Here's to Happy Women...

There’s a good reason the saying, “Different strokes for different folks” has been around for a long time. It’s true—especially when it comes to affairs of the heart. The dynamics between men and women have been analyzed since the beginning of time—and yet they continue to mystify. What works for one couple apparently doesn’t work for all couples. Sure, there are similarities, but some couples relate and communicate in what I can only describe as a foreign language—complete with foreign customs. Foreign to me, that is. That’s fine, because what works for someone else doesn’t have to work for me. It’s not my business, not my life. So it goes that I have my own pat answer at the ready whenever someone says, “I would never put up with that, would you?” I respond consistently with “It works for them.” Now, whether or not it actually works for them, I’ve no clue. Every couple has different boundaries, different rules, and different sensitivities. There are the “don’t sweat the s...

I’ve come to the realization that some people are born complainers. Not born to be wild, but born to whine. They complain and whine about everything. If they have to work an extra few hours, they complain. If they have to work on a weekend occasionally, they complain. If they don’t have enough work to keep busy, they complain. If it’s not sunny enough outside, they complain. If it’s gloriously sunny, it’s “too” sunny. If it hasn’t rained in a while, they complain. If it rains a lot after a long dry spell, then it’s raining “too” much. Everything is an inconvenience—or injustice—that they take to heart, as if meant specifically for them. What amazes me about complainers is they complain about things beyond their control—or anyone’s control for that matter. The things they complain about which are in their control, they do little about—except, of course, complain. These are the folks that are lucky enough to go on a nice vacation and then come back and tell you all the ba...

Recently, I inadvertently sent my son contraband. The custom officials confiscated the forbidden goods, but I’m certain they didn’t just toss it away, unless it was while tossing a nice green salad—a nice big and expensive salad. I was trying to give our youngest a little taste of home—home, home on the ranch. He’s in Australia for a semester and won’t be back until the end of July. Needless to say, he’s having the time of his life, but once in awhile he gets a twinge of homesickness. Not so much for us folks back home, but for the flavor of home. When I spoke with him a few weeks back, he said he was missing Mexican food—more specifically, salsa and tortillas. Then he said he was missing his favorite salad dressing—Ranch dressing. As his birthday was coming up (and Easter), I decided to send him a care package...knowing it would be expensive. I justified the cost by telling myself that at least he would eat a few greens with his Fosters. So off my husband and I went to...

Why is it that we have some friends who make us feel good about ourselves, and then we have other friends who always tend to bring us down? And just like a marriage, for better or for worse, we hang in there with the downers for as long as possible. Faithful until the end. These days, many friendships outlast marriages. This makes me wonder...do I make my friends feel good about themselves? Or am I a downer friend? After all, I’m opinionated, pragmatic, and if you ask me a question, I generally tell the truth…as I believe it to be. On the plus side, this means that I will always tell my friends when their mascara is smeared or if they have a poppy seed or a piece of spinach in their teeth. But honesty is not always popular, and sometimes difficult to maintain— especially when a friend is going through a rough time. When friends have a problem, they generally want you to tell them only what they want to hear—and that’s usually what you do, because you don’t want to cause them mor...

Okay…my husband is on a di et. His knee surgery last year caused problems. He’s not as active as he was prior to the surgery—not by a long shot. He can’t walk for extended periods, nor can he ride the step machine or the stationary bike at the gym as he once did. He can’t even play golf. Bottom line: he’s gained weight because he can’t do what he normally does to stay fit—almost. We’ll get to the “almost” in a bit. A new knee is supposedly the answer to this dilemma. Alas, this begets another dilemma. To get the new knee my husband has to lose weight—or else the operation won’t be successful. Exercise is obviously out of the question, so here we are—counting carbs, calories, fat content and constantly reading labels for taboo ingredients like high fructose corn syrup, trans fat and refined flour. We’ve never done this before. It’s almost like learning a foreign language, except foreign languages aren’t as sneaky as the food labels. This entire situation sounds miserable ...

We've all heard of a win-win situation, but w hat about a lose-win situation? Sounds confusing, but it’s not. Sometimes when we lose we still win. Take for example a recent event in my life. Some of my readers nominated me for both “Best Writing” and “Most Thought Provoking” in an online competition for women bloggers. I told everyone who would listen—and a few who wouldn’t—that I wanted either one of these awards for the first line of my book proposal. I explained over and over again that it would be a call out to influential people, especially editors. It would make them stand up and take notice and provide validation that I was doing something right—that there’s an audience out there for my sideways voice. How pompous, silly and narcissistic I must have sounded...and stupid. I failed to realize that receiving the nominations and then making it into the semi-finals meant that I was being noticed already—and that my readers were plenty influential in their own right. More im...

I’m not a man e xpert, but I am somewhat of a shoe expert—and I’m convinced that t here are three types of guys in the world. That’s right; I’ve narrowed it down to just three. There’s the “shoetree” kind of guy; there’s the guy who knows what a shoetree is, but will never use one; and finally, there’s the guy who says, “Shoe tree? Since when do shoes grow on trees?” As I stood looking at the display of cedar shoetrees in the Nordstrom men’s department recently, these were the thoughts running through my mind. Not sure if I would call it an epiphany. It was more like my own brand of sideways clarity. When I was single, I dated each of these types. So it was that I to ok an interesting journey down memory lane...with a lot of old shoes walking along beside me. You can probably guess which type of guy I married, since there I was looking at men’s shoetrees. So perhaps my opinion is biased, but hey…it’s my her-story and I’m sticking to it. Currently, I have two shoetree guys in my lif...