By Gwen Rockwood, newspaper columnist and mama of 3 My refrigerator made a fool of me today. This morning when I came downstairs to the kitchen, it was croaking – loudly. It sounded like an elderly frog was inside it, sitting in a creaky rocking chair that got louder each time he rocked back. I could hear it across the room. So I did what most of us do when a complex piece of machinery starts to make a weird noise we don’t understand: I smacked it. But it went right on croaking at regular intervals, completely undeterred. Having exhausted all my repair expertise with that unsuccessful smack on the side of the fridge, I called our appliance repair guy, […]

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By Gwen Rockwood, newspaper columnist and mama of 3 Last night I let our Beagle Charlie out into the backyard for his usual “last call” potty break before going to bed for the night. I walked away from the door and soon after heard him start barking furiously. Afraid he’d wake the neighbors, I rushed back to the door and turned on the outside lights so I could see if he’d treed a squirrel or spotted a rabbit. Instead, I saw our fearsome “guard dog” barking his fool head off at a large bag of garden topsoil that Tom had left in the yard earlier that day. Even though Charlie’s bark sounded threatening, I could tell that the bag of […]

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By Gwen Rockwood, newspaper columnist and mama of 3 My mom taught me not to brag, but I’ll make an exception this one time. Because after my last few trips to the grocery store, I’ve decided I am the best of the best when it comes to the following three special skills: 1. Picking the wrong cart. I have an almost magnetic pull to bad shopping carts. Because I have such a long history of picking the wrong cart, I size up my options before I pick one, hopeful that maybe this time I’ll get a good one. I check the wheels to make sure there’s not a gigantic wad of gum stuck there. Then I check inside the cart […]

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By Gwen Rockwood, newspaper columnist and mama of 3 “Can we give it to him now? Please, Mom? It’s just a few days early.” “No, you can wait. If you give it to him today, he won’t have anything to open on Father’s Day.” “I know, but it’s so hard to wait! I really want to give it to him today. He’s gonna be so excited.” “You’re just like your Dad, you know. He never can wait to give presents either.” Ten-year-old Jack kept trying to convince me as we made our way to the check-out lane with the gift he picked out for his dad. It was an Atari “Flashback” video game system, chock full of video games nearly […]

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It’s not culturally sophisticated to admit it, but I love TV – always have. I loved it ever since I was a kid and Fred Flintstone heard the whistle blow at five o’clock and slid down the back of his dinosaur bulldozer. I loved speculating with my mother during the summer of 1980 about who shot J.R. I loved watching Bill Cosby raise the Huxtable kids. And thanks to TV, I’ve met great characters like Flo from Mel’s Diner, Frasier Crane, J.D. and Turk from Scrubs, and Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory. Oh, they make me laugh, even in reruns that never seem to get old. For TV lovers, the last decade of technological advancements have meant huge changes […]

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You don’t need a time machine to revisit the past. What you need is the right meal. Last night I had a big bowl full of “wilted lettuce” that took me right back to 1983. As soon as the first forkful hit my mouth, I was a kid again having Sunday lunch in Ethel, Arkansas – a tiny, dirt-road town in Southern Arkansas where my Grandma and Grandpa lived and spent their 70s doting on grandkids and their garden. Wilted lettuce salad isn’t a name that gets your mouth watering, I admit. It sounds like something you throw out of the crisper drawer after it’s hung around too long. But my Grandma and her sister, Aunt Eunice, made wilted lettuce […]

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By Gwen Rockwood, newspaper columnist and mama of 3 A decade feels like a long time – right up until the day one of your kids turns 10 years old. Then it feels more like a fast 20 minutes. In just two short days, our middle child, Jack, will hit the big 1-0, and he can hardly wait to embrace his double-digit status. When Jack’s older brother turned 10 a couple years ago, I felt weepy every time I thought about it. He was halfway to 20 and only 8 years away from leaving the nest for college. The lump in my throat felt as big as the birthday cake. Now that Jack is also turning 10, I’ve learned that […]

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By Gwen Rockwood, newspaper columnist and mama of 3 Sometimes you throw one small pebble of change into the Universe and the ripples create a tsunami of trouble. That’s what happened to me last week – all because I felt sorry for a fat cat. I’ll back up a bit. Our cat Percy, who was once a skinny stray cat we brought home, has since morphed into a behemoth of flab and fur. She looks like she’s been drinking milkshakes and eating Doritos every day for five years. For years I fed her one small can of Fancy Feast each day. But because she needed to slim down, I switched her to dry food. Percy wasn’t happy about the change, […]

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By Gwen Rockwood, newspaper columnist and mama of 3 Ham salad sandwiches. That’s what the school cafeteria lunch menu listed for Wednesday’s meal, which meant I’d be packing three lunches for school the next day. Ham salad? Those two words shouldn’t even go together. Did Michelle Obama sign off on this menu? Doubtful, I pulled the lunch-making necessities out of the fridge and started smearing mustard on six slices of bread. I pack lunches in the evening and stick them in the fridge overnight for one important reason: We’re not morning people. I’ve heard there are real live people who are razor sharp and even cheerful early in the morning. At any other time of day, I’d say I admire […]

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I started writing The Rockwood Files newspaper column when I was a baby. Okay, technically I was out of diapers but I was only 22 years old, and — let’s be honest — most 22-year-olds are still babies whether they know it or not. I had a LOT of growing up still to do, and I chronicled those life lessons in the column. And here we are, almost 20 years later, and I’m still “growing up” and watching my three kids do the same. But two decades of column writing have taught me the best pieces of writing are the ones that readers talk about most. So I’ve compiled a few favorites here and hope you’ll enjoy revisiting them or […]

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