I received a shiny gadget for Christmas. Well, not so much shiny as nondescript and black and made to be worn on my wrist like a bracelet. It was moderately spendy, so when Mike and I agreed to get them for each other, we decided they would be our only gifts. Oh, I should say “among our only […]
I wasn’t all that good with the cursive anyway
I was driving my mom downtown the other day. She needs a chauffeur since her fall at Thanksgiving necessitated the donning of a huge neck brace that makes her move like a robot. She was trapped with me in the car, so of course I introduced a topic I knew would get her goat start an interesting conversation. “I showed […]
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Tchotchkes and other questionable motives for running
I love Runner’s World, the magazine, probably more than any of the other of the publications we collect like hoarders around here. It’s got great recipes, fun gear reviews and good features. They usually also have tips and programs with reasonable goals for lazy ordinary people like me. Titles like Train for your first marathon […]
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Ski family constants
I’m a summer person. I love sundresses, dinners on a patio, pedicures, and outdoor concerts. Once I got over the fact that I sweat profusely, summer and I realized we had kind of a thing going on. The season’s passing always makes me feel a little morose. Ski season is only thing that makes it […]
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Be well, Katie
“Katie’s out there,” I overheard someone tell Lee. He stood like a bouncer at the end of the line where the trays were handed through the window. He nodded dispassionately as people picked up their dinners, one by one. Sometimes he recognized someone who’d been in line before. “No seconds,” Lee told them. This was […]
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Sunday night lights
Poor Mike came in last night in a huff from fighting his annual battle with our Christmas lights. What we now call the Markley Holiday Lights Smack Down usually happens something like this: Step 1: Everybody else in the neighborhood puts up their lights. Some of our neighbors trace the eaves of their homes with […]
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Of pizza-lovers and poor memory
Lessons learned one recent frenzy-filled month Hey, I did that thing! You know, that thing where you set yourself up with an impossible task and then you’re really bitchy to your family and neglect your work and health and all the household chores for a whole month while you get it done? No, silly, not Christmas. […]
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Slow down season
I am not crazy about the holiday season. There, I’ve said it. Go ahead with your heckling and bah-humbug jokes. It’s not that anything traumatic has ever happened at Christmas to make me dread it. It’s mostly that there’s this weird thing that happens: if you do something once that turns out to not suck, […]
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How to talk to your mother
A communication guide for teenagers Jack and I were in the car the other day, rushing to get him to his violin lesson. I love that he still plays violin, and that we’ve gotten way past the screechy stuff to a place where I get to hear some lovely after-dinner music – a therapeutic follow […]
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The Weird, Obscure, or Slightly Silly: Thanksgiving Edition
The second-tier-but-still-deserving-of-recognition stuff. With all due respect to all the health, family, friends, roof-over-our-heads and a great meal before us conversation; here are a few things that don’t get the gratitude they deserve in normal Thanksgiving lists, but still deserve a little shout out: The fact that neither kid has ever had head lice – Knock […]
