Better than the Last
The first day of the year and it’s the coldest day we’ve had to endure since we moved up North three years ago. I suppose it’s best to get the worst out of the way ahead of time. Now the remaining 364 days will feel superior to this one. There’s a foot of new snow [...]
Do Dogs Get Dysentery?
I awoke to find canine generated diarrhea all over the mud room and downstairs bath for the second time in so many days -like cow flops in size and smell, a field of the richest stink littering the white tile floor, dotting the gray L.L. Bean carpet.
Last night, before bed, I had put newspapers [...]
Leaf Drop and Amputation
Call it depression, call it surrender, call it what you will but I am NOT raking up all those leaves this year. In autumn’s past I’ve espoused the clean-as-you-go-theory of yard work, raking nearly every day to stay on top of the mess, finding each gust of wind personally insulting as new leaves continued [...]
Large Format Reproductions
I have, in hand, large format reproductions of the property next door. Our neighbors have bulldozed and back-hoed their way to a blank slate, all smooth soil and anticipation. I have promised to help them, to select hedge material and shrubs that will thrive in deep shade, alongside a sunny pool deck and in front [...]
Exchange Program
So summer’s been on for fourteen days and, already, I have tired of hearing I hate swim team and it’s too hot for tennis and piano lessons suck. It’s a repetitive loop of thankless bitching, constant complaint. Mostly from my eldest, my naughty by nature son. He has deemed this Country Club Summer, all the [...]
Summer
G is conducting a countdown. Since the beginning of the week she has been reminding me of the minutes left in the dwindling school year. Each morning over breakfast cereal or an Eggo waffle she declares that, “Today is Monday and that means there are only five more days. How many minutes is that, Mom?” [...]
At least the athlete
It was Sunday afternoon and from his bedroom Timmy could hear the human silence in the old house, the groan and creak of old floor boards, his parents walking paces around each other, careful to enter the kitchen only when the other was safely in the living room. He thought their aggressive but furtive avoidance [...]
Sports Extravaganza
We are, so far, louse free and so I am committed to changing my playlist to a more cheerful soundtrack. No more Fallen or Orange Sky or Look After You.
Spring weekends are kid-centric and that’s okay, that’s as it should be. With sporting events, dances and the annual festival with cotton candy and nausea inducing [...]
Trauma of the athletic variety
It was an odd weekend…I’m glad to be back to Monday and all the familiar rhythyms of the work-a-day. Saturday and Sunday had a cold drizzle punctuated by periods of hard driving rain, the back drop to Friday night’s Chernoybl-like meltdown with My Better Half and Saturday morning’s damp and chill soccer game where in [...]
M.I.A.
It’s Friday and the reason I’m not here writing sensual poems with unhappy endings is because I’ve gone to the gym to dash off a quick three miles and hurl myself through the Nautilus circuit so I can be in G’s classroom by 10:30 where I will volunteer to be her teacher’s punching bag for [...]
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