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Resolution Schmezolution
I suck at keeping New Year’s resolutions. (Including, obviously, the one I make every year to quit swearing.) This year, I’m not going to resolve to lose weight (despite the fact that I am really, REALLY looking forward to joining a big, impersonal fitness center just as soon as the kids go back to school next week.) I’m not going to resolve to be online less. As. If. (Although, I will not be online between school pickup and the kids’ bedtimes.) I’m not going to resolve to try a new recipe every week, or get that photo album caught up, or anything else that is going to make me feel…
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Just Stick Her in the Shed
I read an article today about authorities recently discovered a body stored in a Clearwater, Florida storage unit. Apparently, the unit’s renter was behind on fees, and when owners notified them that they’d be selling off the contents, she said “My grandmother is in that storage unit.” Now, at this point in the article, I’m thinking Grandma’s ashes. Nope. She was embalmed and in her casket. In a storage unit. My initial thought was “Who the hell does that?” Seriously – what is the point? I would think cremation would be cheaper if you don’t want the hassle of burying her….and is she in there with the rest of her…
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You Leave The House for Five Minutes, and You Get Invaded By Pirates
One morning over the holiday, I ran to the market. I was accosted coming in the door. I think they had a good time!!!!
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Tooth Fairies
You’ve likely never seen a child more excited to have lost a tooth. Pea was giddy – GIDDY, I tell you. This is a “Yay, the Tooth Fairy is coming” kind of moment. She lost her tooth, as one does sometimes, while she was at school. Well, lost isn’t exactly the word, since she pulled it out herself. One of her teachers asked her how it was faring, since it had been bleeding a bit and she had been fussing about it all morning. She looked at her teacher, and said “SEE?” as she wobbled it backwards – paused – and then simply yanked it out, depositing it in the…
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I Can’t Do Math in My Head, Among Other Things
Despite the fact that I have a degree in Finance, worked for a hedge fund (and actually worked for a time on the trade desk, where we traded currencies and commodities), I can no longer do math in my head. In fact, I’m even struggling to make sense of the sentence that I’ve just written. The best way to understand what we do is to know that we work in a similar fashion to forex brokers – we help people to trade currencies in the easiest and most efficient way. Yes, it can be a very complicated process, hence why it’s affected my own mind so much. Honestly? I think…
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Where I’m From
I am from pictures colored in a notebook, books and a flashlight under the sheets, from milk and carefully split Oreos and tents made from blankets under the dining room table. I am from the “west side”, dinners in the screened-in porch, root beer floats at the A&W drive in and the summer rain pounding on dusty streets. I am from the lilac bushes on the alley, helicopter seeds spinning dizzily from the sky. I am from Mulvahills and Vicinis and Ewings and Rozattis, from a world where anything was possible with some ingenuity (and duct tape). I am from the from the peacekeepers and worriers, perfectionists and imaginations, from…
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The Escape Artist
Yesterday morning, Macy made another break through the hedge into the adjoining field to chase a few sheep. Not good. It is beyond frustrating, to be honest, and very scary. I certainly don’t want to find myself in the position of collecting a very dead young dog after having been (quite within his rights) shot by the farmer. It’s even more frustrating when I see dogs – a springer spaniel in the mix, who has to be as happy to chase birds as any spaniel – lying quietly in the grass, mere yards away from a falconry display. Where the birds are TIED DOWN. This is not my dog. My…
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If it Makes Me Hip, Does My Hybrid Makes My Butt Look Big?
As someone who never learned to drive a manual transmission*, driving an automatic car in the UK could be a costly undertaking, what with petrol (that’s gasoline to my American peeps) running about £3.60 a litre. That’s right, a litre. (You do the math, my whiny American friends – that works out to roughly (mumbling)…3.69 litres to the gallon times 1.34 a liter…so £4.95…(mumbles)….but that’s pounds…so…about… $8.05 a gallon.) A GALLON, people. However, it really wasn’t enough to motivate me to learn to drive a stick-shift. It’s the whole shifting-with-the-other-hand thing while clutching with the same (left) foot. A Right brain/left brain issue. Whatever, I can’t do it. So I drive…
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10 Reasons Why I Could Not Be a Housewife From ANY County
I’ll admit it. I did watch the Real Housewives from Orange County when it first came out. They were ditzy. They were ridiculously rich, and watching them drop thousands on a piece of jewelry – or a car for their kids – was unfathomable to me. They were, at times, ridiculous. But they weren’t overly mean, or nasty, or snooty about their money. Hell, two of those ladies made their OWN money. However. The rest of the Housewives? I just didn’t get into it. New York? Obnoxious. Preening. They wanted everyone to KNOW they were rich. Atlanta? Damn, those bitches be catty. But really, I could not be a housewife.…
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Ali Baba and the Absentee Blogger
Despite my intent to blog on a more regular basis, sometimes life gets in the way. Last week, that roadblock took the form of a pantomime. I’m was a nervous wreck, mostly because I’m really struggled with my lines. While I realize that one aspect of the “panto” (as it is casually referred to here – I know my friends back home that sitting confused, picturing white-faced French guys pretending to be stuck in a box) is that there is always quite a bit of ad-libbing on the night of the performance — that doesn’t sit well with a Type-A perfectionist such as I. I also panicked because the second…