keep passing the open windows

Me: “It’s freezing out here. It’s a good thing I have these mitten-y glove thingies.” (Yes, in my everyday life I’m quite articulate.)
Reagan: “What?”
Me: “They have places for each finger and then a flap that pulls over and they look like mittens. So they are ‘Gluffins,’ I guess…”
Reagan: [...]

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I hate dream sequences. In movies. In books. They seem like a lazy writer’s way of foreshadowing or a way of introducing bizarre elements without resorting to a deus ex machina.
Nevertheless, I can’t stop thinking about the dream I had two nights ago.
In my dream it was Thanksgiving [...]

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My dad is an anti-fatite (to steal Jerry’s anti-dentite phrasing). Growing up he would frequently make comments about my mother’s weight.
My mother, who at 5′8″ typically weighed and still weighs around 130 lbs.
He would also make comments about the weight of women we would see in public [...]

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And now for something completely different….
My dear friend SS and I signed up for “Tuesday’s with Dorie,” (TWD) a bi-weekly food blogger challange in which you make an assigned Dorie Greenspan recipe from the book “Baking: From My Home to Yours.”
I’d never actually made a tart (other than of the “Pop” [...]

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We had a nice Christmas. The kids got game systems that they love and we had the family over for Christmas. That went well, better than Thanksgiving, as there was no illicit aluminum foil thievery.
Backtracking, a couple of weeks ago I got a message that I had left some [...]

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A couple of days ago I took Reagan to the orthodontist, on the way home, clutching the precious paper that would give her school-time access to the wonders of chewable flavored rubber, she said, “The other day Jesse turned in a gum pass to Mrs. W.”
“So?”
“He doesn’t have braces.”
“Yah?”
“And he had whited out a name [...]

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I don’t want to get dooced writing about work, but what am I, if not a rule-breaker? Dream-maker? Love-taker, don’t you mess around with me!
My work rents a small office in an even smaller town.
Our rent for the past few years was $250 per month.
I know, sounds laughably small, doesn’t it? [...]

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I need some advice. My deluxe vehicle in the sky, a 1997 Toyota Rav4, well, the goddamn fucking doors won’t close. When you shut the door, it just pops right back open. The harder you shut it, the faster it bounces back towards you. This only happens when it’s cold [...]

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T-day minus one:
Don’t try to find turkey parts to make “make-ahead” gravy the day before Thanksgiving. THERE ARE NONE.
If you decide to use chicken parts instead, please read the full recipe. Otherwise you might realize, at 9 pm, that your chicken must be basted with butter every 20 minutes for two hours, then [...]

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My kids’ school has a disproportionately large number of pregnant teenagers and a proportionately small amount of sex ed. They get a little reproductive knowledge in science, a dash of “your changing body” from a trip to the Hult Health education center and smidgen of “sex, don’t do it” in an 8th grade health [...]

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