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 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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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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By Gwen Rockwood, newspaper columnist and mama of 3 My favorite humor writer, Pulitzer Prize-winning humorist Dave Barry, is famous for the line “I am not making this up.” He uses it when writing about things that are so absurd that any sane person would assume he’s taking creative liberties with his description when, in fact, the description happens to be ridiculous AND true. I thought of Dave’s famous line when my daughter spotted a toy recently and brought it over to the shopping cart to show me. “Mom, this is kind of weird… and gross,” she said, holding it up for inspection. The toy is called “Poopsy Pets,” and it’s part of the Moxie Girlz line of dolls made […]

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By Gwen Rockwood, newspaper columnist and mama of 3 I’ve heard horror stories about how some spouses constantly butt heads with their in-laws. And I’m lucky because I don’t have those war stories. I love my husband’s family and he loves mine, and we’re blessed to get along the way we do. But there’s one tiny bone of contention between my husband and my mother, and I land squarely in the middle of the debate. Perhaps you can be the judge. The question revolves around the proper loading of a dishwasher, and the issue comes up after we have Sunday lunch together and start the clean-up process. In this corner is my mother, who has never once loaded a truly […]

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By Gwen Rockwood, newspaper columnist and mama of 3 Yesterday, as I was standing over the stove stirring boiling macaroni noodles, I asked a question my family hears a lot around our house. “Wonder what I should write about this week. You guys have any ideas?” When you have a weekly writing deadline, you often pick the brains of those around you, hoping to find a seed of an idea that might grow into something bigger once you give it a little time and attention. Sometimes that happens, but most of the time the family members just stare back at you, shrug their indifferent shoulders and say, “I dunno.” Then they go back to watching cartoons or ESPN. People who […]

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By Gwen Rockwood, newspaper columnist and mama of 3 Tom did something shocking the other day. He came home from the store with a few things I’d asked him to pick up before the next snowstorm hit. As I unloaded the shopping bags, I stopped short. I picked up one of the packages, turned it around in my hands in disbelief and then held it up to Tom, as if he’d accidentally brought home toxic waste. “What is THIS?” I asked. “It’s toilet paper,” he said, as if I’d somehow mistaken it for a Crock Pot. “I know it’s toilet paper, but it’s not OUR toilet paper. Since when do we get this kind of toilet paper?” I asked. “Listen, […]

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By Gwen Rockwood, newspaper columnist and mama of 3 When you’ve been married for a while, gifts aren’t as big a deal as they once were. There have been several times in our 15-year marriage when, instead of rushing around to find an anniversary or Valentine’s Day gift, Tom and I just say, “Hey, want to skip the presents this year and just go out to eat and see a movie?” As long as both people are fine with that low-maintenance approach to gift giving, things work out just fine. But there are other times when someone gives you such a perfect gift, you know they must truly know and love you. A few months ago for our anniversary, Tom […]

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If you’re on the phone and you hear the following words, you’ll know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that what you’re hearing is a big, fat, hairy LIE: “Your call is very important to us. The next representative will be with you shortly.” Yesterday I heard that whopper roughly 67 times while I waited for a non-computerized voice to come on the line and offer what we used to know as “customer service.” But thanks to technology, the machines have taken over customer service centers and their mission is to prevent us from reaching the real live humans, if at all possible. I’m pretty sure the real live humans are on a beach in Tahiti. What’s ironic about this […]

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