The other morning my younger son asked me two questions that were important. 1. What is the statistical likelihood that a person will marry the person they are dating in highschool versus the odds that one will move away versus the likelihood that they will break up? I’m packing his sandwich, I have one earring…
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My favorite non-fiction writer, you may or may not know, is Annie Dillard. Her clean, spare, breathtaking descriptions, her trust in the reader to keep up. Her honesty, her ability to remember her child self and imagine the wild thinking of animals. Long ago, when I first began writing seriously, I was so completely relieved to read The Writing…
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My mother is back in town and on her first evening back has provided me (and therefore you) with the following gems: -She offered my younger son $20/inch to cut his ridiculous face-covering bang. She looked at him for maybe an hour and asked me, “How can you stand this?” And offered to buy…
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This Wednesday, December 16, 2015, I am participating in something awesome. You can come, and read a poem in your pajamas. I’d love to hear your words. There’s a link to RSVP on my events page. Details are below. 8pm – 9:15pm (Eastern) Format for the Meeting: Kelly will interview the special guest for…
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This is my friend Ashley. She says things like, “I can’t be a failure, I’m not done yet.” In conversation. And I write them down. She is my closest reader, my gentle and firm most honest critic, and my greatest cheerleader/editor. We are not always the best for one another. Once we had to flee…
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Here I am with my biggest fan/harshest critic singing our original Rude Song a few weeks ago. There’s a whole album forthcoming. Please excuse my hair, clearly we just woke up (broccoli for breakfast) or I was caught in a tornado (broccoli for survival). I’m only just watching this and there’s no broccoli left for…
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I have so many things I want to tell you about: the prank I kept pulling last week, (which I’ll tell you about later), and about spreading the embers of a bonfire before bed while a possum screamed, and the long hug with my dear first nephew home from college, and about apologies and forgiveness,…
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A few weeks ago, the kids and I went to the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore to see the exhibit we are inside of in the picture above. It’s called King’s Mouth and it’s this big foamy cave you climb into and lay down inside and above you there’s a convex mirror encircled with lighted…
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Thursday night I spent a great deal of time watching internet tutorials about factoring trinomials. Then Friday afternoon I made a confession about honors calculus. Then the person I confessed to kept making math metaphors. Lots of air graphs, right in conversation. The word sine was actually used. I’m not sure if it was a coincidence, and…
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It’s been a while. I’m sorry. This week, Mary Karr’s brilliant book about memoir, “The Art of Memoir” landed in my hands. Want to know how it landed in my hands? I bought it. My own damn self. Because I thought it would help me with some writing I’m struggling with. And it did. Because…
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