Years ago I wrote a humorous column in the vein of Erma Bombeck, and recently I compiled many of the columns into a memoir. This is an excerpt from the book, A Dead Tomato Plant and a Paycheck , titled for the wonderful Mother's Day gift I received one year. Enjoy.... If anybody ever bothered to ask mothers of pre-schoolers what they would wish for if they could have anything in the whole world, I’m sure the unanimous answer would be, PRIVACY! The privacy to be able to close the bathroom door and know that it will stay closed until she opens it again. The privacy to be able to take a shower without the kids and any number of their friends coming in to see if they can have a snack. The privacy to sneak a piece of candy without having to swallow it whole because one of the kids just walked into the room. The privacy to be able to talk on the telephone without someone picking up the extension and yelling in her ear. Or without someone jumping up and down and waving his arms t...

As we start the week heading toward Thanksgiving, it made me think about the time I got all philosophical and used my newspaper column to ask if we don’t use the Thanksgiving holiday as an unconscious excuse not to be thankful the other 364 days of the year. Or at least not be aware of all the things we have to be thankful for. So I decided to make a concentrated effort to search my soul and come up with something to be thankful for every day. Here is the list I made that year: I'm thankful for the cold weather that chills my bones and helps me to appreciate the heat of summer. (Next August you're free to remind me I said this.) I'm thankful for the puppy that comes in my office to chew on my toes and remind me there's more to life than just work. I'm thankful for mail delivery because I know it will draw me out of the house at least once a day.  I'm thankful for the kid who will bail me out and cook dinner when I'm working on a deadline, even though...

This post originally ran here at The Blood-Red Pencil on December 29, 2010.  It first ran as a column in the Plano Star-Courier when I was known as the Erma Bombeck of Plano, then I incorporated it into my humorous memoir, A Dead Tomato Plant & A Paycheck. Enjoy... The day after Christmas was usually one of the best and one of the worst days of the year for our family. If that doesn't make sense to you, don't worry, I'm not sure it does to me either. But let me try to explain. It was the best because: There were now 364 more shopping days until Christmas. It was the one day of the year when perhaps the kids were just as tired as we were, and they’d sleep off and on all day. All the build up for the Big Day was finally over, and the noise level in the house had dropped about 20 decibels. I didn’t have to cook since we had all those leftovers from Christmas dinner. (If we didn't have a big Christmas dinner, I was in trouble on that score.) The kids would dec...