Swamp Thing

  After a weekend in Sunny San Diego, mimi can’t begin to say how happy she is to be back in her Central Florida swamp. The first time I ever flew west, I spent much of the time with my forehead pressed to the window, watching the landscape change from brilliant Southern green to hard-baked desert brown. Florida and California may have palm trees and beaches in common, but that’s where the...
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Battle of the Bulge

My grandmother was a formidable Southern woman. She was the kind of woman who would rise well before dawn (she was a farmer’s daughter, after all) and get to work, put in a full day of driving, entertaining, cooking, baking, running the family business, and what have you, then repair to her room to freshen and change before my grandfather strolled in. After he retired from his...
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My Labyrinth Moment

One of my many faults is that I’m an out of sight, out of mind kind of girl, which explains why the closet in my teenaged bedroom is still packed full of junk. This hasn’t been an issue until lately. Miss Carolyn, however, has decided to downsize, trading the 4/2-and-a-half with pool for a neat condo not too far away. The house is now disarrayed–boxes and piles and bags...
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Fashion Failure

Sometimes I wonder when the nice people from the hospital are going to call and tell me that there’s been a terrible error and that they gave me the wrong baby. I mean, Frack is a straight-up fashionista. She’s had an innate sense of style since birth and has always had strong opinions about colors and styles, not to mention the ability to throw things together that shouldn’t...
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Thirteen for ’13

Fresh starts are always so enticing, like the smooth surface of a brand new jar of peanut butter (or better yet, Nutella). There’s something so peaceful and calming about them, and yet you know that you can’t get to the good stuff until you dig in and get messy. So it’s in that vein that I submit this list of things I’d like to accomplish in 2013. Establish an...
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