Boomer Mom / Suburban MalaiseHow did we end up here?(Untitled)- January 28, 2004 Another snow day. No school today. It's easier to look outside and take a picture than show the inside of the house, which is enormous mess! Wet boots, mittens, coats, scarves, etc. Our next door neighbor, a teacher who also got the day off, invited the neighborhood kids over for a pancake lunch. Quiet prevails, for the time being. I took my other photos off this site (and now I can't get them back on). I'm thinking of transferring this blog to TypePad so I can link to a photo album. I tried..http://blogs.salon.com/0003343/2004/01/28.html#a18 (Untitled)- January 27, 2004 I woke up with another migraine this morning! Clearly this is some sort of bad karma. I did some terrible thing in a previous life. Yet another winter storm is coming (the falling barometric pressure probably helped trigger my headache), the house is a mess, tomorrow will not doubt be a snow day with the schools closed and a parade of dripping children (my own and the neighbors) running in and out of the house. I took some Zomig for the headache and I suppose I should clean up . . . ...http://blogs.salon.com/0003343/2004/01/27.html#a17 (Untitled)- January 26, 2004 A friend and I took our kids to see Cheaper by the Dozen today, a film about domesticity run amok. In this comedy, the Baker family, Tom, Kate and their twelve kids, falls to pieces when Tom takes a posh coaching job and they move to a snooty neighborhood in suburban Chicago. Kate writes a book (about having 12 kids, what else) and goes on a book tour. Although the film cuts her some slack about needing a life of her own outside her family, the underlying message still is that home just isn't...http://blogs.salon.com/0003343/2004/01/25.html#a16 (Untitled)- January 25, 2004 Here's a more benign view of the backyard than yesterday's gloomy photo. It may look deceptively rural, but there's actually a busy highway not far from our development. The sound of traffic is a constant hum, but the sense of space is nice. There were strange looking animal footprints in the snow when I went out yesterday. I got excited, was it a bear Deer Bigfoot My husband, who is an ex-Eagle Scout, went out and examined them and gave me the bad news. Just rabbit tracks . . . the snow...http://blogs.salon.com/0003343/2004/01/25.html#a15 (Untitled)- January 24, 2004 I hadn't intended to keep this ominous looking photograph of the backyard up, but I can't seem to delete it, so stay it will. I can't stop playing around with the layer modes in Photoshop. The actual photo of the backyard and the long-outgrown swingset seemed so boring, so everyday, so much like my life that I tried to change it. But maybe the boring and everyday is where the true mystery of life resides. We're supposed to have a snowfall this weekend here in New Jersey. Whenever there's...http://blogs.salon.com/0003343/2004/01/24.html#a14 (Untitled)- January 23, 2004 I was feeling particularly broke yesterday, so I put up some of the books I used for a grad course last fall for sale online. I sold them almost immediately to a new group of hapless students. The subject matter was the usual grist for today's academic mill: postcolonialism, sexuality, "re-readings" of American history. As I packed up the books, I couldn't help feeling sorry for the students being forced to read such well-meaning, but badly written books. Unfortunately, in the process of...http://blogs.salon.com/0003343/2004/01/23.html#a13 (Untitled)- January 21, 2004 I woke up this morning with an excruciating migraine, which has left me completely depleted. My only solace was the fact that TCM was running Barbara Stanwyck movies all afternoon. The film on TV in the photo above is a 1950 film called To Please A Lady. Clark Gable plays a race car driver named Mike Brannan who Stanwyck, as Regina "Reggie" Forbes, (a crusading journalist) believes was responsible for a rival driver's death. Do I have to tell you the rest This film reflects America's return.http://blogs.salon.com/0003343/2004/01/21.html#a12 (Untitled)- January 20, 2004 Given the chance to go back into Manhattan alone today, I hopped a New Jersey Transit train into the city. It was freezing again and the streets were icy. A brutal day in the city, despite the sunshine. This post-Christmas time is just about my favorite time of year in New York. The light is starting to get bright again, despite the cold. The sun is still low in the sky, so there are lots of dramatic darks and lights and the buildings are even more dimensional. There are less tourists. New York.http://blogs.salon.com/0003343/2004/01/19.html#a10 |