Month: December 2012

And Yesterday, We All Took a Bath

This is one of a series of old blog posts I’m re-publishing in honor of my 9/10’s of a decade writing SoCal Mom. This was posted December 29, 2006 while on another Christmas visit to England and Wales.

I had a good laugh Christmas Eve, while watching the weather report on the BBC News channel.

“Today was cold and gray all over the country,” the weather reporter intoned. “Tomorrow we’ll have more of the same. Frankly, we don’t foresee anything different until later in the week, when we will see a drastic change…”

I held my breath, hoping for the announcement that we would finally have a sunny day.

“…when the gale winds return, bringing colder temperatures and rain.”

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What happens in the Olive Garden Stays in the Olive Garden

This is one of a series of old blog posts I’m re-publishing in honor of my 9/10’s of a decade writing SoCal Mom. This was first published in December 2005.

Each December, our PTA holds its last meeting of the year in conjunction with a holiday dinner. Sometimes it’s held at a member’s home – but last night, it was a no-host affair at the Northridge Olive Garden.

I imagine that the restaurant employee who booked our reservation for an elementary school PTA, pictured a nice, sedate gathering of teachers and mothers enjoying a nice holiday meal together.

That picture would be wrong. At least this year.

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Hair Raising Problems

When I finally realized my hair was thinning, I got bangs. I hate bangs, but I cannot go out in public without them. They are my version of a combover. I wonder if Donald Trump feels the same way about his hair, which is now a...

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Last Minute Shopping is The Only Kind I Do

Christmas is six days away and I bought my first gift yesterday. This is an improvement over Chanukah, when my last minute shopping was even worse: everything purchased on the day the holiday began.

I have not always been this much of a flake.

I was not a huge procrastinator when I was young. I carried a DayRunner and I used it — but my memory was so good back then that the mere act of writing something down ensured that I would remember. I rarely needed to look up the phone numbers of my family and friends; I just knew them.

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After Newtown: Holding Them Close

Friday was a minimum day at my daughter’s school, as she wrapped a week of finals before the annual holiday break. I usually bitch and moan about having to quit work at 12:00 to drive to school and get her, but not this time. By then, I knew what had happened in Newtown, and I could not wait to see my kid and hold her close — which has been my inclination whenever the nation has been touched by tragedy.

It is what I did after Columbine, when she was just a toddler, and what I did in 1999, when white supremacist Buford Furrow shot women and children at the Jewish Community Center a couple of miles from our home (after we got the hell out of the neighborhood while the police were conducting a manhunt). It was how I handled my shock and disbelief after the fall of the World Trade Center her second week of kindergarten. I hugged my daughter after each and every report I heard of a child who was abducted… or harmed… or killed. I held her close and I wondered if there was any way to ensure that she would always be safe.

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