Background to the story ( Read more... )

For three weeks now, my daughter and I have been taking our two, year-old beagles to Doggy Obedience Class every Thursday at 5 p.m. She usually has Tony and I usually have Lexie although we have traded off when we get too frustrated with one or the other ( Read more... )

Came home from church today to find a house finch sitting on my front walk. He didn't fly off like the birds normally do when we approach so I suspected something was wrong. This was confirmed by the fact that I could walk up in back of it and pick it up ( Read more... )

I was working on images for my Second Life store and decided I needed a little company so I switched on my little tv I keep next to my computer and saw that Mystery Theater was on. In case you don't know what Mystery Theater is, it's a program with episodes of different UK "mystery" or "detective" type shows and presented on Public TV. I admit I ( Read more... )

I recently joined my three girls, ages 22,19 and 15, together with the youngest ones friend (I'll call her Mindy), on a shopping trip to the "Valley" which is the term used for the general area in which all "cool stores" reside. As we neared Borders Book Store, they began talking about sex and I, being the prudent mom that I am, kept my mouth shut ( Read more... )

Recently I was at a family gathering and a couple of my relatives asked me if I had ever heard of something called "ear candling or ear coning". I replied in the negative and they went on to explain it is used for people who have problems with ear wax and other debris in the ear. The procedure is as follows, you insert a special tightly rolled ( Read more... )

In the continuing saga of trying to get my 15 year old daughter's medical problems taken care of, the lab results for the fasting insulin came in and the doctor herself called me last week. She informs me that Loopy Lynn's blood insulin level is "highly elevated" and then mentioned "pre-diabetic condition" and a host of other things. I was not ( Read more... )

A day or two before Christmas I received a letter from my daughter's doctor saying she would like to run a fasting blood sugar on her and she was enclosing the lab slip. On the back of the lab slip were several affiliate lab locations we could go to to get this done. On January 2nd, we tried to get the lab work done but discovered that January ( Read more... )

One December, about twelve years ago, my children handed me the JC Penny's Christmas Catalog informing me they had circled everything they wanted for Christmas. This is a time honored tradition among many American children and parents usually find everything in the book circled with a big red marker, as I did and they in turn, smile indulgently at ( Read more... )

The longer I wander through life, the more I don't feel a part of it. This isn't anything new, I've always felt this way, like a stranger peeping in. There's probably some deep-seated psychological reason for this but I'd rather not know what it is. I'm sure it can't be something normal and nice ( Read more... )