Apr 21Scenes from life as an autism momIt shouldn’t have surprised me. Still, it did. We were in the sun room — my son and I — the cozy side room that doubles as my office/writing space and Ben’s I-want-to-be-alone hang out space. We had just created his first resumé, and were now on the career page…Autism3 min read
Dec 23, 2021Two Christmas reads, 20 years apartI love my holiday traditions. There’s Christmasification Day, the day when I lug all the Christmas decorations from the attic, take down all my year-round home decor and replace it with its holiday-themed counterpart. It always takes hours. It’s always exhausting, and it’s always worth the effort. There’s the annual…Christmas Books4 min read
Oct 31, 2021Smile MoreA short horror story…happy Halloween! “…wife’ll kill me.” Oscar drained his beer and turned from the TV to his companion. “Huh?” Derek slid off his stool and laid a ten dollar bill on the bar top. “I said I gotta take off. …Horror7 min read
Apr 22, 2021Planning a DIY writing retreat was the best thing I did during CovidYesterday, I came home from two days away at a writer’s retreat. I use the singular form of writer’s as there was just one of us there. Me. It was a do-it-yourself retreat. I planned it for two reasons. First, I was stuck with my second book. I had a…Writing5 min read
Nov 2, 2020My 10-day cleanse, Days 8/9: Stop asking me what I want to do for dinnerSo let me ask you this: a cleanse isn’t a tough concept, right? Like, if I say — hypothetically — “I’m doing a 10-day smoothie cleanse. I’ll have smoothies for all my meals for the next 10 days,” that’s pretty clear, right? I’m asking for a friend. My “friend” has…Menieres Disease3 min read
Nov 1, 2020My 10-day cleanse, Day 7: Candy, candy, everywhereCandy, candy, everywhere / Chocolate dark as ink / Candy, candy, everywhere / Pour my smoothie down the sink (with apologies to Samuel Taylor Coleridge). Day 7 was Halloween. In years past, when my kids were still trick o’ treating, my strategy on candy was to buy the stuff I…Menieres Disease2 min read
Oct 30, 2020My 10-day cleanse, Days 5/6: Just keep swimmingSo it snowed today. Yeah, snow. In October. Don’t get me wrong, I love snow. I love watching it fall. I love getting snow days (back when I was commuting, that is), and I love how it looks covering the trees when I take my dog into the woods for…Menieres Disease2 min read
Oct 29, 2020My 10-day cleanse, Day 4: “Oh yeah, it’s rollercoaster time” (with apologies to Ohio Players)I miss food. The thought popped into my head on Day 4, when I was driving my two kids home from our bi-annual teeth cleaning. It was sneaking up on lunchtime, and my daughter asked — as she does pretty much every day — “what can I have?” As I…Menieres Disease3 min read
Oct 28, 2020My 10-day cleanse, Day 3: Waiting to exhaleIf you’re keeping score at home, you know that Day 2 was record-breaking awful. So it was with trepidation that I rose in the wee hours (to me, if the clock still shows “6” as its first number, it’s the wee hours) of Day 3. It was Tuesday, which meant…Wellness3 min read
Oct 27, 2020My 10-day cleanse, day 2: The Caffeine-less hellscapeI love my “wake up time” in the morning, to the point where you mess with it at your own peril. Normally it looks like this: I pad downstairs in my pajamas about an hour before I need to start getting ready to be where I need to be and…Cleanse3 min read