by paige on October 22, 2009
MY SON’S DAYS of believing in the unbelievable are growing shorter; I’m pretty sure this is the last year when he’ll accept Santa Claus on faith, though he’s a good sport, and he’ll probably play along for the sake of his sister. But I’m feeling pretty wistful about the end of his belief in magic, so when I discovered two giant pumpkins growing on a vine snaking out of a compost heap I keep ignoring down behind our barn, I decided to try to give him one last gasp of wonder. [click to continue…]
by paige on October 5, 2009
IT IS NOT NEWS to anyone (except maybe a checked-out dad or two) that we moms have a lot of balls: the ones we’re juggling, the ones we’re dodging, the ones flying directly at our heads. (And then there are the big brass ones we bring out when someone raises our maternal hackles, but that’s a story for another post.) When you have that many balls, it’s inevitable that some will drop, and you just pray (or I do anyway) that the ones that go bouncing away will be the ones that matter the least. [click to continue…]
by paige on July 14, 2009
REMEMBER MY SUMMER GOALS? Now that summer is more than one-third past (read that bit again, why don’t you, as you weep into your iced coffee) and I’m about to embark on our few short days of family vacation, I thought I should check in with, um, myself, and err, you all, and ‘fess up to what I’ve done, or not, on that list of mine. [click to continue…]
WHEN THE RIVER was a tiny guy, strangers used to stop us to exclaim about his resemblance to legendary child star and friend-of-Michael-Jackson Macaulay Culkin. If that’s not enough to send a stage-leery mama scurrying from Los Angeles to the hills of rural New York, I don’t know what is. There were other reasons for, and consequences from, our crazy escape from Hollywood to the farm, and this month, they’re chronicled in a story I wrote for Country Living. As a result, I seem to have opened a Pandora’s box of ambition and desire for my photogenic, performance-oriented offspring. [click to continue…]
This is not my tattoo, Mom.
MOTHER’S DAY, A manufactured holiday that can sometimes be second only to Valentine’s Day in overpromising and underdelivering, is mercifully over, once again. This year, mine was exactly right: We went out for a nice lunch with my mom, and some good friends, and the kids mostly behaved, and my other mom friend and I toasted each other with something called a “health margarita,” so named because (in addition to the requisite tequila) it included grapefruit juice. [click to continue…]
There must be another way...
NOW THAT SPRING seems to have really and truly sprung, even in the frigid Northeast where I live, I am struggling not just with finishing my knitting projects, but with getting them started, at all. I blame the garden. [click to continue…]
by paige on April 17, 2009
WITH ALL THE TALK here on TSP about hand-me-down recipes (some good, some, well, terrifying) I realized I hardly have any from my own family. To make up for the absence of ones to call ours, my kids and I are trying some pioneer recipes, ones straight out of our bedtime stories. An unorthodox place to look for culinary inspiration? Perhaps. But not as crazy as it might seem. [click to continue…]
by paige on April 3, 2009
AS SOON AS MY SON, aka The River, could walk, he wanted to ride as well. When we lived in Los Angeles, we lived near an enormous public park crammed with kid stuff–playgrounds, train rides, a big carousel, and pony rides. We took him on a lark, thinking he wasn’t really old enough to circle around on a pony, even with the special saddle strapped around his waist to hold him in place. Judging from the expression on his face in this picture, we were wrong. [click to continue…]
by paige on March 11, 2009
NOPE, IT’S NOT that I’m a famous sister (remember her older sister, Zsa Zsa? Was there ever a better name?) since as you all know by now, I am an only (though hardly lonely). Nor am I Hungarian, and I’ve only been married once (though there’s still time, I suppose, I think I’m unlikely to make it to Eva’s lofty achievement: five trips down the aisle). [click to continue…]
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