I won’t say the name of this organization because then I can speak more freely, but there was a meeting last night that my son and husband attended. It was a meeting for kids. Boys only, to be specific. While I say this with complete and utter respect, compassion and understanding, women and girls have no place at these meetings. Trust me. [more HERE]

Even though it’s a rainy day, I want to take a drive out to Ohio farm country, specifically to drive by our old house. I expect it to look the same — a little, two-bedroom farmhouse surrounded by mature trees. I had to have that house when I saw the 200-year old shagbark hickories and enormous oaks, the woods, the barn, the long cement driveway lined with peony bushes, the bird houses atop posts planted along the creek that divided our property from a soy field, farmed by a man who goes by the… Continue

I tried not to swear in front of my oldest son well into elementary school, out of fear he would repeat it and I’d get the evil eye from all the good mothers, who said things like “golly” and “oopsy daisy” when they gouged their skulls in the corner of their kitchen cabinet, or slammed their hand in their car door in the school parking lot. But James would never repeat a bad word. He just knew. Vincent, however, is a parrot. Nothing can be said around Vincent that you don’t want repeated. He… Continue

I’m a one-at-a-time divulger, usually. But I walked into my doctor’s office and I had a list of three things I wanted to talk about. My arthritic finger that my husband has diagnosed as Lyme’s. My thyroid medicine that was switched last month but isn’t “right”. My undiagnosed ADHD that is morphing into early Alzheimer’s. (See Friday’s pie chart.)



I wrote all three things down on a clipboard that I brought from home, with the carefully worded back story on each. I labeled and… Continue

http://www.amymusings.com/2009/10/16/i-want-the-happily-medicated-piece-of-pie/

You know what’s sad and funny at the same time? It’s when you discover that something you believed to be true about yourself, beyond a shadow of a doubt, isn’t true at all. It’s especially funny when that thing you believed was flattering, like a special talent you thought you naturally possessed, but, in fact, was non-existent. What’s worse is once you discover the unspeakable truth you can’t help but take inventory, remembering all the times you shared that “talent” publicly. The feedback you… Continue

An excerpt of a post on using "highly effective communication skills" to get my baseball glove back from a guy who just doesn't want to cooperate.



...Having authored several New York Times best sellers on effective communication — How to Win Friends and Influence People with the Overuse of Vowels; How to Talk to People So They Give Your Stuff Back; How to Stop Obsessing and Start Living; The 7 Habits of Highly, Highly, Highly Effective People; and… Continue

At 15, most of Jason’s friends had dropped out of school. At 17, Jason was thinking about dropping out, too. He found himself sitting in school suspension in October of his senior year of high school for skipping too many days of school. He plotted his escape by telling the teacher he wanted to check out the colleges who were recruiting students in the gymnasium that day. Jason wasn’t interested in college. This was just a way to get out of suspension. The first booth he came to was a Marine… Continue

http://www.amymusings.com/2009/10/02/the-moment-my-modeling-career-was-shattered/

Skye and I want to rip out the Berber carpet that we had installed in the basement years ago when my mother-in-law briefly lived in what is now the mancave. We want to replace it — the carpet, not the mother-in-law (Hi, Shirley! *waves at mother-in-law* You are irreplaceable!) — with the tile we have leftover from the home improvement project we still refer to as the DIY that almost dissolved our marriage.



Skye: “I thought you knew what you were doing!”



Me: “I thought you… Continue