I am at a crucial point in my life, a moment when I know, with absolute clarity, that things will never be the same again: Our local Hannaford supermarket just debuted online shopping and curbside pick-up. I might never go inside a grocery store again.
I’ve been truly afraid a few times in my life: when I bungee jumped from a perfectly good platform 110 feet up in the air; When we lived in Florida and I put out mouse traps but caught a coral snake instead; When I got on an airplane for the first time in more than a decade; When I moved across country while eight months pregnant; And last week, when I ordered pizza from the wrong restaurant to feed my hungry teenagers.
Have you heard about the “new” movement against assigning homework to children? I use the term “new” loosely because kids have been anti-homework since roughly the beginning of mankind, and parents balking at the nightly ritual is nothing new either. In fact, every decade or so, this issue gains momentum again after a new academic book or editorial is published.
This fall, I wrote about serendipitously meeting a group of Amish women at our local office supply store. The women, all teachers I presumed, were making photo copies of lesson plans for their students. I was also making photo copies for students – my college-level mass-communication students.
Until I moved to Maine in 2008, when I was 31-years old, I had never seen more than a few inches of snow, and then, only when on vacation. I had a lot to learn, like: Why would anyone rake anything off their roof (“It looks so pretty with snow on it!”), and why don’t people in the North use ice in their drinks (they just put the glass of soda in the snow for a few minutes)?
A few weeks ago, I went to jail. A few weeks after that, I graduated from the Police Academy.
My house does not have Barbies, nor does it have a doll house or little plastic ponies. For most of my experience as a parent so far (minus a few years), my house has been filled with toy creatures whose names I can’t pronounce and that I don’t particularly like to look at. Banthas, jawas, and tauntauns — these are the things that impale my bare foot in the middle of the night as I shuffle toward the bathroom.
On Dec. 3, Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter announced that the Pentagon will open all military combat roles to women. Finally, women are eligible to do any job a man can do in the military. Young girls, their mothers and Women’s Rights advocates cheered.
Our family’s road trip to Virginia began the way these things normally do: We planned to be on the road by 7 a.m., but we were actually packed and in the car by 3. We had forgotten socks for Ford and pajamas for Owen, and no one remembered to fill the car with gas the night before.
This weekend I danced in the local Dancing for the Stars charity event. My husband, who was in the audience with my three sons, didn’t bring flowers, and it sort of made me fall in love with him all over again. No, you didn’t read that incorrectly.
There are two types of kids: those who eagerly rip out each loose tooth, even before its time, and those who let loose teeth live in their mouth until the skin attaching them to the gums mostly shrivels up. The crown is left spinning on its axis with each thrust of the tongue or even the slightest breath, and every father everywhere is compelled to ask, “Want me to tie a string around that thing?”
Lindell joined the Navy in 1971. No, not my son Lindell, but my dad, also named Lindell, which makes writing that first sentence really weird.
Imagine, if you will, a mother driving her teenage son to school. The mother is wearing Velcro rollers in her hair and has breakfast in her teeth. She’s driving like a 3-year-old playing Mario Kart because the teenager is mad that he is late.
Last week’s column about women and the draft, and specifically readers’ responses to it, raised many questions. I answer them below.
If the words “Selective Service System” don’t ring a bell for you, it might be because you’re female. Maybe you have all daughters, too. For American boys and young men, however, “Selective Service” means “the draft,” and, yes, they still have to sign up for it.
We have never lived anywhere long enough to need to do a deep clean. And when I say “deep clean,” I’m talking about throw-out-broken-furniture-and-bags-of-old-clothes type of deep clean.
Last month, Cherish Peterson, 27, left her 2-month-old son in a shopping cart outside an Arizona grocery store. According to Peterson, it was an accident. Her routine was off, and her three other children had distracted her. Also, you know, she just had a baby two months ago.
I did not expect to see any Amish people during a recent trip to the local office supply store. Partly this was because I didn’t see any buggies outside. Mostly, however, it was because I had some misguided notions about Amish – notions like they’d have no use for a store that at least in part caterers to users of technology.
Ford and I were checking out a book at the public library. Wait, let me rephrase that. Ford was checking out a book; I was his driver.
James Harrison, a Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker, last week sent back his sons’ trophies because they were the dreaded kind, received only for participating in a sport.
