Cafeteria Concert

There are smiling students handing out flyers next to the entrance to the cafeteria. I take one and we enter, neither of us sure where to go. My son looks at me (he still does this, though I know he won’t for much longer) and I gesture for him to choose where we sit. He selects a seat near the back, a little apart from the other parents, families and friends. It’s not a large audience; this is just a practice performance. He points out his friend who invited him. She plays the bass in one of their school’s orchestras. He points out other friends, too, mostly boys.

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Written by Michelle Roebuck On In

Red Clay Roots: A Weaker Second

After you’ve been a writer for just so long (I don’t know how long, but “so” long), you get inspiration at the most seemingly innocuous times. But it’s not so much the getting of the inspiration but the noticing then capturing of the inspiration that becomes vitally important.

What inspiration did I notice this morning that I knew I needed to capture? Two used tea bags.

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Written by Michelle Roebuck On In , ,

All the Pieces

And there was still a sweatshirt splattered with barbecue sauce waiting, forlorn and forgotten, in the downstairs bathroom sink…

When I work things out just right, I can manage a day where AFTER I work a full shift, I stop on the way home and get groceries, all from a list that I wrote out the day before, not deviating by more than a couple items. I get everything trucked home, cold stuff put away, pantry stuff put away, fruits and veggies on the counter rearranged just so. The kids are home or come home from school and occupy themselves.

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Written by Michelle Roebuck On In ,

What Was That?

If I hear the word “poop” once a day, I guarantee you that I hear it a hundred or more times. My boys seem to grow more fascinated with the word the more anathema I deem it. At ten and five, I wonder when they will outgrow their preoccupation, when it will cease to be so seemingly endlessly obsession-worthy. I wonder, too, whether my calling attention to it, demanding the constant references end posthaste, serves to prolong the behavior.

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Written by Michelle Roebuck On In , Tagged ,

Just Eat It

What, how and why I eat are eminently changeable. When I was young, my "diet" was carved in stone - I ate a sum total of five vegetables: corn, potatoes, carrots, celery and French-style cut green beans from a can. Oh, and the carrots and celery had to be raw. Period.

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Written by Michelle Roebuck On In ,

In the beginning

Wow. Here it is. Post numero uno.

I've composed this post so many times... In my notebook. In my head. In Outlook and Word and OneNote and Evernote. Now that I'm here everything that wants so badly to to be spilled is causing a bottleneck and only a tiny fraction is dribbling out. Perhaps that's as it should be - my Critics are hovering around, trying to convince me that whatever I say in this first post, it will sound trite or insufficient or somehow or another "not good enough".

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Written by Michelle Roebuck On In , ,