idontbelieveingrammar

Last night, with blood smeared on her cheek, Tess finally came downstairs with her top tooth in hand. I have been eagerly awaiting that gap toothed grin, since the last one fell out 10 days ago.   Tess is a little self conscious of her spacious smirk, but they are probably my favorite smiles. Three years ago I wrote about the exact same thing (below)…and it is all still true. My son has been working on it for weeks. Wiggling, pushing his tooth back and forth with his tongue sometimes even until it bled. And I couldn’t have been more ready for it to fall out. His first top tooth fell out about a week ago, and the lone one left was hanging on by a thread. Pointing the complete wrong direction. I sent him to school day after day with this crooked snaggletooth praying it would be gone by the time I picked him up. Until finally, yesterday he pried it out and came running triumphantly to my room before 7 am, tiny tooth in hand. On a Saturday. It is hard to fake excitement before...

Every year I like to write the kind of letter that people used to send with Christmas cards but with a few important caveats. First, I do not have it together enough this year for Christmas cards or even pictures of my kids both smiling and with their hair brushed.   Second, those old school Christmas letters are mostly crap – so I started writing REAL Christmas letters about seven years as ago as a joke, in response to all the fake and cheesy ones people send out about how perfect their lives appear on paper. A friend and I laughed about how refreshing it would be if people wrote real Christmas letters. Confessed to filing for bankruptcy or bragged about their kid’s straight C report card.   What if those letters were a place where they shared the highs, but didn't ignore the lows. It would be way more honest and a whole lot more entertaining. Most people don't write Christmas letters any more. These days we do not save our perfect lives for yearly updates; we post them i...

Sometime in October….Ordinary Time I am at church. It has been awhile. The last time I was here I left in the middle. I said I was running an errand but more likely I was running away. Suddenly we sing a song. Oceans.  Where feet may fail and fear surrounds me You've never failed and You won't start now Standing and trusting.  My damn chin starts to quiver. I try to hide behind my coffee cup and wipe away the few tears that slip out anyways. I love this song, but I can not sing it this morning. I am so mad at myself for not being able to do this.  For being angry. For feeling sorry for myself.  The sermon is on how heavy our burden is and how focusing on the right things will lift them off. He tells us to imagine a heavy weight on us, and then suddenly it being lifted. I think this is bullshit. I do not have to imagine a heavy weight. It is there. It is back. It has slammed me into the ground again. I am afraid to imagine it being lifted because ...

The other night on the way home, I passed my exit. My ten year old had to correct me and ask where we were going. I started to drive to the wrong house. I was tired. I just wanted to get home and into bed. Unfortunately I was headed to the wrong bed. I moved 4 months ago. For the last 120 days I have been driving to my new address, you think I’d have it down by now…and then I slipped I headed back to the old one. Once, a few years ago…out of the blue I signed my maiden name on a check.  I have had this name for almost 15 years, but for a second I forgot my new name. Even in my exhaustion this seemed important. As I made a U-turn, part of me thought I do this in other places too. I forget who I am. That I have changed. That I have moved. On. Or forwards. Or at least somewhere else. I go back when there is nothing left for me there anymore. My surgery didn’t really work as well as it should have. People ask me what the next steps are. And I say I learn ...