For years, Carl has served as the perfect guardian for a little girl. Carl is a black dog that babysits while Mom goes on numerous adventures in the adorable series of children’s picture books by Alexandra Day. Carl was doing just fine, until, the books came under scrutiny by a handful of critics who were [...]
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Looking back, I can say that my greatest memory of last summer was not developing goose bumps waiting behind a boat, but rather, feeding friends and family directly from the garden. Now’s the time to start this summer’s crop. The Farmer’s Almanac has a handy-dandy calendar available for free that has already calculated the phases [...]
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Doesn’t chicken sound good for dinner? Name that movie was delayed by life. The dialogue, which many of you knew, (some admitted figuring it out with Google’s help) was from a movie better known for its reputation as holding the “the longest kiss,” Notorious. Only Cary Grant could make chicken, eaten with your fingers, sound [...]
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The wooden trains have been buried in their storage tub since that sick day when he built an un-Christmas train last year. I made a good-faith effort to pull out the train and placed the tracks under the real Christmas tree this year; but the train was not embraced. In fact, it was simply ignored. [...]
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I caught his eye, and before I let the words out, his eyes told me to stop. Stop. Don’t say what you’re going to say. But I said it anyway. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for your loss. The words brought exasperation to his face — as if he had so much to explain about this [...]
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Years ago, when I was pregnant with my first child, there was an email circulating, listing 10 reasons on how to tell if you’re ready to have kids. One of them was to throw broken glass all over the floor, and walk barefoot over the pieces. The experience was to prepare you for the pain [...]
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Once his big brothers have left for school, leaving the kitchen in a scattered mess of opened cereal boxes, bowls of half-eaten cereal in soggy milk, sticky messes of milk spots all over the table, he pulls out his instruments and begins his morning work, creating worlds that are home to only his favorite colors. [...]
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Peas love cold weather, and I would have planted them by now if not for the icy mass of snow covering my garden spot. At the same time, I was thinking about all that money I can’t resist spending on that first pack of cool-season annuals – petunias and violas for my flower pots. (Which [...]
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Her presence was a constant in my childhood. Hers was the big wide chest I snuggled on as an infant, the shoulder I cried on, the large lap I sat on with scraped knees and bee stings, and the sounding board against the bullies at school. She was my shield when my parents were too [...]
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