Inspired, in part, by this wonderful photo of Woody Guthrie’s magnificent list of New Years Rulin’s (originally found here), I thought I would share with you a few of my own New Years Rules. Not resolutions, you note. Just… rules. Which I think are more useful than resolutions. Do something every day that makes [...]
As we say here in Baltimore: I know that’s right. Listen to that woman. She knows things. But, and it’s a big but (even bigger than my own firm but pliant caboose): do not make the mistake of assuming that unless and until your self-esteem and body-love are at a point where you can saunter through [...]
Darlings, I must apologize for my execrable failure to comply with the one piddling bit of scheduling I have got for this guest spot on Miss Hanne’s lovely blog. I’d tell you all the tedious reasons that this post wasn’t ready for you all yesterday on Tuesday the Eenth as it was meant to be, [...]
Since Mrs. Calabash’s death, our younger cat, Fez, has become extremely demanding about attention. When Callie was alive, Fez bullied Callie for affection multiple times a day. There was a great deal of forcible ear-washing, back-of-neck washing, and snuggling. She’s an odd little cat, this spotty little creature, one who will come and [...]
My sainted mother — she was a Zaftig, you know, of the Harvard Street Zaftigs — explained it best. “Bethena,” she’d call me, since that is my name, “Bethena my dear, if there is one thing that is certain in this crazy topsy-turvy world of ours, it’s that dogs will bark.” Chubbelinas, she was not referring [...]
I have problems with praise. I was thinking about this earlier this morning when a little automated internet robot informed me, with the cheery efficiency such things exhibit, that someone had left an anonymous morsel of praise on an equally anonymous piece of (whisper it!) fanfic I posted under a pseudonym some while ago, and [...]
An exchange I recently had with a wise and funny friend reminded me of a little moment of grace I once experienced years ago courtesy of another wise and funny friend of mine. (I am ridiculously fortunate in my wise, funny friends.) We were riding the subway, the friend in question and I, rumbling [...]
Somehow, no matter what you do and no matter how hard you try, there is never a shortage of challenging people and situations in life. The following are five thoughts and phrases that I’ve lately been finding particularly useful in coping with life’s regrettably reliable supply of character-building exercises. Most people, most of the time, [...]
Those who know me well know that I am a person who writes letters. I don’t, I confess, write as many as I once did. In junior high and high school, however, we put eighteenth-century Parisian socialites to shame: I had friends with whom I would daily trade not the interminable telephone calls that seem [...]
Since my “Real Women” post the other week, I’ve had a few people question me, or challenge me, on my inclusion of intersex and transgender women as “real women.” My question back is: why wouldn’t I? Basically, where I come down on the issue is that first of all, human beings are valid, simply by [...]