I got talked into attending a Tea Party rally in my town. A cousin promised me that I wouldn't be burned at the stake or made to drink strychnine, and  as long as I could manage to keep my mouth closed and my head from exploding, I'd be juuuuust fine. It… Read full post »

I write a newspaper column every week. I love opportunity, and the interaction that my stories and ponderings affords me with the public. Sometimes, a whole 750 words just pours right out, needing no editing at all. Other times, I'm sitting, head in my hands, in front of the computer two… Read full post »

ba-doun-da-dou-doun

Got me a Focus

ba-doun-da-dou-doun

five whole years to pay!

gonna have it paid for

six months from today!

dou-da-doun-doun-da-doun

Awww, but don't you know iiiiit,

my wheels are shaky,

and the brakes done stopped braking.

I got them low-down, everlastin',

91,000 miles and two oil… Read full post »

    I saw a piece of art the other day that made me stop and think. It was titled “What Color is Water?”, and it depicted well-dressed parents holding their child while she drank from a tall chrome-colored fountain. Next to the shiny clean water fountain, a young boy stood/… Read full post »

I should point out that I consider myself a Christian. I belong to a church, and enjoy the sense of security that believing in a Higher Power affords me. I don't care what others believe, and I don't beleive in the Devil or Hell, or that you have to accepted Jesus… Read full post »

Well, here I sit, wet and cold, surrounded by three large, hyperactive canines who all need their toenails cut,but otherwise all alone on Christmas Eve. The weather outside is indeed frightful, but I don't know how to turn on the fireplace, and besides, it's not even snowy frightful, but merely… Read full post »

 It was because of corn starch that I realized I may have  become  a jaded woman.

I was in the Piggly Wiggly tonight, singing Christmas carols in my head and gathering up the ingredients for Spritz cookies when I heard a young man ask a question. He wasn't talking to… Read full post »

I love Christmastime. I do. I do. 

But people keep dying on me during the late fall and winter months, and it's starting to catch up with me. I found myself not loving December quite so much this year.

It started with Mark, a cousin whom I adored. He adored a… Read full post »

I've had it with the "Abortion Debate". If I see one more black and white photo of a teeny baby nestled in a man's hands plastered on a billboard, or a friend's Facebook profile, I'll scream. If one more person tries to argue that making late term abortions illegal will lead… Read full post »

I guess that by now it's old news, the story about the women scorned who unleashed their hellish fury on their mutual lust interest. His wife and three extra-marital buddies got together and decided to teach him a lesson.

Thousands of women cheered the unholy Krazy Glueing of the player's manly… Read full post »

The asshat started his diatribe by saying, "Now, my wife works for an insurance agency, so we've got great insurance, but...".

I was standing at my little work station, putting the finishing touches on a custom frame design, and my boss was standing, arms crossed and legs straddled in the internation… Read full post »

I was on my way to work this morning when I saw him. He was standing, shirtless, in front of his little rented hovel, and his arms and belly were lean and cut with ropey muscle. He had the kind of body that comes from hours slinging a hammer, or I… Read full post »

Let me say, right up front, that I really like my friends. I know they sometimes get on my very last nerve, and I occasionally cringe and duck when I see them coming, but I really, really, reallllly like them, so if a certain freind were to read this, well, just… Read full post »

This is an old column, one from about a year and a half ago. O'Stephanie's wonderful post on raising her daughter to embrace nudity inspired me to post it here.

Sometimes Mama says she wishes that she’d taught me to be normal.  I don’t know if it’s her raising or… Read full post »

It's Sunday afternoon again, and again I've booked myself solid for the entire weekend. I can't seem to make it through the most anticipated 48 hours of the week without anything to do. Most people can sleep all day or garden, or make babies or something besides work on the weekends.

Not… Read full post »

I never understood the whole "don't ask, don't tell" controversy until the other day. Most of my life, I've been lucky enough to have many friends who were gay or lesbian, and I'm particularly sensitive to the way they're still mistreated in our society. I just didn't get why it was… Read full post »

My husband is not a carpenter. He is, in fact, a brilliant artist who used to be a brilliant attorney, but the lack of carpenterness is much more important here. He hates hammers, nails, wood, anything that might cause him to sweat or measure angles.

I love power tools and… Read full post »

South Carolina was left without a captain at the helm for much of the past week. Mark Sanford, the golden-haired child of the conservative movement was AWOL.

When word got out, he came sheepishly back to Columbia, admitting a year-long affair. He'd been in Argentina, doing the horizontal tango with… Read full post »

Here's this week's column. It's about my Daddy, a man I've not always been comfortable around, but whom I've always loved.

When Brother and I were little, we thought we had the biggest, toughest, heroiest daddy ever. He could be gruff, but we knew that he loved us, and he… Read full post »

Here's part of a chapter from my manuscript-in-progress, Danced To Death. It is unabashedly southern, and hopefully pretty funny. In this section, Krystle Lynn Dennis, her mother, Donna Mae Dennis, and a friend, Jill, are attending a memorial service. One of Donna Mae's co-workers at The Jiggle Facto… Read full post »

This is the column that ran today. 

A bunch of my crowd took a celebratory trip to a small island in Florida when we graduated from high school. Brother and his best friend went along, too. They were newly certified scuba divers, and were eager to plumb the murky depths… Read full post »

I was reading an author's blog this morning, and her outrage at seeing small children allowed in the theater for  a showing of "Drag Me To Hell" reminded me of the time I spent three days on the phone, trying to get the Ratings Board to change a movie's "R" rating… Read full post »

I should have known better. A lot of people say that, but, no, I actually should have known better. 

A woman I went to high school with asked me to lunch today. I was happy to accept, as she is charming and a wonderful conversationalist. In school, she was head cheerleader… Read full post »

Somewomen hoard clothes. I’ve heard of ladies who convert entire rooms intoclosets, with overstuffed chairs carefully placed for optimal wardrobe viewing. Not me. Most everything I own is comfortable, well-worn, and in the floor of my very modest closet. So in order to attend a family wedding l… Read full post »