Jeff has a work phone. And it’s not just a work phone, it’s a jazzed up crazy iPhone with a bunch of doodads and geegaws. One of his recent doodad/geegaw acquisitions is titled Price Check by Amazon. With this particular app, you can say a product name into the phone, and it will do an [...]

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As I sit at the computer this morning (making good on my promise to tout my final Laughing Cow post), the girls are in the front room eating Honey Nut Cheerios and watching as Jeff plays Super Mario Bros. on the Wii. This is what Christmas is all about. (This is not really what Christmas [...]

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To the lady at the store who bought the final avocado roll . . . to the young man at the gas station who wore his daughter’s pink scarf and his own mismatched gloves . . . to the guy I see running to the bus stop every day with an umbrella—even when there’s zero [...]

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Me: Jeff, I’ve been paying attention to the commercials this year, and it looks like you’re supposed to either purchase a car or diamonds for me for Christmas. Jeff: I’ve got you covered. Me: So, what did the television convince you to buy? Jeff: I actually went off the grid and bought you a car [...]

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Every year, Neil puts together the (always amazing) blogger holiday concert. Every year, I plan on putting together something really outstanding for you. Every year, it sort of falls through. This year is no exception. It occurred to me on Friday that I needed to check the date to see when this year’s submission was [...]

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When you’re in your goofy teddy bear pajamas and it’s three degrees outside and you call your husband in Philadelphia to ask where the plunger is because it’s not in its normal location in the (very cold) garage and he tells you that he may have hung it on a nail that happens to be [...]

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The temperature in our back yard is currently 4.6 degrees Fahrenheit. If I wasn’t trying so hard to avoid clichés today, I’d burp out something about Bone Chilling! Anyway, the milkman just pulled his truck up to the front of the house, and because I want him to know that He is Not Alone, I [...]

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When I was a little kid, my grandma crocheted a blanket for me out of bright acrylic yarn. When I hit a growth spurt, she would take the blanket back and add on more stripes, and I liked to think that the blanket was sort of like a tree—you could tell just how old I [...]

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Because of our brief blip in believing, The Puddings are now the proud owners of an Elf on the Shelf. (I suppose OWNER is not the best choice of words. One does not really OWN a little helping man. At the same time, we haven’t really gone through the proper channels to say that we’ve [...]

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I have no idea who these women are. What I do know is this: They enjoyed the heck out of the Main Street Electrical Parade, and in my mind, after the last float rolled, they took off their ears and taxied out for Phase Two—an hour spent eating sashimi and bad-mouthing Barry Manilow. Good for [...]

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