Perhaps it’s just having the mindset of a writer that makes it so — always humming, murmuring, thinking, mulling over potential titles and monikers — but I have always, even when I was a little girl, been preoccupied with names. In many ways, bestowing a name is the very first act of parenting, the very first gift you give your child — a gift that will, in many ways, help shape how they are perceived in this world.
Back when we were so very young — just babies having babies, really — my best friends and I would spend hours and hours poring over the appropriate baby naming books (Pamela Redmond Satran’s being the biggie) and talking about what we were going to name the beautiful babes brewing in our bellies. And even then, though I was little more than a child myself, I still recognized that bestowing that brandly new being with just the right name was less designation…than it was INCANTATION.
And having now been a mother for nearly 25 years, I know like I know like I know like I know…that giving a child just the right name is not only the giving of an extraordinary gift, it is THE CASTING OF A SPELL.
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About muffybolding
Muffy Bolding is a mother/writer/actor/knitter/feminist/withered debutante who likes the smell of asparagus pee, and remains obsessed with the bathroom hygiene of her three children -- despite the fact that they are 23, 19, and 16. She is blissfully married to a cute Jewish boy who looks like Willie Wonka, but remains tragically in love with the dead poet, Ted Hughes. She has the mouth of a Teamster, and her patron saint is Rocco (pestilence relief.) Ms. Bolding lives in Southern California, where she enjoys typing words, making movies, and plucking the rings from the fingers of the dead. She was the co-creator and Editor-in-Chief of the award winning satire zine, Fresno Lampoon, and in between writing screenplays, carnival barking, and savagely threatening her trio of darling larvae with a wooden spoon, she currently publishes the zine, "Withered Debutante." More of her work can also be found in the anthology, "Mamaphonic: Balancing Motherhood and Other Creative Acts", the compilation zine, "Mamaphiles III: Coming Home", as well as in The Cortland Review and hipmama.com. She is currently writing and producing for film and television, and working on a book of essays entitled, "Inside A Chinese Dragon." She has slept around, but not nearly as much as she would have liked.
muffy bolding 
yours is one of my favorite blogs on the planet.
Jake — from the Livejournal days
good lord, son — THANK YOU! now that’s how you make on old hooker’s day! now, remind me of who you are back from the livejournal days so that i may adore you more fully and with gusto.
=:o]
xoxo