For all those parents who have longed to raise their children as pirates but just didn't know how, humorist and parenting author Tim Bete and his scurvy sidekick, Cap’n Billy “The Butcher” McDougall, fill us in on their new book -- Guide to Pirate Parenting. The guide provides everything you need to know to turn your little powder monkeys into happy, healthy buccaneers. Read the interview here. Read Full Story
For all those parents who have longed to raise their children as pirates but just didn't know how, humorist and parenting author Tim Bete and his scurvy sidekick, Cap’n Billy “The Butcher” McDougall, fill us in on their new book -- Guide to Pirate Parenting. The guide provides everything you need to know to turn your little powder monkeys into happy, healthy buccaneers. Read the interview here. Read Full Story
She called it her garden room. She was four years old then, and the floral theme in her first "big-girl" bedroom delighted her. We painted the walls pink and hung lacy little curtains at the window. We used stencils to paint dainty flowers on the pink walls. She held the brush and proudly created a few of them all by herself. Some of her work went outside the lines. So did some of mine. Colorful smudges took the place of the intended clean, stenciled edges, as if the flowers on the wall... 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... Read Full Story
Click here to watch funny SpongeBob clips.By Jackie Papandrew School’s out, and we’re on a summer road trip, having left both an arm and a leg behind at the service station in order to fill up our tank. My husband is driving, and I'm riding shotgun while I inhale some much-needed coffee. The headlines are trumpeting a record heat wave. We join other mutilated members of the gasoline-buying public out on the already crowded highway. Even having to sacrifice limbs is not apparently enough to... 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... Read Full Story
I have to admit I admire men's indifference to bathing suit reality. Every man thinks he looks good in his bathing suit - even those with enough back hair to weave a small rug and a beer belly of sufficient size to be a walking Budweiser billboard. I envy that kind of confidence. Almost every woman, on the other hand, believes she surely resembles a Teletubby in her swimsuit. We can only be persuaded to try on new ones each summer because - as with childbirth - we forget the agony endured... 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
Got Milk? Morris, IL -- Police say a trailer loaded with 14 tons of double-stuffed Oreos has overturned, spilling the cookies still in their plastic sleeves into the median and roadway. Illinois State Police Sgt. Brian Mahoney says the truck's driver was traveling from Chicago to Morris on Interstate 80 around 4 a.m. Monday when he fell asleep at the wheel and slammed into the median. "The boxes came out of the trailer and boxes were ripped open," he said. The crash about 50 miles southwest... Read Full Story
Has anyone questioned Squidward? MONUMENT, Colo. - The U.S. Forest Service is looking for "SpongeBob fanatics" who painted the cartoon character on the chimney of a historic building. The 10-foot tall painting of Nickelodeon character SpongeBob SquarePants is on a cabin in the Pike National Forest that used to be the Forest Service's tree nursery until it was abandoned in the 1930s. Forest Service law enforcement officer Tom Healy says the incident is part of an increase in vandalism in the... Read Full Story
