Linda Pack Butler's Blog
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Jul.01.2012
They arrived in the night, in silence. They slipped in when no one was looking and made themselves at home, just like that.
In the morning, the sun rose with that yellow glamour that makes for an achingly beautiful day around here. I wanted chive blossoms for an omelet so I slipped outside,...
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Jun.16.2012
Personally, I don't trust any revolution where love is not allowed. ~ Maya Angelou
Today, I am thinking life is a wheel. Tomorrow, it may be a box but today, it is a wheel: It turns and when the revolution is complete – a new view, new circumstances.
According to my son, I am a mother who, at...
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Mar.09.2012
In an incredible act of maturity that is rarely displayed by 50-year olds – I called my husband a turd.
A turd.
Not jerk. Not idiot. Not even a good old "f-you." And, by the way, not even in kindergarten did I ever sling this moniker at anyone. Not once. So why now?
It was early morning. I hadn't...
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Nov.27.2011
Three boxes are stacked on the dining room table. Garnet Hill, it seems, has delivered Mere's Christmas present early. The familiar Amazon logo is on the middle box. At the bottom of the pile is the familiar red, white and blue of a large Express Mail package, dented and slightly torn.
I try to...
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Jul.06.2011
Fact: The red squirrel is losing habitat to the grey squirrel.
In my house, this means we have gone to war. Actually, this means my husband has gone to war.
His eccentric guardianship of the red squirrel population in our backyard escalated last year when he would tear out of the house making...
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Jul.06.2011
It turns out that a love of reading also must require an inevitable fondness for real estate. Face it: If you love books, you want to own them. It's just part of the experience of knowing a book. It's as predictable as toast making crumbs.
And that, my friends, takes space. Real estate. It even...
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Jan.12.2011
The day I thought all the lights on the entire eastern seaboard would go out was the same day I fully expected the earth to tilt and slip away from under me. It was the day, the afternoon, that my grandfather, Big Lou, called my Cambridge apartment from the far away flatlands of the midwest.
My...
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Dec.28.2010
We are under construction. This is not the first time. And if you are a parent, you know that "construction" does not necessarily refer just to the building process.
The first time we were "under construction," we did it ourselves, sledge hammers banging into plaster and horse...
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Dec.17.2010
So we were lighting the Chanukah lights, my goyishe hubby and I. The sky is dark outside and the night is cold. Our son is away at college and this makes the house seem, you know, big and empty.
I light the candles because they are beautiful. I light them because my mother and my grandmother...
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Nov.12.2010
Dawn has hardly woken, awoken, or even awaken.
Well, in 'struth, dawn woke an hour earlier but mankind, being what it is, likes to sleep late. According to daylight savings time, however, and the 9 a.m. rush hour, it still is early.
It is so early, my makeup is not on, not even the tinted primer...
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Oct.29.2010
I've been having nightmares. I've been dreaming about alligators, big bears, and good ol' boys with the law on their side.
It's an odd mix, but they share one common thing: me. I'm swimming in an alligator-infested creek. I am in a room with a Dutch door separating me from the big bear who is...
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Sep.17.2010
The coyotes are howling. Not right now but often enough. I never see them. I only hear them. I love the faux danger of being perfectly safe surrounded by my four walls of civilization while coyotes are howling in the dark close by.
Will a chicken be found dead by morning?
Will a family cat be...
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Sep.13.2010
Eat, Pray, Love: As a book, it bored me. And as a movie, it seemed painfully boring (and Julia Roberts does not bore me).
TrueBlood bores me but vampires do not.
The Shipping News bored me.
Saturday Night Live has bored me for decades.
Madonna has always bored me.
Al Gore never bored me.
George...
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Jul.28.2010
It's like this: I was waiting for her. Again. The frustration was killing me. I think I cried. Maybe I wailed. I felt lost, alone, abandoned. Red-faced and sweaty with hopelessness, I stood there full up with despair.
And then I sat down. I sat down the way one does when you are teeny and swaddled...
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About Linda Pack
I write fluff.
Connections
Causes Linda Pack Butler Supports
Random and not-so-random acts of kindness.
Linda Pack’s Favorite Books
The Help, City of Thieves, Back Seat Saints, Skinny Legs and All, Their Eyes Were Watching God.