When we first moved to Dallas, we made some colorful friends who were actors at Scarborough Renaissance Festival- King Henry and a Contessa, to be exact. During October, the Scarborough Fair grounds become a spooky maze of haunted houses, Scary-oke, expensive food vendors, and a throng of tweens looking to snuggle up to their crush … Continue reading
Author Archives: welderbeth
Captain’s Log: Baby’s First Flight
Tuesday, 7/11/2023, Nashville Airport 2:08 pm I wasn’t anxious about this until we popped open the back of my sister’s van. It’s not the actual flying that concerns me. The Baby is almost chronically un-anxious, as in, he is not anxious even when he probably should be, like when he tries to drown himself by … Continue reading
Groundhog Day
Life has felt oppressively the same lately. Don’t get me wrong. Everyone’s doing comparatively well. No one is seizing tens of times a day and losing critical developmental skills like sand in a sand timer or telling their sweet, first-year 5th-grade teacher to “Suck my mother fucking dick”. So…comparatively well. My friend Rachel said she … Continue reading
David Sedaris: Call and Response
January 23, 2023 Dear Mr. Sedaris, My son, {The Baby}, came screeching into the world via an emergency c-section at 26 weeks- a two-pound potato whose vital organs needed lots of assistance to keep him alive. I met him for the first time four months later, when his birthmother invited me to visit the Neonatal … Continue reading
Emmanuel: God With Us
I remember talking about atheism and agnosticism in my world religions class in high school. In my little conservative corner of West Texas, we didn’t spend much time talking about the godless heathens, but I remember the description of Clockmaker god, who designed the world, perfectly calibrated all of it’s gears and dials, and then … Continue reading
All That Glitters Is Not Gold
Much to the distaste of my family, I’ve been re-watching the show Hoarders lately. If you’ve never had the pleasure, let me explain to you the American institution that is Hoarders. It’s a TV show that follows one or two people that have hoarding disorder. Usually, these are older people who have been hoarding for … Continue reading
G-Button: A Year in Review
I am a recovering black thumb. It’s not that I don’t care about plants. I care about them desperately- maybe too much. I’m a textbook overwaterer. When my plants start looking wimpy, I think, “Oh, they just need some water” and then they quickly die of root rot. Last year, my friend Lori brought me … Continue reading
Is It Worth It? Let Me Work It
We took a last summer hoorah to Galveston beach a few weeks ago. The big boys and Alex took the car and went deep sea fishing. No worries. Our AirBnB had a community pool that was far, far away from my immortal enemy Beach Sand. I wrangled the Baby into his swimsuit, lugged him downstairs, … Continue reading
Adventures in Ableism: “Is he a dog?”
(BIG OLD ASTERISK RIGHT HERE AT THE BEGINNING: My proximity to disability is almost negligible. I parent a child with disabilities. I do not have any disabilities myself. I only know what I can observe and what happens to me within earshot of The Baby. My hope in sharing these stories is not that you … Continue reading
The Oregon Trail
Alex and I took some time off in early May to go to Oregon. Neither of us had ever been there and we were excited to do some hiking and napping, sans children. What follows is a mish-mash of thoughts from the trip- the good bits. *** Day 1: It’s good to be small Airports … Continue reading