In Which Christina Gives Herself a Root Canal

I've been feeling a bit failure-ish of late. Just have not been what my life coach would call "My Best Self." But it has been brought to my attention that my failure at friendship has gone completely unnoticed and I have been given many friends. More than the usual pair. And in the past two...

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Roll Initiative

I've been tasked with writing a Dungeons and Dragons adventure for my family. (Nearly every word about this sentence would have given me pause 20 years ago.) The stratosphere of social coolness levels aside, D&D is a complex game. There are lots of charts. Mathematics are involved. One finds oneself saying things like, "What a...

Freaking Lippizaners, man

Once upon a time I lived in Germany. And one day I went to a ball at Heidelberg Castle. True story. And that's where the glamour ends. Cuz this story is about me. It was summer. There were lots of people in the dining hall. There was no air-conditioning. I was pregnant, was wearing a...

“In Which We Break Down in a Cornfield” OR “Here Come the Chains”

Text to my family: "We are all fine. We have plenty of water and all the fresh corn we can eat." *** The kids and I have taken a road trip across the country to visit my family. The two weeks leading up to the trip had been pretty par for the Fishburne course-- *...

Lego My Ego, My Precious

It's PCS season, moving season. It is usually around this time, the two-year mark, that I become surly, jealous, restless, and resentful as I watch friends and strangers pack up their lives and get ready to start over somewhere else. I love moving. I love the prospect of arriving at a new place where nobody...

In Which Christina Goes Blonde and Becomes a Reever

I did it. I'm blonde. It took 5 hours to go from dark to light, but what journey of great magnitude doesn't take a long time? As I sat there, suffering under the process that would transform me from my obsidian depths to sunny brilliance, I could not help but meditate on the spiritual and...

Craigh Na Closet

My family recently had occasion to celebrate a huge milestone event. Photos were taken.  Anxiety and Excitement, meant to be taken like swift shots of tequila and then ridden out before the taste could settle, turned into a waterboarding theme park. Toddlers were in rare form. Parking was challenging. Winds rendered time spent on arranging hair pointless. Lighting was harsh....

Cover Story

I've been listening to 90s alternative rock while I exercise. It blasts me back to when I was young and everything was possible. And I mean everything. Tooling down the halls of my high school, totally oblivious to my surroundings for much of the time-- was I concerned with what I had made on that...

The Stream of Consciousness One

This one isn't going to flow very well. Unless you ADORE James Joyce. Then you just might love this one. James Effing Joyce was the bane of my existence in grad school. I was tasked with reading Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man not once, not twice, but THREE times. And each time...