My rules for sleepovers and/or sleepover parties, thank you. Please do not tell me at the last minute that your child needs to be up and out of the house by 8:00 a.m. the next morning for basketball practice, a soccer game, et al. I would not have planned a sleepover if I knew I would be responsible for making sure your child got a good night's sleep. If it is a sleepover party, we put a starting time for a reason. Please don't tell me the morning of the party that your child will not be able to make it, due to a game a half an hour prior to the start time, until almost an hour and a half after the start time. Please do not call me that morning and tell me you have planned dinner with a relative that night and your child will not be able to make it until three hours after the start time. But, your child does not want to miss the movie. Let me just pull out the newspaper and pick a new movie AND a new theater, so we can accommodate a dinner I should have known about a week ago. A birthday is once a year, in the party cases, and I think it should be important enough to get to, get to on time, and stay at for the allotted time. Oh, and please don't call me at 9:40 a.m. the morning after and tell me you need to pick your child up at 10:00 a.m. since your family is going somewhere. I'm sorry, it was a sleepover, your child just woke up about twenty minutes ago since he stayed up all night. I haven't even fed him breakfast yet. In fact, he is still laying in his sleeping bag, with the rest of the kids, on the family room floor watching cartoons. Thank you for your anticipated cooperation in this matter. Let's everyone get on board with the etiquette of sleepovers.

The trouble with Facebook....I can say it here because I am not known here to the friends I am talking about. We have been helping some friends, a lot, in the past few weeks. As far as I know this other family has really not done a lot to help in the situation our friends are in. I know I am being cryptic but I don't ever want this to get in the wrong hands because I feel I am being petty. So, I was reading Facebook yesterday and I knew our friends were going to a NBA game last night. Well, this other family posted on Facebook that they were going to the NBA game last night. I felt kind of weird because they never asked us to go. Then, this morning, I read the other friend's post and it thanked our friends for TAKING them to the NBA game. Not a cheap date in our neck of the woods. I know I am being petty, but I really feel this is the problem with Facebook and with reading all of your friends posts. It is really easy to feel very left out in certain situations when you read all of your friends posts and you realize that you have been left out of an event or a situation. As I write this I have one other thought too. I think friends should be discrete when posting if they know that everyone isn't included in an event. It is pretty stupid to post something that you know someone, who has been left out of the event, will read. So, I guess that is my final thought. It isn't a problem with Facebook, it is a problem with the indiscretion of my friends. Why must these situations hurt me so much????

I just finished "Bitter is the New Black" and can't wait to read the other books by Jen Lancaster. First, and foremost, she is funny and you can invision every single thing she is talking about. I can imagine the "dot com palace" I can picture the apartment in the 'hood and I can invision what the new townhouse will hopefully be for Fletch and Jen. I laughed at her antics and wanted to strangle some of the people who screwed her. No really, I wanted to pick up the phone and ask them what the hell they were thinking and who gave them permission or the go ahead to do what they had done to her in her career. She showed considerable more self restraint than I think I would have in those situations. I finished the book and sat and thought about everything they had been through and, though I have a child to add to the mix, could relate to almost all of it. There was a time when I had a closet full of size 6 suits and went to court for work all the time. I worked in the City (San Francisco, not Chicago). I left the house at 6:00 a.m. and didn't get home until sometime after 5:00 p.m., and that was only after my son was born. Before my son was born I would get home at 7:00 or 8:00 p.m. and sometimes later. Now, I work ten miles away, as opposed to many more to the City, and go to work in Dockers, or whatever the other label I wear calls them. I am so far removed from the City it isn't funny. Unfortunately, since that job, and the one I held after it, I am also so far removed from the pay check I used to get it isn't funny. Like Jen, I got to the point where I wondered why I needed immediate gratification on everything (think credit card). I realized it was because I always had the pay check to back it up. I was always able to keep my bills down by making substantial payments every month. Then, I got my pay cut by 15% at my job in the City. That may not seem like much, but it was a wake up call. Then my job got eliminated all together, along with others in our firm. I was only on unemployment for two and a half months, but that truly screws with your psyche to be on unemployment when you have worked since you were seventeen years old. On to another job, no suits, no court, no anything I had at my other jobs. Oh well, it was a job. Then, the work started to slow down. Then, my hours got cut. Now, I have such a different life it isn't funny. I say no more often to my son when we are in the store and he is wonderful and understanding about it and is the best kid in the world. I don't have the money to buy clothes and to do any extra things. I could totally relate to Jen as her spending scaled down and her priorities switched to her new life. Her dogs (and God knows they are expensive!!!), her husband, and her friends. I think we are all reinventing our lives right now in this economy. Thank you Jen, for taking us on your ride and making us all realize that just because your life switches gears it doesn't mean you can't be happy and still have what matters most....family, friends and your dogs.

I haven't been here in almost two years, so this is a little experiment to see if anyone ever stops by. A lot has happened...I got laid off for the first time in my life at the end of last summer due to downsizing and was out of work for two and a half months. It was truly the most frightening, sick to my stomach, time I have ever had in my life. I found a job in mid November and got my hours cut in May as the work was slowing down. I am now just barely making it with the pay cut and watching everyone else in this economy suffer. I keep telling my son that he is going to read about this in his history books in high school and college. His children are going to ask him how the depression was and ask him how we survived. I don't know how we survive. I guess we just keep on plugging along and thank God we have a roof over our head, we both have jobs and we can pay the bills every month. I feel like someone is putting their thumb down on all of us and we are just about to be squished. I don't know how much longer people can survive this recession. More and more people are losing their houses, their jobs... and their sanity. Everything was supposed to turn around in May of 2009 and that was five months ago. So when folks, when are things going to get better? We have all had it so good for so long that nothing has taught us to deal with stuff like this. I hope things turn around soon. I don't know how people handled this in the great depression. Unfortunately we have so many more expenses in this day and age, cell phones, cable tv, computers and the internet. All sorts of expenses that we count on everyday that they didn't have when things went all haywire back then. Is anybody else feeling like it is going to get worse before it gets better? I don't see the light at the end of the tunnel yet.

We were watching the Yankee's game last weekend and Ronan Tynan, the Irish tenor, sang "God Bless America". I know it is the hundred and tenth time I have heard him sing it, I know I have seen them pan on the faces of the players squeezing their eyes so the tears don't fall and the badges and the faces of the New York Police officers and the people holding up the flag of the United States equally as many times, but it never gets old. Two girls, about ten, were giggling and talking and from the side you saw an adult elbow gently nug one of the girls. Immediately, both girls stopped talking and looked straight ahead. It was just a little gesture, but it made me smile because this adult seemed to be reminding the girls to be respectful. I think all of our children, and all of us, are a little more respectful now. I don't think that any of us can watch and listen to Ronan Tynan sing "God Bless America" and have at least some memories of that day. In our house, as corny as it seems, we always stop what we are doing and watch silently while he sings. It seems to be the little bit of respect we can pass on to all of the men, women and children who lost their lives or sacrificed so much so others could be rescued and helped and comforted. I'm glad Ronan Tynan is still singing "God Bless America" at the Yankee's games. I am glad it is a new tradition that they will keep in respect for some many.

The flags are no longer at half mast, but we promise we will never forget. You have gone back to school, to the campus where all the horrific actions took place and we pray that you make wonderful memories so that slowly, but surely, the pain of those actions are replaced once again by the innocent laughter that a college student should have at this time in their life. We want you to know that we are lingering a little longer when we tuck our children in to bed. Not just to cherish them more than we already do, but to answer their endless questions about the horror that happened at Virginia Tech. My son now recognizes the VT and pointed it out to me on the dashboard of a NASCAR car on Saturday. The world is with you and thinking of you and praying for you. We can never understand what you went through and are going through, but we want you to understand that everywhere you turn you will have a shoulder to lean on and an ear to listen to anything you want to talk about. We want you to know that we are here for you, whenever you need us. My son asked why? Why were the people putting flowers on the killer's memorial, why mom? why would they do that? why does he deserve them? Because my love, my son, my life, because he needed help and he didn't get it. Because he has a mother who loves him more than life itself, as I love you. Because one of the things our God taught us is to forgive, as hard as it is sometimes, as much as it doesn't make sense. As all of us are talking to our children and all of us are watching what can happen when a person doesn't get the help they need, maybe this will open up a whole new chapter in the life of mental illness. Maybe people will be more likely to urge their friends to seek help if they think something is wrong Maybe our own children will understand why it is so important to get help if they ever feel like they need someone to talk to outside of their families. All I know right now is that we will remember all of the bright beautiful faces that were taken away from this world way too soon. We will always remember the bravery of a teacher who had survived some of the world's most horrific events, the Holocaust, only to die at the hands of a disturbed student%

Do you tip? I really want to know. I am at a loss now as to who you are really obligated to tip and who people tip...just to tip. I tip waiters and waitresses at restaurants, usually 15% to 20%, depending on their service. I tip the newspaper boy everytime I pay the bill. I tip the gal at Supercuts when she cuts my hair. When we are on vacation, I tip the curbside people at the airport, usually a dollar or two a bag, depending on how big the bag is. I tip the rent a car bus driver if he gets to my bag before I do :) and the hotel shuttle, if this is what we take to the hotel and we have a bag. But, as far as I can remember right now, these are the only people I tip. I don't put money in the little jar at the coffee house. I don't give my paper boy an extra tip at Christmas, even though he solicites it via a flyer and self addressed envelope folded into the paper. Honestly, I think this is why I DON'T tip him. If I tip someone, I tip them. I certainly don't want them to ASK for a tip. That is a surefire way NOT to get a tip from me. I don't give him one because I don't even know him. I really think it would be different if he collected door to door, like in the old days. I don't give the gal at Supercuts an extra something at Christmas because I get someone different everytime. I get Drew's teacher something at Christmas and the end of the year. I always either get, or chip in on something for his coaches at the end of every season. I don't know, do you guys give special gifts at Christmas to all concerned, paperboys, hairdressers, mail delivery person, etc.? I just don't know where to draw the line. As far as tips...what do you do? When you buy a cup of coffee, do you tip the people who hand it to you across a counter? I just can't see it, but maybe I just am not getting this custom. I don't tip the people at Baskin Robbins either, or any place such as this where you walk up to a counter, order and walk out.