• Travels

    Germany Is Obviously Full of Green Thumbs.

    The planters all over the towns we visited as well as the flower boxes hanging outside of the houses were exploding with gorgeousness. It was ridiculous. (And by “ridiculous”, I mean “something I am way jealous of because I have a hard time keeping weeds alive”.)

  • Fun in Chicago

    Still Too Young To Be Fearful.

    As we squeezed into the crowded elevator that would take us up 103 floors to the Skydeck of the Sears “I’ll never call it Willis” Tower, Kate looked at me and said, “I’ve had anxiety about this all week.” I had no idea. I told her that the gift shop is away from the windows, in the center of the floor, so if she wanted to hang out there, I’d take Bean over by the windows so we could look outside. Oh, and to the Ledge. Remember how I said that you’d never, in a million years, get me to go out on that thing? Well, here’s the thing. I…

  • Working On My Fitness

    I Nearly Gave Myself Whiplash With This One.

    Remember how I started the C25K program? Remember how I said that I wasn’t planning on doing a 5K, that my only goal was to finish the program? Yeah, about that… I changed my mind…again. I will be doing the Blogher 5K in New York’s Central Park this August*, because how great will THAT be, to do a 5K in one of the most fabulous places in the entire world? Go big or go home, you know? Hold me. *With one of my roomies, Michelle. Anyone else doing it? ©2010 Suburban Scrawl

  • Working On My Fitness

    I Always Said I’d Never Do The Couch To 5K Program. (Never Say Never)

    I have never liked running, ever in my life. Even as a kid, I don’t recall enjoying a simple, quick run across a field just to meet a friend. The required mile-long runs in P.E. class when I was a teenager? I dreaded those days immensely. Plus? I was nearly always last coming back. As an adult, I also despise running. How much? Well, as I told a friend on Facebook this week, I hate running with the fiery passion of a thousand suns. That’s pretty deep-seated, don’t you think? So it makes TOTAL sense that, when I decided that my routine needed shaking up (again), I settled on…running. The…

  • Family Fun,  My Kid Has Mad Skillz

    Driving Miss Melisa

    The big news around here isn’t all about high school graduation, believe it or not. The younger boy is having his own sort of commencement this week. Thanks to a permit test passed with flying colors, he is beginning a lifetime of…driving. Acquiring a driver’s license is very different from how it used to be, back in the day. Basically you read the driving rule book, you *might* have taken a driver’s ed class in school if you were able to fit it into your schedule, you took a permit test, and one day, you just went to the department of motor vehicles on your sixteenth birthday and, as long…

  • Uncategorized

    Under Pressure

    And now, a vent. My apologies. It had to come out of me at some point. I haven’t spent much time online this week. I’m out of touch with Twitter, I’m unaware of my friends’ status updates on Facebook, and my Google Reader’s waistline is expanding by what seems like fifty unread posts every few hours. In real life? I’m not keeping up very well either. I have a tremendous amount of activity going on over the next two weeks, and earlier today a migraine sidelined me until, well, about two hours ago when I made myself get up from my self-imposed two-hour bed rest, in order to push through…

  • Random Thoughts

    Rock-A-Hula Luau, Midwest-Style

    The movie “Grease” holds a huge amount of magic for so many people my age; there’s just “something” about a movie about teenagers in the 1950’s that came out in the 1970’s and is still fun to watch today. One of my favorite parts was always the finale, in which the boy gets the girl and everything is tied up in a neat little package. As I became a teenager myself, I became cynical of the setting in the last scene*: I mean, what school DOES THAT for its graduating seniors? And then, of course, there was “Grease 2”, the movie which Michelle Pfeiffer always seemed to forget to list…

  • Travels

    What Would Mario Do?

    Welcome to Part 853* of my “Weather’s Better in the Bahamas” series! Today I actually have a horror story to tell you, right out of the Bahamas. Don’t worry; I’ve still got pretty pictures AND there’s a happy ending. One of the activities we were lucky enough to partake in while we were there was snorkeling. I had never snorkeled before**, and neither had the older boy. We were totally stoked to wake up on the morning of our first full day on the Pecheur and find out that the morning would be spent snorkeling. We were also totally stoked to discover this view, once we took a short sail…

  • Amazing People,  Blessings,  Something That Could Change Your Life

    So I Received This E-mail From Haiti…

    I was thrilled yesterday when I received a response to the fan letter I sent on Tuesday! Saturday, January 23, 2010RE: THANK YOU (a fan letter)From: Bill NeelyTo: Melisa Wells Hi Melissa {sic}, I’ve just read your email. Thank you so much for taking the time to write and for your generous words. They mean a lot. Its been a challenging ten days. But I’m glad something I did could reach out and perhaps help Haiti in some way. Thanks again. Bill BILL NEELYINTERNATIONAL EDITOR, ITV NEWS200 GRAY’S INN ROADLONDONWC1X 8XZUNITED KINGDOM ©2010 Suburban Scrawl

  • Food,  Reflections on Parenting

    Sometimes the First Bite Is Also the Last.

    Most parents have a strategy for getting their young children to eat foods that they don’t want any part of. If we never pushed our kids to try new foods, they’d grow up on Gerber applesauce and pureed carrots, after all. Some parents make their kids eat one bite of the new food for every year of their age. Some parents make their kids try just one bite. Some parents make their kids clear their plates, and some parents avoid the issue entirely by making an alternate meal for their finicky kids. I am fairly certain that, growing up, I just had to have a taste of the foreign foods…