“There’s nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child.”
– Erma Bombeck
Some gather on the eve and some on the day. Some prefer to leave home, and others to stay. Whatever your preferences or plans may be, Christmas is a time of hopes, dreams and glee.
There you […]
There is a long-accepted seasonal stereotype that says that women love to give amazing gifts and men are incapable of doing so.
Chuckles abound each year as commercials, sitcoms and general conversation all imply males would happily — and haplessly — give vacuum cleaners and dish soap as Christmas gifts if our nation’s jewelers didn’t save […]
Last week, my son opened a door to a pantry full of food and proclaimed that there was nothing to eat. Granted, he is 12, and if there are no snack chips, carbonated beverages or cookies then the cupboard is deemed bare.
Still, it struck me that people who have all that they need and […]
In life there are two kinds of people: those who start shopping for Christmas Dec. 26 of the previous year, and those who wait until Black Friday (or later) to even think about crossing anything off their holiday shopping list.
Many people delight in having their shopping “all done” prior to Thanksgiving. They are at […]
Nothing will knock you out of a navel-gazing haze of self-indulgence over rapidly advancing age — “Wait? What’s that? Another wrinkle?” — quite like staring death in the face.
In this case, “the face” was a snapshot, more than 20 years old, of an old high school classmate who never lived to see her 16th […]
Our sixth-grade son, Wonderboy, has gone to camp. Camp being yet another thing the school district cooked up specifically to test me.
Much like the whole “Fifth graders totally belong in middle school with big giant huge children who look like they eat fifth graders for mid-morning snack!”
They have helpfully decided that in sixth grade, […]
The best thing about the writing life is, of course, the commute — mainly that there isn’t one. I work from home. I can, if I choose, work in my bathrobe.
The only problem with “being my own boss” so to speak is that I have such a close, personal relationship with my employee (also […]
It is often said that every boy should have a dog. That does sound nice. What I truly believe, however, is that every boy — and girl — should definitely have a barn.
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The first barn I vividly remember is my grandmother’s barn. It is the quintessential “big red barn.”
The lower level featured horse […]
Remember when the news was newsworthy?
News, of course, is anything you learn that you didn’t know before. Using that definition almost anything is technically “news” if it’s new to you.
Researchers at Georgetown University, for example, found that caterpillars can “shoot” their feces a distance of 40 times their body length. See there? News! Is […]
There is a point in life when you realize that you never do, in fact, outgrow high school. Worse, you never really get over junior high.
We sent the baby off to “middle school” this year. In my day, middle school (AKA junior high) didn’t start until seventh grade. Today it starts in fifth grade. […]
