I ran several weeks of Camp Lemon this summer, which was fun and exhausting. A couple of years ago, I joked that it bummed the kids out when their friends whose parents both work outside home went to week after week of camp and were unavailable to play, so maybe I'd just run my own camp. A friend took me up on it, and since then I've picked up kids ( Read more... )

I can cope with daily pain. I can cope with the ripple effect of a layoff and how long it takes to get things pulled back together. I can cope with stress, and making do, and a house that is perennially under construction. I can deal with losing two outlets in the kitchen. I know that things tend to fall by the wayside and needs must, and we work ( Read more... )

Ez: '...got ran over by a crappy purple Scion ( Read more... )

Because I have beaten a dead horse about the Hip, so we'll move on ( Read more... )

In the car, we take turns picking the music. See, we have some differing tastes in one car.

For example, this is one of Anya's favorite songs.

Click to view

Girl punk band? Yes, please. Anya likes her music fast and loud.

Now, Ez has no objection to that song, but here is his current favorite.

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Irish music? Yes. Yes, Ez likes all kinds of music, but where ( Read more... )

A family in our neighborhood lost one of its parents to a pulmonary embolism a couple of days ago. She and her wife have twins a year behind Anya. I didn't know them, but it's just so terribly sad. I don't know the details of what caused it--like I said, I only met them once or twice--and it's not my business, but it rattled me for a couple of ( Read more... )

I remember asking my mom if we could do things, and her saying not now, then doing them anyway. Not things that we weren't supposed to do, but things that as an adult I realize were a pain in the ass for my mother ( Read more... )

I hadn't bought new bras since some time in 2010, so you can imagine that with the washing and wearing and nursing and all that, mine were looking a bit ragged, shall we say. I undertook to run to Target and get a couple ( Read more... )

Sometimes when my kids complain about things, I remind them of the hardships I suffered as a child. I'm not talking about those troubles that we all suffered: no DVR, no handheld electronics, no Google. I'm talking about those things that everyone else had ( Read more... )

That's what they always ask at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta. And I have to say, "Yes, several times."

We're that family, the one with the kids who break legs and split gums and swallow rocks and urinate blood for unexplained reasons (benign hematuria, they call it. WTF NOBODY TOLD ME MY KID WAS GOING TO URINATE BLOOD FOR NO REASON, I call it ( Read more... )