If there’s one thing Southern gals know how to do, it’s gab. Silly or serious, all it takes is a glass of iced tea and time. Pull up a chair, kick off your shoes, and make yourself comfy…get ready to dish!
Be a Camellia
Last month, my oldest friend Kathryn said goodbye to her mother. It was a hard goodbye after weeks of hospitals, frustration, and medical shortcomings, and Kathryn and her father will be dealing with the raw scar of pain for a very long time. Andrea Hickman White was an honest to goodness force of nature. She was married for more than fifty years to her high school sweetheart, Ken. She loved her only daughter fiercely, a love exceeded only by her devotion to her three grandchildren, the bonus children added through marriage, and the...
read moreGood Night, Good Dog
Today was pretty much the Mondayest Monday in the history of Mondays. Today, we put our thirteen-year-old Brittany, Jester, down. Mr. Man and I put a lot of research into choosing what would be our family dog after having lived with Jack, pretty much the perfect cocker spaniel. We wanted something a little bigger, with a similar happy disposition, good looks, smarts, and just a bit different from what everyone else had. So we packed up the kids and checked out a litter of teeny squirming puppies too young to leave their mama and promised...
read moreValentine’s Fun
This is an adorable French animation called Cupidon. Poor Cupid has one job…...
read moreSunday Soundtrack: Jump
I love this song. If you’re ever completely flat and need motivation, let Madonna kick you into...
read moreComing Out of the Dark
Happy New Year, everyone! After the trash fire that was 2017, I think most of us are looking for change, if not outright reinvention. It’s been interesting to read up on people’s resolutions. I have some writer friends who are focusing on the positive in the world (we all could use more of that). Other friends are beginning new reading challenges. It seems most everyone I know has latched onto one permutation or another of diet and weight loss goals, like eating more healthy food or actually going to the gym for once (no thanks)....
read moreSunday Soundtrack: “Just Do You”
Happy New Year! 2016 took a chunk out of a bunch of folks, me included. Looking forward to making positive changes in myself and for others in 2017. This song, one of my favorites by India.Arie, pretty much says it all. Be...
read more2017 Reading List
Earlier this month, I got into a testy professional conversation with an online colleague who was bemoaning how colleges/universities are no longer permitted to teach the dead white guy literary canon because diversity, or something equally stupid. It pissed me off. Not only is that claim patently untrue, but it also denigrates the many brilliant writers who don’t happen to be white males (dead optional). So next year’s personal reading will be an all-female and POC affair. I asked my Facebook friends, a blend of lifelong friends,...
read moreSunday Soundtrack: “Cherish”
Today’s tune is “Cherish,” one of my favorite classic Madonna tunes from her late ’80s album Like a Prayer. It has an effortless bounce and an absolutely adorable video. Madonna recently won the Woman of the Year award from Billboard magazine, and she had some great things to say about being a woman I’d like to share: “As women, we have to start appreciating our own worth and each other’s worth. Seek out strong women to befriend, to align yourself with, to learn from, to collaborate with, to be...
read moreSunday Soundtrack: “Love Never Felt So Good”
Start off this Sunday with “Love Never Felt So Good” by Michael Jackson featuring Justin Timberlake. This video is extra fun because it celebrates so much about MJ’s legacy–the great dance moves, that voice, his multifacted appeal. Everything about it, from the happy dancers of all ages and races to the lyrics to adorable twinkly JT, is just perfection. I dare you not to smile. Or dance, even if you stay in your...
read moreStay Young, Don’t Look Back
Welcome to 2016! Since I’m in the very large crowd that habitually makes New Year’s resolutions but doesn’t keep them, this year I’ll try something different. Instead of coming up with my own list, I’ll borrow one from baseball legend Satchel Paige. His famous “How to Stay Young” was published in Collier’s in 1953. It’s great advice. Here’s how I plan to follow it in the coming year: Avoid fried meats, which angry up the blood. Ah, yes, the food one. There’s always a food resolution,...
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