Today is my 50th birthday. I won’t lie: I am having a little trouble with this. This past week I have been filled with a strange type of upset and a little bit of panic that crashed into me out of nowhere. This “mini crisis” isn’t about anything related to my life itself. I have nothing to complain about (to say the least); the source of all of this is literally the number, and I am mostly surprised that I feel this way…but in a way, I’m not. I was one of those kids who did the math to learn that I would be thirty-two years old in the year…
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There Are Worse Things To Obsess Over.
I have an odd obsession: toilet paper. My preoccupation doesn’t have anything to do with a particular type of toilet paper or even having a firm stance on whether it should roll over or under. I’m obsessed with having enough in the house. Weird, I know. I have worried about it for as long as I can remember, and I was never able to figure out why until I came up with a theory a while back. More on that in a minute. I get extremely nervous when the stash in the house goes down to single digits: heart palpitations and all. What if someone has a bathroom crisis and…
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Sometimes You Feel Like a Nut and Sometimes You Need to Learn How to Share.
I received some devastating news on Saturday*: my twenty one-year-old son said that he enjoys an Almond Joy candy bar now and then. DEVASTATING*. I thought I was the only one in the family who consumed Almond Joy bars. I mean, I have enjoyed the heck out of grabbing the fun-sized Almond Joys out of the boys’ trick-or-treat bags after they spent Halloween night ringing doorbells for sweets, because they ranked Almond Joy down there with Circus Peanuts and Whoppers. I’ve loved buying the occasional Almond Joy and leaving it on the counter where it would stay untouched until I was ready to eat it. Making sure that Almond Joys…
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The Mystery of the Denim Shorts
Alternate title: Designer Label Averse, Apparently. The scene: my bedroom. Jim, home for the first time since August, has handed me a pair of Calvin Klein denim shorts and questions to whom they belong. “You, I thought…” I replied. “They aren’t yours?” “No,” he said. “They aren’t my size and anyway, I don’t wear Calvin Klein anything.” “Oh, maybe they belong to Dylan,” I said. Sidenote: Dylan, who currently lives here full time, is so well-known for his love of wearing denim shorts that his college/fraternity nickname was “Jorts”. Jim strolled into Dylan’s room and put the shorts on his bed. About an hour later, I was back in my…
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Garage Sales. Don’t Get Me Started.
Garage sales. Sigh. I’m not a fan of attending them, and I’m not a fan of hosting them. When I was a kid, my mom hosted multiple garage sales every year, and I wasn’t enamored with the process at all, to put it lightly. Sure, my sister and I got to be the creative geniuses behind the signs, which took hours thanks to my mom being an evil genius (story here), but we also had to do the work of going through our stuff, helping to price it, and sitting outside watching strangers pick through it all. Of course I completely get that many people LOVE garage sales as a…
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Friends First.
Momo and I met online seven years ago, at some point in 2008. (In Internet time that’s virtually 575 years ago.) We met in real life in June of 2009, when I helped bring a van full of meat to her house. (The Momo’s Meat Wagon story is here.) We’ve been close friends ever since. I became her contractor at BlogHer three years ago, and for every day of those three years I have been one half of a total Dream Team. I don’t think every pair of friends could have a successful work relationship, but we do. We have worked together seamlessly, with excellent communication and just the right…
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New Old Holiday Traditions
If there is anything for which I am well-known, it’s that I’m not a huge fan of the holidays and holiday traditions. Wait, it’s that I have a Type A personality. Wait, it’s that I love tea. Wait, it’s that I’m a very cheerful, optimistic person. Wait, let’s go back to that holiday thing. I’ve explained it many times before; it’s not that I don’t like the holidays in general. It’s more about not fully enjoying the pomp and circumstance that comes with the holidays: the decorations, the fuss, the clutter, the stress, the “we have to do THIS and THIS”…I’m a creature of habit and it all gives me…
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Reason #829 Why I Love The Internet
The internet is pretty awesome. Okay, it is awesome if you set aside the ways in which it sucks. I’m focusing on the awesome today. Here’s the thing. It’s very common for people on the internet to band together and come forward to be supportive when there’s a personal crisis going on. There’s always someone on the internet to say, “Oh my gosh, me too!” or “Don’t worry; that’s totally normal!” whether you’re talking about physical issues, mental issues, home repair issues, kid issues, or any other kind of issue, really. The Good People of the Internet* are right there, helping others feel better. I was having my own crisis…
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Survival Skills
There’s a saying about how Chicago has only two seasons, winter and construction*. My little corner of my western suburb has been experiencing construction year-round for nearly two years now (even through the winter months), thanks to a gutting and extensive reconstruction of a major state route that happens to be one of the few roads that runs through my entire town from all the way north to all the way south. By the way, that state route happens to border my subdivision. The city planners back in the day had absolutely no idea that eventually Naperville would be the fifth largest (by population) city in Illinois and naturally, didn’t…
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HanukkahBlah
No really, I’m excited about Hanukkah. (Really!) The boys are home this week (er, one is en route) and my parents will be here tomorrow for Thanksgiving with a little Hanukkah on the side. It’s just that I haven’t decorated yet, and at this point–since the holiday begins at sundown TONIGHT (I thought it was tomorrow, arggghhh!)–I’m once again thinking that it would be easier to just quietly scoot those boxes of decorations back into the corner of the crawl space. It’s not the first time this kind of thing has happened; in fact, when I searched through my blog archives just now I found the post I wrote three…