A dear friend sat with a plastic surgeon recently, as stunned as she was offended. Her breast, it seems, can’t be reconstructed right after her upcoming mastectomy for reasons irrelevant here. The shocker wasn’t the news; it was the M.D.’s attitude. “Why would you care?” the doctor asked uncaringly, although not in those exact words. “After all, you’re 75.”

Seventeen or 75, we’re women and we care about looking like a woman and feeling like one. How dare that doctor dismiss her concern! To point, my friend isn’t an invalid ...

<< MORE >>

<< MORE >>

Did I mention the toilet? Ours worked perfectly well. I liked it fine. Only nowadays owners of upscale homes who redo bathrooms install “comfort height” units. They’re higher off the ground so we don’t have to struggle to squat so low. (I never struggled; did you?)<< MORE >>

Ryan has a brutal upper respiratory infection. He’s lucky. Why? Because if he felt good, if his nose and throat and head and glands weren’t swollen and achy, he’d be at band camp. << MORE >>

One fine spring day in Oneonta, New York, my college friend Chris and I bolted out of her car in a bank parking lot while belting out the words to Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman.” Newspaper editors, serious students and overall ambitious young women, we were giddy with possibilities – until we came face to face with Clifford Craven, our school principal. << MORE >>

Toppling out of a meeting at my kid’s school 8 o’clock at night, famished and damn sick of the black pumps squeezing my toes, I was happy to learn that Son No. 1 had remembered to take the chicken wings dinner I’d prepared in advance out of the oven. Until I read his text: “Please never make them again.” Pissed, I scrolled to the next message, from my  husband: “Wings for me? They’re all skin.”

 

<< MORE >>

Low-grade terror of spills, stains and general culinary chaos aside, I decided to cook for company in my new kitchen. That’s a normal thing to do, right? << MORE >>

Take a look at this picture. It’s a blah picture of a spoon rest on a plastic plate, right? Oh no. It’s more than that. This is Michael and me being scared of our kitchen. This is an image of spoon rest on a plastic plate so the metal won’t somehow destroy the counter under it. << MORE >>

I was crouched to the ground of the hallway outside the kids’ rooms gently smashing hamburgers against the twin heated serrated panels of a hand-me-down George Foreman grill. << MORE >>

OK, clearly I'm so hot at inserting photos into blogs, either. Will have the teenagers take a look and fix it later.