From the monthly archives:

August 2004

Thoughts on waking

August 29, 2004

On weekend mornings, a cat alarm wakes me. The cats take turns, and each has its own technique. Sergei settles onto my arm, purring, and gently kneads my shoulder with his front paws until I wake. Lyra licks the spot between my upper lip and my nose; it’s the feline version, complete with tuna breath, [...]

Read the full article →

Back story

August 27, 2004

I was thinking I had writer�s block. I had trouble with writing even a few words about anything. Nothing I wrote pleased me. I felt stuck.
But today, as I wrote for the blog I share with my husband Paul, I realized that the problem is not that I have writer�s block, at least not right [...]

Read the full article →

Salt and pepper to taste

August 24, 2004

I thought that I would never color my hair. I thought that I would gracefully play the genetic hand I’ve been dealt, moving from almost black through salt and pepper to snowy white with little more than the occasional wistful thought of a previous decade’s darker hair, and even faint anticipation of someday having [...]

Read the full article →

Excellence in sport

August 22, 2004

Since joining our family (and probably before), our cat Sergei has been an athletic boy. As a kitten, he amazed us with acrobatics in pursuit of his favorite toy, a cluster of feathers on a string. Backflips, vaults over furniture; they were beautiful, elegant… and talk about sticking the dismount. Sergei landed on his feet [...]

Read the full article →

40:40 vision

August 16, 2004

My sister came in from the back yard, holding the little finger of one hand between the thumb and index fingers of the other.
“Splinter,” she said, when I asked what had happened. “Would you get some tweezers? I think I’m going to need help with this.”
I fetched the tweezers, washed and dried them. Then [...]

Read the full article →

Storm tracking

August 10, 2004

I grew up in hurricane country, so I know this feeling.
The storm is brewing. Clouds building on the horizon, a charge in the strangely greenish air; you can see it coming from miles away. The waiting is the worst. You do what you can to prepare: tape the windows, buy batteries and water. You don’t [...]

Read the full article →

The Samurai Boss

August 6, 2004

Thanks to Jay over at The Zero Boss for coming up with the idea of Blogging for Books. Here’s my entry for #2: Servitude.
Updated 8/10: And thanks to Jay and Kim for choosing this as one of the seven finalists this month.
I’m an architect. Some years ago, I had a job that I loved. [...]

Read the full article →

A blog of my own

August 1, 2004

For the past 6 months, my husband and I have kept a daily blog about his second battle with cancer. (He’s winning so far; I’ll write more about that later.) At this point, I’ve decided that I want, in a manner of speaking, a room of my own. I need a place to write about [...]

Read the full article →