Author: Laura Packard

I’m not a perfectionist by nature. Except for the last 31 days of the year, when I suddenly morph into one.

    Volunteering in my friend Charlotte’s first grade class, I get to relearn some things I’ve had to toss out of my brain to make room for the more “important” stuff like my social security number and all my online passwords. 

    It seems to me at least, that down here in the South, people really like to talk about their ailments. It’s a one-up-man-ship of sorts. 

Do you ever feel invisible?             Me, I feel this way all the time.  Especially at night, when I’m brushing my teeth and washing my face in tree pose while balancing a giant scrunchie on top of my head. See, this is about the time my husband, being a guy and all who always has to finish first, turns off the lights in the bathroom while I’m still standing at the sink. 

It’s more than a feeling…. I begin dreaming… I close my eyes and I slip away…

Erma Bombeck, my literary hero and one of the wisest women of the twentieth century, once said, “Housework, if you do it right, will kill you.”

  Can a kitchen table tell a story? It is, after all, just a table; an inanimate object that takes up a lot of space.  Let’s face it, it’s something else around the house, like your kids and your bathroom sink, that needs to be cleaned, scoured, disinfected and wiped down on a regular basis.

I just love football season, don’t you?  What’s not to love?There’s the name calling, the obnoxious drunk people falling down in the parking lot before the players even reach for their helmets, not to mention the large grease stains on your best blouse from the fried chicken, and the heartburn from all the pulled pork you inhaled off the back of a pick-up truck before kickoff . . .

“You’re a sweetheart to the max. I love you like Crispy Critters.”- Wesley Willis People like to say down here in the South that if you can fry it, well . . . you can surely eat it. I don’t know about that seeing as it was my brother who inherited my PaPa’s .22, his deep fryer, and a shared affinity for wild, domestic and backyard game.

Hold the phone, y’all. Stop the presses. Sit down ’cause you are never going to believe what I am about to tell you. A researcher in Australia not too long ago conducted a study that shows . . . Wait for it . . . Wait for it . . .