Dear Arlene,

Last night, my son told me that his best friend had gotten arrested yesterday, for shoplifting when my son was with him. My son is under 18, however his friend just turned 18 in June. My son says he had not shoplifted yesterday, however he admitted to me… Read full post »

Dear Arlene,

My mom, who is 71 and a widow, seems to be going crazy. She moved here near me when her husband died almost 3 years ago. Up until then I didn't have a lot of contact with her for about 17 years. Her husband liked her to… Read full post »

Dear Arlene,

Recently I've been dreaming about an old boyfriend. Not just dreaming, having full on passionate sex with him in my dreams. Which isn't so bad I guess. I don't have any control over my dreams. I'm worried because I've also started fantasizing about him while having sex with my… Read full post »

About every other week I read something that suggests that video games are a bad, bad thing. That too much exposure to them will rot childish brains. Parents and the people that like to tell parents what they should be doing seem to consider video games the crack cocaine of recreational… Read full post »

When I was a very young mother I used to encounter what Ayun Halliday has dubbed The Old Lady Brigade. They were rude, opinionated and more than a bit bullying. They wore polyester and had blue rinses. When they weren't telling me how under dressed or overdressed my kids… Read full post »

Dear Arlene,

I have been dating the same woman for 8 years and I want to ask her to marry me but we have a problem. When we first got together neither one of us wanted children but as I've gotten older I've changed my mind. I want a child now… Read full post »

Dear Arlene,

I've been married for a year and my husband has just confessed to me that he is bi-sexual. I'm very confused about what I should do now. My best friend says that I should leave him because he going to put me in danger of contracting HIV. I love him… Read full post »

Dear Arlene,

I think my boyfriend is lying to me. He told me that he was going to help his friend fix his porch but when I drove by they weren't on the porch and nothing on the porch that is normally there had been moved. I waited an hour… Read full post »

I discovered orgasms at a very young age. I never realized how fortunate I was in that. By the time I was 8 or 9 I rode the white pony with regularity. And when we moved into the new house when I was in the 5th grade and I found, hidden… Read full post »

One of the most important jobs of a parent is to teach their children to think. Many  parents are confused about this and believe this means you are to teach them to think just like you do. They are wrong.  You find this mindset amongst people who send their… Read full post »

What with the Rachel Ray smackdown, I started thinking, what is it about her that sets me off, really? It is true she's perky and I hate perky. Perky, even when it isn't, always seems fake to me. And no one is perky all the time so people who/… Read full post »

I actually started this post about a week ago and then never got around to finishing it. I'm finishing it tonight. Things have come to a head. Changes are going to be made. Even if I have to drag my husband kicking and screaming into the Century of the… Read full post »

I should know better than to give my family tech advice. I really should. It all starts way back when I was the only person in the family that even had a computer and my dad asked me if he should get a Mac or a PC and I… Read full post »

A comment by Neil Paul on the piece Make Love, Not Measles, Jenny Mcarthy by Dr. Rahul Parikh struck me last night. It stuck with me all night and kept popping into my head uninvited today. It isn't a particularly controversial observation. Just a/… Read full post »

Alaska's Copper River Basin where the O'Brien creek feeds into the Copper River is some of the most treacherous, wild, beautiful country in the world. You can take a picture of it like this one:

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Chitina_dipnet.jpg)

But it only tells half the story. It… Read full post »

I remember my childhood 4th of July celebrations fondly. Mostly because my father turned into a kid himself for that one day when he was able to blow things up.

Dad is a bit of a pyro. Case in point, last summer when my older boys went to… Read full post »

I'm not sure how it came to be that I became Clearlake's unofficial birth coach for young mothers. I didn't exactly apply for the position. It just kind of happened. It might have started with my young friend Desiree. Desiree knows everyone in this town and she was so… Read full post »

Teen sexuality is a scary topic for a lot of parents. It is also the one topic where you will find crazy levels of denial when you talk to them. Parents don't want to think about their kids and sex. Sex is something that will come later, when they… Read full post »

There are two jobs someone can hold that I wouldn't want to have to play supportive spouse to. One is preacher and the other is politician. They both live in a fishbowl and people live to pull them down. Michelle Obama is now in the position of having… Read full post »

Alyssa was born under less than ideal circumstances. Her mother, Cara, is an old girlfriend of one of my sons. When she was 18 she fell pregnant. She'd had sex exactly one time. I know this because she asked me worry filling her big brown eyes "Ummmm, Arlene,… Read full post »

A friend of mine will likely be going into a nursing home. Which depresses me. I don't like nursing homes. I worked in one once, and while it wasn't the worst place in the world, it wasn't great either. Things happened while I was there that I'll never forget. I… Read full post »

My dad takes great delight in telling stories about my childhood's less than stellar moments. He always has. For some reason he seems to think that the time I dressed my sister up as a ragamuffin and had her selling wildflower bunches door to door to make some cash… Read full post »

When my oldest son was a newborn my friend Emma, who was in the parenting teens stage of life, looked at my son and told him, "Your mama ought to stick you in a little box so you never hit 13."

I was slightly horrified by this at the/… Read full post »

It is graduation season again. I hate graduation season. It is an excuse for administrators, without any public speaking talent whasoever, to assemble a captive audience and bore us all to tears with motivational and inspirational speechifying.

It wouldn't be so bad if it were… Read full post »

I first met Debbie when my child chopped his ear off. No, he wasn't going to mail it off to someone. He was 5 and running through the mostly empty house that we were moving into, shrieking with glee. One of our dogs thought this was a signal… Read full post »