Career advice can come from unexpected places. We went to visit family in Georgia last week and while we were there, Dennis and I hit up my favorite outlet mall, a seemingly neverending stretch of discount stores from every-retailer-you-can-possibly-think-of, just north of Atlanta. This particular trip was for Dennis, who was sorely in need of […]

Deep Thoughts, Personal

August 3, 2016

The One Career Question We Should All Be Asking

Salesman

Dear Daughter, After years of summer drama camps, acting workshops, and children’s theater performances, you finally faced your first major audition yesterday. You were going for the role of Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird, and you arrived at the audition to find that 25 other girls all wanted the part as much as you […]

Deep Thoughts, Personal

June 9, 2016

Behind Every Success is a Whole Lot of Failure

Behind Success is Failure

Don’t believe the hype– There’s nothing wrong with using your Facebook feed as a highlights reel. Last week, my husband and I dropped everything, pulled the kids from school, and, along with my two grown stepdaughters, got on a plane bound for California. A family emergency was responsible for this last-minute journey– I won’t go […]

Deep Thoughts, Personal

April 28, 2016

Why I Love My ‘Facebook Highlights Reel’

Facebook Perfect Moment

In the age of the iPhone, we all have our time-suck apps. For some, it’s Facebook. For others, Instagram. For me– and I realize I’m far from alone here– it was Candy Crush. In retrospect, one of  the biggest problems with Candy Crush was that Candy Crush never seemed like much of a problem. I […]

Deep Thoughts, Personal

February 23, 2016

Getting Rid of Candy Crush Changed My Life

When I was growing up, the one thing my mom always made sure we had was a housekeeper. Even when we were so poor we used a kerosene heater to heat our den and could only afford ten-cent packets of Kool-Aid to drink, we always, always, always had a maid. For those of you who […]

Deep Thoughts, Family, Live, Personal

January 5, 2016

Shoes On or Shoes Off in the House? The Struggle IS REAL.

I was scrolling through my Facebook feed when I came to a list of suggested friends. At the top of the list was a woman we’ll call Maggie. “That’s weird,” I said when I saw her photo. Maggie is already my Facebook friend. Or at least, she used to be. When I clicked on her profile […]

Deep Thoughts, Personal

November 17, 2015

I Don’t Speak Woman. And It Shows.

You might have noticed by now that adult coloring books are a major trend. Okay… Wait. Now I’m getting a mental image of a coloring book with black-and-white drawings of Playboy Centerfolds, and that’s just all kinds of wrong. Let me rephrase that first sentence. Coloring books for adults are a big trend right now. They are so popular, […]

Deep Thoughts, Family, Personal

October 15, 2015

Death and Coloring

“Have you seen the nest?” my husband asked me one morning a few weeks ago. “Which one?” I replied. We’re in the middle of a banner bird season here in Nashville– The high-pitched chirps of baby birds wake me bright and early every morning, and bits of robins’ blue egg shells are currently strewn across […]

Deep Thoughts, Family, Live, Personal

June 24, 2014

Empty Nest

This column originally stirred up readers in the Nashville Scene. I’m driving down West End silently cursing the man ahead of me, who’s going barely five miles per hour. Cars zoom by on my left, but traffic’s too heavy for me to switch lanes. “Oh, come on!” I say finally, tapping the heel of my […]

Deep Thoughts, Humor, Personal

March 19, 2010

Cyclists vs. Motorists: Can We Really Share the Road?

Bicycle