Claire Bidwell Smith

It’s Friday and life, as usual, is a jumble of all sorts of things. I’m wearing a maxi dress today. That’s how pregnant I’ve become. I’m just about 30 weeks and really feeling it. I’ve been experiencing a witching hour of sorts between 3 and 4AM every night, during which I think about things like Read more…

I’m perched at a counter by the back windows in Intelligentsia in Venice right now, an hour in front of me before I head over to 826LA to teach a workshop on autobiographical writing to a group of teenagers. The convergence of my old LA life and my new one is strange sometimes. When I Read more…

Well, it’s publication eve, and it really does feel like tomorrow is Christmas or my birthday, or my baby’s due date, or something monumental and exciting. I spent the day mainly doing a lot of mom stuff. In the morning, Vera and I walked down to the beach so that we could meet some friends Read more…

Our holiday card this year… Front Inside Three years in a row… Hope everyone has a cheery holiday this month, whatever you’re celebrating. We got into it a bit early around here. Photos here.

Uncle Brad came down from San Francisco and entertained Vera while I cooked. I made my port wine & cranberry sauce that no one ever eats. As well as a 12 pound turkey, cornbread stuffing with apples & sausage, scalloped potatoes, and brussel sprouts with carmelized onions, pecans and gruyere. Liz made grits florentine, sweet Read more…

  I got home from New York two days ago and only now feel like I’m mostly recovered. It was a big trip emotionally and even though it was amazing, it was also exhausting. I had a terrible cold while I was there and it took a lot of work to ignore it in the Read more…

More from our morning beach walk…

I’m sitting here at a desk in the Topanga house, trying to figure out where to even start. It’s Monday afternoon and Veronica is napping and I have what feels like 400 emails to contend with, more unpacking to do, address changes to deal with, final book edits to comb over and I really need Read more…

I am practically tearful with happiness as I report that I officially live in Los Angeles again. We rolled into town around 1:30 yesterday, after a harrowing last hour on the LA freeways (which almost made Greg want to turn around and head back to Chicago, but which actually made me teary with glee to Read more…

Well, we made it to Vail yesterday. Another 9 hours in the car, marking a little more than half way there. We spent most of the morning in Nebraska and finally crossed the border into Colorado around lunchtime. The mountains appeared on the horizon just before we reached Denver and both Greg and I shared Read more…