I’ve started again, aimlessly walking laps. Due to the heat, my marathon lap training has taken to the indoors. No one notices me as long as there’s an Astros game on and I don’t cross in front of the tv. There is so much to do. And yet, here I am walking in circles. Two days until we leave to move her to college. I paused at the bottom of the stairs yesterday to relish a Mozart aria drifting down from her voice lesson above. The last voice lesson that I will be privy to for who knows how long. From now on, other souls, strangers, will be her audience. And this is the right thing, because these strangers will become her mentors, friends, and closest allies as she follows this yellow brick road of her dreams. But it’s hard for me to let go and realize that I am no longer that person who has the front row seat, the backstage pass, and the behind-the-scenes access. As moms, we have devoted YEARS of our lives to THEIR lives…countless hours driving them to practices, rehearsals, l...
You may or may not know that Southern Living has “The Grumpy Gardener,” a guy who writes a monthly Q&A gardening column, routinely shaming people for “Crepe Murder” or not deadheading their petunias as soon as the blooms begin to fade. Well, I am going to start a new monthly column called “The Cranky Concertgoer," in which I will offer no meaningful service to the public other than calling out bad concert behavior for us all to bemoan. Last weekend, I attended the Tears for Fears concert at the beautiful new Moody Center in Austin, TX. We had great floor seats, 16 th row in the middle, to be exact. If you’re a concert goer, you know that significant time, money, and effort go into attending a concert. There are expectations set that others attending the concert hold the same sanctity of the experience in high regard. But sadly, that isn’t always the case. As we took our seats, I sized up my neighbors to see what we’d be dealing with for the night. To my right, I had...