I just spotted a Facebook post by the friend of a friend (do we really know all the people we “friend” on Facebook? I think not.) about the death of her child’s fish.

If you have kids, you have pets, and when you have pets, well, death soon follows. The smaller the pet, the bigger the chance you’ll end up having a funeral.

Fish are especially short-lived. We had a fish aquarium when we were growing up, with lots of exotic fish, but they ended up dead Continue reading “LAUGHLINES: Moms Master of Pet Funerals” »

Matt and I went to a wedding over the weekend, and wow. What a romantic event. Made me ashamed of my wedding, back a million years ago.

This wedding was the kind you see in a movie. Less than 100 guests and an outdoor ceremony in a garden. The bride wore a slip of a dress (she’s a slip of a girl) and the groom was appropriately bashful and beaming. Continue reading “LAUGHLINES: She’s Got the Wedding Bell Blues” »

Last night, Matt asked me about my next hair appointment. I thought he was going to complain (again) about the cost of my highlighting, but no – he instructed me to get the gray out.

Ouch. I have blonde highlights to camouflage the gray hair, but apparently it isn’t working. Continue reading “LAUGHLINES: Color Me Beautiful, but Gray” »

I hate to cook and I don’t care who knows it.

I’ve tried to cook. I once cut a few dozen recipes out of women’s magazines, but I’ve yet to make even one. They’re too complicated, they have too many ingredients that I don’t have and don’t want to run out and buy, and frankly, I don’t have the time. I have better things to do, like sleep and — yes, eat.

I don’t have a Cuisinart or a steamer, or a set of professional knives. My oven is electric – no fancy-schmancy gas cooktop stoves for me. No subzero freezer, warming oven, or hanging brass pots that scream “I am a real cook!!”
I don’t have cookbooks, but if I did, I’d be using them to prop up the dresser in my bedroom that’s missing one caster. The kitchen canisters we got as a wedding present 20+ years ago are not in the kitchen filled with flour, sugar or recipes. They’re in the basement, filled with crayons, Legos, and marbles.

Sure, I watch “Top Chef” on cable occasionally, because it’s fun to watch people sling, toss, mash, bash, cube, Continue reading “LAUGHLINES: The Joy(lessness) of Cooking” »

There are plenty of headlines these days about women who’ve found old boyfriends on Facebook, reconnected, and dumped their husbands to run off with “the love of their life.”

After checking out my old boyfriends – and there weren’t that many, frankly — I’ll be hanging with my husband, thank you very much. Continue reading “Laugh Lines: Ditching the Spirit of Boyfriends Past” »

I’ve always been proud of being accident-free driver, and since my daughter is about to start driver’s ed, my clean record has given me an air of superiority.

All that changed last month.

I was in my first car accident, which meant an end to the moral high ground. And since this accident was a rear-end collision, I am doubly shamed by the fact that it was my car doing the rear-ending. Continue reading “LAUGHLINES: Wham-Bam! Watch Your Rear End!” »

For the first time in my adult life, I am not “in the swim,” so to speak.

My beach bag stuffed full of bathing suits and shoved in the back of the closet remains there, and that’s where it may stay. Have I become too old to wear a bathing suit? Sort of.

Like most women, I have a very complicated swimsuit history. It began as a kid, when my mom would buy two identical suits for my twin and me, usually with frills and little skirts. Continue reading “LAUGHLINES: Swimsuit Season? That Ship Has Sailed” »

Every spring I vow it won’t happen — and every year, it does.

I feel the familiar twinge, then itch, then burning sensation. A few days later, there’s a lone blister that blossoms into Continue reading “LaughLines: Spring Has Sprung – Pass the Calamine” »

My cousin is complaining these days that her kids don’t listen to her, and she’s convinced there’s some weird medical malady that’s causing the problem.

It’s so much easier to believe that your children are acting out because they have a hormonal imbalance, a food allergy, or one-in-a-million virus that’s short-circuiting the behavior center of their brains. Any of these would be better than the alternative explanation, which is simply too horrible to consider: that you’re a lousy parent and your kids are brats.

Most of us assume that the most complicated, convoluted answer is the correct one, don’t we? Famed aviatrix Amelia Earhart didn’t go missing because she had a lousy sense of direction or forgot to check the gas gauge – she was abducted by aliens.

Lee Harvey Oswald was part of a vast conspiracy that included Vice President Lyndon Johnson, Fidel Castro, Jimmy Hoffa, the Mafia, and the Radio City Rockettes, right? Don’t tell me he was just a looney guy with a high-powered rifle.

The pyramids? Built by aliens. You can also credit those little green guys with crop circles and the giant designs in the Andes you can only see from the air.

Elvis? He didn’t die sitting on the toilet. No, he’s living happily and anonymously in Des Moines, hanging out in donut shops and working at the A&P. Fame was too much to handle, so he pulled off the world’s greatest vanishing act.

The fact is, we don’t want to know the facts. We don’t want to admit that the simplest explanation is usually the right one. The pyramids were built by thousands of slaves who didn’t get even minimum wage, and never took time off to see the dentist or get to that great sale at Kohl’s. Elvis died on the crapper (pardon the expression) after over-exertion due to chronic constipation caused by prescription drug abuse.

Sure, the truth isn’t pretty, but if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, odds are, honey, it IS a duck. Sorry. It’s not a prehistoric bird that lay dormant in a glacier in the Arctic until it was freed by global warming-induced melting.

And your kids? They act out because you’re not raising them right. They scream because it gets them attention, not because of some incredibly rare disease, or a genetic mutation that afflicts one-in-a-zillion children.

In this case, as in countless others, the duck theory applies. Sorry, cuz.

I just spent a few days in New York City, and I gotta admit, I’m no city girl.

It’s not that I don’t try. I read the Times for a few days, pack black clothes, toss in a pair of Jackie O sunglasses and away I go.

I even went more ‘native’ this time, and got a room at a funky, boutique hotel in a funky part of town. How much more ‘in’ could I get? I also brought my 14 year old, Ben, so he could see firsthand how sophisticated his country hick mother could be. Continue reading “LAUGHLINES: I Love NY? Not So Much” »