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Practical Jokes and the Need to Laugh
Both my parents loved practical jokes. My mother told me that once she sewed shut the flies in all of my dad’s underwear. Apparently, he was not very amused, but she laughed and laughed. My parents played practical jokes on me and my sister when we were still very young and not really able to…
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15 Things I Like
There was a time when banana flavored popsicles were my absolute favorite treat to buy from the ice cream man. He had the worst hands, chapped and cracked and callused from putting them into a cold ice cream truck every day, but he handed out the most wonderful treats. And we were always happy to…
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Things I Have Learned
For the most part, a lot of the things I’ve learned over the years have been the source of a great deal of retrospective chagrin. I also laugh about a lot of them now, but at the time maybe not so much. I’ve compiled a bunch of them for the last chapter in my memoir.…
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Weird Words, Part 8
Hunky-dory That’s a word you don’t hear very often any more. I’ll call it a word and not a phrase because it is hyphenated. I’m not picking nits. It’s just that I like to make my article titles accurate and relevant to the body of the article. Really. Well, mostly anyway. Now, where was I?…
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Beneath Certainty: Some Ramblings about Life in Dianne Land
Beneath certainty lies a very nastily tangled web of doubt. It seems to me that any rational person could not possibly be certain at all times about all things. And therein, as I see it, lays the problem. For me it is a large one. Mostly, I go about my life certain that I am…
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Common Misconceptions, Part Three
The Dark Side of the Moon When I was very young, I wondered why we saw only one side of the moon. I was a little odd. Still am. I set about finding the answer to that question. We didn’t have the Internet at that time. Our family didn’t even have an encyclopedia set. And…
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Common Misconceptions, Part Two
Napoleon was Vertically Challenged I used to find solace in the fact that someone so short could still have such a profound effect on history. My God! The man practically invented canned food. Well, not literally. But he did set things in motion that eventually led to the canning of all sorts of foods. I,…
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Inspire, Promote, Encourage, Sing!
There is no doubt that songs can be inspirational. Songs are written about all manner of things and because words put to music are often easier to remember than otherwise, songs have been used through the ages to teach and inform as well as sell and influence and even warn. A national anthem tells the…
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Things I Just don’t Understand, Part One
Bath Tissue “If I put bath tissue on the shopping list, will you know which kind to get?” My husband, Bernd, actually said that to me. Me. Just who does he thinks does all the shopping around here? The Shopping Fairy? Why wouldn’t I know what kind to get? But that’s not what I don’t…
Maddie's Mom Writes 