my careless contagion

Perhaps readers wonder what happened over the last year, where I ended up, what life now looks like. Perhaps not. Fair enough.  The last few months looked a lot like this . (It's  a few seconds and says it all.)   Took time for my nervous system to return to baseline. Maybe some say it couldn't have been that bad. Oh, shucks, you're right. It was totally not a big deal. I moved 1,400 miles away and still have nightmares more than a year later. I don't plan on expounding on what happened anymore. My June 13 post, The Naked and Famous — Young Blood , explains, if there is further interest. On this blog, I cut the crap. I acknowledge the unacknowledged. It's not always pretty, but it's real.  I went through all the emotions. Anger. Destabilization.  Unease.   Disassociation. Bewilderment. Hopelessness. Moments of hope, despair, depression, exasperation, wonder, resignation, repeat. Resetting your life isn't easy. Some days, I gave up and took a nap, hoping tom...

Face mites! I have the strangest conversations with my 5-year-old son. One of the latest involved face mites.  I’m not even sure how it happened, but one morning we woke up and (after talking about banana sandwiches) started talking about face mites, which are tiny parasitic arachnids that live on nearly every human being’s face. I told him they eat dead skin (they do not; they eat sebum) and come out at night (which is true). Normally, they hide in our pores, gorging on the oil from our glands. They can live up to two weeks, and the reason they come out at night is to mate. Also, they are very good house guests, leaving no mess in their wake.  I showed my son a photo of a face mite, to which he exclaimed, “Oh, how cute!” At this point, I suggest readers look up photos of face mites themselves (or click here ). They are decidedly not cute. But beauty is in the eye of the beholder. To me, they look like tiny, though harmless, monsters. When a baby comes into the worl...