Still a Dancing Queen

Am I the only one who feels relieved when Christmas is over? I don’t know about you, but as soon as December 26 rolls around, I feel the immediate urge to take down every single Christmas decoration and shove it in the attic for the next year. The day after Christmas is like the day after a night of binge drinking. The fun is over and now you have to peel yourself out of bed, head pounding, and deal with the mess.

It’s not that I hate Christmas. In fact, I love it. I love the lights, the ...

Nothing taps into the hopeless romantic buried deep beneath my sarcastic exterior like a wedding. Such a magical event—the couple who radiates happiness, the toasts that bring on laughter and tears, the music and dancing (I especially love that part!).

I love it all really, but the longer I am married, the more it is the ceremony itself that affects me. Two optimistic souls saying, “I’m a nut job. You’re a nut job. Let’s see if we can win this game of life together.”

Ok, so that’s not in most vows, but isn’t it ...

This month one of my book clubs read “Where’d You Go, Bernadette?,” a fictional story of a highly creative, up-and-coming architect who becomes a recluse after suffering a professionally tragedy. After years of keeping to herself—and becoming more than a bit nutty in the process—she actually physically disappears to Antarctica of all places, and her husband and daughter must find her. 

I wanted to love the book since it had rave reviews, but even though it was funny at times, I couldn’t suspend my disbelief enough. Antarctica? Really?

The real problem, though, was that I somehow ...

Any woman nearing middle age—or in denial that she is in middle age because once you hit 40, middle age is always 10 years older than you are—has learned never to ask the question: “Does this make me look fat?”

It’s, of course, an unfair question because if you’re asking it, you already think you look fat. So basically you’re asking the recipient of your question to either lie or hurt your feelings.

The wise nearly middle-aged woman simply says to herself, “so what if my ass looks huge, these pants are fun and I ...

My baby turns 7 this week, which means I’ve begun my yearly descent into weepiness and nostalgia that isn’t PMS-induced. It’s the birthday blues, and they’ve appeared like clockwork ever since her first birthday.

I actually thought I’d escaped tear-free this year, but no, I simply hadn’t been triggered yet. Yesterday my daughter and 11 friends celebrated by making journals out of cereal boxes at her recycled art–themed party. Her smile beamed as she listened to friends from her current school and last year’s school singing rousing renditions of both “Happy Birthday ...