The generous, very-kind gift
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope,...
Somebody SMACK me…!
Last night some of the happiest, funnest blogging news OF ALL TIME crossed my inbox… If you've read me for any length of time, you know I relish all things Southern. When I learned my beloved Southern Living magazine had chosen me as their Mama...
Biltmore House: a necessary addition to EVERY Bucket List!
{Biltmore Estate, fourth in the series} One of my favorite movie scenes takes place in the 1984 movie Splash with Tom Hanks and Darryl Hannah: his character, Allen Bauer, gives her character, Madison, a lusciously wrapped gift....
A Mid-Summer night’s…wonder
"Come on, Mom, we're going on a field trip." It was after 11:00 and I had just gotten up from bed to start the laundry load forgotten earlier, aggravated at myself but knowing she needed "that" shirt and "those" shorts by 7:00 a.m....
Nants ingonyama bagithi Baba*
There’s just something about the excitement of a child–adrenaline-filled Christmas-morning anticipation, the kind of waiting-for that slows days into 24-hour eternities. His eyes have been locked on the calendar for this day. He’ll defy...
Madmen, Twitter & (my) pure idiocy
I joined Twitter almost 2 1/2 years ago and I'll admit: those early days were awkward. It was like schoolyard jumprope and you'd have to study the twirl of the rope and time it just right before running in to play, too. It felt silly to...
Rotten tomatoes
Sometimes I can be surprisingly literal and uncharacteristically brief — Somewhere in Georgia, July 2010. Homegrown tomatoes from someone very close to me. All I have to say is bless…her…heart. How does YOUR garden grow?...
Beautiful/Nerds
"We're the nerds…we sit at the nerd table at lunch." It wasn't a pity party or a passive-aggressive attempt to coax a compliment from me, it was a declarative statement, a matter-of-fact assessment of "who" they were by one of...
The Cure for Memory Loss
Sometimes you strike gold when you aren’t even mining for it. The idea was planted the way a lot of great ideas are–buried in the loamy subconscious, waiting to burst surface at just the right time. The blame–no, make that credit–goes to Don...