Children’s Games, by Pieter Bruegel. This is my number one most favorite work of art of all time. I am intimately acquainted with every inch of it. I have pondered every single child, tried to figure out every single game — some are more obvious than others — wondered what’s inside the building, where are [...]
Monthly Archives: June 2006
Through the wringer
I landed a proofreading job over the weekend. At first I thought it was a plum. I’m going over the galley proofs of a book that’s going to be published shortly. It’s in almost-final form. All it needs is a pair of fresh eyes to look for typos. What could be more fun than that? [...]
Happy birthday, darling
Daniel is three today! And what a perfect excuse to get on my homebirth soapbox. When Daniel was just a couple of months old we thought he might have an ear infection and I took him to the ER. “OMG, he’s so huge,” said the nurse. “Yes,” I agreed. “He was 9 lbs 14 oz at birth.” “OMG, what was [...]
Follow-up
Inkling commented: Things that make you go hmmmm. Coincidi (isn’t that better than coincidences?) are eerie, even when concerning such ordinary things as mugs. It makes one want to cry, ’twas meant to be! But was it? Does the cosmos care if your father gets the right mug, no disrespect to your [...]
Wool-gathering leads to another coincidence
This morning in the shower I was thinking about Veronica’s “I am from” poem, specifically the part where she says she is from not reading at the table. I too am from not reading at the table. Not reading at the table was ingrained into me at a very early age, ingrained so deeply that [...]
Coincidences and mug shots
The other day I read Paul Auster’s The Red Notebook. It’s a wonderful collection of little vignettes or anecdotes that apparently happened in real life, either to Auster or to friends of his. Each vignette describes some weird coincidence, such as two people meeting in Hong Kong and discovering that their sisters live next door [...]
I am the proverbial chicken
with its head cut off. This week has been absolutely horrendous. And it’s not over yet. In addition to all the usual end-of-the-schoolyear stuff (if you have a teacher in your family you’ll know what I mean), some web design stuff, some family drama, and some major frustrations in the “inability to schedule a pedicure [...]