Best Buys
I call my husband Patrick "Renaissance man." Five years ago he discovered his tenor voice while singing along with a Three Tenors CD I bought him on a whim. He started taking lessons, won an …
M y husband Patrick has been dreaming of the sea. After blazing through all 20 Patrick O'Brian Master and Commander novels in 10 months, he began to throw out wild statements such as, "I decided …
I knew Christina in high school, and we've kept in touch over the years. As the years passed, some of the old crowd began to wonder if she would ever marry. But she did, and …
Our 15-year-old wedding ceremony VHS tape sits in the bottom drawer of my bedside table. The mini DV tape of our first child's birth and baptism lies in the inner door of my secretary desk. …
"Nobody likes a smelly dog," I said to my husband Patrick. We were discussing Nellie, our terrier, and the fact that the last time we left her with my friend Bernice, Bernice gave her a …
"I t is pronounced, 'bru-skay-ta,'" groaned my husband Patrick after I slaughtered the pronunciation for the millionth time. That thought kept popping into my head as I asked store clerks where to find bruschetta. Not …
Last summer, I spent a month on my brother-in-law's farm with the kids. They fed the goats, caught toads, fished and swam in the pond, and helped harvest vegetables from the garden. I picked endless …
Bernice's mom has diabetes. My friend began to take on the care of her mother's household -- shopping and cleaning. "Her feet hurt," said Bernice on the phone, "she has become more sedentary, and I …
T he cold fact of age -- ten years now -- has taken the spring out of our Scottish terrier Nellie's step. "She doesn't even jump up on the bed anymore," lamented Patrick, even though …
'Idle hands are the devil's tools" was a favorite saying of my great-aunt Josephine. But as she's gotten on in years, she's become increasingly idle herself. Christmas this year may have provided a solution. Josephine …
M y friend Christine fears her two children are growing up without enough family traditions. As she, another friend Celia, and I power-walked through the neighborhood, Christine lamented, "I need to start some family traditions. …
All those bake sales and car washes must have paid off this year -- maybe it was my blueberry-nectarine pie. When our youth group broke open its year-end piggy bank, they found a little something …
Everyone's got skeletons in the closet. Some people's rattle more than others. Mine's pretty quiet, but it's there, literally in the closet: piles and piles of photographs, still in those multi-pocket envelopes you get from …