From Seuss to Spade?

Conversation between Hamlet and Rain Dog at bedtime:
H: Daddy, tell me a story about a bad man.R: What kind of bad man?H: Just a bad man.R: Does he stay bad, or become nice?H: He stays bad.
Four years old and already thinking noirish thoughts. It’s a crime writer’s career dream come true.

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Schmooze-worthy

Thanks to LawMummy for saying I have a “schmooze-worthy” blog. This new award is given “to recognize those people that were exceptionally adept at creating relationships with other bloggers by making an effort to be part of a conversation, as opposed to a monologue.” I now have to tag five other people I read and [...]

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AstroTurf (TM)

I read somewhere that the grass on the other side of the fence is probably AstroTurf. It sounds cool, but then something is lost from the analogy – once you get to the other side, the grass there is still greener than the natural stuff on the side you were just on. Right?
This past spring [...]

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Really, what else could we do?

On a recent road trip to South Carolina, we were pretty well prepared for bored children. The best advice I’d read online: make up games, but let the kids lead.
So it was with Hamlet. Before long he was asking us to help him make up stories. Rain Dog and I would start, then give Hamlet [...]

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Answers.com contest entry

Every time Sally saw Ed on a street corner, she wanted to ask him to come home. Something about his scraggly gray beard, skinny frame, and washed-out blue eyes made her feel both protective and guilty. Protective because he was still her husband, and not much more than a little boy lost. Guilty because she [...]

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Happy Birthday, USA

A few weeks ago, we had some work done on our home to 1) remove bats and flying squirrels and 2) keep them from coming back. The man who did the work told me that he had been home from Iraq from about a year and a half. Coincidentally, one of our Terminix service guys, [...]

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