You are a young woman. You are a middle-aged man. You are childless. You are a mother of five. You live in Cambodia. You live in Chicago. You are a marketing professional. You stay at home with your kids. You want to be a writer when you grow up. I met one of you in [...]
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On Sunday afternoon, I bought myself 60 minutes of Freedom. I clicked on a small icon on my desktop – a clock with a shield in front of it. A pop-up window appeared and asked, as if it were the simplest matter in the world: How many minutes of freedom would you like? Hmm, I [...]
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I’ve been catching up on some reading during our road trip and I finally made it to last month’s feature in The New Yorker on Ree Drummond, better known in these parts as the Pioneer Woman. I haven’t read much from the Pioneer Woman, but I found the piece on her to be very interesting, [...]
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So I think I might owe all of you an apology. Do you remember how, with perhaps not a small amount of self-righteousness, I spent a fair amount of time talking in the past about my aversion to new technology? In one post, I even wrote: And it’s not as though I oppose technology [...]
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Friends, I think I’m getting old. Not old in terms of years, but old in terms of attitude. Yesterday, while watching a TV commercial featuring two scantily-clad teenage girls, I actually said the words, “I just don’t get kids these days.” And this expression came from me, a long-time high school teacher, who always felt [...]
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One year ago today, I published my first blog post. For the first few months, I posted every day. Then I started posting six days a week. Then five. Then three. Now whenever. Those all felt right and this feels right too. For now, at least. I’m not sure what initially drew me to blogging. [...]
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I just finished reading Julie & Julia, Julie Powell’s blog-turned-book about the year she dedicated to cooking her way through Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I came into the book with high expectations. Eagerly engaged in my own happiness project, I thought I’d be inspired by reading about Julie’s. Moreover, I really [...]
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Might I recommend that if: a. you ever find yourself on bed-rest; b. you feel nauseated when you read for too long; and c. you are a TV-watcher, you try to schedule said bed-rest for a season other than the summer? I’m not a big TV-watcher by nature, but I do have a few shows [...]
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Hi there. Remember me? It’s been awhile since I’ve been here. And there’s one big reason for that. Or, actually, one pretty small one. I’m pregnant, you see. 16 weeks or so. And this little creature has been kicking my butt for the past couple of months. Lots of nausea. Two big scares. Weeks of [...]
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So you know how I told you last week that I was having technical difficulties? I’m happy to report that they have been resolved, thanks to my sassy new laptop. (A PC, by the way, despite the strong Mac lobby that emerged in the comments section of my last post and on Twitter. What can [...]
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I am experiencing technical difficulties. I had a great weekend. (Yay!) But my computer didn’t. (Boo!) I’m getting a new one. (Yay!) But it hasn’t arrived yet. (Boo!) I hope to be back in business soon – reading and writing and commenting as usual. In the meantime, be well and happy blogging! Image: Computer Rebuild [...]
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Have you ever been in the middle of watching a video on YouTube when it suddenly stops playing and a single word fills the frame? Buffering. I’m no tech whiz and I’m not exactly sure what buffering means. What I think it means, what it seems to mean, is that the data is moving from [...]
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Finding balance is elusive. Heck, defining balance is elusive. It occurs to me that balance – like happiness, or presence – might be one of those terms that falls under the Potter Stewart “I know it when I see it” standard. Yup, that’s it, I think: I don’t know how to define balance, but I [...]
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I’m pooped. I suppose you might take that expression literally, given that I live in a house with two kids under three years of age, but, in this case, I’m using it euphemistically. I’m tired. Spent. Wiped. Exhausted. After ten days of non-stop blogging followed by a week of non-stop sniffling, this lady needs a [...]
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There was a lot of talk last week about our hyperconnectedness and the challenges it presents. In her guest post at Motherese, Becca wondered about her need to be constantly connected. At An Attitude Adjustment, Jana asked whether the Internet can sink a relationship. And, at Motherlode, Lisa Belkin offered a forum for “mommy bloggers” [...]
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Today it is my pleasure to welcome Becca of Drama for Mama as my latest guest in the Won’t You Be My Neighbor series. (Thanks again to Amy of The Never-True Tales for initiating this wonderful meme.) At Drama for Mama, Becca crafts posts so resonant to me that I often feel like she’s plucked [...]
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Today my good buddy Jane of Theycallmejane’s Blog and I are doing a house swap. She’s keeping an eye on things here at Motherese while I keep the home fires burning at her place with a guest post of my own. I have to thank Aidan, my bloggy fairy godsister, for introducing me to Jane [...]
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It’s been three weeks since my move to WordPress and I think I am finally starting to figure out how things work over here in my new space. Since my move, a number of readers have asked me about my experiences here and at Blogger and I thought, in the spirit of community, we might [...]
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Welcome to the new, and hopefully improved, Motherese! What do you think? While you’re here, take a look around. See something funny looking? An entire post filled with HTML gobbledygook? Please let me know! Before you go, please take a moment to subscribe to Motherese via an RSS feed or e-mail. You wouldn’t want to [...]
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My beloved DVR, It is customary in these parts to reflect on love at this time of year. On its pretty promise and prickly possibilities. I have known love; for I have known you. DVR, you had me at “Scheduled Recordings.” You had me at “Series Manager.” You are everything that I dreamed a Love [...]
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I think a lot about the ways in which spending so much time online might compromise our relationships with the people we know in real-time. But what about the people we don’t know? The larger community of mothers with kids who could use a seat, or strangers carrying trays full of hot coffee? During some [...]
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I didn’t post on Saturday. Wait. You mean that fact didn’t rock your world? It sort of rocked mine. Since I started blogging on November 2, I had posted every day – weekends, holidays, while on vacation – until Saturday. At first, I posted daily in order to get myself in the habit of daily [...]
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Friends, think of me on an airplane. Think of Big Boy, hopefully docile. Hopefully enraptured by our new portable DVD player. Think of Tiny Baby, hopefully asleep. Hopefully sound asleep. Think of Husband, hopefully multitasking contentedly. Think of the people – hopefully patient, hopefully child-loving – seated in front of us. Think of their kidneys [...]
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Another Wednesday, another opportunity to tell you about how Husband and I spend many evenings – side by side on the couch, each with a laptop, paying half-attention to a days old episode of The Daily Show. On the episode we watched last night (and we are quite behind), Stewart was mocking Fox News anchor [...]
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A friend of mine in California recently decided to move her four year old son to a new preschool. He was being bullied at his former school and the school staff did not intervene in a way that my friend found effective. When she told the preschool director of her decision, the older woman told [...]
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Many thanks to BigLittleWolf who bestowed upon me my very first blogging award, the Sugar Doll. Apparently, this honor comes with some saccharine strings attached. So stay tuned for my list of Ten Things We Don’t Know About You, which I will post as part of my upcoming Holiday Hiatus. (I know, the suspense engendered [...]
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Since I wrote two weeks ago about Freudenschade, I have been thinking a lot about Lindsey‘s comment on that post. In her characteristically eloquent way, she wrote: “Most of the things people say to us, most of the criticism, judgment, or, even, approval, is about them and not us. We are mostly screens for other [...]
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After Tiny Baby was born, I started a blog to keep our families and long-distance friends abreast of the life and times of our growing family. From the moment I hit “publish” on that first post, I started thinking more and more about what information to broadcast and what details to keep private. Ultimately, I [...]
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Guilt Written
Jun 09
Since my post last week on searching for a bloggy balance, I’ve been buffering, trying to find a way to stay connected, all the while making room in my life for the other things that make me happy and nourish my spirit. Your comments last week – on the blog and via e-mail – in [...]
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