After lunch on Sunday we walked to the next street corner where we found a record store. As in vinyl. As in albumins. As in “Big CDs”, which was the term I used when trying to explain to my two boys what record albums were, way back in the late 90’s and before they became interested in vinyl themselves. These days, all three of us are suckers for a cool record store. (Jim’s lukewarm about it but will absolutely spend some time happily browsing if you ask him to.) We’ve all spent time with my sister on Record Store Day, tracking down colored vinyl or special releases or other treasures.…
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The Waiting Is The Hardest Part
This girl. Sigh. At the time this post goes up, I’ll be delivering her to our vet for another procedure: today she’s having a cyst removed from her front leg. We’ve visited our vet more frequently in the past eighteen months; that happens as a dog (or anything, really) gets older. It’s hard. She’s ten and a half. My other beagle (the late, great Bijoux) lived to be thirteen. She was my first baby: we brought her home two years before D was born. I spent the last three years of her life panicking over each and every health incident (and in between them!) because I was worried that, each…
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Movie Popcorn. We Have a Love/Hate Relationship.
Ah, movie popcorn. It’s one of my very favorite things to eat in the entire world. And yes, I know it’s horrible for me, especially with extra butter. Let’s just get that out of the way. It’s HORRIBLE for me. Horrible. But I love it so. I happen to think that the theaters who have the little “add-your-own-butter” stations did that just for me. I get a little carried away. In fact, I expect my local theater to take away those stations someday, and it’ll be because of me. Last summer, I cut way, way back on the movie popcorn and then I gradually started eating it again. But ONLY…
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Empty Nesting Is Awesome, Except When It’s Not.
I love my life the way it is at this moment. I have one son who graduated from college and supports himself with an actual job, and I have another son who is a college sophomore, living only two hours from home. I work from home. I have the freedom to sleep in if I want, workout for as long as I want, not cook dinner for a whole week if I don’t want to, and most of all, pack a bag and take off to visit friends or accompany Jim on a business trip if I want, with no problem. Many of my friends who still have kids at…
- Childhood Memories, Confessions, Do I Really Want My Readers To Know This?, Family Fun, Pretty Pictures, Too Funny To Ignore
My Dad’s 40th Birthday, In Pictures
I know what you’re thinking. “How can her DAD be forty, when she is in her late forties??” First of all, he isn’t forty anymore, and second of all I am forty-five which is SOLIDLY in the mid-forties, so shhhh. To celebrate his birthday TODAY I am going to tell you about the celebration that is most memorable in my mind, which was in 1982, his fortieth. Of course, that was a long time ago for all of us and because I only remember certain major points of the story, I’m adding drawings for your added entertainment. We lived in Knoxville, Tennessee at the time and my mom had decided…
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The Writing Process Blog Tour!
My sweet friend (and LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER Boston co-producer) Cheryl of Busy Since Birth tagged me for the Writing Process Blog Tour and although I almost always hate being tagged—which is hilarious because my friend Kari from A Grace Full Life just tagged me for another meme just this morning and she’s probably going to read this and go, “GULP”—I’m going to do it anyway. I also have to point out that I absolutely adore that Cheryl sent me a Facebook message BEFORE she tagged me, to ask my permission first because she knows that some people always hate being tagged. (Did I mention how much I hate being…
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Halston*, We Have A Problem.
We moved into this house in December of 2000 and one of the things I wanted to renovate as soon as possible was the double-length closet in our master bedroom. There wasn’t anything wrong with it, really. It was a standard his-and-hers closet with a rod for the hangers and a shelf above it for boxes or other items. I had, however, a dream. I had a dream of a beautiful closet with a place for everything and everything in its place. Hoping to make that dream come true sooner rather than later, I had been stalking custom closet organization products; not the expensive, richly-finished, installed-for-you kind, but the kind…
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All You Need To Know About Me Is Right Here.
The videos from the 2014 season of LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER are now on YouTube! Naturally I’m a little biased and highly recommend that you watch the Chicago show first (the playlist in show order is HERE). That said, I did visit the Madison, Milwaukee, and NW Indiana shows and they were awesome too, and I will be watching ALL of the other ones at some point, likely after the conference-that-shall-not-be-named-so-I-don’t-make-more-work-for-myself. You can catch all of them too, by going to the LTYM YouTube channel. Here’s my “very Melisa” reading from this year’s show.
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Office Space
There’s a running joke in this house about Melisa’s office space. I have lots of offices here. Err, I should say “offices”, in quotes. I have a family room “office” (on that couch), a living room “office” (on the other couch), an upstairs “office” (the little rolltop desk in D’s bedroom, which I have actually never used as an office but it sounded good when I mentally took it over a while back), and a basement “office” (which Jim now claims as HIS office, but I use it every now and then). I am in my family room office (on that couch) about 75% of the time I’m working and…
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My Mom Is Pretty And Other Mantras
Although I wouldn’t say that I’m a worrier by nature, I do sometimes grab onto an idea or a situation and mentally wring it out for all it’s worth. My latest worry is the quality of my skin. I know how it started. Two things: 1. I recently remembered for no reason whatsoever that I will turn forty-six years old this fall. I’ve never been one to freak out about aging and I’m still not, but the fact that starting in November I will be in my “upper forties” instead of my “mid-forties” gave me pause for a moment (and yes, technically I think forty-four to forty-six is probably still…