Laughing into memory: Sharing a Buffalo blizzard with my teenager & mother

Since it’s the season of blizzards, I thought it timely to repost this. My thoughts go out for the safety and fun of those hunkered down braving the Blizzard of 2015. As I hold down a house with two sick … Continue reading

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“What’s a hook-up, anyway?”

      Words and meanings are slippery. Crossing cultures and time, words have a way of morphing.     Generational Syntactical Blunders One evening after dinner, a young man visited our household for dessert and studying with my oldest … Continue reading

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Carve Out Writing Time & Guard it Like a Zealot… Until It’s Time to Make Chicken Soup

The title pretty much sums up my week. I worked for days, banking time to free up this last Thursday and Friday for working on the book. “Only two chapters to go. How hard could it be?”  I won’t tell … Continue reading

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Laughing into memory: Sharing a Buffalo blizzard with my teenager & mother

Last week my fifteen-year-old laughed at seeing her breath one morning as she scraped frost off her the windshield of the car. For the first time. My pleasure came from the pure, uncensored delight of that laugh. She’s a teenager. … Continue reading

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“He asked me to be his Valentine, Mommy. What do I tell him?”

My twelve-year-old posed this question.  With the days of the sparkly Valentine’s box and confetti-decorated, pink cupcakes mostly behind us, I pondered my own questions. Who is this boy? What is he like? What does it mean to be someone’s … Continue reading

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Just a Parenting Moment: Thoughts on Teenage Relationships

My soon-to-be-sixteen-year-old daughter is gearing up for a boyfriend upgrade. I must confess I liked version 1.0. Despite the fact that he ate only Mac-N-Cheese and Mac-without-the cheese, I was sad to see this gentlemanly scholar-athlete parked in the friend … Continue reading

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Book Talk with What Not to Wear’s Style Guru Stacy London

“Writing this book was a labor of love. Emphasis on labor,” Stacy London said in a recent book talk she gave in my town about her newly released title: The Truth About Style. “I gained 15 pounds. I adore my … Continue reading

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Scorpions in the Shower

Yesterday, I had the kind of day that included:

• a 7 AM parking lot tutoring session for daughter #1

• the announcement: “Mommy, I tied a cherry stem with my tongue…” (–for the 7th time. We’re going for ten. Every talent counts.)

• early school drop-off both girls

• a gym run to attempt to squeeze an hour work out into 30 minutes

• helping 6th grade tie dye (and I didn’t get any on me!)

• chiropractic

• interviewing a state representative, who stopped our interview to ask if we could pray

• tutoring again

• the 20th reminder: “Red Vines are not a food group.”

• meeting with a doctor/state representative and group of women to understand what the legislature has done to women’s health rights (this list is too small and nice to get into this here…)

• shooing the dog off the top of the table when she thought lights out meant the pastries were fair game

• thoughts of a Margarita, rocks and ice, the whole nine yards

At least by midnight there were no more scorpions in the shower.