06/24/11

Letting Go of the Little House

Sometimes, I think the only reason I had a child at all was to have someone to whom I could read the Little House books. My mom scored a complete set of them at a 1986 yard sale, and they figure heavily into my childhood memories. My mom read me Little House in the Big Woods and Little House on the Prairie; I read the rest on my own. I still can't read the early ones without hearing her voice behind the words. I think Farmer Boy sparked my love of food and food-writing (those butter-soaked pancakes! spicy apple pie for breakfast! the feast at the county fair!), and The Long Winter may be why I am terrified of cold weather. And when I got scarlet fever as a child, I was kind of excited, as though I had achieved the pioneer equivalent of street cred...

Posted at 08:32 AM | Permalink | Comments: 6

06/17/11

Right Where I Am: Five Years, Three Months


The Right Where I Am project is kind of like the It Gets Better project, except for dead babies rather than gay teens. There is a better explanation and a link to other people’s posts here, but in a nutshell, it looks at how long it has been since your loss and how you’re coping.

Both James Ellroy and Elizabeth McCracken have said, “Closure is bullshit” – McCracken in reference to her own stillborn son – and I think that’s largely true. Or, in less vulgar terms, as one of my favorite teachers wrote to me after my friend Jim died, “There may...

Posted at 10:38 AM | Permalink | Comments: 11

06/10/11

Clotheshorse

This will come as a shock to my mom, my exes and many of my friends, but I actually pride myself on being a fairly low-maintenance woman. I know on some level that this isn’t really the case, obviously, because I have a wide variety of quirks and phobias and anxiety issues that make me a huge pain in the ass overall, but I justify my “low-maintenance” characterization by the following: I insist on ordering “a large coffee” from Starbucks instead of a “venti nonfat latte” or whatever, I prefer cheap beer to sugary cocktails, my makeup routine consists only of SPF 15 moisturizer and cherry Chapstick, I have only one purse, I’m not a picky eater, and I hate to shop.

And up until this past week, I would’ve told you...

Posted at 10:04 AM | Permalink | Comments: 0

06/03/11

Introducing Alex

Eve: One thing that New Orleans and Columbia, Mo., have in common is a very high turnover rate. People are always moving in and moving out and moving on. The big difference is that when people leave Columbia, they generally don’t come back.
 
Oh, sure, I miss Shakespeare’s Pizza and the laidback vibe of Ninth Street in the summer and the simplicity of a town that only had four escalators – but I have no real burning desire to live there again. New Orleans, on the other hand, I missed like a family member.
 
When my friends in Columbia moved, I thought, “I sure am going to miss them.”
 
When my friends in New Orleans move, I think, “I sure am going to miss them...

Posted at 09:34 AM | Permalink | Comments: 8