midlife
April 28, 2009
- I know — it's ugly and wrong. The only times I post on here is when I'm promoting a talk for "Knowing Pains." I'm sure this will send me straight to writer hell. I'll take that risk.I'll be joining the editor of and other contributors to "Knowing Pains" as well as the editor of and contributors to "Writin' on Empty" for a reading/signing in San Rafael. Here's the ...
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March 13, 2009
- It started just below the diaphragm—“butterflies” is the going term but that somehow seems too bucolic. This was more a clenched fist, knuckles pressing, twisting, like the hammy hands of a baker kneading bread. I’d take deep breaths and feel a throbbing, audible and insistent, from my throat up into the ears. At worst, lines of sweat slid down my chest to the waist and from my scalp ...
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March 10, 2009
- "So, I guess you’re wondering what I want to talk about. I mean, why else would I be here if I didn’t have—‘issues,’ you call them… right?” “That is the clinical term, Stanley, yes,” said Dr. Alexandra McCormick, smiling slyly. She looked about 40, on the slender side and tall—five-ten or eleven, I’d say, as her blue eyes met mine straight on when we ...
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November 16, 2008
- Roz Chast gets me... or does she?I have a new Red Diaper Dharma column up at Literary Mama. "One of my favorite Roz Chast cartoons shows a woman in her forties or fifties wearing a flowing baggy dress with a wild hairstyle and clunky jewelry. The words read: Are you entering your "Goddess" years? Have you gotten heavily into herbal teas, especially the "soothing" ...
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October 15, 2008
- It took a 2,400 mile trip back home this weekend, sitting in the bedroom where I once spun hopeful, cotton candy plans for my future, to make me see that I have spent the better part of my adulthood chasing a dream that was never meant be.It hasn't been easy this past year or so to recognize that the pattern I cut for my life never did quite fit -- much like the blue jean overalls misfire from ...
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September 24, 2008
- This may be the most boring blog ever. Certainly, the most boring I've written, because it's all all about self promotion. But if it's self promotion for a good cause, does that change things? I thought so ...Well, after a lot of exhausting rewrites, editing, e-mailing and phone calls, the contributors to "Knowing Pains: Women on Love, Sex and Work in Our 40s" had a launch party last ...
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August 25, 2008
- As the book editor (among my many other titles) at the Marin Independent Journal, I've had a lot of anthologies that come across my desk that look at life as (pick one or all):1. a 20-something2. a 30-something3. a single person4. a "bad girl"5. the "other" woman 6. a bitch in the house 7. a mother8. a single mother and so on. Some have been good, some have been great, some ...
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June 20, 2008
- It was almost half-way through the soccer season when Sara, her hand deep into the bag of organic, fair-trade flax seed blue corn chips I brought, asked me, "Who's that?" "Who?" "That brunette over there." "I dunno. Must be related to one of the players. I've seen her at a few games." "Find out." So I inched over to the team busybody, Gayle. ...
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June 11, 2008
- When a few of my friends got together recently — some in struggling marriages — we started talking about the good things that have happened to us because of our divorces. Overall, a lot of good had come from them, so I was originally going to blog about that, but the concept of "freedom" kept coming up.I have often said that, too: that I love my new-found freedom. But freedom from ...
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May 20, 2008
- “Are you sure there’s crab in this?” Anna asked a waiter passing by as she, her friend Neal and I sat before a shared plate of crab cakes at a local eatery one Sunday. “It’s impossible to find any,” she said. “Yeah, kinda like trying to find a smart, attractive, grounded man in Marin,” I observed with a hint of snark. Anna chortled, nearly choking on her appletini. “Are you ...
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