Your child’s mind is her most valuable resource, and until she is old enough to become a gestational surrogate, that won’t change. But school cutbacks are a fact of life now, and though you didn’t sign up for it, you need to be prepared for the responsibility of having to teach your kid stuff.  

I was twelve when my “little visitor” arrived for the first time. Its arrival was heralded by my mother as a “first taste of womanhood.” Frankly, in spite of her obvious enthusiasm, I found it a damn nuisance, nothing more. I can’t say I wasn’t prepared, though.

I’m traveling alone, renting a cabin at a normally tranquil spot on the bank of the Big Laramie River at the edge of the Medicine Bow National Forest up in Wyoming. You won’t stumble upon Woods Landing on your way to someplace else, because that’s not where it is, and you’ve never been there on purpose.

Yesterday I ate 3 pieces of cheesecake, 1 cannoli, 1 can of sardines and drank 3 pellagrino blood orange sodas.  That’s it. Oh wait. I smoked a pack of cigarettes. I’ve been waiting around for the important thought, although I don’t have important thoughts. I sit for hours thinking nothing in particular, looking at the dogs sleeping on chairs and sofas and the sun moving across the rug.

We’ve all heard of a parliament of owls, a gaggle of geese, and a murder of crows. But what about the creatures on this good semi-green Earth who lack a collective noun?