LESLEY WHEELER

Tag: dieting

  • Bad girl, with rainbows

    It’s so easy to veer off the path your mother sent you down, with cake and wine for grandma. Neglect to whiten your teeth or pluck your eyebrows; be less than completely self-abnegating in a meeting; show anger on your own behalf; gain weight and fail to express shame. And I’m the stereotypical eldest daughter:…

  • Elephant blessing

    On Sunday afternoon I took a bubble bath–I know, tough life–during which I was visited by an apparition. My spouse and kids say I overheated myself, and I did emerge flushed bright-red and a little dizzy, but I swear I spent that half-hour with an elephant made of bubbles. This wasn’t just a heap of…

  • Poetry resolutions with a side of black-eyed peas

    Every New Year’s Day, after the hoppin’ john, my family of four pulls out a box that gets packed away annually with the Christmas ornaments. It contains lists we’ve been keeping since before our kids, now 13 and 16, could write. We reread them, laughing or chagrined or occasionally pleased, before drafting a new list…