It all comes down to cookies. The chocolate wafer kind, mint-flavored with a delicate chocolate coating and sealed in a rectangular green box. The world knows them as Thin Mint Girl Scout cookies. I know them as my nemesis.
When I was in Girl Scouts, I dreaded going door-to-door in the Girl Scout’s famous annual fundraiser. I had to knock on the door of someone I didn’t know, interrupting that stranger to ask him or her to peruse my list of cookies and order some, and then I had to go back a few weeks later, lugging around stacks of cookie boxes that my mother had taped together and labeled in our garage, and then they had to give me money. The act of just knocking took everything I had. Read More…
A pink tent sprouted in my house last weekend. It was no accidental sprouting, though. I planted the thing myself. It was a tent from San Diego’s 2007 Breast Cancer 3-Day walk that I’d procured from my sister* to give my boys a chance to sleep in a tent like the one I’ll be sleeping in for the next two nights as part of the 
I couldn’t help but be skinnier now. I have just emerged from three weeks of being buried by a load of projects and activities that brought me eye-level with the ground. Between Halloween, 
As if we didn’t know it, our kids have proven once again that they are 
As with my wedding anniversary and the birthdays of every person I know except my three sons, I usually forget my birthday. You’d think that with it being the day after Halloween, I’d remember, but I don’t. Luckily, my friends and family do remember it, and this year three people—my parents and my friend since junior high, Tara—decided that what I’d probably want more than anything else on my birthday was cash . . . for my Breast Cancer 3-Day fundraising. They were right! With their donations plus the money that my husband, our three four-year-olds, and I made at our fifth 
Suddenly, I am frightened. My older sister, who has walked in the “
A couple of years ago, when our triplet sons were old enough to be aware of his wedding band, my husband told them, “This is my ‘I Love You Ring’. It means I love Mommy,” and then he pointed to each of the boys in turn, “and I love you, and I love you, and I love you. I will always wear it because I will always love you all.” His explanation stuck. At four-and-a-half years old, the boys still call our wedding bands our I Love You Rings.
Got a spare $90,000? Oh, good! For $90,000, you can buy a new tree for your front yard. True to the price tag, it’s a special tree, called an “Urban Tree” and fashioned by man instead of Mother Nature. The boys and I walked through San Diego’s latest grove of Urban Trees last week and left convinced that we had to have Urban Trees of our own.
In the past six days, my ‘Breast Cancer 3-Day’ walking team has lost two loved ones to cancer. The latest, Cheryl’s Aunt Sue, succumbed to breast cancer yesterday morning. The last thing Cheryl said to me before hanging up the phone to go make travel plans for the funeral was, “We gotta raise a ton of money to BEAT this thing.” And so…
Today the boys wore their “
I bet it would hurt to have one’s hamstring impaled by an 18-foot length of 3/4-inch PVC pipe. Or at least, that’s what I was thinking last week as my three small men marched through Lowe’s home improvement store carrying the materials for my 
Today was national ‘Talk Like a Pirate Day.’ I was reminded of that when a 3-foot-tall pirate walked up to our 
You are? Well then, how about a cup of pink lemonade? San Diego is heading into another heat wave, after all, and there’s no sweeter way to cool off. Best of all, as you down that cold cup of pink sweetness, you will be sticking it to cancer, big time.
I have a long, nasty red welt on my left hip. I have a matching one on my right. And I’m not sure, but I think I’ve got several on my hind end. The thing is, I inflicted them all myself—while jumping rope. Not that it’s always my fault. Okay, yes, sometimes I do trip up on the rope, snapping it against my lower extremities like a taught rubber band. But four separate times in the last four months my speed ropes have literally snapped in two while I was mid-jump, and the nylon ends whiplashed my thighs. Pwap! Jumpin Jehosophat! Talk about pain.