Okay, now picture yourself in a boat on a river.

So I’m in my living room, and my roommate Jenny, who has this seriously hardcore stereo system, put on some kind of mellow chick music that went very well with whatever incense she was burning, and it was soothing me and making me feel pleasingly soporific, and then out of nowhere the CD changed – [...]

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Welcome to Kitchen Stadium!

My  brother Colin is one of my favorite people on earth. He is 18 – almost exactly 10 years younger than me – but in many ways, I think he’s the family member I’m the most like.  For example, we share a passionate commitment to laziness; we have been known to argue about who is [...]

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25 Things About My Dad You Probably Don’t Know Even If You Know Him

#1.  He can waltz. He was in several musicals with me at my all-girls high school, and in My Fair Lady we got paired up as waltzing partners for the big scene at the ball.  He’s a really good dancer.  Every day we would come home from rehearsal and practice our routine for my mom. [...]

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Archived E-mails – Actors and Temperance Hymns

I have some extremely witty friends.  So, from time to time – like if I write a really downer post like I just did but then feel bad about leaving you all on that depressing note – I will post some of the many laugh-out-loud funny things people have e-mailed me which I have kept [...]

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The DPC (Dead Parents Club): Or, In Defense of Gallows Humor

Jordan was first. When my close friend Jordan – husband of my best friend Erin – told me his dad had shot himself, the whole world changed for all of us.  My mom was sick at the time, in the second year of her ultimately three-year battle with ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, better known as [...]

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Hell Triathlon: or, Why I Want To Know the Random Things That Inexplicably Infuriate You

So for some reason, I absolutely LOVE to know people’s random irritants.  I can’t get enough.  I love knowing the stuff people don’t like.  I’m not talking about reasonable, universal dislikes (spiders, Paris Hilton, interpretive dance) or ideological dislikes (Bill O’Reilly, Michael Moore, whoever is currently president or was president most recently, and whatever they [...]

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Holy Crap, I’m a Godparent.

It has finally happened. The thing I have been anticipating for years, but was pretty sure wouldn’t happen until one or the other of my siblings got married and had children, which, no offense to them, was not exactly like IMMEDIATELY UPON US, so I thought I had a minimum of like five more years [...]

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Sal, Dorothy, Lydia & Glen

TRAITS INHERITED FROM MY GRANDMOTHER LYDIA (DAD’S MOM): Obsession with Watergate. Argumentativeness. Stubbornness. Pride in being smarter than people. “Tough love.” Love of retro kitsch like plaster seahorses in the bathroom or commemorative plates from every state in the U.S. Terrible eating habits. Sass. Fierce protectiveness of family. TRAITS INHERITED FROM MY GRANDFATHER GLEN (DAD’S [...]

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Ten Teenagers In One Room For a Year.

Because I am my mother’s daughter, I frequently choose to do things for no other reason than a patronizing exasperation at how poorly someone else is doing them, and a conviction that I am the only person who can do it better, or at all. I am of the oh-for-heaven’s-sake-just- give-me-that-and-let-me-do-it-for-you school of . . [...]

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My Parents

An excerpt from an article that appeared on the front page of the Oregonian on Easter Sunday (April 8th), 2007, written by our friend Nancy Haught, the Oregonian’s religion editor. The Crossroads of Faith For Christians, Easter is a time to reflect on their lives and their journey While many people celebrate Easter with new [...]

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