So much for "I'm gonna start posting more on LJ again!" Well. There is still a Life Update of Doom I ought to do, if anyone's even still reading, that's over a year overdue. But for now, more LJ Idol ( Read more... )

I am sitting in my living room with my grandmother, watching The Doctors. I am thoroughly horrified ( Read more... )

My partner this week was _messy, whose Bridge entry can be found here. Our pieces are pretty standalone, but the connection maybe be clearer if you read hers first.______________________________________________ ( Read more... )

They were everywhere, it seemed ( Read more... )

There she walks, alone, where they used to walk together. Across the empty field opposite the playground, around the fence, along the wall of the preschool that serves as the back boundary of the schoolyard ( Read more... )

I’ve started to wonder in the past few years if our common conception (in America, at least) of Adulthood--of what it means to be an Adult--is something of a myth. A terrible myth that we use to beat ourselves and each other up, to boot ( Read more... )

A scuffling of chairs, and then--”Punch him!”

Um, whatI look up to see two teenage boys facing off against one another. The big one is posturing, throwing his chest out and leaning into the the smaller kid. But he has an air of amusement underlying his provocation. The smaller boy--the awkward, geeky type (I know my own kind)--is the angry one ( Read more... )

Whatever it takes to keep smiling, right? That’s what I say ( Read more... )

“Oh, I don’t usually do this ( Read more... )

There are places of great beauty here. Right here in Illinois. You heard me.

No, we do not have spectacular mountain vistas, or far-as-the-eye-can-see ocean horizons, or roaring waterfalls, or stark desert landscapes. We have a lot of cornfields.[ 1] Soybeans, too. But we also have forests and wetlands and prairies--we are the Prairie State, after ( Read more... )