flawed but authentic

Let’s get right down to business.
I love handmade crafty things. I love shopping for gifts. I love sticking it to The Man. (Come on. I don’t spend a lot of time sticking it to The Man. However, for the sake of this entry, let’s say that I do.)
Because of my love for crafty things, [...]

 I wrote this post last January, on my poetry blog. I remembered it the other day when I read this wonderful post  by Mme. Kennedy about slogging through the creative doldrums. I’d like to re-dedicate it to all the NaNoWriMo and NaBloPoMo warriors out there, headed into the home stretch this week. Yes, even you crazy NaMoShoeBlo’s. You go.  
Several years ago, I made [...]

(Sorry I managed to screw up posting two weeks in a row. But my computer BROKE yesterday. New computer today! Yay.)
My mom is over 80. She recently got a letter in the mail from someone she had gone to grammar school with.
The letter was from a woman, Jill, who had been in the same school [...]

I’ve been reading through my old paper journals from my single years. It’s all been very entertaining, except for one volume that I now refer to as the volume of crazy.
There are more crazy volumes, but they are in more formal blue journal binder like things. This is just a little flowered notebook [...]

I forgive myself for sometimes losing my shit with my kids.
I forgive myself for not always keeping a clean house.
(I forgive myself for never keeping a clean house.)
I forgive myself for spending every day looking like a complete slob.
I forgive myself for not going to graduate school.
I forgive myself for not being a very good [...]

It’s too hard to wake up happy every day, but most days I can manage it. Last week I mentioned that a former student passed away, but I haven’t elaborated on the details. They’re not that important anyway. I have too many stories in my fairly short career in education of students who have died [...]

As people who follow me at Notes already know, it has been a stressful and uncertain time for my husband and I these past several months. His fledgling freelance graphic design business went through a slow period, and our ship began taking on water. We have been listing badly. “It’s expensive to not have enough [...]