Writer's block is alive and well, here in the upstairs office of my home.  I'm not sure why, now, it seems to have settled around me . . . maybe it's the fall weather and all those parenting, school-like obligations, those minuscule distractions leaving me feeling attention deficit and dithered to a ditz (did I ever send along that second box of tissues on my son's school supply list?). Maybe it's the reality of no one in this house landing a job, leaving me open to endless uninterrupted hours of writer's block, or, depending on the day, endless interrupted hours in the kitchen with my …

Our roofer was looking rather frail so I asked for some type of guarantee on his work. He turned to me in earnest that clear fall day and vowed his business-partner son would be responsible if a problem should arise. One year later, following a slight rainfall, we notice leaking over the front porch. After rooting through some old receipts I locate Henry's phone number, only to find his phone has been disconnected. I turn to the internet for his whereabouts, and there it is–clear as the faulty overlap of his shingles–in his obituary. Using my best non-ticked-off voice, I call up his son.  "I …

Hmm, where were we ... ah, yes ... my son Ben and camp ... and my festering doubts as to whether he truly liked it there and would ever actually consider going back. Well, those doubts were finally put to rest with his singing camp songs on the more-than-three-hour ride home in the car. "B-B-B-Beckett, in the Berkshires" he belted out, showing none of his usual shyness and reserve. He seemed different. Happier. More confident. And he kept using the word "awesome." But in the fast-moving world of family life, that was last week's news.  Now he's home and I still haven't seen much of him. It is…

It's been more than two weeks since my son left for sleep-away camp and I wish I could say I've actually gotten used to it, that I'm no longer missing him so viscerally, so down to the bone. That the walloping kick in the gut has gone. Whereas in the first few days it felt like someone had cut off my limbs, leaving me in this vestigial phantom-mom state, all hugless and nonembracing, now motherhood had become mostly illusion and smoke screen. Hardly based on reality, on the mundane, on such quotidian tasks as serving up his morning mango juice with two ice cubes (see mom vacuously staring out…

He's gone. The house is quiet. There's no one sitting on my lap as I type, grabbing at my waist as I walk into the kitchen. Our son is at camp. For a month. And suddenly, the cicadas outside are so very loud. I know it will be good for him, this YMCA camp in the Berkshires, but still. Will he be OK? Will he be lonely? Chances are, most likely, he'll do just fine. Chances are, in late August when we see him again, he'll say he wants to go back next summer, "For two months!" And he'll have grown ever so slightly taller, and maybe a bit more mature, and maybe, just maybe, and this is the truly …

So here it is, mid-July, not exactly the best time to embark on a diet. Though, strictly speaking, fall, winter, or spring isn't much better. So then the question begs, when is the right time? "Never," my stubborn heart replies.  "Never?" my weary brain echoes.  If memory serves, it would take just two weeks at age 25 to drop, say, 8 pounds (applying guru-like devotion to thrice-daily poached eggs on toast... or my sister's sworn jujube diet from the '70s—those tiny pellet candies guaranteed to toss your parents' hard-earned dental-work money right out the door). These days a diet demands a …

Summertime, and the job hunt's not easy. So what's an unemployed girl (and her equally job-challenged husband) to do, except make full use of the sunlight, the refreshing waters of the Jersey Shore, basically dive into this possibly short-lived freedom with anything close to free... outdoor lawn concerts, Shakespeare theater at the library, World Cup and Wimbledon on our deck, well, you get the picture. "You're taking your son to see Liza?" my friend whispers disbelievingly over her magazine at the Ridgewood Public Library. I understand, whereas most 10-year-olds are off to yet another round …

Did I really need to know that Sandee S.—one of my closest friends from high school, someone who taught me each and every syncopated word to ''Moondance" on the flag twirlers' bus, whom to this day I owe all knowledge of mascara application, blow-drying and the proper technique of sash belting—flew up from Florida to visit our old New Jersey neighborhood... and didn't bother to call me? If it weren't for Facebook, I would have remained blissfully unaware.  Then again, if it weren't for Facebook, she wouldn't have noticed my recent visit with Sandy C., my best friend from high school, which …

It's wet and overcast on this Tuesday morning, nothing unusual to the day. My son goes off to school, I begin my chores by sweeping downstairs, and my husband sits at his computer looking for a job. We're relatively new to the ranks of the unemployed, almost three months now, but today, for some reason, with its dull, gray-drab palette, its heavy wall of cloud, there's a gravitas to our situation. Like we've arrived, firmly, at this place... terra incognita. And that it's not going away, these circumstances. It occurs to me, that I should at least attempt to shake it off with a spin class, or…

I'm sitting in the bleachers at Citizen's Park, with my new best friend, Star—someone I've been cozying up to four times a week over the last six weeks, two hours at a stretch, or three, depending on the innings, the weather, the score. She's someone I find myself closer to at the moment than any of my closest friends. We are, after all, deeply enmeshed in a full-out, baseball-mom high-intensity relationship. Meaning, we support each other when it's one of our sons' turn up to bat, a fly ball in their vicinity, or, as on this long, tired day, a need for some deeply felt commiseration. My son'…