November 4, 2019 The dog broke my toe. My car got hit parked. The roof is leaking. The kids need money. And I am travel worn. In two weeks, I have been in eight airports, three time zones, and seen 4 a.m. on more clocks than I care to count. After a run like that, […]
October 28, 2019 Brian Smith, of Winter Park, Fla., never knows what’s going to come in the door. Customers have brought in dead scorpions, locks of hair, broken plates, bricks from famous places, pawprints, President Bush’s socks, and a metal bell from a Yemeni yak’s neck, all for him to display. “I’ve seen some weird […]
October 21, 2019 Want to be happier, more productive, better at budgeting, more disciplined and fitter? This is not a trick question. And I’m going to assume, yes. Good. Then start by making your bed every day. You think I’m kidding. As a finale to my run of recent columns on bed basics — from […]
October 14, 2019 You snuggle with them. You sleep with them. You hold them close. Some of you won’t leave home without them. I’m not talking about your pet. I’m talking about your pillow — that under-sung household hero that most of us spend more face time with than any other object, save for, perhaps, […]
October 7, 2019 I had nothing left to do but wring my hands. Hurricane Dorian was looming off the horizon. We were being bombarded by media telling us to hole up, hunker down and hang in. Stores, restaurants, schools and businesses across Eastern and Central Florida were closed. Mail didn’t come for days. I had […]
September 30, 2019 Having a dog in my life has always been a priority. I just never intended to have three. Who in their right mind would have three dogs, I ask myself every time my pack greets me at the door as if I am an ice cream cone on a hot day. […]
September 23, 2019 “I’m up to my eyeballs in needlepoint pillows,” came the text from my neighbor and friend Deborah Robison, when I asked how her mother’s move was going. “I’m decluttering generations of inheritance.” I have been there, and now Deborah is. Going through a parent’s belongings is a rite of passage almost none […]
September 16, 2019 Food, clothing, and a roof over your head most would agree are basic needs. We’re two out of three at our house. The soggy realization that our roof was kaput soaked in a few weeks ago. “Uhhh, Honey?” I said, looking up from the kitchen table toward a brown splotch forming […]
She arrived at my door full of hope, promise and foam-wrapped innersprings, the mattress I’d been dreaming of, the same model I’d slept on for two nights in a Chicago hotel, where I woke up feeling like a teenager again, with a back that moved like a Slinky, for the first time in years. The […]
August 26, 2019 We all have one. Many of us need a new one. Yet shopping for a new mattress is about as much fun as shopping for, say, a coffin. But at least when you buy a coffin it never has to be replaced. “The process was a complete nightmare,” Mike Magnuson recalls of […]
