• Confessions,  Do I Really Want My Readers To Know This?,  Family Fun,  Food,  My Kid Has Mad Skillz,  Too Funny To Ignore

    It Runs In The Family

    February 5, 2013

    The big birthday celebration on Sunday was pretty awesome: J had a really great day overall, which makes me happy. The one thing that didn’t go as planned was that Jim didn’t join us for lunch due to the fact that he was really sick. It was not only a bummer because it was J’s eighteenth, but also because we had reservations at our favorite, only-eat-there-on-special-occasions Brazilian steakhouse. For those of you who aren’t familiar, what makes this kind of restaurant unique is that there is no menu; rather everyone gets to enjoy the “salad bar” first, which is huge and actually has very little salad on it. It’s got…

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  • Best Thing Ever,  Friends,  Too Funny To Ignore

    It’s Amazing We Ever Get Anything Done

    January 3, 2013

    Back in November I showed you a little bit of the behind-the-scenes process that Tracey and I go through for the Listen To Your Mother show. Being silly is a part of our partnership and I wouldn’t want it any other way. (Err, mostly. I wouldn’t want to commit to that statement 100% because I might lose my “Taskmaster Card”.) We are indeed, more often than not, silly. Today’s evidence is a conversation that resulted from this Facebook status I posted after I had been trying to finish up a huge article for deadline and then, well, it’s self-explanatory: The status: OH MY GOSH, Tracey’s cell phone is calling me…

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  • Friends,  Too Funny To Ignore

    On Crossed Wires

    December 15, 2012

    It’s super funny when you and your sister make a date to go to a friend’s house for lunch and cotton candy on a dreary, rainy Saturday, and this phone conversation happens: *ring ring* Jen: Hello? Me: Hi! So…is 11:30 okay? My sister asked me what time we were doing lunch and when I told her 11:00, she thought that meant we were leaving at 11:00 but *I* meant that we had to be there by 11:00, and due to that misunderstanding we’re running a little late this morning. So is 11:30 okay? Jen: Uh… Me: No? Is 11:30 a problem? Jen: Uh…*I* had 12:30. Me: OH! 12:30? Okay, that’s…

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  • Family Fun,  My Kid Has Mad Skillz,  Too Funny To Ignore,  Working On My Fitness

    As Good As It Was, The Conversation Ended Pretty Much How It Started.

    December 4, 2012

    The enjoyment of weight training workouts is something seventeen-year-old J and I have in common. When he was playing midfield in lacrosse a couple of years ago he discovered that adding resistance training on top of his practices made him stronger, of course, and his game improved. For the last two years he has chosen a weight training unit in gym class as much as is allowed, skipping over other units like basketball, soccer, and other sports, and on school breaks he’ll use the Bowflex we have in the basement. I have always (well, since I started working out twenty years ago) enjoyed feeling strong and having some tone in…

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  • Amazing People,  Best Thing Ever,  Blessings,  Friends,  My Friends Have Mad Skillz,  Too Funny To Ignore

    My Friends + Laughter = Me + Thankful

    November 29, 2012

    I had a couple of ideas for this, the penultimate NaBloPoMo post for 2012. I thought I might write about how I used to sew clothing (easy patterns, but still) for the boys when they were little and how a matching pair of shorts led to one of my favorite pictures of them from way back when. Then I thought that I would post a couple of black and white pictures I took of the boys over Thanksgiving weekend. (I love black and white pictures, don’t you?) I also considered sharing (finally) one of the buildings I toured during Open House Chicago, since I never got past talking about Marina…

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