollowing friends who post articles that don’t align with their beliefs or perspectives that make them uncomfortable. This furthers the divide, of course, since now those people are surrounding themselves with carefully curated information that will only serve to bolster their own preexisting viewpoint. Continue reading

Feb 23 2017

9 Times I Wish I Had a Sanitation Chamber

9 Times I Wish I Had a Sanitation Chamber

When I taught high school, my students always joked that they were going to get me a sanitation chamber for my classroom. “We’ll install it just inside the door right there,” they teased, “so no one can come in without using it first.”

Someone said this every single year, because apparently I am not shy about my aversion to germs. Each time, my first reaction was to laugh with them because teenagers are hella funny. And then my second reaction was to get really, really, unbearably depressed because human-sized sanitation chambers are probably super expensive, and anyway how exactly would one go about getting something like that approved by the Board?

Then I had children of my own. Forget school — I need a sanitation chamber for my HOUSE. Like, yesterday. Yes, yes, I know: exposure to germs builds immunity, blahbity blah blah, but a person can dream. There are so many instances when it would totally come in handy: Continue reading

Jan 26 2017

A Magical Tale of a Photo Fail

A Magical Tale of a Photo Fail

A couple days ago I published a post called “The Space Between Baby and Boy” (which was semi-uncharacteristically sentimental, I know, but sometimes the sappy side of me crawls out from its miniature cave and doesn’t know what to do with itself).

The baby is growing up. It’s rocking my world a little bit.

So I poured it all out and then sat down to choose a featured image — you know, the picture that accompanies the post when someone shares it on social media. And I browsed for a minute, but then I thought, Meh, I’m getting sort of tired of using stock photos. Continue reading

Oct 25 2016

Melissa and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Melissa and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Today was a DAY, you guys. Just an absolute day.

I’ve been meaning to write about the other four hundred thousand topics in my Blog Post Queue — which is obviously a very official space in a remote corner of my brain, where I carefully collect all the ideas that rush at me throughout the week and organize them into a giant heap and then place them in the Queue to die, because Peaches really needs a sandwich and Baby B is trying to see if the dog’s ears come off and I’m pretty sure I’m supposed to tend to those things first.

Right now, though, I have to abandon the Queue to talk about a regular ol’ day in the life, which is sometimes terrible, horrible, no good, and very bad, even when everyone seems relatively healthy and no bones appear to be broken.

Oh and also: this post is not pretty or polished or shareable. It’s more of a diary entry I guess, because sometimes writing stuff down is the only thing that makes a wild mind feel semi-tame, which is a big reason this blog was born in the first place.

So anyway. Even if I’m the only one who ever reads this, that’s okay. In fact, you probably SHOULDN’T read it, especially if you’re the least bit squeamish. And/or if you’re eating.

Seriously, fair warning: if you’re still with me, put down the chicken salad sandwich. Continue reading

Jan 19 2016

The Beauty of Being Lost

The Beauty of Being Lost

This morning there were errands.

Millions and millions of tiny to-dos, buzzing around my head like gnats. Get the dog washed. Pick up diapers. Go to the post office. Stop at the bank. And the baby was with me and he was starting to fuss in the backseat and I knew he would need to eat in the next ten minutes, which reminded me: this nursing mama still hadn’t had breakfast. I was famished. I pulled over to Google Map a McDonald’s.

And I thought, This is my life now, I guess. Sometimes I don’t even recognize myself, and it is so discouraging. One year ago, in this precise week of January, I was wearing a dress (and boots, of course, because Michigan) and preparing midterms for my students. I was surrounded by dozens of wonderful colleagues and hundreds of hilarious kids, and I had a bell-to-bell job to do.

This morning, I was in leggings and a spit-up-encrusted nursing tank, ticking mundane tasks from a checklist, totally alone in the world car save for my hungry baby behind me. This is my life now. Where was I? Not quite a writer. Definitely not a teacher. For the ninety-seventh time since we moved to California, I felt lost. Continue reading