Here's to Happy Women...

I can’t tell you how many times in the last few months I’ve heard someone say, “Life is a hig hway.” Well, if life is indeed a highway, then some people need to drive a little better. Scratch that. They need to drive a lot better. I’m tired of the road hogs, the tailgaters, the speed demons, the oblivious (to everything but their world) drivers, and the honkers. I’m especially tired of the honkers. Am I talking about real drivers here or will this be another metaphorical column with ducks and trash? Since I’m currently perturbed with many of the drivers in my neck of the woods and a few people in general, you be the judge. Read between the lines or drive between them. Both work for me. Let’s start wit h the road hogs. A road hog is someone who thinks that he or she personally owns the road. They seem as if they’re not paying attention as they hog the road. In actuality, they just won’t make eye contact with other drivers. To do so would be to concede something. What they’re conced...

(This article was originally posted November of 2005. I know that some of you have already read it, but I know that many of you have not. I wish you all a wonderful, safe and delicious Thanksgiving. And now, I am off to Hollywoodland to enjoy the view and my brother's hospitality...and yes, I am bringing the dessert!) W hy is it that the invitations we don’t get can be as agonizing as the on es we do receive? We’ve all experienced the pain of not getting an invitation. Like the Christmas party that all of your friends were invited to, but not you. How about the time when several of your friends got together for a movie—without calling you? This always h urts, so we put on a good show and say that we were busy and wouldn’t have been able to go anyway—even if we weren’t and we could have. Sometimes not being invited is due to miscommunication. Someone was supposed to call, but forgot. Perhaps the invitation was truly lost in the mail. Other times, you just weren’t invited. As hurtf...

Recently I was thinking about the similarities between people and food. We’re all familiar with the famous saying, “You are what you eat.” I brought this up with some of my chicas and we had a great time putting some interesting cuisine in front of our friends’ faces, including our own not so innocent little mugs. We decided to plan a menu for a friendly dinner party. We didn’t base our bill of fare on the food we eat on a regular basis. It was personalities and other little quirks that set our table with an eclectic variety of chow. We started with a snack...and a friend that always has a dilemma in her life. Nothing on her plate i s ever easy. She’s invariably stuck in the middle of something difficult or controversial. Perhaps it’s stealing a bit from the late, great Erma Bombeck, but we decided unanimously that this chica is a bowl of cherries…complete with all the pits. Once pitted, she’s smart and funny, but getting there is a challenge for even the most experienced chefs. But...

On a recent trip to visit our son in college, my husband and I needed to adjust our watches to accommodate for a new time zone. Not just the hour time difference in Colorado, or the difference between our son ’ s 10 minutes and our 10 minutes...we needed to adjust for the time difference between our son’s life and our lives and the thought processes and priorities that our differences entail. You see, there have been times when we haven’t adjusted our watches...and frustration, anger and hurt feelings ensued. There have been times when we’ve been focused on our timetable and priorities and totally consumed with our timing. There have also been times when our son has been tuned into his timetable and completely ignored our time zone. I learned this lesson long ago—and I mentally adjusted my watch before we left for the airport. My husband...not so much. Our destination for the weekend was “The Republic of Boulder.” It’s not officially a republi c , but it’s called this by many Co...

At a party recently, someone brought up the “I don’t” trend of older couples. It was said by one friend that there’s not enough motivation anymore to say “I do” if children are not in the master plan. I know several of these couples. I’m not referring to couples who have “his” and/or “her” children. I’m talking about couples who have no children, on either side, and are approaching (or just past) the half century mark. Many have been together for years (and years), and still have not tied the proverbial knot—or have they? Some of these couples are content with their “single but almost married” status, and others not so much. There’s this one case in which the chica would really like to be married. It’s n ot the wedding she wants per se, but the ring and its symbolic commitment in the eyes of our society. Her significant other has held out for over eight years. Before the comments come in saying that it’s time for this couple to fish or cut bait...or get off the pot, read on. If y...

I’m tired of hearing don’t sweat the small stuff. I like the small stuff. I think life is in the details. If you can’t appreciate the details, how can you appropriately appreciate the broad strokes? I love the paintings by Vincent Van Gogh. I think I appreciate his genius more because I know some of the details behind the canvas…behind the big, thick impressionistic strokes of that Starry Night. Does this make me an “over-thinker,” as a dear friend recently labeled me? Am I compulsive? Anal? Or do I just like the details. What does “over-thinker” mean anyway? Taken out of context it can mean many things. In my case, my friend means that I see things and then do things to ensure the happiness of others. At least I think this is what my friend means. I think she’s wrong. I’m much more selfish than that. I do things for others because it makes them happy, and this in turn makes me happy…and I like to be happy. This same friend calls me detail oriented. She’s right. Details hit m...

It happens all the time. We think we know someone and then we find out we don’t—or at least not as well as we thought we did. I’ve decided that we may not know someone at all until we know what he or she does during the lunch hour. Life is full of surprises, and we may d iscover that a friend’s plat du jour may not be at all what we expected and that he or she has a taste for something different—something we may never choose from the menu in a million years. This happened to me recently. I found that a friend of mine spends her lunch hour in another state of mind...and most definitely in another world. The title of this article purposefully alludes to the lunch hour—specifically the hour between noon and 1 p.m . You might be thinking “nooner” at this point…and you wouldn’t be wrong. It’s actually my friend Su-Z-Q’s nooner to which I allude. It’s an almost daily event that I had no idea took place—and continues to take place Monday through Friday. Let me clarify this statement. I ...