Category Archives: Relationships

Writing

In exciting news, I was recently privileged to have an essay published in Redbook Magazine. I don’t have a link to share yet, but I will come back and update this post as soon as I have one. Redbook likes their magazine to be in full circulation before they start posting free articles. Crazy business people. So feel free to go out and buy one! The bonus there is that you can also read another article they published, entitled “Frosty, Boozy, Easy Treats.” Who’s in?

I have always wanted to be a published writer. I’ve had ideas for years about the stories and essays I wanted to craft, and visions of a computer, a coffee cup, and a killer view as I worked (and made actual money) doing the thing I’ve loved to do for as long as I can remember.

As a kid, I played that board game Life, the one where you pick from five different possible careers, and I swear I thought those five were the only careers in existence. Actor, writer, teacher, lawyer, doctor. I suppose I knew there were also farmers and video store employees out there, but that never seemed like the life for me when I was 8 years old and signing my name all over my white bedroom furniture with a pencil, in hopes that I would one day be famous and the wooden boards would be worth something. I was not yet acquainted with the concept of hubris. Or, apparently, with how pencil erasers work. Read More>

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Dad’s Day

On Saturday, Rob asked me not to make a big deal out of Father’s Day. I didn’t totally understand what this meant—no billboards?—but I tried to keep things chill yesterday by having a slight relapse in my pneumonia symptoms and sleeping all afternoon. Rob took Scarlett and some other visiting family members to the beach, while I stayed home with my own Dad.

So I think I can safely say that not only did I NOT make a big deal out of Father’s Day, I barely acknowledged the fact that it was a day at all. We did give him gifts, does that make things a little better?

I think that maybe one of the things my very private husband meant when he made his Father’s Day decree was that I shouldn’t feel it necessary to blog about him and his Dadness this week. But that is just too bad. This is a guy who works all day at a very demanding job, comes home, serves dinner, cleans it all up, bathes Scarlett, gets her ready for bed, and then when he is finally ready to relax for the night, has to help me with…everything.

Rob is a great Dad. A few months ago, I asked Scarlett to give me one word to describe him, and the word she chose was “Batman.” Read More>

|Categories: Life, Parenting, Relationships | Tags: , , , | Permalink

Unsent

Dear ____,
I was thinking of you today, and thinking of myself, too, in that sort of unattractive, self-pitying way I sometimes do. Don’t you just want your life back? I want my life back so desperately today. I realized something recently: spontaneous acts of affection are slipping away from me. Not all intimacy, that’s not what I mean. But the little things, the things that feel much bigger once they’re gone. To stride across a room and embrace someone just home from a trip. To reach out and squeeze someone’s hand, a quiet connection. Even to completely and totally invade someone else’s personal space while you’re watching television, so that for the duration of the show, you’re not quite sure where you end and the other person begins, and you start breathing at the same pace because it’s just easier that way.

If I could have full command of my body again, I would positively spin across the floor when the front door opened. I would take a bath, my toes flexed and my hair spreading out behind me like a mermaid’s. I would stand in my closet getting dressed, and I would pile my wet hair on top of my head in a bun, and I would pour two glasses of wine.

I miss my life. You know what I’m talking about, ____. There’s plenty to be happy about still. We do make the best of things. But right now I’m tired of compromising. And you’ve been doing this for so long. How? How do you keep your frustration from spilling out, forcing the ones you love most to back away so they don’t drown in it?

I still have my little person. Read More>

|Categories: Life, Parenting, Progression, Relationships, Venting | Tags: | Permalink