“So I fired two warning shots.  Into his head.” “Cell Block Tango” Chicago Okay– I’m trying not to be irritated, because that usually makes me rant, and when I rant, I’m like a race car which can, at any moment, veer off into a big tank of jet fuel and explode.  I don’t want to… Read More

Okay, so the trip was awesome.  Seriously.  Amazing.  It sucked that the whole plagiarism/fanfiction thing erupted while I was still out of town–and I’m going to address that tomorrow.  It needs to be addressed.  The brunt of it is covered here at Chicks-n-dicks, including links to the site that started the whole thing.  The one thing… Read More

Okay, let’s see if we can get this straight.  It all started with a free story I wrote last year. Good Reads did this thing– someone posted a picture, and one of the writers who frequented the group would pick up the picture and write a story.  I was, as usual, timed out.  “No, no,”… Read More

 The beach and the zoo, and kids in various stages of anxiety and joy.  Zoomboy LOVED the zoo–the primate pens were his favorites’  Squish loved the beach, of course, and Chicken and her friend just liked hanging out together.  Zoomboy has been ADHD boy–when we forget his meds, he looks a lot like this– But… Read More

Okay… so, we’re going on vacation.   Yes, you heard me.  It’s February, and my kids’ school has something called “President’s Week”– no, I don’t understand it either.  It’s a week off and it’s not Spring Break–seriously!  I’m not making this up! So we’re going to San Diego.  Because it’s by the sea and we… Read More

I don’t know if I have yet written a Valentines Day scene. I know that in Bound, when Cory is celebrating/mourning the day she actually looked up and saw Adrian in the gas station, Bracken panics for a minute, because he thinks he forgot Valentines Day, and Cory is like, “Yeah, no, doesn’t matter.”  I’m… Read More

About three weeks ago, I was surprised to see that my alter ego–the one who used to teach in the really difficult school district with people who were not necessarily kind to anyone who stood out–was called a pornographer in the press by an administrator she had never met.  He was taking credit for ridding… Read More

Okay– So Chicken is learning how to drive.  It’s not pretty. “Chicken, you ready to drive to school today?” “No.” “Seriously– your instructor is going to be here Saturday.  You up for it?” “No.” “Fine.” “Fine.” “Dammit, get in the car.  I know you know how to back out.” “Fine.” “See, that’s not so… okay,… Read More

Mate’s grandmother fell ill this week (i.e., was prescribed the wrong medication for a uti which basically hastened her decline, the signal of which was an event in which she RAN around the house when she hadn’t actually WALKED for over a year and talked to invisible cats) and she has entered final stage hospice… Read More

Sometimes, listening to my family talk is like living in a movie with AWESOME satirical dialog–except you can’t rewind and listen to it all over again, no matter how badly you want to.  I was going to try to capture some of it here, but, well, forgive me.  It was a huge deluge of great… Read More