Tag Archives: kids

acting out

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I finally found it. I’ve been looking for it since last night. I don’t even know how it came up. I was talking with the kids after dinner. We had fish—a nice frozen white filet of some sort from Trader Joe’s that I’d defrosted in the fridge and refroze about three times before finally committing to the thing. I hate eating fish when it’s raining. It’s too much water element, you know? It depresses me. And I always think I’ve scored the deal of the century buying a frozen fish filet at Trader Joe’s, but the things are still like six dollars a pound which ain’t cheap.

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fun block

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This isn’t a riff on sun block. It’s maybe not a riff at all. Just a discovery. It’s not writer’s block that gets me. Ideas are plentiful. Low-hanging fruit. It’s just that before my fingertips brush the skin, I kill the idea. Pluck the peach, toss it to the ground. Let the squirrels finish it off.

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writer, with kids

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A writer friend, Cari Luna has a blog called Dispatches from Utopia. I met Cari while blogging from Brooklyn. She lived there too, wrote there, had a baby, and knitted. We had a playdate and then to add another commonality to the list—okay, I’m not a knitter, but I can bead a mean necklace—both moved—she to Portland Oregon and me to, well, you know. I rediscovered Cari recently on Twitter and reached out. Nowadays, she posts a wonderful series called Writers, with Kids. Today, I’m that kidful writer. Take a look here, and thank you Cari.

prune

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Here’s a little pattern I have sussed out over the weeks: I have a sublime time by myself, writing say, or taking an epic, hour-long walk through hilly little neighborhoods with winding streets, old growth trees and peeling tudors and Dutch colonials. Maybe I’m just sitting on a comfortable chair with the dog on my lap, reading a good book. And then a kid, one of mine, say, wakes up, or is picked up from school, or a playdate, by me of course, and that peace I’d just been cultivating, luxuriating in, gets trashed like a hotel room by Keith Richards circa 1972.

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dichotomy dog

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Part of the reason I wanted a dog—why the house wanted a dog or so I like to clarify—was for the walks. I’d be forced to head outdoors and move the old bod, even when—especially when 99% of me wanted to sit like a lump reading The Hunger Games trilogy.

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exhale.

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I’ve been hibernating. Have you noticed? That question is masochistic, right? But maybe that’s the point. There is masochism here—yearning for an audience I can’t control. Blogging in order to have readers. Broadcasting my sins across cyberspace. And there is masochism there—not blogging, stifling my voice in order to save myself from judgment, from silence. From indifference.

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Tricky

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I was standing in Target a couple weeks ago with Peaches. We were there to buy a Rapunzel costume. We got lucky and nabbed the last wig, but when she saw a one-shouldered pink prism Barbie dress, she had to have it, and so a new costume idea was born. Peaches would now be Rapunzie. Barbunzel. Something like that. I loved the idea. Love that she’s taking something already mapped out and reworking it to invent something better.

This year I am doing the same with our treats.

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