I got married when my stepdaughters were 10 and 12 years old. Two years later, they were living with us full-time and I was pregnant. What followed was a whirlwind of acne and diapers, boyfriends and baby bottles, angst and alphabet songs. It was a hot mess of a time and a true trial by […]

It’s been a busy (and short!) month, but I still managed to read/listen to seven books. W00t. Two of them will definitely be on my ‘Best of 2019’ list. Two will probably be on my ‘Worst of 2019’ list. What’d I love? What’d I hate? Read on to find out…   Follow the River, James […]

I got to try QuikFix free of charge. My opinions, as always, are my own.  I can’t count the number of times I’ve had odd jobs that would be perfect for a college kid in need of beer money cash to help pay off student loan debt. I have the numbers of several good handymen, but it […]

Get ready for the ultimate Chattanooga family vacation. If there’s any city I feel completely knowledgeable about (besides Nashville), it’s Chattanooga, Tennessee. My oldest stepdaughter enrolled at UT Chattanooga in 2008, my younger stepdaughter followed her a few years later, and at least one of them has lived in Chattanooga ever since. We generally visit […]

I always get off to a slow reading start in January — I think it’s because I generally devote lots of time to reading in December, when everything shuts down for the holidays and the kids have time off and it just feels like the perfect time to curl up with a good book. By […]

  Last weekend, my eleven-year-old son and I went to the zoo. It was a cold, snowy day and we pretty much had the place to ourselves. We had fun watching the clouded leopards and Andean bears in their exhibits… But what we really enjoyed was the playground. The Nashville Zoo’s playground is massive– It’s […]

Capriotti’s provided the food for this post.  There are so many new restaurants opening in Nashville lately that it’s hard to keep track, but I’ve been wanting to try Capriotti’s ever since reading about it in the Nashville Scene. As food writer Chris Chamberlain tells it, when he informed people who were familiar with Capriotti’s […]

It’s the time of year when most of us feel soul-shattering regret over our ‘choices’ during the holiday season, and we resolve to grit it out and Get In Shape. For many of us, this means spending an obscene amount of money on expensive workout gear — because it makes sense to assume a flashy […]

  2018 has come to a close and it has been a year my family will definitely never forget. A health crisis easily could have made this our worst year ever, and I’ve definitely had more than my share these last 12 months of hand-wringing, sleepless nights, and total, non-stop anxiety. Am I being too […]

It’s been a big year of books around here — This year, I set a goal of 60 books and ended the year having read 67. Yay! I have to admit, it feels good to have made a conscious effort to use my downtime more productively. And while most of the books I read this […]