One day a mother took her two children to a small urban zoo.  The zoo was getting crowded– it had, in fact, been around for quite some time, and was built back in the days when people used to dismiss or marginalize the amazing creatures inside.  It was growing now, in leaps and bounds, and… Read More

 Okay– looking back at my blogposts, I realize that I went from running screaming out of the damned hotel to “Hey, it was great, and look, ALLIGATORS!” to, “My family sucks!” and I bypassed some seriously fun moments. Sorry about that! But the fact is, between “RUN AWAY!” and, “Oh crap I’m back and I’m… Read More

So an interesting thing happened with my family.  I was asked (at the last moment) to write my grandmother’s obituary, and for a whole minute, I was really proud.  This was something I could do.  I wanted to use a few brief words and paint a picture of my grandmother as an extraordinary woman.  I… Read More

Okay– so it’s Valentines Day tomorrow, and I spent all day running around doing… well, unpleasant tasks.  Laundry.  Lawyer shit.  Son’s dentist appointment.  My own dentist appointment.  Writing an obituary.  Taking a nap because, in spite of all the stuff I had to do, I was still recovering a bit from my trip. Anyway– but… Read More

So I left these people, looking sweet and adorable and fun, and came to Florida. For the record, I like North Florida. Not a soul here has not been kind, with a big smile and an earnestness to help.  (We will not discuss the Bird-Bates Hotel– but even those people are nice.)  To the right… Read More

Okay.  I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that getting an invasive pat down in an airport because one’s maxipad apparently looked threatening on airport security X-Rays pretty much levels out the weirdness scales of bad travel stories, right? Yeah. I thought so too. Of course, when I sat next to Michael from Mourning Heaven… Read More

Mate:  You know, this new Ninja Turtle show is pretty good. Me:  Right?  The dialog is fairly entertaining. Conclusion:  Maturity is for the weak Me:  Yeah, the Art Docent lesson plan called for oil pastels and watercolors.  I had them make dots with markers instead. Squish’s Teacher:  Oil pastels and watercolors?  IN A CLASS WITH… Read More

Okay, went and saw Muse last night and I had my mind effectively blown. The band has been around for a while– long enough to have a big repertoire and a REALLY diverse following.  They were fun on stage, but the fourth and fifth band member was really their lights/effects choreographer– DAMN.  Just… DAMN.  I’ve… Read More

) Especially with all of the awesome superhero movies out there, there’s a lot of fun talk about, “My superpower is…” And I have to admit, I’ve been blessed with a couple of them myself. *  Allegory–I have the gift of naming– I won’t deny it.  Children, characters, stories, pets– I can name things. *… Read More

Seriously.  I ran out of toilet paper.  The family had just enough to get them through this morning. Now this is an unusual thing for me– I am usually the uberqueen of overstock, but not in this case.  In this case I. Ran. Out. Of TOILET PAPER.   So, well, that was something I had… Read More