I like to shop at thrift stores. I like thrift stores because you can find the most amazing and startling things there--and finding a small treasure amid trash is thrilling. A few weeks ago I found a wonderful robin's-egg-blue vase with a white daisy on it and if I hadn't looked closely at the shelf where it sat I'd have missed it because it was almost hidden by a tacky enormous china rabbit and a broken wire basket. Last winter I found a red plaid thermos that was exactly like the one my mother used to pack into my matching red plaid school lunch box. [more]

Yesterday I sat in my third meeting of the week, next to a colleague in another department who is some months pregnant and showing.  Her belly is rounded out just enough so that her sweater stretches taut over the curve of it, and throughout the meeting she kept running her hands over the bump in that characteristic way I found so familiar, and which filled me with a sudden pang of longing.  I don't long to be pregnant again, but I do feel nostalgia from time to time for the pregnant me from some years ago; the pregnant me who used to sit in my graduate school classe [more]

Sometimes I feel as if one of my main missions in life these days is to grouch at the people around me about responsibility.  At home both my husband and I are spending more and more time each day trying to curb T.'s newfound love for making messes everywhere she goes.  Be responsible! Don't forget to clean up! [more]

I had a long, and involved dream on Saturday night.  It was one of those meandering dreams that takes you on a surreal mental journey, through dark and twisty roads, against the backdrop of an unfamiliar and menacing city.  I won't go into the details of the dream, but it involved my son, and a parent's worst nightmare, and even though it all worked itself out in the end, when I woke up I still had that heavy-chested feeling you get when you have been run through the emotional wringer for a prolonged period of time.
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