Lori Duff Writes
I often hear people my age and older bemoaning the fact that children are no longer taught writing in cursive in school. Aside from the fact that people’s signatures look silly if they aren’t written in cursive – riddle me this. Why, exactly do they need to learn? These are kids who know how to…
Here are the top five things I remember thinking and can’t believe I actually used to think that: I think you’ll notice a prevailing theme. I used to go out and do stuff, and going out and doing stuff and being with my friends was a priority over creature comforts and bodily functions like sleep. …
My husband recently had back surgery – he had two of his lumbar discs fused to two other lumbar discs which had been fused about nine years ago. No, he hadn’t been in a car wreck or fall. He just got old(er) and the human body wasn’t originally designed to live as long as it…
When I was a young girl, my grandmother taught me to knit. For many years, all I could knit was rectangles, but you can make a lot of things with rectangles. Scarves, blankets, even hats. My Dad, whenever he saw me knitting, called me “Madame Defarge” after the Charles Dickens character in A Tale of…
I guess because I’m over fifty and algorithms are real, I keep getting suggested links to articles with titles like, “Ten Outfits You Should Never Wear if You’re Over Fifty” or “Makeup Trends to Avoid if You’re Over Fifty” or “Haircuts That Will Just Make You Look Like a Dried-up Hag if You Are North…
I have a business idea that, if I had the energy to build from the ground up, would make me a zillionaire. Get this: Rent-a-Mom. There have been times when I wished I could have called the good ladies at Rent-a-Mom when my kids were sick at college and just needed a good in-person momming…
I went on my annual pilgrimage to the eye doctor earlier today. I’ve had eyeball surgery three times in my life, so the poking and prodding they do for a normal exam is no big deal to me. The big deal is picking out glasses. This is a big, colossal deal, and I’m expected to…
I was having lunch with my husband in a semi-fancy restaurant when I had an epiphany. Y’all, I am a freaking magician. I can turn a lightly grilled piece of cow haunch into human thigh fat without any apparent effort. It’s a good thing we don’t have to know how our bodies do these things. …
I went to visit my son a few weeks ago in Houston, home of the World’s Worst Highway System.[1] It was a busy, whirlwind trip, and one of the things we did was go to the Texas Renaissance Festival. Among other things, the Texas Renaissance Festival bills itself as the world’s largest Renaissance Festival because,…
When my kids were little, I made sure they knew there was a difference between tattling and telling. Tattling was bad. Tattling was telling on someone for the sole purpose of getting that person in trouble. It wasn’t making the world safer or more orderly or preventing a theft. Telling, on the other hand, could…