For this girl, a not-particularly-good-at-history, middle class, sheltered child, Memorial Day meant the pool was opening!  Not very deep, but I’d actually love it if my kid had the same summers I had. Depart at morning, ride bikes to the pool, come home for lunch and disappear back into the neighborhood until Mom blew her fierce, two-fingered whistle around dinner time.  Those memories are great and I remember them well. Unlike my fun memories, I’d guess plenty of people have times from their childhoods where the memories are more of a haunting kind they’d like to forget. How beautiful when...

Just Kidding. God help me, if my blog has come off like a “how-to,” then I missed the mark I was aiming for. Well sure, I play Dear Abby with my friends, when they ask for my opinion, and I ask them for theirs. This has rarely worked for me (probably them as well) because no one really knows what is best for someone else. Usually when I do take someone else’s advice it turns out wrong, and when I don’t, I look back in hindsight and say, “Shoulda listened to that one.” Two things came up that put me...