Another Way to Doodle Around on the Internet

Today, I discovered Crushpath, which has successfully kept me distracted from the home feature I should be writing. I created my free, one-page profile:



And it will allow me to create more pitch sites for other services I offer. This is so easy to use! Go try it.

Hey Moms! New Mag for Tween Girls

BYOU Magazine: Be Your Own You is a new mag for tween girls roughing it through the late elementary through middle school years. As you can see from the picture below, my 12 year-old daughter got her fingerprints and her eyes all over my review copy. I'm hoping she absorbed the age-appropriate advice about dealing with mean girls, following her dreams, being a better student and taking care of her personal appearance and health.

The mail-bag page reveals what other girls are thinking and saying about what they read in BYOU.

Fun, quick quizzes help girls sort out who they are, what they like and how they can do better at what they're already doing well.

And what girls' magazine would be complete without beauty tips?

In addition to reading the articles and features, girls can get advice from someone their own age!

Plenty of role models, from girls just like BYOU's readers to successful women, are presented, with stories about what they do and how they do it. Crafts, short fiction, puzzles and humor keep the pages interesting from cover to cover. And as a mother of a tween girl, I like that the articles in my review copy didn't push the envelope. There was nothing edgy or morally questionable. In fact, everything I read supported values that the vast majority of families share.

Living the Dream

Since my teenage years, I've wanted to be a morning person. Two reasons: 1) I have a romanticized image of morning people drinking steaming coffee while watching the sunrise and composing great literature and 2) The white-hot disapproval morning people exhibit toward the sleeping habits of night owls makes me squirm.

Morning people, because they know I couldn't possibly know any better, let me go on believing in the morning person dream of relaxation and productivity before the world awakes. And though they claim to not pass judgement on the hours I keep, I can tell they believe only a sloth would lie in bed until 9 a.m.

For decades I have believed that I am a morning person stuck in a night owl's body. I have struggled against my nature, periodically setting my alarm to ring me out of bed at ungodly a.m. hours with the unhappy result of slapping the snooze button until 10 or getting up and crawling through my day like a zombie. These experiments end with me patting my self on the back for giving it a good try and returning to my slovenly ways of waking whenever I please.

But then I remind my self that it took me 40 years to develop the habit of making up my bed every day, a task most people master by the time they are 10. At 10, I had the good sense to know that making up my bed was a huge waste of time since I would be messing it up again that night. At 40, I wanted to quit being sensible.

At age 44, still holding on to the hope that I can successfully transform into the person that I know I am inside, I've had an epiphany. In order to be a morning person, I must give up being a night owl. Staying up until midnight and rising at the cock-a-doodle rooster crow will never produce the results I seek. That's a place of limbo and bleak identity confusion.

Since coming to this realization and changing my ways, I've had another epiphany. The early bird misses the sunrise because she's doing the laundry and making the coffee.

Just Try

Remember when you were a kid and your mom would tell you to go use the restroom and you would protest? Usually, this nagging preceded a long car trip or a visit to a place without facilities. Usually, if you were like me, you whined something akin to "But I don't have to go."

My mother would end the ordeal by commanding, "Just try." And most times I would. And behold, my mama would be proved right. I did have to go.

And on the occasions that I resisted successfully and made the trip without the old school try, my mama was also proved right. I did have to go. Only, it was too late. 

Failure to learn from natural consequences showed my age. It wasn't until my thirties, when I had children of my own to harangue, that I saw the wisdom in my mother's words, "just try." 

Now, I'm slipping deep into my forties. Per my mother's example, I frequent bathrooms, not because I feel the urge, not because of a pending road trip, but simply because the opportunity presents itself. On advice of my mama, my motto is never miss a chance to make water. 

On a recent visit to my parents' place at the beach, I got a horrifying glimpse into my future, however. I questioned whether I was blindly following my mother's admonitions.

I think it really shows a person's age when she doesn't regard an unnecessary shower chair in the bathroom as an unusual accessory. My parents are robust and spry. The superfluous shower chair resides under a layer of towels. 

Nonetheless, my mother's comfort with its presence is entirely disconcerting. I've acknowledged her indisputable wisdom about just trying and taking the opportunity to go when chance presents it, but I think I'm going to have to whine about the shower chair, if for no other reason than to re-establish boundaries and steadfast resistance. I refuse to "just try" on this one.

School's Out Just in Time

If it's not the locusts, it's a teenage boy. Teenage boys eat voraciously without discrimination. Which makes them grow like Jack's magic seeds. Pants that fit them in the morning are capris by afternoon.

It's a good thing school is out for summer, because this specimen has outgrown his thinking cap.

Fragile but Fearless

First, let me say that I think I have died and gone to summer camp . . . The luxury  kind . . . For adults. 

Second, let me tell you that my "camp counselors" are so patient with this neophyte. Last night the Wine Snob forgave me for my inability to talk vino. The golf pro didn't say a foul word that I could hear when I knocked a 3-foot putt 10 feet past the hole. 

No one freaked when I got tangled in my own fly rod line. And My horse, Anne, and I bonded  onthe trail ride. The canteen filled with lemonade, sweet tea and vodka certainly gave me warm feelings toward her.

My fantasy trip to Barnsley Gardens Resort in the foothills of North Georgia's Blue Ridge Mountains has taken me back to my childhood when I spent summers living in a cabin and honing my riflery skills. I love having a similar experience, but in an all grown up way.

Though, when our sporting clays instructor, Skip, strapped a shoulder pad on me this morning, I asked him, "You must think I'm fragile?" He hadn't harnessed any of the other lady "campers" in such a contraption. Maybe it was a compliment to my femininity. Perhaps. I couldn't be sure, however.

I channeled my presumed frailty into inspiration. Bam! Bam-bam! I broke those sporting clays fearlessly. "Whoop!" I triumphantly yelled. 

He still didn't let me take ithe protective shoulder pad off. I believe it was a chivalrous move and that's where I plan to hang my hat. On chivalry. Because I'm far too young for frailty. And hell-bent on fearless. And I know Skip gets that about me.

At leat, that's how I choose to comfort myself in this glorious retreat from reality.

Confess and Repent

As you can see, I found something that passes for business casual (at least the Barnsley Gardens Resort Wine Snob, Greg Tieague, approved of it). Unfortunately, he didn't approve of my wine tastes.

He went around to each media person present and asked her what wines she normally enjoys. Each one replied with a lot of words I didn't understand, which made me fade to the back of the classroom.

Eagle-eyed, he spied me slipping behind another guest. "And what kind of wine do you drink?" he asked me. 

Ugh! My heart fell. Everyone would know the truth about me now. They would know I was faking the business casual.

"I was trying to fade to the back of the classroom," I said, ashamed of getting caught.

"You drink Chardonnay, right?" He knowingly accused.

That's when I let the truth fall out of mouth like marbles I could no longer contain. "Yes! With an ice cube in it. Three dollar wine from Walmart!" I took a deep   breath. "I'm so sorry."

He forgave me :-)