Moments after I was born, Dr. Felsenbaum greeted me with a slap on my heinie. Naturally, I was too young to understand the significance of the gesture and took immediate offense to being manhandled straight out of the womb. As it turns out, it wouldn’t be the last time someone slapped me on my backside. I just wished he would have given me a firm hand shake instead. That whack on the bum was my first introduction to a long list of quaint American greeting traditions and was meant to get me started crying and breathing. Of course, I didn’t know that at the time. I would have preferred a…
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Five Minutes from Lorraine Moxie CrimeFighter & Cholera Priest: babies' names have gone wild
During the period affectionately known as the Baby Boom, routine amniocentesis and maternal sonograms were still years away. And while the 50s and 60s can claim fame to some of the best music in the history of the universe, its struggling medical practices offered no help to new parents trying to choose their babies’ names. That being the case, one would think the prudent thing to do would be to spread your bets equally across two columns of baby names: one for boys and one for girls. But my parents were so convinced that I was going to be a girl, they put everything on pink and let it ride.…
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I’m 70 Years Old, Unemployed and a Complete Success Success usually has little to do with how much money you make
“Success means doing the best we can with what we have. Success is the doing, not the getting; in the trying, not the triumph. Success is a personal standard, reaching for the highest that is in us, becoming all that we can be.” — Zig Ziglar I’ll never forget the beginning of Jack Nicholson’s award-winning film, “About Schmidt.” It opened with a hideous shot of Warren Schmidt cramming his belongings into a box on his final day of work. After a lifetime as a life insurance actuary, Schmidt was finally packing it in. My mouth dropped to the floor. An entire life spent as an insurance actuary? What a depressing thought. The…
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My Hoarding Life I've never bought ONE of anything... does that make me a collector or a hoarder?
There was a time when I could move everything I owned into the back of my VW bug. Give me an hour’s notice and I could be on my way to skiing in Alaska or picking pumpkins in Maine. All that’s changed. I’m a hoarder. It’s impossible to pass up a good deal. If I run across a special on melon-ballers, I never buy just one. I’ll buy two. Or three. Maybe even four. I never want to repeat the agony of having to dash out in the middle of the night searching for nail clippers. The same thing goes for claw hammers, Preparation H, or rubber bands. My accumulating…
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Making Errands Fun Again The secret to combining dreadful tasks with fun-filled activities
Thinking back to my childhood, my mother had the process of multi-tasking errands down cold. She’d pop a load of dirty laundry into the washer, drive to the market, pick up the dry cleaning, pay my older brother’s parking tickets, and stop by the bank just in time to get home and move the clean wash into the dryer. Then, she’d make dinner for a family of four. How on earth did she do it? How can I apply my mother’s errand skills to my own life? It’s simple. read more