Their Bad Mother

My daughter, at the site where we held my father’s memorial, watching the water fall down down down. Me, watching her, feeling the spray of the water against my cheek, feeling grateful to have this place – this cathedral of water and rock and trees, open to the sky – in which to commune with…

When I was a young girl, I was a detective. Not any ordinary detective, mind you: I was a supernatural detective. I detected fairies and goblins and elves and witches. Witches were my specialty. I almost caught a witch, once. She lived in an ancient, crumbling farmhouse on a rural road just north of Dawson…

(Sad kitty is my cat, Lily. She had surgery on her leg yesterday to remove a tumor. She is sad.) (I am also sad. Sad because Lily had a tumor on her leg, and sad because I have flu and am too sick to say anything more profound about my sadness and her sadness other…

These are my not-so-world-famous Cinnamon Bongs. They are, no exaggeration, the best things that I have eaten all year, and I say that having eaten chocolate cheesecake in my bathrobe at the Chateau Lake Louise in July, and having had fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies at the Chateau Frontenac on Canada Day, and having gnawed on…

When I was little, my bedtime ritual always included a bedtime prayer, and that prayer always ended with a plea to God to bless the people that I loved. Jesus tender shepherd hear me,Bless thy little lamb tonight.In the darkness be thou near meWake me with the morning light And then… God bless Mommy, Daddy,…

What I am most thankful for, always: these two. There is no measure of gratitude – to God, to Nature, to the universe, to my husband, to myself – that is sufficient to the thanks they warrant. My little turkeys. I love them so.

I’m getting a little tired of all the cries and lamentations about how New Moon – the movie and the book and the Twilight series from which the latter are derived – is bad for you, bad for girls, bad for the world, bad, bad, bad. Because, really: it’s not. It just isn’t. So we…

You’re gonna join the club, that’s what. Because being bad is better in solidarity. And while it won’t help you bake better cookies, it will help you feel better about your lack of cookie-baking (and organic-baby-food-making, and sleep-training, and enjoying playdates, and resisting-complaining, etc, etc…) skills. So. What are you waiting for?

We watched the movie Up the other night. Predictably, I cried. I knew that I would. I’d been told that I would. Even if you’re not a crier, I was told, you’ll cry at Up. I’m a crier, so, yeah. The thing of it was, though, that I didn’t cry in that tissue-clutching, nose-dripping, Terms…

This picture was taken this past spring, at the Blissdom conference in Nashville. It was taken by my good friend Anissa, who, in the middle of a chat we were having outside the hotel, just dropped to her knees and pointed her camera at Jasper and me and said, ‘this is just such a beautiful…

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