LEGACY

I don’t suppose I’ve achieved enough success in my life yet to consider mine a rags to riches story, but I can certainly say I’ve come a long way from having been a child ward of the state.  Those days were an almost forgotten other world from here, way back around that bygone era when DCFS destroyed the only family I’d ever known by then ( Read more... )

THE LONG ROAD

My husband and I have been losing sleep lately, trying to convince our boy he’s not a vampire.  It’s not just the biting, and the refusing to eat people food, though, certainly those are problems worth addressing.  But how do you make a 3-yr-old understand abstract concepts like, we are diurnal creatures, child - humans are designed ( Read more... )

MISFITS

I’m not in the habit of going around saying I have “daddy issues,” though, while I haven’t looked into any sort of official diagnosis, I will admit a professional who focuses on such things might be willing to apply a more formal variation on the term to describe some of my impulsively developed coping mechanisms as a result of learning ( Read more... )

FIRST BLOOD

The municipality of Minneapolis is across the mighty Mississippi River from the home I share with my husband and our son in the adjacent twin city, 11 miles from Cup Foods, the neighborhood grocery where a grandfather and father of three made his last commercial transaction, for a pack of cigarettes.  It became his last, after the $20 ( Read more... )

LET’S DREAM

“The Island of Sodor is surrounded by beautiful blue sea.  It has fields of green, and sandy, yellow beaches; there are rivers, streams, and lots of trees where birds sing; as well as windmills, a coal mine, docks where visitors arrive, and a profusion of railway lines...” 
...that carry anthropomorphic, sentient train engines into ( Read more... )

SPOILED ROTTEN

A few years back, some good friends of ours once had three little dogs.  We’d spent plenty of time with them, as our friends have done a great deal of alfresco entertaining.  They also own the home next door, and rent it out to other friends, sharing a giant combined backyard space they’ve converted into an inner city paradise for ( Read more... )

Moving Day

The last time our family moved, it was with a 4-month old baby in tow, and much more suddenly than we’d have intended or preferred.  Minion and I had been living in a rental we initially shared together to cut expenses and get more bang for our buck - because an 1800 sqft. single family home with an attached garage and a nice big yard ( Read more... )

ILLUSIONS

My Mom tells a story about being too discontent one miserably hot Minnesota summer day.*

*You might think it can’t get that hot in Minnesota, but you’d be surprised.  I come from Florida, where temps can get up to around 100 - 102°F in the blistering summers, but regularly hover between 97° - 99°F.  In over 30 years, I’ve seen the dog ( Read more... )

ATTRITION

I don’t have any friends.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a total recluse or a social pariah or anything.  My various media profiles each have a few hundred connections, though I’m regularly whittling them down from the several hundred they used to have, as I come to value closer relations the older I get, and I no longer see the point in ( Read more... )

GROUNDED

This time last year I had just finished up my first week at a new contract after 18 months at 3M.  I was excited to have it, as I was returning to my roots in supply chain accounting, and to the kind of billable I’m accustomed to.  The kind that would more effectively support us ( Read more... )