Navel Gazing (and I Don't Mean Oranges)
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HHI is Bad for My Happiness
I find it’s easier to be frugal when I avoid shopping malls, shopping catalogs, shopping websites, and (most of all) Target, the place where willpower goes to die. (Seriously what is up with Target? It’s like the consumerist tempting sorcerer peering into my American soul and wheedling me into purchasing that Clearance decorative vase. Target should be renamed Covet.) There are things we sort of need that I don’t go buy because just walking into the store where they can be bought is a temptation too great. I’d rather put Jack in 5T pajamas for months longer than they fit, rather than head to Old Navy and end up with…
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All Boy
A couple of weeks ago, a friend who is an ultrasound tech offered us a free gender ultrasound. (Technically, should be called a sex ultrasound, shouldn’t it?) “Make an appointment for when you hit 15 weeks, and I’ll make sure it’s recorded as No Charge,” she said. “Think Pink!” I called out, after I’d thanked her and we started to walk away from each other. We didn’t tell any family or friends about this ultrasound, lest the baby not cooperate. And if it did, we thought it would be fun to surprise folks with the news. On Friday morning we met, the two of us, at my OB’s office and…
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Changing the Metrics
In February of last year, on the last day of my trip to Rio de Janeiro, I had the entire day to myself. I spent the morning riding skycars up to the Sugar Loaf Mountain and traipsing around a series of fetching wooded paths populated by tiny monkeys the size of squirrels. In the afternoon, I paid up at my hotel, stored my bags behind the desk, and took my book, my towel, and my self out to Copacabana Beach for an afternoon of reading and snoozing. I had several hours before my departure for my late evening red-eye flight, and I had a big old Stieg Larssen novel that…
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Excerpts from “Blue Nights” and My Own As-Yet-Unwritten Memoir
Joan Didion wrote “The Year of Magical Thinking” after her husband, John Dunne, died of a heart attack at the dinner table, and her daughter, Quintana Roo, collapsed into a serious illness from which no doctor could retrieve her for 20 months. Shortly after The Year of Magical Thinking went to press, Quintana died as well, in an ICU in New York City. “Blue Nights” is the book that came after. This book is for Quintana, says the inscription. You may not know – I didn’t when I first heard her unusual name – that Quintana Roo is the name of a state in southeastern Mexico, on the eastern part…
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Extracting Light
I am struggling a little bit, just a little bit. A couple of tears slipped down my cheek when our church children’s choir sang Away in a Manger at our Lessons and Carols service this week. Afterwards our preacher read a stock prayer – dear Lord, be with the sick at heart. Dear Lord, comfort those who mourn. Dear Lord, walk with those in shadows. Dear Lord, carry we, your children, in your arms. My lower lip trembled through the whole thing, and I let more tears fall when he tacked onto to the very end “especially in Newtown Connecticut.” The hateful knowledge of that hateful day is following me…