booknboob.com Blog

First of all, I can’t sleep.  Second, I’m forcing myself to be here.

I started this post over a week ago and this is as far as I got:

I was at church recently (I attend a Unitarian Universalist congregation) and the minister was speaking about the experience of young adult cancer patients in the context of finding a greater hope and recognizing joy.  He quoted a young woman who said something (unfortunately I didn’t write down the quote because I swore I would remember it later) along the lines of “at night it is difficult to get into my scary bed with my scary thoughts.”

Then, I stopped.  That’s as far as I’ve been getting lately.  Basically, the part about the scary thoughts.

(more…)

It’s official.  I plopped my kid in front of the TV so that I could actually get something done around here.  (Ironic after I just wrote a post about the demented self-created world that I inhabit in which chores and false responsibilities take precedence over my family.)

(more…)

So, while I flounder around starting posts and stopping them mid-sentence so that I can edit, edit, edit my content, so that I can double-check to make sure that I am saying what I am meaning to say, so that I can verify that I am writing something worthy of this brand of instant “publication”, I am, by all stretches of the creative imagination, not writing at all.  (In fact, I just started to delete this sentence and then stopped myself and forced myself to write it before I could read back to the beginning and delete the whole damn thing.  Where are thou, my self-confidence???)

So, I have, just recently, in the last few days in fact, experienced a little, life-altering epiphany.   And, yes, like most life-altering epiphanies–or at least like most of my life-altering epiphanies, because I have had so very many, you know– the burst of mind-numbing enlightenment was completely obvious.  Beyond obvious.  Let me fill you in…

(more…)

So, Silas is feeling better! He seems to be getting back into his sleeping groove– going to bed last night at 7:30 (Praise the Lord!) and napping as I write this (Can I get an Amen!) Yesterday afternoon, we were actually able to spend some quality time rolling the ball around in the yard without any sign of a meltdown, and then, brace yourself, Paul and I were not only able to watch a movie together, we were able to cuddle up while we watched it! And if that wasn’t enough, my awesome hubby managed morning duty all by himself and I got to sleep in until 9:30! Oh, how sweet life is!

Now, you know and I know, that I am doing my best at the glass half full thing. So, I would like to squelch any possible mis-readings even before I begin. My tone for the remainder of this post will be bathed in the bright light of sarcasm. I am not, in any way, shape, or form, honestly complaining. I am only paying homage to the fact that I am now living in a household in which I am a gender minority and the majority has already begun gaining power-by-number and using its iron-fisted methods of oppression. I am the clear underdog.

(more…)

Be Careful What you Wish for.
Curiosity Killed the Cat.
Build it, they will come.
And so on and so forth forever into the dark, lustful night.

(more…)

I live in a really small town in North Carolina. And, I perform with a really small improv comedy troupe that was, this night, performing in a really small independent coffee shop on, you got it, a teensy few blocks of a quaint historic Main Street. Between the folk painted long-eared goats and the banjo pickers in front of the courthouse, there we are, comedy troupe extraordinaire, Gag Order.

As you might guess, with improv sometimes your hot and sometimes you are really, really, really not.Needless to say, I’ve had some less than uplifting performances. Until tonight I thought my worst possible gig was one in which an unexpected acquaintance appeared in the audience and for some reason– maybe it was the scowl of distaste upon her face– I froze like a deer in headlights, and then I froze like a deer in headlights, then I made a crass joke, and oopsy, I froze like a deer in headlights again.

(more…)

My sister has recently pulled the twigs and leaves and ladybugs of Maine from her dreads and has driven down to stay with us awhile. She has come to NC, I believe, under the pretense that she is my daily assistant. Folding laundry at my side, preparing healthy dinners of fiddlehead spaghetti, and sweeping up Silas when his whining (it’s this new independence thing he’s into) gets to me. And pointing out, whether I like it or not, that I am an unfaltering stream of negativity.

(more…)

Before I get into what, if anything, barbies and birth defects have in common, I’d like to mention that I am sitting on my back deck, listening to the birds and gazing at two very luscious weeping cherry trees. I’ve just enjoyed a piece of Amish-raised organic chicken breast that I grilled a la Emily and topped with a puree of tomato, onion and cilantro (okay, salsa!) and some grated cheddar cheese. I am finishing off a glass of Newman’s finest Cabernet (not that impressive) and am watching the clouds jet across the evening sky. One looks like the Warner Brother’s Tasmanian Devil in a three-quarter spin. I’d almost forgot what it was like to name the clouds. I have a bad habit of keeping myself unnecessarily busy.

Maybe I should also mention how I am finding myself in this moment of reverie. This evening, my husband is playing a gig in a very reputable juke joint and Silas decided he wanted to go to bed early. Oh, the sweet silence of sitting solo! I can smell the fresh cut grass and hear the murmur of children in the distance. My Lord! What a wonderful world! (Even with the mosquitoes.)

So, on to barbies and birth defects.

When Silas was born, I noticed, almost immediately, that he had an unusual red lump on his neck about the size of a pea. It has the firmness of cartilage and is shaped like a snail’s shell or a curving fragment of the human ear. We were told by the hospital pediatrician and the resident pediatric surgeon that the bump was a leftover “gill”.

It turns out that the lump is not a gill– not really. It is a branchial cleft cyst. An embryonic birth defect.

(more…)

I am, at best, a mediocre poet.

Less than mediocre. A non-poet. The converse of poet. The negative space that might exist if a poet was to implode or was sucked into a black hole or was acted upon by some terrific and terrifying laws of physics and mysticism. A stock broker.

(more…)

Last night I reintroduced myself to the seductive rhythm of the Salsa beat after a long 10-month separation.

I was once an avid Salsa dancer– perfecting my turns and shines once or twice a week. And, that’s not all. I can not only salsa, but I can dance the cha-cha-cha, the merengue, the bachata, and the cumbia too. (Yeah, they’re all about the same…) I also like to brag that I won a Salsa competition once. (I really did. I won’t, however, comment on the number of contestants or the bias of the judges.) More than that, I played a salsa-dancing bird in a local production of Suessical, the Musical. (For children…) So, I like to pretend that I could easily take the gold on Dancing with the Stars. (Right, if I was a star…) But, yesterday, when I pulled my jazz shoes out of the closet, they were covered in what could have been a decade’s worth of dust.

(more…)