• Confessions,  Do I Really Want My Readers To Know This?

    When A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words About Another Picture

    It’s the time of year when I start to plan what I’m going to do for holiday cards. I’m one of the dinosaurs that still sends them, you see. I used to make them myself: papercrafting, when I had time to do it, was a blast. I loved expressing my creativity on my holiday card project every year, and if the card didn’t have a picture element attached to it, I included one in the envelope so our friends and relatives who don’t see us very often can check out how much the boys have grown during the year. For the last few years, I’ve ordered cards online, and that’s…

  • Friends,  I've Got Mad Skillz

    Somebody’s Gotta Do It.

    It’s probably not news to you, but I’m very extroverted. I can talk to just about anyone, I’m very comfortable in group situations, and I do tend to, as my sister calls it, “always choose the Fun Pass”. (My sister ORIGINATED the Fun Pass, by the way. We’re good at Fun.) A dear friend I’ve known since high school is not extroverted. (Nothing wrong with that!) In fact, we’ve had countless conversations over the years about how anti-social and introverted she is, in direct comparison to my place on the other end of the spectrum. If I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard her say, “I’m just not…

  • Childhood Memories

    Member Of The Rotary Club

    I will never, EVER get used to seeing Adam Ant and Duran Duran vinyl albums in antique shops. It nauseates me to see my youth tossed into plastic milk crates right next to the milk glass, art deco costume jewelry, and old, dusty pillbox hats. That said, coming across a “vintage” rotary dial phone–also from my youth–next to all of that same stuff last month didn’t really bother me. Go figure. Maybe it’s because I didn’t hang posters of rotary dial phones on my bedroom walls, and I certainly didn’t spend every waking moment swooning as I watched rotary dial phone videos on MTV. It occurred to me when I…

  • UGH.

    Beeeeeeep!

    Thanks for calling. Melisa is not here at the moment; she’s busy dealing with the remnants of a day that started out wonderfully with a Dailey Method workout and a LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER webinar and slowly disintegrated into a seemingly endless grocery shopping trip during which she spent a king’s ransom to restock her pantry and refrigerator with food for the coming week plus Thanksgiving. Her eventual release from the checkout, after feeling judged by her fellow shoppers for how much she had in her cart, resulted in a longer-than-usual drive home due to construction and then an eventful transfer of groceries from the car to the kitchen, during…