We have a cat. Rather, my wife has a pet. The cat has me. Last night, I sat in my easy chair watching wildlife on Animal Planet when our all-white barely-more-than-a-kitten named Coconut issued an order. “Ah, listen to her cute little meow,” Terry said. There was nothing cute or little ...
How did we get so mixed up over nostalgia? By definition, nostalgia is a yearning to revisit a past period in one’s life. That leaves out my junior high school years. Speaking of which, when I was in junior high, once or twice a year, we would have ’50s Days, in which we all came to ...
There has always been the notebook. My earliest memories of family trips — other than bouncing all over the back seat with my little brother — are Dad reciting the odometer reading and the number of gallons the gas station attendant had just pumped into the car. Mom recorded these in the ...
The post warmed me more than a mug of hot chocolate: “In Iceland, books are exchanged on Christmas Eve, then the tradition is to spend the rest of the night reading and eating chocolate.” I don’t know if this is true, but it sure ought to be. Which books should we give? Mine, ...
Toy commercials are back! They probably never went away, but it’s the first time in years that I’ve taken notice with the rapt attention of my youth. And by “rapt attention,” I mean scribbling them in a notebook so I can detail my Christmas list for Mom and Dad. If I had spent as ...
You don’t have to gag your way down the cologne aisles to know that we are enamored of odors. Our speech reeks of fragrances not meant to be taken literally. Take a whiff of some our favorite idioms: • “Wake up and smell the coffee.” (Meaning, “Buy a clue, Mr. Oblivious.”) • “Take time to stop and smell the roses.” (Slow down, you’re moving too fast, you got to make the morning last.) • “Fee-fi-fo-fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman.” (Daniel Craig has arrived.) • “Can you smell what the Rock is cooking?” (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is fixin’ ...
