Just. So. Tired.

I'm going to make the understatement of a lifetime: this week was hard. Because I'm all out of pretty words, I point you in the direction of poet Maggie Smith. 

This poem beautifully captures the parenting dilemmas I've been wrestling with since at least 2011. (And again in 2013.  And in 2014. Pretty sure I'll keep thinking about this a lot.) Meanwhile, I'll spend this weekend regrouping. Perhaps next week I'll have more for you.

Artists vote, too!

Make time to vote next week! And if you live in a state that allows early voting (or mail-in ballots only, like mine), do it NOW. It took me a good hour to go through the voter's guide because we have an extra-long ballot of issues and candidates. But I needed to learn more.

I voted earlier this week, so all that's left for me to do is to urge you to do the same. (And bite my nails down to the quick, while we wait for election results on Tuesday night.)

Work-in-progress: engaging your ghosts

These little people don't exist anymore. Neither does the landscape where they sit.

They're not dead, of course: that's me and my brother as preschoolers. But Halloween reminds me of my fascination with stories and lives that might have been.

The little girl in these family photos was scared of almost everything: monsters, getting lost, upsetting someone or not being liked... the list was endless. Right now, I'm living through the scariest presidential election season I've ever experienced. But I've also lived long enough to know the outcome will not signal the end of the world. (Probably. I could be wrong this time.)

Halloween is supposed to be the time of year when 'the veil between worlds is at its thinnest.' I've always loved the idea of reaching other worlds, real or fictional, and I realize there may be some horrors when we get there. But  I suppose I can stand some of the horrors, as long as I get the magic too.