From an outsider’s perspective, I guess the last few days could certainly qualify as our Worst Week Ever. Monday, we returned home from Dennis’s father’s funeral in California. Tuesday, Dennis went back to work at the TV station where he’s been employed for 23 years– and was fired. And if you’re shocked and confused about […]

Dear Daughter, After years of summer drama camps, acting workshops, and children’s theater performances, you finally faced your first major audition yesterday. You were going for the role of Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird, and you arrived at the audition to find that 25 other girls all wanted the part as much as you […]

Don’t believe the hype– There’s nothing wrong with using your Facebook feed as a highlights reel. Last week, my husband and I dropped everything, pulled the kids from school, and, along with my two grown stepdaughters, got on a plane bound for California. A family emergency was responsible for this last-minute journey– I won’t go […]

In the age of the iPhone, we all have our time-suck apps. For some, it’s Facebook. For others, Instagram. For me– and I realize I’m far from alone here– it was Candy Crush. In retrospect, one of  the biggest problems with Candy Crush was that Candy Crush never seemed like much of a problem. I […]

When I was growing up, the one thing my mom always made sure we had was a housekeeper. Even when we were so poor we used a kerosene heater to heat our den and could only afford ten-cent packets of Kool-Aid to drink, we always, always, always had a maid. For those of you who […]

I was scrolling through my Facebook feed when I came to a list of suggested friends. At the top of the list was a woman we’ll call Maggie. “That’s weird,” I said when I saw her photo. Maggie is already my Facebook friend. Or at least, she used to be. When I clicked on her profile […]

You might have noticed by now that adult coloring books are a major trend. Okay… Wait. Now I’m getting a mental image of a coloring book with black-and-white drawings of Playboy Centerfolds, and that’s just all kinds of wrong. Let me rephrase that first sentence. Coloring books for adults are a big trend right now. They are so popular, […]

“Have you seen the nest?” my husband asked me one morning a few weeks ago. “Which one?” I replied. We’re in the middle of a banner bird season here in Nashville– The high-pitched chirps of baby birds wake me bright and early every morning, and bits of robins’ blue egg shells are currently strewn across […]

This column originally stirred up readers in the Nashville Scene. I’m driving down West End silently cursing the man ahead of me, who’s going barely five miles per hour. Cars zoom by on my left, but traffic’s too heavy for me to switch lanes. “Oh, come on!” I say finally, tapping the heel of my […]