For any of you keeping track out there, you might’ve noticed that my columns have become rather, er, sparse in the past several months. There’s been a certain amount of life going on. And I guess I just don’t have the Blogger’s Heart. more

It’s two am. Life could be worse. Okay, so, looking in from the outside, it doesn’t look great. We took our kids out to a party, stopped at Subway on the way home as per the suggestion of the 12-year-old; got gigantic, sloppy sandwiches, came home, wolfed them down. more

Recently I was asked, first for Babble.com and then for Time magazine — if I had any thoughts on the “drinking mom” trend. Because apparently, in light of the tragic Diane Schuler drunken car crash, the era of the chardonnay-swilling mama is officially over. more

My son flew to Paris a few days ago, courtesy of his grandfather and college savings. The program where he was signed up to study French sounded professional and organized, but suddenly, in the days leading up to the fourth of July— his departure date—we couldn’t reach anyone to get any information about his host family. more

The economy being what it is, and life being what it is, we have a summer full of… no plans. The original plan -- back before the heart attack, the job layoff, and an overdue book advance—was that my oldest son Edison would go to France for a French immersion language school (borrowing from his college fund set up by grandpa). more

I’ve turned in my book, it was accepted enthusiastically, and now I’m venturing out from my bunker and looking around at the piles that have accumulated in my studio over the past few months. Parenting? Oh, yeah. That. I’m a little out of the loop. more

Under a crushing book deadline, I’ve noticed I’ve gotten a wee bit lax about a few things. Along with the multiplying dust bunnies in every corner, too many take-out dinners, and the piling up of unpaid bills and unread magazines, there’s been a slight relaxation of our family “screen time” rules. more

I remember when my oldest boy devoured the entire “Redwall” series. Thirteen, fourteen books. He read them two, possibly three times, all the way through. He begged me to read them too (because really, I never have enough to do) —so I picked up the first one, in solidarity. more

So I’m in the middle of writing a piece for Mommy Track’d. And it’s a fine piece. It’s nice. It’s friendly. Very amusing. Haha! But basically I’m writing on automatic with a giant crick in my neck, because the real story is, I’m leaving town tomorrow. more

No, it really wasn’t entirely the excitement of the Obama win that has kept me from putting pen to paper or sitting down to my computer with a cup of coffee and tapping out a few pithy sentences. A little more than a week before the election, my husband Richard came home from a weekend trip and promptly had a heart attack. more