I am not a vegetarian. I have never been a vegetarian. I have been friends with vegetarians, lived among them and even dated them, but I have never, ever joined them in their meatless way of eating. Yet people think I am one. Friends who have known me for years, who...
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Remarkable Things
1. I have GREAT FRIENDS who have really come through for me this week. One friend is getting the equipment I blogged about last time and another brought Bob home today so I wouldn't have to take another day off work or try to drive him home in rush hour traffic. I am...
My Husband is Not My Best Friend
[Yes, I've given my blog a new look, but it's still me.] When I was young I had a best friend. She was my favorite person in the world. We had lots of fun. Then a new girl entered the picture and my best friend eventually decided to be her best friend and to stop...
Building Community
At the beginning of the year, I became convinced that a new year's resolution support group was just the thing I needed to help me with some health and relationship goals. I sent an email to all my women friends and asked who wanted to meet. Only a few replied and...
How to Be Friends
I think grown ups, for the most part, suck at friendship and we often have no good role models for it. When I was growing up, no one modeled successful adult friendship for me and I'm only just now (age 42 1/2) learning how to become and stay friends with women. It's...
New Year’s Resolutions
I've been one of those people who looks at new year's resolutions with disdain. Why bother with a pointless cliche that never works? Well, it turns out that new year's resolutions actually do work. According to research I recently heard about on National Public Radio:...
Christmas with too much free time
It’s the Christmas season when everyone’s calendar fills up with family gatherings and visiting friends and various holiday activities, plus all the Christmas shopping and/or baking and/or cooking, all on top of our usual routine of work, errands and family. What’s...
Representing on Obama’s Election Night, 2008
Last week I felt the beginnings of a cold. I made it go away because I was heading to Iowa to canvass for the weekend. I felt the symptoms again on Tuesday, but tried to ignore them as I headed downtown. Over two hours of standing and watching CNN election results on...
Married and Lonely
Getting married two months ago was great, but I've noticed that this winter and spring it has been very hard to get my friends to spend time with me. I understand that they are busy. Everyone's busy. And many of them have boyfriends or husbands or even children. But I...
Little Things Make Me Happy (also Big Things)
My friend Donna was one of the many people to whom Bob and I sent a marriage announcement in March. She recently moved and it took a very long time for her to get it. But when she did, she dashed off this email message: Guess what else I finally got? Your wedding...
How to Get Job Help from Your Friends
The text of an email I sent to most of the people for whom I have email addresses: Hey, everyone - After launching a job search in October, leaving the waitressing job in January, taking a long-term temporary assignment in February and becoming very discouraged and...
Tough times
I guess it's just really tough times for people right now because the morning of March 25th we sent out 75 mailed announcements to let friends and family know that we just got married and we've heard from a surprisingly low number of people. We did get a couple of...
Ray Waller
One of my best friends ever was Rayfield A. Waller, a prolific writer, agile intellectual and urban quick wit from Detroit. We met when we entered the Cornell English PhD program in 1988 and stuck together in the trenches of it for four years. He was my partner in...