Everyone has been inviting me to their Ugly Sweater Parties. Everyone has been inviting me to his or her Ugly Sweater Party. Even though “everyone” sounds like a truckload of folks, the singular “his or her” is grammatically correct. (Worried, I confirmed this with the grammar police.) “Their” sounds more …
PART I: HOW ANNOYING AM I TO MY DAUGHTERS? Repeating myself “Mom, you’ve told me that ten times!” Asking too many questions Just after exchanging I love you’s and mwah’s at the end of a phone convo, suddenly a string of questions spills out of my mouth like bubbles from …
Unrelated announcement: A MAGICAL USED COOKBOOK SHOP & A DIVINE COOKIE RECIPE I’m addicted to worry. Not long ago, I wrote a Huffington Post post, Worry Less: 10 Lessons From Cognitive Therapy, in which I advised, “Be aware that rumination and obsession are like drugs, in a bad way. They activate …
RELATED ANNOUNCEMENT: SEE MY HOME GOES STRONG ARTICLE, 11 More Great Ways to Deter Break-Ins, Readers Speak Out. It was Christmastime. I was ten years old and playing on the adding machines in my father’s office. I walked down a narrow hallway to show the secretary my string of numbers. …
It’s been a longie since my last Tip Day. I’m worried you’ll think I’ve run out of tips. To be honest, I’m a little worried myself. So today, when a positive thought visited me, I wondered how I could put a worry spin on it. Then I remembered long-neglected Tip …
UNRELATED ANNOUNCEMENT: Check out my article, FOUR 4-INGREDIENT ENTREES . . . QUICK, EASY, DELICIOUS & HEALTHFUL! A few days ago I went into the basement (scary basements, a whole topic unto themselves) to put away an old file and came across an article I wrote while deeply involved in …
Unrelated announcement: See my daughter’s amazing appetizer recipes in my article: 7 EASY ELEGANT CROWD-PLEASING APPETIZERS. When I was a kid, I thought if only I could wear a suit of armour, I’d be safe from predators. Then, when I learned about conductivity, I gave up the idea, realizing I’d …
Unrelated announcement: How I Organized my Home, De-Cluttered my Life & Learned 21 New Tips Some call the holiday season Chrismukkah, others say HanuKwanzMas. Then there’s Festivus with its unadorned aluminum pole, miracles and airing of grievances. I say Hanukkah simply on its own can cause confusion, starting with: which of …
Call me a curmudgeon, but so many things about restaurants irk me. Noise. I’m not likely to even patronize an esablishment that vibrates with double-digit decibels. Okay, the alliterative appeal forced me to exaggerate. Since 10 decibels=breathing, 15=rustling leaves, 20=whispers and mosquitoes, I could cope with up to 45 decibels, …
It all began with a tweet from MaMoosie, even though it originally began 50 years ago with a French kiss lesson. During one of my maladaptive, obsessive, neurotic checkings of Twitter messages, I see this retweet from one of my followers “MaMoosie” who knows I’m a writer: “’Writing is …
Unlike me, my friend Eleanor never worries about the dark or anything else; she’s more evolved than I am. All my fears and worries I blame on my inner cavewoman, who is constantly on the lookout for danger. Fear of darkness (myctophobia) made sense 200,000 years before Thomas Edison came …
Unrelated announcement: Zhuzh up hot chocolate with a candy cane stirrer and other Breakfast Ideas to Wow a Couple or a Crowd. See my article on Home Goes Strong. I’ll be flying on the day after Thanksgiving and I’m dying to try a pat down. But I’ll not do it …
Shortly after my divorce I signed up for the Marine Corps Marathon and at first paired off to train with a divorced and widowed man named Charlie, who told me he found divorcing his wife harder than losing his other wife to death, because he had to continue dealing with …
Last week, in the writing group I facilitate for homeless people, I suggested a pre-Thanksgiving exercise that got me thinking. Instead of the grade-school-type assignment of writing what you’re thankful for I suggested we come up with some things we are not thankful for and see if we can find …
If you’re not a worrywart, maybe you don’t stress about weighing comfort and how you spend your time against what it requires to look your best. The older I get, the less patience I have for wearing anything that feels less comfortable than pajamas and shearling slippers. I have paid …
Though I have a fear of catching “other people’s worries,” I don’t worry about getting infected by my friend Baxter; each of us independently has come up with the same things to worry about. While gabbing over cappuccinos the other day, she mentioned fear of forgetting people’s names. This is …
Right now I’m overwhelmed. My 12-year-old Casey has been in pain for more than a week and after 2 vet visits and 2 xrays we still don’t know what is wrong, except that the pain seems to be coming from his neck. The rest are White Girl Worries. My mind can …
Here’s how I came to fall in Kindle love (though, as you may come to understand, I am sympathetic to impatient readers, so if you want to skip ahead, scroll down to where you see Kindle in bold). In addition to a lifelong wish that my stomach were flat, I’ve …
I’m one of those people who needs to keep everything in sight in sight (not a typo). I spread papers out on my desk, lest I forget something is there. Inevitably new layers of fear-of-being-forgotten items appear and cover the old ones, which then get forgotten. This goes on till …
When it comes to my to-do list, there’s overwhelming potential for worry. The precursor to my to-do list was the calendar I used in high school. Mainly I wrote what I wore each day and the names of boys I had dates with. Even in my twenties, albeit with teeny …
Unrelated announcement: Show Your Mojo With Coffee Table Books, my latest post on Home Goes Strong. I wonder whether anyone else avoids using favorite things. As far back as high school, I remember saving my blue Villager blouse for special occasions. Now that I’ve lived several more decades, there are …
I’ve always worried about time running out, and after starting my blog, I knew it was only a matter of time, so to speak, before I would write about, um, time. Once I knew I’d be yammering on these pages about this t-word, naturally I began noticing, even more than …
If my daughter says she has to pee, then I have to pee too. And whenever I go to restaurants, I get food envy. No matter what, the other person’s order looks better than mine. Wouldn’t it be great if, similarly, when someone says, “I never worry,” I were to …
I. What to do if I encounter a bear II. What the difference is between biological and chemical terrorist attacks *All I remember is for one you go upstairs and for the other you go downstairs III. Less worrisome is that I can never remember the difference between the words …
When I was in my twenties, I read a book (it may have been Looking for Mr. Goodbar) in which an overweight single woman discovers that the dietetic milkshakes she has been consuming daily for months are not dietetic at all abut are packed with like 1021 calories each. (I …
Unrelated Announcement: Check out my new post on Home Goes Strong, “You Don’t Have to Be Jewish to Make Great Chicken Soup” Oh My Lady Gaga, I’ve met my match! Below is part of an email I just received from a dear old friend, whom I don’t see very often, …
On the Top Ten of my Hit Parade of Worries is bedbugs. It started when friends contracted bedbugs in their home and told me they had to lie in bed at night to be hosts, which drew out the critters, so the Hazmat folks could come in their Hazmat suits …
I’d been rooting around for a good mental picture to swap to whenever I get visions of things like having no one to play Scrabble with when I reach my December years. I was searching for a sweet memory of which I have many. The ones that kept leaping to …
Unrelated announcement: “Composting, It’s Easier Than You Think,” my latest post on Home Goes Strong. Some folks seem to think a worrywart ought to look like a Shar-Pei. Not too long ago I commented on an article in Huffington Post. I do this regularly as it drives traffic to my …
Right after posting One Space or Two? I began to worry that readers would roll their eyes, wondering why I thought anyone would want to hear about the minutiae that hopscotches around in my head. It was wasted worry, because the views of my blog doubled that day and plenty of …