adventures
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Thawed
Well, what a difference a week can make. Actually, I’m not even sure what day that 16º temp is from. It was actually much colder than that, which should not be happening here. Last week, snowstorms blanketed a pretty large part of the US, and as you can see, Texas didn’t escape it. Now, I lived for 40 many years in northern Illinois and Chicago. In theory, I’m used to1 the cold and the snow. However. Unfortunately, Texas is built for Midwest winters. Our houses are designed for cooling in hot weather, not for this malarkey, and they are not well insulated. I mean, in all the years I lived…
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#The100DayProject – 2019 edition
April 2 marks the kickoff of #The100DayProject – a free online art project where people commit to 100 days of exploring their creativity. The idea is simple: choose a project, do it every day for 100 days, and share your process on Instagram with the hashtag #The100DayProject. What you do is your choice: paint, draw, doodle, knit, sing, dance – whatever you feel is creative. Now, I say the idea is simple. The execution should be too, as long as you pan well. The project says the key is to pick something that you can complete in 5-10 minutes a day so that you can stick with it – and…
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Always Pee Before Airport Security
There are 99 reasons I hate flying out of a certain airport, and 98 of them involve the inevitable flight delay we will encounter. Yesterday I added the 100th – the random security check that goes awry. When we left my son’s soccer camp in Charlottesville, Virginia for our drive to the airport, our flight was on time. By the time we reached the highway, it had been delayed 15 minutes. Then 30. Then 45. Then 2 hours. We stopped along the way at a shopping center to stretch our legs, kill some time, and get something to eat (because the airport food, or lack thereof, accounted reasons 52-58…
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Exploring the Newly Redesigned Being Human Hall at the Perot Museum
As I’ve made it known here, I am a HUGE fan of the Perot Museum of Nature and Science, and my family has held a family membership since we’ve moved to the DFW area. One of our favorite areas is the Being Human Hall which explores us as humans – our origins, our DNA and how we work. While it never gets old, the Perot recently completed a redesign the Being Human Hall – the first since the museum’s opening in 2012. I was recently invited to explore the hall before it’s public opening, and the transformation it has undergone is amazing. The central theme that guides the hall is…
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All You Never Wanted To Know About a Barium Swallow
I have spent the better part of the past few years coughing like a retired coal miner with a five-pack-a-day habit. Except the closest I’ve ever been to a coal mine is rail cars clattering past on the tracks, and I despise the smell of cigarette smoke (which made for a rough go while I tended bar in college). I digress. For a long while my condition was brushed off as asthma. Well-controlled asthma, to boot, save the fact that I constantly suffered post-nasal drip and felt like an invisible elephant was sitting on my chest. (I call her Bubbles – she’s cute but kind of a bitch.) Finally, I found…
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I Went to the 2016 AMAs and This Is What I Wore #KohlsVIPs
I attended the 2016 AMAs as one of the #KohlsVIPs. I still don’t know how it happened *pinch me*, but it did, and while I wasn’t asked to write this, I couldn’t not. A few weeks ago, somehow, somewhere in Wisconsin, some magical people happened to surprise me with an invitation to attend the 2016 AMAs – the American Music Awards. I was sitting at DFW airport awaiting a flight, and I’m sure everyone around me thought I was having a seizure or nervous breakdown (or both) as the invitation came over the phone. I had never been to any kind of awards show before, although I’d watched a lot on TV – along with plenty…
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Baseball Anxiety
I’m an anxious person by nature. I am also a lifelong Cubs fan, but I confess, one who isn’t as enamored of televised baseball games as I am sitting in the ballpark, beer in hand. But this series – and particularly this game tonight, Game 7 – has me chewing my nails to the quick from anxiety. I know people who would use 50 mg cbd capsules to deal with this in other cases, something that isn’t for me but seems fair. I know some people even use marijuana to calm their nerves instead of just the cannabinoid. With weed so accessible in some areas due to it being legalized…
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Exploring “Eye of the Collector” at the Perot Museum
My daughter is a bit of a magpie – a collector of things, some shiny, some not. If you open any small purse or pouch in her room, you’ll likely find a collection: plastic butterflies, acorns, pressed flowers, feathers, rubber bouncy balls. (I’m sure there is a fine line between her kind of “collecting” and hoarding, but for the sake of my sanity and the story, we’ll just call it collecting.) The newest special exhibition at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science focuses on the hobby of collecting – and why people (and museums) do it. After all, that’s what a museum does: they conserve and collect the world as we…
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(I’ll Be) Live from the DFW Auto Show!
I love cars, and since I’m deep in the hunt for a replacement for the swagger wagon, I couldn’t be more excited to be attending the DFW Auto Show this week! I’ll be at the auto show tomorrow for a media event at the Kay Bailey Hutchinson Convention Center, and you can follow along as I share all the fun on Twitter, Instagram, and Periscope (@mommy_grrl)! We’ll all be sharing using the hashtag #DFWAuto, so be sure to look for us! If you’ve been following me for a while, you know I fell in love with my pretty red Toyota Prius hybrid when I lived in Wales – its fuel…
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The Real Challenge is that I Love Food.
Given that my daughter will be turning ten in March, I’ve accepted that I must quit referring to my muffin top as baby weight. It’s a food baby, plain and simple. Since wishing it away hasn’t had any effect on my waistline, and attempts at regular exercise have been so-so, and I don’t have the energy to go find out what this year’s iteration of the Weight Watchers plan is (since it seems to change every year – make up your mind, people), as I mentioned earlier this week, I opted for the Advocare 24-day challenge – mostly on a whim. I’m now nearing the end of the 24-day challenge,…
