Quit Effing With Me, Anthropologie.

Anthropologie, "New Arrivals."

I just couldn't be alone with this.

If a Tree Falls in the Forest and Has the Stomach Flu...

My eight-year-old son threw up twice last night.

I was having a dinner party for friends. Of course. The first time he threw up was just as I was serving dinner to my guests. He puked right there on the kitchen floor. Splat.

"Bon appetit!" said my husband.

Hours later, as the poor boy rested in his bed and we the adults chatted downstairs, I heard the pitter patter of little feet thundering down the stairs. Just as I met up with him in the living room, he splattered the wood floor with his ginger ale.

"Thanks for coming!" said my husband as he ushered our guests out the door.

Later, I tucked my son into bed, stroked his forehead and put a bucket next to his bed.

"Why didn't you run to the bathroom when you felt sick?" I asked. I mean, he had to run past one bathroom and down an entire flight of stairs to reach (or in his case, "miss") the second bathroom.

"Because you can't hear me upstairs," he said.

Which leaves us with a question: If a boy throws up in the toilet upstairs and no one hears him, did he really throw up at all?

I'll leave that for all the eight-year-old philosophers to ponder.

Just Trying to Move My Fingers Across These Here Keys

I daresay I'm in the midst of another writer's slump. I started something fabulous and wonderful the other week but it's way too long for a blog. I don't know what to do with it. I suppose I could post it as a three-blog-post series. It's all about middle school. Who doesn't lo...athe middle school?

Blue Moving Boxes.

I've started a new job. I'm at the same ad agency but on a new account. I hate to even jinx it by admitting how much I love it. It's tough. It requires a lot of thought. It requires hard work and research. I have to absorb a ton of information and then let it sort of marinate in my brain before I can even attempt to write a headline. I love that I'm having to stretch and twist and agonize over the writing I get paid to do again.

I'm worried about family. I'll keep that part of my life as private as I can, out of respect for their privacy. But my family members seem to keep getting cancer and I know it's cliche to say, but I'm getting really sick of it and I'm confounded by it. It makes me angry and frustrated. The older I get the more precious I realize life is. It would terrify me if I really let myself think about how precarious this whole ride is.

Grace is really digging life.

Speaking of life, my children are bursting with it. My son just turned eight and he is getting to be quite the card. He makes me laugh on a daily basis. And he makes his baby sister belly laugh. She worships him above all others. His name is Max and she tries to call him "Maxie." It comes out as "Nassie." When he's not home, she runs around the house calling for him, "Nassie? Nassie? Nassie?" When she figures out he's not home, she asks, "Hockey?"

Don't tell his friends he watches The Wiggles with his sister.

She knows his schedule well. I haven't attempted the whole "He's at his dad's house," because she's only just shy of two and I don't think she'll get the fact that she and her brother don't have the same daddy. Though she sees him walk to his dad's house just two doors down from our house all the time. Perhaps she just thinks he's visiting the neighbors. It's all very normal to her.

I've also discovered that my daughter has a sweet tooth. She's only just started speaking in complete sentences. These are my favorite two sentences thus far — and they were both uttered immediately upon waking first thing in the morning:

"Dulce is awesome."

"Dulce is nummy."

Dulce is "sugar" or "sweet," if you don't speak Spanish. My daughter's babysitter speaks Spanish to her so she can be brilliant and bilingual. Of course that comes out as Spanglish. Half the time her father and I don't even know what she's saying. It may be babble. It may be Spanish. Who's to say?

I'm ready for my sugar. Fork it over, Lady.

My other favorite sentiment that my daughter has expressed in sentence form:

"Mama is funny."

See? It's clear she's insightful and smart. Or maybe she's just flattering me so I hand over the dulce?

Pigtail Zen.

New post on my Buddhist blog:

A meditation on doing my daughter's hair.

Life Is Dookie.

I've got a new post up on my Buddha Mama Sans Drama blog. Feel free to stop by and read it. I fixate on the meaning and definition of the opening words of the Dhammapada: "Life is dukkha."

Click here to read "Life Is Dookie."

Speak, Fear.

Sometimes I think that learning to voice our greatest fears is the very path to letting them go. We think we have some unimaginable burden that we could never share with another person. But then you stay up late talking to a friend or lover, and maybe you find a moment of safety and bravery — so you speak your truth.

Sometimes we are blessed to be heard and to receive the absolution of friendship. Of love. We are left more human, more forgivable and yes, lovable even. We may spend the rest of our lives discovering and re-discovering this. We will forget and re-learn over and over again that once we speak those fears, their power over us is diminished.

But the love between us? It increases beyond our greatest hopes. Oh to remember this. Stay, sweet Insight, stay just a moment longer.

Happy anniversary to my husband — that friend with whom I can share my secrets and fears and find acceptance there.

Building a Fort.

My friend built a fort for my daughter out of the living room chair and a blanket. Because he has carpentry skills, he used a broken-down cardboard box to support the roof. She loved the little fortress so much, she didn't want to come out.

"HOUSE!!!" she wailed as I tried to extricate her.

When I got home, I built her an identical fort out of a cardboard box, a living room chair and a big blanket thrown over it. It managed to stay intact for the most part, except for when she would grab the blanket and pull down on it until the cardboard roof caved in.

"HOUSE!!!" she wailed each time it fell.

"House!" she chirped each time I put it back up.

I remember trying to build a fort out of a blanket as a kid. I laid on my back and stuck my legs and arms straight up in the air to support the roof. I tried using a cardboard pole leftover from wrapping paper to act as a prop. I tried using throw pillows and stuffed animals as walls.

The trouble was, the blankets kept falling back down. Propped up for a moment, they'd soon return to brush my face and cover my body again. No matter how much effort and how many contraptions I'd build or finagle, the blanket fell down and covered me.

Today I was thinking about that blanket and how I could never keep it off of me. Sort of reminded me of depression. I've spent a lifetime propping it up and trying to keep it off. But every so often the cardboard scaffolding I've built gives way and I feel it brush my face and cover my body once more.

Sometimes I just want to lay down in the dark and give in to it.

But most times I brush it off and try to prop it up. I rummage around for the cardboard poles and stuffed bears in my head and build walls out of plush. Sometimes it all seems so pointless.

Building an imaginary fortress against pain.

Why bother?

But that inner kid in me doesn't care about logistics and logic. I hear my daughter's voice yell, "House!" and I put the structure back in again. She needs me to keep a roof over this house of mine. She needs the shelter of my joy.