Airing My Dirty Laundry

By Jackie Papandrew One of life’s little ironies is that at the same time you are sharing a house with people who think they will live forever -- people (and I use the word loosely) otherwise known as teenagers -- Mother Nature begins to impress upon you the realization that you might not even make it into next week. Ma Nature, being a crotchety old lady with creaking joints, decides that your middle-aged self no longer has any business thinking like a jaunty juvenile. So, using forces like...Read Full Story

There should be a certain progressive evolution in a family’s method of camping. You should start out, when you are young, vigorous and too naïve to know better, by camping in a tent. Then, as your family and your waistline grow while your flexibility and patience decline, you should switch to some kind of pop-up trailer that at least gets you off the ground. Finally, in the golden years, when you are wise enough, wealthy enough and cranky enough to insist on taking it all with you – bed...Read Full Story

I guess I'll have to scratch this off my list of school fundraising ideas... Seven middle-aged Spanish moms who posed discretely in the buff for a calendar to raise funds for their children’s school in the small village of Serradilla del Arroyo are now sporting red faces instead of pink cheeks after the calendar didn’t sell. Read more here ... Speaking of the PTA, here's a column I wrote about my own experiences with that worthy organization... Pity The PTA By Jackie Papandrew Sometimes, I...Read Full Story

Like many people entering middle age with an ever-expanding midsection, I really need to get in shape. I joined a gym earlier this year to fight the battle of the bulge, paying the membership fee and buying an adorable workout outfit. Then I waited for the blubber to be gone. Apparently, though, there’s more to it than that because my body continued to balloon, as I discovered recently when I tried (and failed) to find a bathing suit that would render me somewhat more attractive than a whale...Read Full Story

On top of spaghetti, all covered with cheese I lost my poor meatball when somebody sneezed It rolled off the table and onto the floor And then my poor meatball rolled out of the door… Tom Glazer -- “On Top of Spaghetti” CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THE SONG... When I was a kid and apparently had far less to occupy my time than kids do today, I used to sing aloud that fanciful ditty from the 1960s – sung to the tune of On Top Of Old Smokey -- about a mountain of spaghetti and a wayward, sneeze...Read Full Story