It Is What It Is
Soap opera fans will be familiar with this plot device:
Parents send Johnny off to summer camp at age 6. Six weeks later, Johnny returns with facial hair, a deep voice, and a boatload of grown-up problems. Meanwhile, the soap opera parents, even the ones who have spent the summer being cloned, kidnapped, and stranded on a desert island, haven’t aged at all. Continue reading “Like Sands Through the Hourglass…”
As I write this, I am on day 5 of a 5-day cleanse. This cleanse does not involve any green juice or kale, and sadly, I don’t appear to be losing any weight, either. That’s because this cleanse is actually a “Digital Detox” — a self-imposed hiatus from social media.
If you’re at all familiar with millennial vernacular, you’ve surely noticed the recent rise of the use of the word “adulting” as a verb. It’s the millennial term for taking on the grown-up responsibilities that come with adulthood, and is often preceded by a hashtag, as in: “Just made mac & cheese from scratch. #adulting” or, “Spent my whole paycheck on food and toilet paper. #adulting.”
Lord knows, I’m no millennial. I’ve been “adulting” since almost before the first millennial was born. And yet, I still often feel like an impostor grown-up. Even with the specter of 50 looming over the horizon, I feel like I have been taking the “fake it ’til you make it” approach to adulthood for the past 25 years. Continue reading “Adulting Like a Middle-Aged Boss”
For the past several days, my family has been tormented by a fly. This fly is just your average everyday housefly, I suppose, except for the fact that it is roughly the size of a small blimp. I have no idea how it found its way into our house, but it has been constantly buzzing around our kitchen, taunting us with its lightning fast reflexes and Usain Bolt-like speed. I offered my son a buck if he could kill it, but despite stalking the fly with a swatter for a good 20 minutes, he’s had no luck. I’m telling you, there’s no way Mr. Myagi or Daniel-san could pull the old chopstick-catching trick on this sucker.
It’s tough work being an American consumer in this day and age. Companies are putting more & more responsibility on our shoulders and laying more & more guilt on our psyches. This is something that became crystal clear to me the other day in the Taco Bell drive-thru line. As I paid for my order of Nacho Cheese Doritos® Locos Tacos (it was for my teenage son, I swear), the kid at the window handed me a receipt with a survey at the bottom. He looked me in the eye and said, “If you fill this out and give me a good review, I’ll get an extra $10 in my next paycheck.” I had to admire the honesty, but what choice did he leave me at that point? I could just imagine the kid getting his next paycheck and noticing it was $10 less than what he was expecting, and remembering me (and the make & model of my car) and spitting in my Baja Blast the next time I drove through the Taco Bell.
Continue reading “Can Anyone Recommend a Good Retail Therapist?”
The other morning as the sun was rising, I took my dog out to do his business and I spotted 3 deer grazing at the edge of our back yard. They looked so peaceful, shrouded in some light morning mist. I saw them before my dog did, so the moment lasted long enough for me to start fumbling for my phone in order to snap a picture. I was disappointed when I realized I didn’t have the phone on me, but then it dawned on me that I was actually enjoying a beautiful scene in real life instead of through the lens of my iPhone. Why couldn’t I just enjoy it without feeling the need to document it?
I am so excited to be a Guest Writer on one of my favorite websites, Grown and Flown, a site for parents of teens and college-age children!
Click HERE to see my article about helping your student to cope with tragedy, based on my own son’s experience with grieving a good friend who died by suicide during his freshman year at college.
For years now, consumer watchdog reporters like Jeff Rossen have been warning us that hackers could be watching us through our computer webcams. In response, I’ve decided to take precautions. Specifically, I’m making sure my hair is brushed and my makeup is applied before opening my laptop. Hello, Mr. Hacker! How do I look?
That’s it. I’m not going to freak out about the idea too much, because a.) I think it’s highly unlikely, and b.) the most scandalous thing a hacker is going to see through my webcam is just how messy my desk is. I’m not dancing around naked in front of my webcam, EVER. No one is going to see any nudity through my computer unless I start using my laptop in the shower, in which case I’ve probably got much bigger problems than worrying about some hacker seeing my boobs.
Continue reading “Every Breath You Take, Every Click You Make, I’ll Be Watching You”
Note: This post originally appeared on my first blog, found HERE.
A smoke detector started chirping randomly in the middle of the night. Seriously, is there anything worse?
The answer to that question is, of course, yes. Duh. There is something worse. For example, your house burning down to the ground because you didn’t know the batteries weren’t working in your smoke detector–that would be worse.
But, still… It does suck. You probably know the drill. You get up and try to find the source of the annoying chirping, which isn’t as easy as it seems because unless you are standing right underneath the offending detector at the exact right moment, you can’t be sure where it’s coming from. So you move from room to room, standing under each smoke detector in the dark until you hear the chirp again.
