Hello dear friends. Today would have been my mother's 98th birthday. Happy birthday! I still miss her so much that at times it physically hurts. Although she would have disapproved, we went out and washed her and Dad's headstones and then I poured a libation of Jack Daniels over Dad's and a good tot of gin over Mother's. My sister and I will ( Read more... )

So Mother has been gone for about six weeks now. We talk about her all the time; Webster says he had no idea how much he would miss her. She absolutely filled our lives -- if we weren't with her, we were thinking and talking about her. As we still are ( Read more... )

We are alone at last, and it feels very strange. Everything seemed to happen so fast ( Read more... )

If you celebrate, I hope you had a good day. As Webster said this afternoon, every holiday is so poignant right now, because we never know if this will the last one -- the last Christmas, the last birthday, the last Mother's Day. So we had a special Mother's Day. My sister sent gorgeous flowers from the Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden:


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Today is my mother's 93rd birthday. Ninety-three! Imagine everything she's seen and done. She is such an amazing woman, born in terrible poverty with an abusive mother but she not only escaped that, she transformed herself into an entrepreneur, a wonderful mother, and a world traveler. Watching her age has been an honor; I tell her that she's ( Read more... )

IT'S TOO HOT TO SLEEP. I have two fans going and just got out of a cool bath, plus there's a glass of iced tea AND a glass of lemonade on my night stand to keep me cool. Also a damp towel to drape over my décolletage ( Read more... )

Day two! Things might be slowing down a bit at work, but I still have faculty wandering in a bit lost, and a few students, but it's much better. Two more days, then a three day weekend so we can all recover.

( So my mother: )

It's been quite a week. ( Mother was back in the hospital )

Today is the seventh day of 14 Valentines, a project based on the idea of fandom as a community largely composed of women and their allies and the power of the relationships there. This is my first year to participate; I chose to write an essay about domestic violence. Please take a moment to read today's 14 Valentines essay, about domestic ( Read more... )