Have you ever wondered how, in the movies, especially old ones, the heroine always wakes up in the morning with flawlessly applied makeup and not a hair out of place? Doris Day, for one, looked incredibly perky in every scene filmed of her, no matter if she was being chased down dark alleys by knife-wielding […]
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Sleep is vastly overrated. Who needs eight hours of it? President Kennedy, it is said, managed to govern the country on four hours of sleep per night. I don’t think I’m quite ready to govern the country yet. I had the flu last week. It wasn’t fun. I was very brave. Ivy Scarlett, the German […]
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Thank you all for your prayers. In case you’ve forgotten, I asked you to pray for me because I was feeding a cast of thousands over the July 4 weekend. I also suggested you pray for those I was feeding. For newcomers to this column, if there are any, my cooking skills are pretty much […]
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Since I am pretty solidly Irish (my mother was a Kelly, my dad was a Sullivan – once upon a time, O’Sullivan), I have a love/hate relationship with the Brits. They were, as history points out, quite rude to the Irish back in the century when they ruled Ireland with an iron fist. I won’t […]
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Our children tell me often that I scarred them for life. When they were little, one of the lullabies I sang to them was Go Tell Aunt Rhody. Go tell Aunt Rhody, go tell Aunt Rhody, Go tell Aunt Rhody, the old grey goose is dead. The gander is weeping, the gander is weeping, the […]
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I’ve probably mentioned a time or twenty that Bing and I have five children. They are, of course, quite exceptional, or, as Garrison Keillor would say, above average. Three of the said children live in sunny California. The other two are brave Mid-Westerners, residing in Minnesota and Iowa. The three Californians are somewhat smug about […]
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Somewhere along the way, Bing and I failed as parents. Big time. All five of our offspring hate dolls. They call them “creepy.” How can this be? My childhood was awash in dolls. I had tea parties with my dolls. I wheeled them around the neighborhood in their little doll buggies. I dressed and re-dressed […]
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Wade, our last-born, texted from Los Angeles the other day asking if I knew what time he was born. I can barely come up with the year any of our five offspring were born – how in the world would I remember the hour? I suppose some super mothers do, but I probably wouldn’t like […]
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It occurs to me that I haven’t given you all an update recently on the stray cat family that dines on my porch every evening. Sorry to have kept you waiting. I’m sure inquiring minds want to know. If you are a latecomer to this column (please bring a note from home explaining why you […]
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Remember that wonderful old song by Tony Bennett, “I Left My Heart in San Francisco?” Well, I didn’t leave my heart there, or anywhere else over Christmas. But I left my wallet in Los Angeles. Not fun. Not fun at all. Also, it wouldn’t make much of a song title – too many syllables. When […]
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