This afternoon, as I was getting ready to leave for work (hey, look, I don't teach on Mondays, and Isk is at school in the morning; I leave for the office after family lunch, okay?), Isk gestured to the bookcase, where my XF box set had been pulled down off the shelf. "Look!" he said. "One of them is looking for the others ( Read more... )

SETTING: The Nahurriyeh family's new home in rural New York state ( Read more... )

Being The True Story Of A Young Woman In A Big City, As Told In Song

Download the music here.


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SETTING: Isk and Amal have just walked to the local drugstore for sundries, and picked up a Valentine's Day gift for Leigh while they are at it. As they approach the house, Amal says, "Now, Isk, the gift we got for Mama is for Valentine's Day. So don't tell her what it is ( Read more... )

The Nahurriyeh household is covered with holiday detritus. All around the living room, my son's arranged his new toys in piles: there the plastic guitar, there his extremely large pile of small plastic animals, there the box for Mommy's new slow-cooker, with an eye-hole cut so it can be a robot costume. The Christmas tree, in all its fiberoptic ( Read more... )

In the US, today is National Coming Out Day. Like many holidays, it is both a product of a major marketing campaign and a legitimate expression of community feeling among many, many, LGBTQ folks.

In the spirit of recent efforts to encourage queer youth in their struggles with bullying, self-identification, and depression (see: the It Gets ( Read more... )

I ask my mother if she can watch Isk so Leigh and I can run to the store to grab a new bottle of baby vitamins. (Drug stores without the New York City markup are a great pleasure for us; we save minor purchases like this for trips to the motherland where possible.) Sure, she says. My father, cooking dinner in the kitchen, asks if we need money ( Read more... )

I'm going through my photos for the Ladies' Big Bang. (I'm posting this Tuesday. My writing is done. My illustrations are not.) I keep calling Leigh over to look at pretty photos of pretty ladies holding guns. "This one or this one? This one or this one? I know she's smiling in this one, but can you tell that's a disassembled Sig Sauer on ( Read more... )

If anyone heard about the absurd weather in NYC today, and wondered, "Were the Nahurriyehs OK ( Read more... )

Today's thoughts ( Read more... )