Dear Health Experts, I respect your expertise. I really do. But would you please give us a break? You’re sucking the joy out of food, and I’m officially fed up. Yesterday I saw the Dr. Oz show, and his guest was a neurologist who has written a book called “Grain Brain: The Surprising Truth about Wheat, Carbs and Sugar – Your Brain’s Silent Killers,” written by Dr. David Perlmutter. I haven’t read the book yet, and I’m sure it’ll be convincing. But what’s frustrating about yet another food-related health book is that the experts can’t agree – or at the very least stay with one theory for more than a few years at a time. They’re starting to remind me […]

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When my alarm went off this morning, I groaned, rolled over and reached under my pillow to give it a good shake to shut it up. My alarm clock is on my smartphone, you see, and when you shake the phone, the alarm is silenced into five more minutes of precious snooze time. After a couple more snoozes and shakes, I finally sat up on the side of the bed and fished the phone out from under the pillow so I could find out how well I’d slept. That’s when it hit me – just how attached I’ve become to a piece of technology that didn’t even exist seven years ago. I’m sleeping with it, for Pete’s sake! We all […]

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“That’s it,” I said to no one. “I’m getting nowhere.” I shut the lid of my laptop in disgust and walked away. As I paced around the room, I glanced out the window and decided a walk might help jumpstart the words that wouldn’t come – not even for a deadline. I rummaged around in the garage until I found Charlie’s dog leash. As I bent to hook it to his collar, he looked up at me with those scaredy-dog eyes, suspicious of a trip to the vet’s office. “Come on, Charlie. Let’s go walk!” I said cheerfully, but he was still reluctant. Once we were striding down the sidewalk, we both felt better. Today was one of those rare […]

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All this talk of government shut-down has got me thinking. Can a mom declare a household shut-down? And if so, what would that look like? More importantly, can it be avoided? To be honest, I’m not sure there’s much hope of reaching a peaceful agreement around here. We’re hopelessly deadlocked on the issue of whether or not socks should be turned right-side out before they’re tossed carelessly into the laundry hamper. I’m firmly in the “yes, definitely” camp, and the kids are stubbornly entrenched in the “what’s the big deal about socks?” category. There’s also a dispute about the frequency and methodology of hand-washing – something you might call “Oh-mama-care.” No matter how many times I tell the kids how […]

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