My Outrage Detox
I joined Facebook in the midst of the 2008 presidential election. It was super fun, especially for a work-at-home parent of young children who was craving a little water cooler conversation. I could...
View ArticleRockaway, or the Rockaways? They’re both right.
I’ve lived here for most of my 45 years, and spent much of my professional life dealing with editorial conundrums and questions of usage, as well as reading communications scholarship on language and...
View ArticleIt’s Paddy, Not Patty… and Other Thoughts for St. Patrick’s Day
It’s my Blogday! That’s a word I invented for Blog Birthday: I posted my very first dispatch, “What is a Narrowback Slacker?” on this site exactly one year ago today. I had written it as sort of a St....
View ArticleThe Attention-Challenged Freelancer’s Toolkit
When I first started freelancing, I was terrified. I don’t have ADD, but I sometimes act like I do. I have always had real issues with distraction–particularly noise–as well as a tendency to put off...
View ArticleSlacker Hack: Macaroni and Real Actual Cheese
A while back I posted about how we are trying to limit processed junk in our house. Inspired my children’s absolute favorite comfort food, spaghetti carbonara (I swear by Lidia Bastianich’s recipe,...
View ArticleHow We Turned a Reluctant Reader Into a Habitual Reader (Or: I Lied on My...
My son is a reader. He likes books. He reads plenty. But: He is not a voracious reader. He’s not one of those kids who gobble books up like Pac-Man chasing down dots. He doesn’t romanticize,...
View ArticlePlease Don’t Drown: A Public Service Announcement for Beachgoers.
NarrowbackSlacker:Since the productivity/parenting stuff on NarrowbackSlacker has sort of taken on a life of its own, I’ve decided to parse out my local interest stuff to a different site. Please visit...
View ArticleThe Unexpected Dividends of PC Gaming
I do not enjoy video games. Like, at all. So, when my gamer husband bought a gaming console when our son was just around seven or eight, I was a little eye-rolly. But they really enjoyed playing games...
View ArticleBy Popular Demand: A Momentum Optimization Project Update
In April 2014, at the behest of some friends, I wrote a little post called How I Limited Screen Time by Offering My Kids Unlimited Screen Time. As of today, that post is at over 700,000 views, and I...
View ArticleBirthday Gifts to Myself
My people don’t really bother with birthdays all that much. My siblings and I are just un-birthdayers, and my husband totally jumped on the bandwagon when he joined our tribe. I live in awe of those...
View ArticleLessons from Hurricane Sandy #6: Everybody’s Got a $3 Million Lifeguard Shack...
Today is a good day. It is the last day of the lease on our hurricane car. For three years, this car has mocked me. It is the first new car I’ve ever “owned.” I signed on the dotted line without ever...
View ArticleMy Outrage Detox
I’ve been a lazy blogger. But this one, I think, is worth revisiting right now. Narrowback Slacker I joined Facebook in the midst of the 2008 presidential election. It was super fun, especially for a...
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