The featured image is a note in a card given by one practical ten year old to another–the front image is an elephant walking a tightrope. I have some really dear tough-guy friends who indulge my demand for sweet-guy behavior. I won’t name them here in case they are embarrassed by what sweeties they are (such…
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One of my favorite, favorite, favorite things is showing kids really campy cheesed out things. Some teenagers were hanging out at my place the other weekend, and I showed them several videos that astonished and perplexed them, including the one below. One of my all-time 100% favorites, it elicited a great deal of excited commentary…
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Who among us, when met by a resting, almost forgotten grief, doesn’t ask the questions: What is wrong with me? Shouldn’t I be over this by now? Well of course you should be. In fact, bad things shouldn’t happen in the first place. To you or anyone. In fact, it should also never rain during the day.…
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This week, some incredibly cool and interesting people I’m glad to call friends were suddenly in town from California and we had the fortune of meeting for dinner. We talked about so many things–books and art and documentaries and geography and history. We talked a fair bit about the artist James Turrell, who they had…
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The other weekend my kids and I went out to finish some things on the fun-things-to-do-list which is on a whiteboard in our dining room. They voiced concerns that I was succumbing to the patriarchy by underestimating Hurricane Hermine. Because I am the power*, I was undeterred. We went to the planetarium at the Air & Space…
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The very worst part of mothering, if you ask me (which you did, by coming here to my website) is packing school lunches. “Wait, Seema,” you may be thinking. “Have you forgotten about childbirth and nursing all night and diapers and cleaning puke up from the carpet?” No, friends. I assure you, I have not.…
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A few years before I read about Escobar’s hippos (I am not going to be the 36th person to tell you about Pablo Escobar’s hippos, but let’s agree: they are fascinating), I heard a story on NPR about the lost dream of American hippopotamus ranching. The story I heard attributed the plan’s failure to the inefficiency of the…
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It’s the first week of school and the kids are pissed. And so am I. This was possibly one of the best summers I’ve had as a mother (and that is saying something). I had individual trips with each of my sons, lots of our friends visited, we spent time with family, went to really beautiful…
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It’s another beautiful Combat Paper/Warrior Writers week at the USO. Which means on Friday August 26th, we’ll have a show–this time at Workhouse Arts Center in Lorton at 7 pm. What a stunning group this week. So many MVPs–the show is going to rock your world, I know it. When I’m an old lady making…
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We arrived on the coast of Maine after a long day of driving and stopping at scenic overlooks and eating chips and celery and carrots just in time for the Perseid meteor shower. I lay on the beach, my cotton scarf spread beneath my head. My little son, just ten and still bright with boy-wonder,…
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