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Dalai Mama Dishes

by Catherine Newman

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

Dalai Mama Dishes

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

The Road at Nickerson Campground

Posted August 19, 2008

Ever wonder what Catherine sounds like? Listen to her read this blog entry.

We are skipping down the steep hill from the bathroom, you and I, in the piney twilight of the campground. Since your brother Ben was a baby, I have probably made this exact trip to and from this exact bathroom, oh, 300 or so times. It is one of the few aspects of camping in which the beauty of the moment is not immediately apparent -… Read More
3 people found this post helpful

Summer Fever

Posted August 19, 2008

Ever wonder what Catherine sounds like? Listen to her read this blog entry.

Something is wrong with the children. All day, they bicker in the abstracted way of a long-married couple - never focusing on the argument at hand, never not arguing. Ben is making refrigerator magnets while offering Birdy unsolicited advice about the Mousetrap game she is trying to set up, and they fight without actually ever looking up from their solitary projects.

"Well I wasn't wrong just because… Read More

Aswim

Posted August 06, 2008

Birdy is trying to explain something about the flower fairy she has just twisted together from pipe cleaners and silk petals. She cocks her head to the side, points to its floral skirt, and says, "It's just kind of like...you know? I can't really explain it? The way it is? You know." Um, like, I don't totally know? Because, like, you haven't actually said anything? But, well, okay.

She is a mystery to me, this little girl. When I go to… Read More
2 people found this post helpful

Honestly

Posted July 29, 2008

Ever wonder what Catherine sounds like? Listen to her read this blog entry.

Little Miss I'd-better-grow-up-to-be-a-gangster-rapper is musing aloud in the car about all the things she'll have one day - in the car. " I'm going to have a swimming pool in my car! And a swing set! That will surely make the time pass away." There's a brief silence during which I consider Birdy's recent adoption of "pass away" - a morbidly eloquent little malapropism that always… Read More
7 people found this post helpful 3 Comments

Chilling Out

Posted July 15, 2008
It may look like a Louie-Bloo Raspberry Otter Pop to you, but to me it's a frozen plastic tube of resignation. I seem to have stopped micromanaging my children's every worldly experience. Don't get me wrong - I'm still manning the drawbridge over here. But I'm dropping it down for the occasional blue food, the Juicy Fruit gum, the plastic swords, the late bed times, and even some of the popular movies. I mean, you can only check Heidi out… Read More
8 people found this post helpful

Buckets of Rain

Posted July 08, 2008

" Cheese lightning?" Birdy asks from the back of the car, and I laugh. "No, honey. Heat lightning." She's silent for a couple of seconds, then says, "Wait - what?"

It's hot again, and the sky is flashing and silent, though in another couple of minutes rain will come pouring out of the sky all at once, like the world has been turned upside down and the oceans are above us and suddenly remembering about gravity. We'll race screaming from the… Read More
3 people found this post helpful
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About Catherine Newman

Catherine Newman is the author of the memoir, Waiting for Birdy: A Year of Frantic Tedium, Neurotic Angst, and the Wild Magic of Growing a Family, available online and in bookstores nationwide.

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