Telling Tales

Do you know what special person will be honored this Sunday? It’s the one day where mom giddily relinquishes her normal responsibility of “doing everything” and replaces it with a meal (that she didn’t have to plan, cook or clean up after)...

At a certain point in life you look at your furnishings and realize you have had enough of the hand me down pieces and decide its time to buy some “adult” furniture.

I may not be organized or athletic or the best possible volunteer for the PTO, but I still have one thing I thought was lost somewhere between college graduation and the birth of my first child.... my ability to rock out!

You can learn a lot about someone by the way in which they play a game. My husband and I both come from families that enjoy playing games during get togethers.

No offense to Ben Franklin but there’s more than two things for certain in life- especially if you’re a mother.

Do you remember life before email? I do and it was such a nice peaceful life. These days, however, my life is in constant chaos and it’s directly attributable to my email capabilities.

Does anyone really know? The normal I’m speaking of is the adjective sometimes used to describe family life. Growing up in a family of six kids and reared by parents that were transplants to Tennessee, it was clear from the beginning that we were not “normal” in the traditional sense.

So we were having dinner with friends when the topic came up about a mutual acquaintance whose daughter had given her kidney to her new husband. We all spoke at once about what a kind and loving gesture this was and how amazing that her husband was doing so well now.    

I grew up in the suburbs of a big city. Most everyone I knew had an identical looking house in a subdivision. Your house was either a “ranch” or a “colonial”. Every home was surrounded by a big gray concrete sidewalk in the front and a large wooden fence in the back.

I have a theory that there are two types of holiday families. There are the cookie cutters and the nutcrackers. As a member of the nutcrackers, I always took for granted that I would get to spend all holidays with my family… that was… until I got married.

I’m the proud mother of two wonderful boys, three if you count my husband. There’s always a bounty of testosterone wafting through the halls of our home. On some days, when pictures on the walls are shaking from the latest wrestling match, I feel outnumbered and in some serious need for girl time.

My wish for some girl time was granted by my good friends, Janine and Alan when they called on me to watch their 4-year-old daughter while they were out of town. This assignment would last for several days. I would finally get the chance to play dress up with dolls, coordinate big grosgrain bows with each frilly outfit and of course, get mani/pedi’s with my new little buddy.