Beware the Introducer!

LG is a tween — that stage between 10 and 13 when preadolescence (which is harder to decipher than “real” adolescence) rears its smart-mouthed head, and parents are the stupidest they are ever likely to be. It’s hitting Jif and me hard. As a professional, I have coached families through every conceivable developmental stage, I [...]

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Pay Your Bills — Don’t Let This Happen to You!

First, a confession. Since WTF, I have been late more than once on paying bills. I’ve even picked up our phone to discover it was dead. So I called Ver!zon on my cell phone and did an electronic check, and they turned it back on. I know it’s not good, but it’s not high on [...]

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Bless Her Heart

When the Miss Teen USA Pageant began the other night, I had to change the channel, against LG’s protests. I couldn’t take it. I couldn’t take the too-short shorts, the too-cheesy dancing . . . the over-sexualization of teenage girls, the whole plasticity of the thing. Today, I see what we missed by changing the [...]

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I Wasn’t Always Like This

Much of yesterday, I was unable to talk, due to WTF-ish tongue and throat trouble. In the late afternoon, as LG was scurrying around preparing her backpack and her fashion ensemble for the first day of middle school today, I pulled her close to me. “I’m sorry that I’m so grumpy so often these days. [...]

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Sunday Post

“Fresh activity is the only means of overcoming adversity.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Psalm 51:10-12 The following is an encore post: Back to School I don’t think I’ve blogged this before. I think I just talked about it in an email conversation with a lovely blogfriend, about this time last year. It’s time to [...]

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I’m Back

Thanks, everyone, for checking in. We got home late last night. We went to some nice places — Outer Banks, Virginia Beach (a work thing for Jif), then colonial Williamsburg and Jamestown. Unlike our trip to Vermont, when WTF stayed out of my way a lot of the time, it seems like this vacay was [...]

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Sunday Post

“So often we dwell on the things that seem impossible rather than on the things that are possible. So often we are depressed by what remains to be done and forget to be thankful for all that has been done.” – Marian Wright Edelman The laundry has been done. So I’m thankful for that. We’re [...]

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You Can’t Have That, It’s Not in the Book

Looking at all the crazy around and within me, I got to thinking today of a client I saw for years who was convinced that she was crazy. She did crazy things, and she lived a crazy life, but she wasn’t crazy. People in her family, in her church, on her job, told her she [...]

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No More Calls, We Have a Winner!

Well, darned close. The entry by the lovely and talented RzDrms, aka Razz, on the previous post contained the words that were in the original winning headline, which was (drum roll): Nut Bolts and Screws

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The News Business . . . and a contest!

I used to want to be a TV reporter or news producer. I worked at a station for a while, as an intern on the 11 o’clock news, and I really loved it. And of course, those few months of experience some twenty years ago left me highly qualified to critique the performance of any [...]

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