While you’re reading this, I’m (trying to) sleep on a 40-year-old sectional sofa in a three-bedroom ranch house steeped in 45-plus years of cigarette smoke.
Ah, Cleveland, how I love you.
Showering in the basement. Listening to the TV at decibels previously reserved for the profoundly deaf among us. The pantry stocked with packaged foods.
My husband’s grandparents [...]

The Poo received a digital camera for Christmas, one made just for kids by Vtech. It is fascinating to see the world from her perspective.
Here is Christmas, as seen by one just-turned-three-year-old:

If you’ve got time to kill, you can see the whole set here.

It was inevitable that I would catch The Poo’s cold. After all, two days ago she woke me up by vomiting mucus and juice all over me at 6 a.m.
I felt the tickle in the back of my throat Thursday while driving home from New York, and today I feel like death. I wanted a [...]

I never want to see the interior of my minivan again.
We - and by “we” I mean I - drove 1,400 miles in six days, that being an average of 233.3333333 miles per day. Holy fucking shit I am so tired thatisibdhsupphdhgfhfpeipeieruyryeh ….
Whoops! Sorry, that was me banging my head against the keyboard. BECAUSE THAT [...]

The Poo is wretchedly ill. Again.
She went to bed late last night, wound like a top from her fourth and final Christmas gift-opening extravaganza. Her cousins were here and they frolicked and fought like they always do, wearing each other out.
I wrangled her into a much-needed bath around 8:45 p.m. and then finally into [...]

Dude, Christmas is over.
We had our faux holiday alone, and it really does feel like I can release all my stress about traveling on the actual day marking the birth of Christ.
Until, that is, someone (probably related to my husband) does or says something outrageous over the next 10 days and 2,400 miles. Then I’ll [...]

My husband has the plague.
The same plague that, er, plagued The Poo and I for the past 12 days. She and I are just about at the tail end of it, but folks, I gotta tell ya, it is still kicking my ass.
By 5 p.m. I’m ready for a hot toddy and my cool sheets.
So, [...]

She sat down on the stairs, her face skeptical.
“Poo, there’s something I think you want to see,” her father said, looking like a little boy himself in candy-striped pajama bottoms.
“What, Daddy?”
“Santa came in the night while you were sleeping!”
Her eyes widened, and her resolve to remain on the staircase deepened. We looked at each other [...]