I’m at home today, in self-imposed exile, allegedly working on a feature story due — oh, well, technically I suppose it was due yesterday. But my editor doesn’t expect it from me yet. He knows. I am mean-mean-mean when it comes to deadlines with my own young writers, because I feel strongly that I was […]

Snapshot from a Saturday afternoon. Sophie had just finished a strawberry Ring Pop (hence, the pink lips) and climbed into the chair of the proprietess of a store called Kooky Krafts. I have no reason to share this, other than because I’m a sucker for ornate pink chairs – and for Sophie.

Today is Yom Kippur. It is the Day of Atonement — the heaviest hitter of the Jewish holidays. The day you apologize and the day you remember. Today, my dear and oft-mentioned friend Deborah posted a poem on her Facebook page. Today, I was going to post the recipe I used for my (burned) Rosh Hashana challah, […]

I promised a friend I’d post pictures of my best finds at the Rose Bowl Flea Market a couple weeks ago, so here goes. Above, vintage chenille grasshoppers. Below is Sneezy, part of my ugly (according to my mother) but lovable (according to me) collection of carnival chalk. Sneezy was marked $45; I got him […]

Home Remedy. That was the assignment for last night’s Mothers Who Write class — the workshop I’ve co-taught for years with my dear friend Deborah Sussman Susser. We wanted our students to write about health care, but frankly, we weren’t interested in 15 essays about health care reform. So the ever-wise Deborah came up with […]

I can’t sleep. Yesterday morning was pretty typical — we scurried to get ready, scurried out the door, scurried out of the car into backpacks and lunch boxes and over the crosswalk to school. When Sophie, Annabelle and I arrived, it was the typical rush of teachers opening doors in the carpool lane (it always […]

Some days I feel it more than others, but most of the time I can tell that having kids — and yes, in particular, having a child with special needs — has changed me. I’m not saying (nor would some people who know me say) that I’m any nicer. I still have a button on […]

Good thing I was off eating tofu last night with my dear friend Trish, because I’m a big chicken when it comes to the kids taking risks. I’ve grown accustomed to seeing Annabelle scamper to the top of the wall at the rock gym around the corner from our house, but I wasn’t prepared for […]

So there’s hoarding where you can’t make a path through your house to get to the bathroom (I’m not there — yet) and then there’s the kind of hoarding where you find something super-cute and save it for a special occasion. Such was the case with the pinwheel straws. I don’t know where or when […]

Lately, I’ve been telling people that Annabelle won’t be going to religious school this year because she’ll be attending the church of dance, instead. I’m not really kidding. This year, Saturday morning class has been joined by Wednesday afternoon class (this time with my mom, who runs the studio — how could I resist?) and […]