column
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To Those Who Abandon Their Own Storefronts
My 7th Grade English Teacher : If you want to understand something, teach it. If you want to know something, write about it. They asked me to write a column; a series of articles to show how storytelling could help companies explain their products and services to customers. I thought, I’m just simply going to “re-tell†everyone what they already know. What’s so profound about explaining information about your product, and getting it out there for people to see? What I found instead, was how so many companies get it wrong. Poorly written websites, which never get to the meat of what consumers want to know: How does your product…
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Is Santa Real?
The question, Is Santa Real, rings through the holiday season with the Christmas carols, and just like the icicles hanging from our rooftops, sends a shiver down our spines. We can stall, ignore or sugarcoat our answers; however these futile attempts to side-step the issue rarely satisfy the insatiable curiosity of a child.
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The Best Place to Hide Presents
When it comes to Christmas presents, kids have a sixth sense; they can smell presents the way a Mom can smell chocolate. You’ve worked so hard to find them the perfect gift, and then, they find the gifts and spoil the whole surprise. The spots listed here are stealthy ingenious because they are, as Poe’s purloined letter, so obviously right in front of your nose, yet still concealed. Not under your bed — but under your child’s bed. They’ll never check there. In the Valentine’s Day Decoration Tub. Your neighbor’s attic. That Special closet with the lock. In the laundry room, under a bag that says “To Fold.” Behind the cans…
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As If Four Pranksters Weren’t Enough
Oh yeah. He’s back… and he’s been quite the challenge to “manage” while we’ve been working through the Great Altoids Gift Challenges. Here’s what he’s been up to this year — from my newspaper column. We can freely debate the existence of Santa in our house — but when it comes to Elf, there is no discussion. Out of all of the make-believe characters that are introduced to children, Elf is the only one that truly helps me. For example, I’ve found him standing guard in front of the Kitchen Aid Mixer, preventing me from creating a icing-massed disaster with my over-zealous dream of a Martha Stewart gingerbread house. Some…
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Gratitude Blooms in Stillness
Would I still be able to dig out a treasure in our Superman Gratitude Journal? Now that the boys are getting older, would their little lists still have “melt-your-heart” treasures like “getting my brother out of the crib?” or “running through the dust when Dad blows the leaves with the leaf blower?” Yet, I found one. Several, actually. But here’s one treasure. From my newspaper column. As my boys struggle each night to fill their list of “Three Good Things,†I realize that this exercise of gratitude takes just as much physical exertion as running across the soccer field to maneuver the ball into the net for a goal. Based…
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Eat, Pray, Starve
More details about my mysterious silent retreat… from my newspaper column. When I embarked on my one-week silent retreat, I knew there would be plenty of time for yoga, reading and contemplation. Meals, reduced to the sacred ritual that they truly are, were to be taken slowly and mindfully, savoring every morsel. I know your mind has already conjured up images of tofu, quinoa and passion fruit, because those were the same images dancing in my head too as I carried my bags to my gorgeous bay-windowed room with a fireplace. So you can imagine my surprise when they revealed the room’s “pantry†complete with refrigerator, toaster and microwave, with…
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What Will You Do Today With Your Boredom?
Adapted from my newspaper column. I am bored. If there is any mantra that epitomizes summer with children, that phrase is it. As their mother, the words send me into a tailspin. Childhood should be happy, joyful, and adventurous. Not boring. What can I do to pull them out of this distressing state? My suggestions yield little fruit. “I don’t want to do that.†By the time the kids are done nixing my propositions, I feel just as bored as they do. Signing them up for yet another summer camp becomes appealing. But what would I be depriving them of if I rushed to fill those empty hours? Kids have…
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Who Said This Is Woman’s Work?
When a woman marries a man, she gains an extra seven hours of housework each week. The man drops an hour. The findings are part of a detailed study of housework trends, based on 2005 time-diary data from the federally funded Panel Study of Income Dynamics, at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research (ISR). Obviously, she’s doing his laundry. The new lovebirds are also eating out less, so she’s cooking. Once the woman has three children, her household chores go up to 28 hours per week, while the man gains ten hours. (The study stopped at 3 children; but if they would have asked me, I would have…
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Our Favorite Easter Bunny
Before I write my column for the newspaper, I give myself a “heads up” that I need an idea. Then, I start the laundry, clean the bathrooms, cook dinner and do yoga while I wait for the inspiration. I expect the idea to come barreling in — hitting me over the head with a ton of bricks. But it rarely does. Usually it’s a whisper; I whisper that I push aside. The idea grows, and it starts to integrate itself into the laundry, the bathroom, the dinner and the yoga; until it is those things. At this point, the idea is pounding in my head in complete sentences, and there…
