elise in lumbar-land

My three-year odyssey of back pain has led me finally to a chiropractor's office, a place I never thought I'd enter after reading Dr. Sarno’s books which explained my pain to be psychosomatic and nothing that a firm self-talking-to couldn't fix. And it worked. For a while. But now the yoga has brought my pain into sharp relief. There are certain poses and transitions between poses that just hurt my back in a way that I can't abide any longer.

biting the hook

It turns out that screaming at children is bad for them, and for us, but a lot of us are doing it.

mommy see mommy do

Above, Hamish and Stella hard at work keeping up with the times and emulating Mommy, who's been writing more than usual lately. Hamish's favorite these days is an arcade-style Wow! Wow! Wubzy! game, and I gotta admit, he's pretty good, and so is the game. He'd get more practice if Mommy weren't always hogging the computer. Tonight he warned me that I was wasting the battery by leaving the thing open on my desk. "But it's plugged in!" I protested, wondering how in such a short span of time we'd switched places. "The phone's ringing," he said in response, as if to say, get it together, woman. And I did. It was Bryan.

they say you have an eelness

Hamish has an ear infection. I am already slipping in the memory department and cannot remember if he's had one or two or none before. I only have hazy recollections of storing thick milky antibiotics in the fridge at various times in his short history. But yesterday he was more listless than I've ever seen him before, so that could be why I can't say for sure whether he's had this particular sickness. "They say you have an eelness." Quick! What's that from? I can't recall the name of the movie (my memory again!) but it was Julia Roberts to John Malkovich in her first and last period role (thank God), complete with "Scottish" accent and minimal glamazon smiles. Unless you count Erin Boobovich as a period film.