Sunday, September 30, 2012
Decorate your rooms with memories.
My friends have well-appointed rooms in their homes. Draped in high-end upholstery of the latest hues and adorned with carefully selected objects d′art, their beautiful interior spaces look like pages out of magazines. I admire their homes, and appreciate the time and effort that went into the creation of each room. And, truth be told, I envy their sense of style. My own home lacks such a designer’s touch. It seems that the time and resources never aligned during my early years of motherhood and career-chasing, so our house remained a structure of function with very little form. Now retired and having inherited rooms full of family furniture and bric-a-brac, it feels a bit late to begin redecorating. But I do look around my den this …
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Offering a shelter animal a forever home renews everyone’s spirit.
I want another dog. I want one so much I can hardly sleep at night. Whenever I try to accomplish something productive, my body involuntarily floats over to the laptop and my fingers autopilot me to the Angels Among Us pet rescue website. No shortage of adorable pups there! My husband isn’t thrilled with my new obsession. He spouts all manner of logical reasons why we don’t need another dog. His main argument is that 15-year old Jack the Wonder Dog would be heartbroken by having to compete for our attention. I disagree, because I have enough room in my heart to smother 20 dogs with love and devotion. And Jack gets pretty bored hanging out all day with two retirees. He could use a sibling, don’t you think? Throughout our long marriage, I …
Saturday, August 11, 2012
A bored mother tells you more than you ever wanted to know about impacted teeth and English novelists.
Wisdom teeth are vestigial third molars, a leftover from our Neanderthal days when we had larger jaws and needed extra molars to chew plants and such. Once we discovered fire and fine-tuned our taste for roasted animals, we no longer needed big jaws for munching only foliage. But, consistent with other vestigial features, we continued to grow third molars even after we found ourselves classified as homosapiens. Wisdom teeth tend to develop between the ages of 17 and 25. And because our jaws are smaller than our prehistoric ancestors, our mouths don’t have enough room for the additional choppers. Thus, oral surgeons make a good living extracting these molars from young adults. Just one more expense for already broke parents, incurred about …
Monday, July 9, 2012
A mother passes along tips for cooking and living well.
Tonight I began to compile for my 19-year old son an electronic recipe box. My preference was to assemble an actual 3-D metal box with antiquated 3x5 index cards divided by food categories. But I am quite aware of my son's aversion to all things non-electronic. So I started creating a colorful collection of PowerPoint slides with recipes to catch his interest as he moves to his apartment in August and begins his second year at Kennesaw State University. My son doesn't need to become the next Bobby Flay, but I would like for him to learn some basics. I know from experience that marrying a man who does not know how to use a measuring cup is...aggravating at best. I'm talking about cooking rice, making spaghetti with Ragu sauce, boiling an …
Monday, July 2, 2012
Young home buyers may expect too much for too little.
I recently began watching the TV show House Hunters. Don’t ask me why I do this, because the show aggravates me to no end. During each 30-minute episode, home buyers are shown three houses priced within their pre-defined budget. Then they select the house they want to buy and the show wraps up with a quick visit to the home a couple of months later so we can see how happy they are in their new nest. The home buyers, usually young couples, consistently cause me to throw my buttered popcorn at the TV screen in disgust. I don’t know where HGTV finds these people, but they are no doubt selected for their incredible skills as whiners. Most couples bring to the real estate agent a long list of “must haves.” First-time home buyers are the …
Monday, June 4, 2012
Our best traits, when used in excess, can also be our worst.
Before retirement last year, my career included a lot of speaking engagements and conducting seminars around the country. I traveled all over the place, sharing what were surely genius-level insights into organizational life and effective leadership practices. Of course, like many university-based consultants, most of what I had to say was tripe. But I got paid well and groups continued to invite me to speak at mostly great destinations. One of my favorite leadership topics was Paradoxical Thinking. Referring my aspiring organizational leaders to the work of Fletcher and Olwyler and their book on the topic, I encouraged them to use paradoxical thinking as a problem solving tool. But, more importantly, I urged them to understand the …
Monday, May 21, 2012
One friendly little wren has nested in our garage and captured our hearts.
About three weeks ago, a wren started building a nest on a high shelf in our garage. Carefully crafted from twigs and dried grasses, the little nest is tightly wedged between pieces of clutter, and is shaped long and deep like a cornucopia. The wren spent about two weeks flying in and out of the garage, holding tightly in her beak additional stems and debris to add to her nest. My husband putters around in the garage daily, but the little wren quickly grew accustomed to his presence. Indeed, he began talking to her throughout the day and grew most protective of his little “Wren Wren.” I was a bit concerned about the suitability of our garage as a maternity ward. Would the bird and her babies be safe from our indoor/outdoor cat? Would the …
Monday, December 26, 2011
The new year lets us redefine ourselves and recommit to family in spite of adversity.
In recent blog posts, I referred to my spouse as my husband-who-happens-to-have-cancer. Friends and readers gently inquired as to the reason for this term, so here is my best explanation. Cancer, or any adversity, should not define who we are as individuals and as families. Every single one of us is at risk for illness, unemployment, financial crisis, sons or daughters going astray. Yes, these events are powerful in their impact. But they must not detract us from who we are. We are - first and foremost – husbands, wives, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers and more. In my culture, the traditional family begins with a couple declaring before their God and loved ones their commitment to weather the best and the worst of times. Non-…
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