Mincing muddle (04/04/08)
Isn't it amazing how the sound of a babbling brook or waves lapping upon a sandy shore can give you such a fine sense of well-being? Isn't it amazing, as well, that a piece of minced onion between your toes while you're cleaning up the kitchen can make you spit fire for the rest of the day?...

The perfect make and model (03/21/08)
When a man and a woman shop for an automobile, they each look for different things. That's why both husband and wife need to be there. If the man went alone, he might come back with a vehicle that would go 200 miles an hour and do zero to 60 in less time than it takes to sneeze, but… it might not have a windshield. He's thinking about the power, not the fact that bugs inhabit the air that he would be plowing through at 200 miles an hour...

Like Liza and Henry (03/07/08)
The husband and wife stood in the driveway next to their minivan, contemplating the flat tire. The wife was a know-it-all harridan. The husband was a patient, tolerant man and he was not quite as simple-minded as his wife thought. They tolerated each other for the most part, but only because the husband was willing to give his wife time to come to the same conclusions he already had. Because of the wife's superior attitude, however, there were many conversations like this one:...

The days of our lives (02/29/08)
Most people, when they look back upon their life, equate each turning point or period of time with an event or series of events. For example, some people might have had the Braces Years, the Silk Shirt Phase, or the Experimental Stage (which everyone knows has something to do with illegal drugs and sex). ...

The laptop with no name (02/22/08)
I had a laptop on which I used to type my column. We were close. I never knew its name, though, mostly because I couldn't decide whether it was a male or a female. When it comes to technology, you have to be well-acquainted with an appliance before you can determine its gender...

Where Beavers and Gophers come from (02/15/08)
When I was a kid, I used to have a puzzle of the United States. I learned so much from repeatedly solving that puzzle, that when I saw a similar product in a store, I bought it for my children. So many kids have no idea where on the planet they live. If you asked my 6-year old where he lives, he'd tell you, "In a house." Well … that narrows it down considerably...

Our mattress has Alzheimer's disease (02/08/08)
When my husband and I first married, we slept on a waterbed. It was warm in the winter and cool in the summer and it satisfied our thirst for adventure on the high seas. However, it wasn't long before my husband's 185 pound frame turned into one of a linebacker. The combination of his weight gain, his restless sleeping habits and our free-flow waterbed caused me to feel as if I were a small ship on a stormy sea...

The history of thirst (02/01/08)
I am going to tell you about the history of thirst. This is history as I understand it. Anyone who doesn't have a sense of humor is cautioned not to read this column because the obvious inaccuracies would be too much for your staid sensibilities. In the beginning, there was water. ...

The Breakfast of Champions (01/25/08)
How many rules is a kid breaking when he has fudge nut brownies for breakfast? It's hard to count them all, since I only have ten fingers. I baked a big batch of fudge nut brownies yesterday and we had them for dessert last night. There was still some left over this morning. ...

Shopping for side effects (01/18/08)
I have, for the last several years, watched the commercials for prescription drugs and have come to the same conclusion that many other people have: Drug manufacturers are out of their collective minds. Have you ever seen a commercial about a prescription drug that touts "Absolutely no side effects!"? That's the drug I'm looking for. Instead they keep making drugs that have side effects that are worse than the ailment you want the drug to alleviate...

A box for blankie (01/04/08)
My little boy is growing up. It's sad and exciting all at the same time. Before he was born, so many years ago, I bought a baby blanket at a garage sale. It was brand new; still in the packaging. It was made of white flannel with blue satin trim around the sides and a little blue teddy bear embroidered on one corner. I didn't know, at the time, how much this little garage sale purchase would mean to my little boy after he was born...

Alien gender issues (11/30/07)
There have been many stand-up comics whose best material had to do with the differences between the genders. That's because there is so much material of this kind to work with. We're simply on different wave lengths. I don't think that any interstellar theories like the popular Venus/Mars thing can completely explain the crossed wires that can occur between men and women here on Earth...

Going green and getting off the grid (11/09/07)
My husband has decided that we need to go "off the grid." For those of you who are not familiar with this term because you actually have a life, this means that we are not going to participate in the electric power grid system. We are going be self-sustaining and "green."      ...

One macabre night (10/19/07)
Halloween is such a strange holiday.  I know the beginnings of this holiday as well as any 8-year old.  But it has â€evolved. Halloween started with the celebration of the Catholic feast day, All Saints Day which is November 1.  Saints cannot be canonized unless, of course, they are dead.  I guess that keeps people honest.  You don’t want just anybody being saintly their whole life simply because they wanted the title.  So, we wait until they are dead, that way we know for sure that they had no agenda.. ...

Where does America keep its apple pie? (10/12/07)
Did you ever get a craving for something that you just couldn't put out of your mind?  That happened to my husband and I when we were four hours away from home.  We had left the house one morning to satisfy my husband's need for something geeky.  He wanted to go check out an amateur rocket launch four hours away.  Although I could think of many other ways to spend that Saturday, I went along for the novelty of it all. ...

Bullies and Super Soakers (10/05/07)
Sixth grade is the equivalent of boot camp for many students. There are so many hormones attacking these receptive bodies that it truly is a wonder that any of them make it out alive. In fact, I have never met a sixth grader that said they had lots of friends, no one ever picked on them and the homework was a breeze. If we ever do find one that has no gripe with sixth grade, we need to recruit that child to teach the rest of them survival techniques...

Treasure in a bed (09/14/07)
Living with a 5 year old is an adventure everyday. Something as simple as changing his bedding can turn into a treasure hunt. Well, the treasure is his, but the wonder of it all is something that I get to share, too. Yesterday was "Changing Of The Sheets" day...

Can you hear me now? (08/31/07)
We are in a day and age when everything is digital and nothing seems to work.  Not that many years ago, when I used a pen and a piece of paper to write a letter, the only thing that could go wrong was that your pen might run out of ink.  Although that was a pain, you didn't have to call someone to have it fixed.  After all, a pen wasn't a huge investment.  If it stopped working, you threw it away and got another one...

Tooth fairy vengeance (08/24/07)
My brothers and sister and I were born about a year apart and as a result, there was a period of about three or four years, in my childhood, when the Tooth Fairy came to visit our house on a very frequent basis.  She came so often that I thought that maybe it would be best if we set up a guest room for her so that she didn't have so much flying to do...

Some 'dummy' books just shouldn't be (08/03/07)
There are certain things that "dummies" simply shouldn't mess with. Neurosurgery comes to mind, for example. My oldest son celebrated his 24th birthday recently. It is a manly rite-of-passage that at some point he receives his very first gas grill. My husband decided that he was old enough now to handle such an important responsibility. ...

Celebrate a virtual birthday (07/27/07)
An e-mail to my sister: Hi, I think I just missed someone's birthday and I think that it might have been one of your children. It might have been your youngest child … no wait you've had another one recently haven't you? How many do you have anyway? I lost count after the first one...

An early start (07/13/07)
My husband had a dream about an old lady kissing him.  She smelled like fruit.  That was his excuse for getting up at 4:30 in the morning and taking a shower.  We had gone to bed late the night before because we were busy packing for a trip we were going on the next day.  Six o'clock in the morning was the scheduled time of departure and that was already too early for my sleep-deprived body...

Caller ID is for spies (07/06/07)
Caller ID is the original spy-tool. It was never patented as such, but I'll bet James Bond would have used it if he had it. Someone could call me and leave a number, but if they're not at that number, I would know. So, if they would lie to me about that, what else are they lying about?...

A man and his grill (06/29/07)
I'm not a man-basher.  Really, I'm not.  If I do say something uncomplimentary about my husband or men in general, it's only because they deserved it.  I love my husband all the time, but sometimes I don't understand him.  I don't understand why he can't eat Froot Loops in front of other people.  He tells me it's not a manly cereal, and he wouldn't be caught dead eating them, even though he likes them.  He eats things like granola and trail mix because they sound manly.  Well…and because he likes them, too.  But that's beside the point.. ...

Scar Wars (06/22/07)
It never fails.  When you're in a group of people and someone mentions a bandage on someone else's person, there ensues a discussion about every injury these people have ever had.  I like to call these discussions Scar Wars. The conversation eventually gets around to each person.  Each person then relates a horror story that relates to a scar on their body.  Each story gets worse and worse as if they were trying to outdo each other in their extremeness...