The economy being what it is, and life being what it is, we have a summer full of… no plans. The original plan -- back before the heart attack, the job layoff, and an overdue book advance—was that my oldest son Edison would go to France for a French immersion language school (borrowing from his college fund set up by grandpa). more

I’ve turned in my book, it was accepted enthusiastically, and now I’m venturing out from my bunker and looking around at the piles that have accumulated in my studio over the past few months. Parenting? Oh, yeah. That. I’m a little out of the loop. more

Under a crushing book deadline, I’ve noticed I’ve gotten a wee bit lax about a few things. Along with the multiplying dust bunnies in every corner, too many take-out dinners, and the piling up of unpaid bills and unread magazines, there’s been a slight relaxation of our family “screen time” rules. more

I remember when my oldest boy devoured the entire “Redwall” series. Thirteen, fourteen books. He read them two, possibly three times, all the way through. He begged me to read them too (because really, I never have enough to do) —so I picked up the first one, in solidarity. more

So I’m in the middle of writing a piece for Mommy Track’d. And it’s a fine piece. It’s nice. It’s friendly. Very amusing. Haha! But basically I’m writing on automatic with a giant crick in my neck, because the real story is, I’m leaving town tomorrow. more

No, it really wasn’t entirely the excitement of the Obama win that has kept me from putting pen to paper or sitting down to my computer with a cup of coffee and tapping out a few pithy sentences. A little more than a week before the election, my husband Richard came home from a weekend trip and promptly had a heart attack. more

I am a little pent-up. Okay, pent-up is a not quite it. I’m a wreck. I go to sleep thinking about votes flipping in West Virginia, I wake up worrying about vote caging in Ohio. more

Not long after I wrote "The Three-Martini Playdate", I was reviewed in "The Weekly Standard,” which I soon discovered to be a scathingly right-wing neo-conservative rag, a publication with which I vociferously disagreed in all matters. more

So. The Palin. Now that I’ve picked my jaw up off the floor and have stopped the incessant head-shaking and screaming to the heavens, I can finally weigh in on this. more

With the economy in the tank, I’m suddenly hearing more and more about the “staycation.“ As in, Honey, let’s stay at home this summer, instead of popping off to the Algarve, or driving to the Oregon coast. Or, in fact, driving our Land Rover to the beach, because that now costs about ninety bucks for the fifteen minutes it’ll take to get there. more