tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-106423202015-09-16T18:06:23.258-04:00(Musical flourish) Housewife... of... the... Universe!Phantom Scribblernoreply@blogger.comBlogger1810110tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10642320.post-1667029641154884512013-04-16T13:25:00.000-04:002013-04-16T13:25:27.424-04:00

In the western suburbs, the party starts early because the race starts early. Even so, the first runners won’t go by for at least an hour as we thread our way down already crowded sidewalks, dodging lawn chairs and small children, older kids throwing balls and dashing gleefully into the closed road to retrieve them. At this hour, the road is mostly empty; only unofficial challengers are this far

Phantom Scribblernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10642320.post-82590465418131433322012-05-08T11:52:00.001-04:002012-05-08T11:57:39.778-04:00

I never thought of Maurice Sendak as a writer for children. Possibly this is because I did not read his books when I was a child. I don't know why we never had many picture books in our house, but for whatever reason we didn't. We had Dr. Seuss and Mercer Mayer and a handful of miscellaneous titles, but no Sendak. I went straight on from The Lorax to the Bobbsey Twins, and, as I grew, did my best

Phantom Scribblernoreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10642320.post-24003897633744277522012-02-26T13:04:00.000-05:002012-02-26T13:04:58.427-05:00

I shall be over here on Sundays with a list of lovely links to writing by women around the web. Read something awesome by a woman? By all means let me know. I'll tweet links from here, too. Thanks for reading!

Phantom Scribblernoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10642320.post-31076105766089334412011-03-18T08:45:00.003-04:002011-03-18T08:50:43.231-04:00

In the brave new world we live in, your day starts in the usual way. You don't read newspapers anymore; you haven't in years. Lately you haven't even been checking newspapers' websites, unless you're following a link to some article or another, a link posted by someone you know, where "know" is defined as -- no, not in the biblical sense, you smart-ass -- "someone you follow on some social

Phantom Scribblernoreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10642320.post-74259674662275665792011-01-26T13:43:00.008-05:002011-01-28T15:48:44.709-05:00

It was an exercise we practiced over and over again during my senior year in high school in preparation for taking the AP exam in English. We were handed a short passage of prose or a poem, and given 45 minutes to analyze the hell out of it. I hated it, like I hated just about everything that added any further pressure to an environment already so pressurized that I walked around with a chronic

Phantom Scribblernoreply@blogger.com37tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10642320.post-37927763205827569582010-04-29T09:10:00.002-04:002010-04-29T09:12:39.608-04:00

For the first five months that BB was in kindergarten, every single drawing that she brought home was labeled, “BB AND MAMA.” It didn’t seem to matter what the subject of the drawing was: landscapes (a house with a door and windows), portraits (BB in neon pink and yellow, with enormous eyes), hearts and flowers, oddly appealing bits of geometric abstraction — all of them bore somewhere, “BB AND

Phantom Scribblernoreply@blogger.com28tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10642320.post-1115865923103518782010-02-25T19:24:00.002-05:002010-02-25T20:39:07.144-05:00

... I hereby present a short risk of things that are currently thought to increase one's risk of miscarriage. Pregnant women of Utah, play it safe and keep careful track of your actions. If you miscarry you could be considered "reckless" if you've engaged in any of these:Risk factors for spontaneous abortion and its recurrence." href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3273482?ordinalpos=1&

Phantom Scribblernoreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10642320.post-46259353961083701842010-01-18T10:19:00.008-05:002010-01-18T10:48:44.731-05:00

Okay, Martin Luther King, Jr., did not believe in plastic forks. That was just the first thing I had lying around to protect the pseudonymity of the innocent.Yes, peace. Which is illustrated by white kids (check the hair) hugging each other. BB, as per the assignment, crossed out the picture that showed the opposite of peace: a black kid pushing a white kid. Um. This lesson on Martin Luther

Phantom Scribblernoreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10642320.post-17499763506717486822010-01-15T11:55:00.003-05:002010-01-15T12:31:33.068-05:00

Welcome back to the new, revisionist Phantom Scribbler. You know, the one with no comments on any of the posts. Years of the pixie party vanished, just like that. Thanks a lot, The Company Formerly Known As Haloscan.But I have to admit that I get some bizarre existential glee out of seeing it all wiped away and transformed into a years-long monomaniacal monologue.Except when I had to wipe away

Phantom Scribblernoreply@blogger.com24tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10642320.post-11258021006234630662009-12-19T10:43:00.005-05:002009-12-19T11:17:27.549-05:00

I got pinged by Haloscan today. They're rolling out the change blog by blog, and MB's blog had already been converted, so I knew it was coming. Haloscan has been taken over by another company, which wants to charge me $9.95 per year to continue hosting the comments. In fact, I voluntarily paid more than that to Haloscan per year -- but that was to keep the pixie party ad-free, not to keep it

Phantom Scribblernoreply@blogger.com0