Category Archives: Introductions

Introductions of people – including myself – who you read about in this blog.

Ballet Camp

Posted on by February 25, 2020

Hey everybody. Sorry for the radio silence for the last couple of days. I was helping my friend Linda move, catching up on some grading, and developing a nasty cough. (This nasty cough seemingly different from the nasty cough that cut me off at the knees last Wednesday. Whatever.) Anyway, I’ve been working on a post, but it has taken me a bit longer than usual to assemble. Here it is now. Enjoy!

Ballet Camp

Caroline has been taking ballet pretty much since we moved to Montgomery. Last December, she got to perform a small role in the Nutcracker, and there’s no reason to believe she won’t be cast again this winter.… Read the rest

The broken arm entry

Posted on by February 25, 2020

As many of you know, Caroline started a new school last fall. In fact, most of you know this story in its entirety, but it deserves to be written down, and Brenna’s post over at Suburban Snapshots got me thinking about it. I’m going to give the back story pretty briefly, largely because it’s worth of its own entry, but also because it will turn any post it dominates into a rant. The short version is that the school Caroline had been attending went from awesome to sincerely dangerous in the space of a summer. The new teacher in what would have been Caroline’s classroom declared that my daughter couldn’t attend without an aide (she doesn’t need one), and generally proved to be a fucking lunatic.… Read the rest

Kidspeak

Posted on by June 23, 2011

One of my college English profs claimed kids don’t screw up grammar nearly as much as adult representations of kidspeak would have us believe. She was extremely knowledgeable in linguistics, and I believe her perspective represented cited studies in addition to her own observations.

I really wish she had gotten her hands on my kids when they were learning to speak. Because they both regularly spout stereotypical examples of children’s language.

It isn’t so much that their grammar is bad (though it is) as it is that they just make up words that don’t fit at all when they can’t figure out what to put in a sentence.… Read the rest

Cousins

Posted on by February 25, 2020

Recently, we went up north for Scott’s 20th college reunion. He went to the College of Wooster, in Ohio, and most of both our families still live a couple of hours away, in the Cincinnati area. His Mom drove up and met us there, and on the way out of town, we caught up with his sister, Judy, and her family, for about an hour.

I have always said that if I’d had to do things in reverse, and choose my spouse based on who I would have for in-laws, I’d still have wound up married to the same guy.… Read the rest

Ladies’ Man

Posted on by February 25, 2020

We went out to eat for Father’s day, both children in tow. Normally, this is an adventure in death-wishes, as the kids either act like monkeys (and not the tame ones, either) or choose a restaurant that features cuisine whose quality is inversely proportionate to the presence of playlands.  But as a special gift to Daddy, they behaved wonderfully during a grown-up meal. It helped that Sam had just spent two hours napping in the car as we returned from the McWane center in Birmingham, but the real success was in his falling in love with our server.

One of the big excitements of the trip was that Caroline has started eating a meat product.… Read the rest

Ballet Camp

Posted on by June 15, 2011

Caroline spent roughly an hour of one recent afternoon confined to her room sobbing, “I want pretzels. I wah-hant pretzels”.

It would be funny if it weren’t so common.

This is the downside of Asperger’s for us. The fit has nothing whatsoever to do with pretzels, although Caroline would certainly argue otherwise. This is about sensory overload, and it happens pretty much every time we introduce her to something new. This time, it’s a combination of the Orlando vacation and ballet camp. She’s been in ballet for three years now, but this is her first summer experience. It’s a three-hour long program three days a week, and in addition to dancing, the “campers” do crafts and watch movies.… Read the rest

Lost at Disney

Posted on by June 13, 2011

We lost Sam at the Magic Kingdom. It lasted all of five minutes, but it was a frantic five minutes, I can assure you. Anybody with small children knows how fast they can vanish. I remember in my teens watching a dear friend’s toddler at the county fair for a few minutes. I was holding Tessa’s hand one second, and then the next, she was gone. Like that. And even though I found her barely half a minute later, she was already yards away from me, investigating the elephant ear stand. It scared me then, and she wasn’t even my personal baby.… Read the rest

American Idol

Posted on by July 12, 2023

Before the blog post today, let me guide you to a website created by my publisher:

http://throwaway-lines.com/

More about that another time, but you can currently find my bio by hovering over the word “Fiction” and clicking my name.

 

I tried out for American Idol (and is it any wonder that this particular bit of reality-showdom has an acronym that could also mean artificial intelligence?) while we were at Disney. It was a total lark, and I didn’t get past round one, and there are no photos for evidence, but I actually learned some fun stuff in the process. For one thing, I had no idea that Disney owned American Idol, though Walt’s company owns the rest of the planet not bought up by the Sam Walton family, so I shouldn’t be surprised.… Read the rest

Down by the Ocean

Posted on by February 25, 2020

I’ve always been a Gulf coast kind of girl. As in the Gulf of Mexico. I cannot imagine a retirement that doesn’t have Naples, Florida in it. In fact, to my knowledge, in spite of spending a large portion of my childhood in South Florida, I had never been to the Atlantic coast until we went there last week during our Orlando visit. Mom hates the Atlantic. Well, not really. It’s all relative, and any ocean is better than none for her. But she has always said the Atlantic is cold and the shells aren’t very good. She is right on both counts.… Read the rest

Sam and the Princesses

Posted on by February 25, 2020

I have a confession to make. I know I said I hadn’t been blogging because I was swimming with Sam, and I know I claimed to have been grading like crazy. And those things are true. But the primary reason I haven’t been online for the last several days is that we were on vacation in Orlando. Yes, that’s right, we did Disney for Sam’s birthday.  And then I’ve spent a week getting caught back up with the paying job, because, well, Scott and I aren’t wealthy enough for me to contemplate the alternative.

We had an awesome time with friends Dennis and Kristi and their kiddos.… Read the rest