Exurban Cowgirl

I gave birth to my sweet boy seven years ago today.  I’m pretty sure it was the hottest day of 2005.  Natalie Holloway was all over Fox News (I was in a daze and let Christian pick the channel). We were already TV free at home back then and drunk on trashy television and relief. [...]

One of my favorite things about city life was the ability to walk out my door and be in the middle of something.  I loved my bustling neighborhood in Paris, and my eclectic neighborhood in Brooklyn.  I loved being able to walk down the street for a greasy spoon breakfast or coffee and almond croissants [...]

  When I was spending my junior year abroad in Paris, I went on a date with an aristocratic French guy named Grégoire.  Things didn’t really get much farther than that first date, and I probably would have forgotten about him altogether if a single detail hadn’t gotten stuck in my mind.  This was back [...]

Let me start by saying that both of my children are exceptional.  They are bright and funny, good looking (of course) and wonderful.  I’ve been thrilled to see their gifts, talents and interests emerge over the years.  However, I have recently been coming to terms with the fact that, as far as school goes,  my [...]

As the inhabitant of a quirky old house, I’ve found that there’s usually a certain amount of reverse snobbery from the inhabitants of quirky old houses.  We talk about McMansions (huge but poorly built houses that spring up on tracts of former farmland) and McMullets (brick or stone facade but metal siding on the back [...]

I threw out my last diaper on New Year’s Eve. I’d call that starting the year off in a big way.  We’re a couple weeks into four years old, and so far I must say it’s awesome. My girl got the overall potty training thing a couple years ago, but hung in there on the [...]

As you may have read, I decided not to send out Christmas cards this year. This decision was based on exhaustion, residual technical problems related to the death of our computer this summer, and a desire to save the $75 or so it would have cost to produce and send them out.  A bit scroogy [...]

My kids’ all time favorite pastime is playing in dirt.  They were both home sick today (hacking cough, fever), but I had to let them out for half an hour to dig around in the driveway. That’s why I loved this post. Sticks and cardboard boxes are way up there too. We don’t spend a [...]

I’m a pitcher.  Or whatever the opposite of a hoarder is.  My need to get rid of stuff borders on obsession.  This may come from many years of living in small spaces. Or the fact that most of my life takes place in my head. Or the fact that we live in an old house [...]

I got my first Mac Classic in 1990–saved up my tips from a summer of waitressing after my freshman year of college and brought that baby home to my crummy little two room apartment in uptown New Orleans. Break-ins were rampant in my neighborhood back then, and when I went back to Virginia for Christmas [...]