Robin Dodd Photography

What is your deeply buried gift? Don’t think it’s not down there. It is. Something is going to help it rise to the surface. When I was a child, I dreamt of going to Hollywood and making movies. I remember specifically knowing what it must feel like to do that very thing, although I was in the middle of a rural ranchette in Texas. I carried around a video recorder the size of carry on luggage, which attached to a giant news station style camera, and I made movies. I can think of three or four different films that were lost forever in the 80’s. I remember shooting portraits of my cats sitting alongside cowboy hats, with a little 110 camera, and writing story after story and reading book after book. Talking into an old recorder with an English accent, singing at the top of my lungs as I played the piano. These are the snapshots of my childhood forty years ago. When I graduated from the theatre department at Baylor University, I was not ready emotionally and did...

There are a a few new things that I  have discovered  as a mom that make me happy. One, the 24 hour yoga pant, Two. The Middle. A show that has been on for years, but for the past few months I've had the pleasure of being in a room with Grace on Wednesdays awaiting Modern Family and cooking dinner, and I find myself wearing my 24 hour yoga pants and laughing my HEAD off. Grace never laughs as loud as me. I'm in constant laughter, like more than Modern Family, and you know that show is hilarious. I'm mainly laughing at the mom. And Sue.  Does anyone else laugh at The Middle? I find it as funny as David Sedaris apparently, I'm ready to marry it, I love it so much. The third thing I'm discovering is that I love to eat chips. Chips are my downfall. Popcorn counts as chips for me, pita chips, tortilla chips, sun chips.. any kind of chips. After walking around with four full length mirrors three days a week these days, I will know longer be eating those.  And being a mom...

I was up late the other night working and saw a Johnny Carson documentary on Netflix and decided to watch it. It was really good. All the great comedians were on talking about Carson and what a difference he made in their lives. Drew Carey cried, Ellen got a little weepy too, talking about how Johnny called her over to the couch after her stand up. Remember how he did that at the end if you were really good.. Joan Rivers talked about how cut throat and intense he was. It was just a really good documentary, and halfway through I started to cry a little, and then by the end a little harder..I went upstairs, got in bed and said to Shawn "I watched a Johnny Carson documentary and I'm upset." "Why" he says "because he was got married twelve times, because he was an alcoholic or because he's dead." "I'm not sure, I say.." then break into the ugly cry. Sob is more like it. I don't know why I was crying. Was it from nostalgia? Was it bec...

Those of you who know me know how much I love to get up at 4:15 am. We have to be at the gym on Wed morning by 6:00 am and with the time change that translates to the butt crack of dawn. Grace crawls out of bed this morning and says "I didn't sleep AT ALL!!!" well I know better because I heard the snores through the night from the other side of the room. I suppose you know when a kid likes something when they are sleepy but raring to go. Today she told me, "Mom I could see the sleep lines on the girls faces.. and some had on pajama pants over their leos." Which in Grace's world translates to "maybe I can wear pajamas out in public." We've been gone a little over 24 hours and last night we face timed for 30 minutes while cooking dinner on our little stove at 9:30 pm after gym. And when I say face time I mean that Shawn makes ridiculous Blair Witch project faces the entire time while I'm busy examining all the wrinkles on my neck. I miss...