It’s that time when we’re supposed to reflect and set goals for the New Year. Or if you’re a member of the more cynical set, it’s time to ridicule resolution-makers and people who take up all the parking spots at the gym until February. Depending on the year, I could go either way. I was looking […]
A little trivia about this blog: It started as family travel journal. Turns out, when you take a couple of kids around the world, you may leave grandparents skittish about the lack of daily contact, even if they weren’t terribly helicopter-y before you talked about getting on a plane. It morphed into a sort of […]
“Don’t you just get more and more excited as it gets closer to Christmas?” This was the start of a conversation over scrambled eggs yesterday, December-the-very-first, with our exchange student, Anna. Since I don’t talk much before 8 am, my only reply was to stare at her over my coffee mug, contemplating her sobriety. Then […]
Early last week, Anna, our Danish daughter, asked how it feels to know, as a nation, that the whole world is paying close attention to your every move. To be honest, right now it feels rather like getting caught by the neighbors, having passed out on the lawn in a puddle of … well of […]
I’m not much into the country music scene, and by not much, I mean not the teensiest bit. So when told my trip to Nashville would be on the eve of the 50th Annual Country Music Awards, with a lot of celebrity sighting potential, I had to confess I wouldn’t know a country star unless […]
There had been an argument down the hall. Raised voices, a thump, then silence. Martha harrumphed and reached over Larry’s head. He flinched as she grabbed the key off the pegboard. She turned and pushed through the swinging door, disappearing around the corner before it could swing back. Larry closed his binder after laying a pencil across the […]
I got into a little argument on Facebook recently. Someone said (and I’m paraphrasing here): Oh, it’s so sad. A child was hit in a crosswalk this morning on his way to school. Please be careful everyone. Then another person, whom I’m just going to call the “Douche Bag of the Day” responded (again … […]
Last month, Grant Feller of The Telegraph published an article admonishing parents to wait to travel with their children until they’re teens. To do otherwise, he says, is a waste of money, and the only reason anyone would do so is to assuage guilt about expensive vacations, and rack up bragging chits about their little […]
The mall in our town is surrounded by an open-air parking lot you can see on approach from the interstate. It stretches to the horizon and it’s always full. Around the holidays, cars back up at that exit sometimes a quarter mile or more. Why this sight doesn’t serve as a warning to any sane […]
When Mike said he was going to do the ice-bucket challenge a couple years ago, I told him if he tagged me, or if anyone he tagged, tagged me, or if anyone THEY tagged, tagged me, I was going to take it as a sign he wanted me to kick him out and change the […]
