In Memoriam

On June 12th, my grandmother, Mary Bogart, passed away.  She would have been 100 on September 20th of this year, and we’re planning to be in New Mexico on that day for a family gathering and memorial service. When our first child was born, he had six great grandparents, all but my father’s parents who passed away my senior year in high school, and now our boys have only their great grandmother, my father-in-law’s mother.  I am so grateful they will have memories of all these people.  It also means that we’ve had more funerals in the last five years than in any other period in my life.  It doesn’t seem to get any easier. My mother asked me several weeks ago to write something for the collection of memories of my grandmother that...

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Posted by Mara Collins on Aug 31, 2007 | 0 comments

Hypographia

So some days writing seems like something I cannot help doing, something as natural as breathing, something I wake up looking forward to doing, the daily opportunity to capture some of the words and thoughts that have been drifting around in my head. And some days it feels like torture. The blog seems like an additional pressure, I don’t want to disappoint anyone, I am sure that anyone reading is going to get sick of it and stop reading entirely, and of course, I have the stats chart conveniently provided by WordPress to back me up (would I be happier with it disabled?). Or I open the computer and read a dozen other blogs and either dismayed at how brilliant the brilliant ones are, or at how the ones that are more like social connection-points for groups...

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Posted by Mara Collins on Aug 29, 2007 | 1 comment

Conspiracy

Dear Person Who Has Been Slipping My Children Behaviorist Theory, Please stop! I don’t know who you are, but there is clear evidence that someone has, behind my back, been spoon-feeding the precocious darlings some B.F. Skinner. I expect any day, to be rifling through their backpacks and find a pamphlet “Training Your Parents in 10 Easy Steps” with beginner level steps like: 1. Wait for the moment when the parental unit is clearly relaxed and not thinking about you and choose that moment to torture your brother until he screams loud enough for the neighbors to surely contemplating calling Child Welfare. 2. Make it clear that the person who does most of the picking up in the house understands that the inevitable consequence of time spent with a...

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Posted by Mara Collins on Aug 27, 2007 | 0 comments

I could wait for you to find it on your own…

…but all of my writing energy went into my (sorry, a little derivative) list of fifty things you might not know about me, set up as a page off my really boring about page, and, dammit, that’s what you should read if you’re going to read something I’ve written today. If wordpress even lets me publish it. WordPress did unexpected server maintenance last night and has done funny things when I try to save this this morning. We’ll see. The exciting news is that I am typing this sitting on the new sleeper sofa that just got delivered, out in my studio, so now we are ready for people to come and stay with us. Of course, we’re still at only one bathroom. And there are six of us. So you might not want to stay for a really long...

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Posted by Mara Collins on Aug 25, 2007 | 0 comments

Sorry I disappointed you…

Regardless of my determination to disregard my blog stats, I do find the search terms entertaining, like these from the last twenty-four hours: hallmark breaking up cards 2 hire a potty rainer 1 pleasing my husband 1 chutes and ladders 1 glossy magazines are good for kids 1 and I can only imagine how disappointed these searchers must have been, because what I have to offer in any of those areas is so… limited. If, on the other hand, you want advice on firing your violin teacher, I’m your woman.

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Posted by Mara Collins on Aug 23, 2007 | 5 comments