Kill Your Lunch Hour Sarcasm served anytime. For work-avoidance and procrastination purposes only.

I had lunch the other day with my friend Glenda, whom I haven't seen in at least five years.  That's too bad, because I like hanging out with her. She laughs in such a way that you get a clear-as-a-bell view of her tonsils, and I appreciate being able to tell if a person has strep every time she lau

After a trip to the beach, I spare one tee shirt from the laundry and seal it up in a Ziploc bag. Each day after work, I open it up and mash my face into the cloth, smelling the sand and sea and sun.  I do this until the poor thing is devoid of any kind of olfactory beachiness. I think today is the

One night, long after bedtime, Sophie begged me to write a letter to my dad, her late grandfather. "You promised we could do it tonight," she said. I watched her take scissors to paper and tape the little pieces together to very meticulously make a pair of butterfly wings. "It's too small for me to

Today is Sophie's first day of first grade.  We've come a long way, baby! Last year at this time, I was rounding up our friends from across the street to see Sophie off on her first school bus ride. I video taped her with my Flip Mino (that has since been stolen during our basement remodeling), made

When Alex and I learned we were expecting Sophie, we had decided to surprise ourselves with the baby's gender. This of course was an invitation to anyone with a  penchant for predicting to guess what we were having.  "You have a fifty-fifty chance of being right," I told one stranger at a party. She

Recently I heard the author/artist SARK talk about how it's a good idea to acknowledge the weaker parts of ourselves, and maybe even (gasp!) let them show more often than we do. She said she had gone so far as to  take the part of her that felt hopeless out for a walk. "We didn't make it very far,"

Dear You, Technically speaking, the question, "Can you work later than usual this week?" is a yes or no question. The fact that you chose to answer "yes" is your problem. Dear You, Sure, I feel bad hiding some of my possessions from you, but I would feel worse discovering that you had ruined them.

If I had to decide what I missed about working a real day job during my years as a home office freelancer, I would say with all certainty that it's the amenities. Sure, being able to steal office supplies is nice, but that's not what I mean.  I missed the little classes, the seminars, the workshops

Last weekend, Sophie lost her second tooth.  I pulled it for her, after she had worked on it for maybe a few hours, tops. She jiggled and wiggled it through half of Where the Wild Things Are.  "This movie is boring," she said. "Will you pull my tooth out for me?" "Of course," I said, "I'd be hap

Just when I think there's nothing new for my mom to teach me, she reinforces the fact that, although I'm in my 40s and a mother myself, there are still deceptively simple lessons to be learned and re-learned again. I come from an all-news-all-the-time upbringing, which might explain the bomb shelte