I accidentally spent $177 on a beef tenderloin.  One hundred and seventy-seven dollars.  It all started with Rick Steves’ European Christmas. I watched it on PBS during last year’s Christmas season.  Many times. Many, many times.  Rick Steves’ European Christmas combines three of the best things ever — Christmas, Europe, and Rick Steves.  Rick Steves…

Well, last week we talked about Thanksgiving. Today, we’re talking about The Night of the Banana Bread.  Indy wasn’t feeling great. He was, in fact, one sick dude. Parkinson’s disease is like that — one minute you’re fine, the next minute fine is acting like you owe it money and stole its girl.  I headed…

I know Thanksgiving is over. I mean, my Christmas decorations have been up for a week. But I have to tell you about the Thanksgiving that almost was. Over Halloween, my brother told me he wasn’t hosting Thanksgiving this year. “I’ll just put together a little something to eat at Willie and Indy’s on Thanksgiving,”…

I complain about the cabin a lot. The cabin. The Cabin. I don’t own it. That honor goes to my husband and father-in-law. It was my husband’s grandfather who built it. And because he’s the one that built it, I don’t hate it. Most of the time I’m neutral about it. It’s the way I…

So with two gainfully employed adolescents, a few nights a week I find myself in a peculiar position.  I am, for the first time in 17 years, consistently and completely alone in my house.  And I don’t know what to do.  I mean, I have an hour and 45 minutes to myself.  An hour and…

A few weeks ago, I made a comment about my dead pets’ ashes. In my bar. Their ashes are in my bar. I thought nothing of the comment because I think nothing of those ashes being in my bar. That’s where they belong. But then my editor said he was going to need more information…

I think I did the worst thing I’ve ever done. It was a chilly but sunny Friday, the trees just beginning to embrace their fall colors. And I, what did I do on that dazzling autumn day? I took Indy and Willie on a tour of an assisted living facility. If there is anything more…

Well, guys, here I am. I survived the haunted hotel. And I’m like 98 percent sure nothing followed me home. But that two percent sure gives me chills when I jolt awake at two in the morning. Which I’ve done every night since I slept at the haunted hotel. Kidding, guys, kidding. Our drive to…

It is the very nature of fall that brings about my complete abandonment. As October unfurls each year, my husband fades from my world, like Marty McFly playing the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance in Back to the Future. By November, he is completely gone, as though his parents never shared that first kiss ultimately…

Take my hand. Join me in the 1980s. For I am trapped there, and though the end is in sight, it is but a glimmer in the distance. There are so many good ways to be trapped in the 1980s. Stranger Things, for example. Or Sunday morning, when I found Can’t Buy Me Love playing…

You may recall I scrapped my dad’s car. I got rid of my mom’s car, too. Doing so was way more work and way less fun than getting rid of my dad’s car. I mean, my mom’s car didn’t have unlabeled bottles of what my dad, AKA Indy, called “either vanilla extract or motor oil.”…

I was all in when I committed to staying in the haunted hotel. Now, not so much. In a parenting triumph I’m sure would impress Dr. Spock, I have raised one of my children to be every inch the horror aficionado I am. Great. Awesome. I have a partner for every horror movie that hits…

So I don’t like the outdoors. Obviously. But I married an outdoorsy guy. I’ve written many words about our opposing views in this space. Guys, I’ve written a whole blog about our opposing views. I’ve even written about it for outdoor journals. Over the years, we’ve created a system for making this whole thing work.…

I told you a few weeks ago I’m about to get scuba certified. I told you this certification is a whole new level of horror. Before I explain, let me just say I love the water. While watching, say, a sunset or birds might be fascinating to some, I could never sit still. But put…

In the words of Fiona Apple, I’ve been a bad, bad girl. And yeah. I’ve been careless with a delicate man. And while it most certainly is a sad, sad world when a girl will break a boy just because she can, I swear that’s not how things went down. My dad, whom I call…

I have gone completely off the rails. The underwear was bad enough. What I did next was absolutely chilling. I swam in a lake. I know! Me! The girl having a nervous breakdown over alligators! To be clear, I was very worried about alligators each time I swam. I scanned the lake before each dive,…

I’m getting rid of my dad’s car. On its face, getting rid of a car sounds easy. Trade it in. Maybe give it to a grandchild about to earn a license. Donate it. But my dad isn’t the standard octogenarian dispensing of a car. My dad is a Delco native who survived The Great Depression…