Is listening to audiobooks cheating?

I didn’t always listen to audiobooks.  I’m very much a visual person, who needs a map in my hand.  When it comes to books, I like to hold them.  I like being able to skip back and forth when I’m confused.  I even like being able to read the ending before I reach it, so…

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Confessions of a chronic dieter

I was a pudgy child, or so I saw myself.  Others may have called me solid.  One boy friend told me I wasn’t fat, just well-packed – like this was what a teenage girl wanted to hear from a guy she wanted to date? I have been thinking of food all my life.  Seriously.  I…

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Daring to dream

A dear friend recently celebrated a milestone birthday.  After the food was eaten, wine drunk, toasts offered and dessert served, my friend rapped her glass for attention. She had a toast of her own to make, and, in the process, offered a word of wisdom.  Follow your dream, she said, and told of something she…

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Why I’m not retiring

A reader just wrote that she heard I was retiring.  Who said that? No.  I’m not retiring.  Let’s be clear about it.  I.  Am.  Not.  Retiring. Not that I haven’t considered it in moments of frustration.  Life for a writer has changed.  When I started – more than 30 years ago – all I had…

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Walking on thin ice

I have three sons.  All are grown, married with kids, and gainfully employed.  They genuinely like me, and I genuinely like them.  In all of these things, I am very, very lucky. That said, navigating the waters with an adult child hasn’t always been easy. First came college.   Actually, the trouble began not when my…

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Lean on me

Lean on me… when you’re not strong … Remember that song? Bill Withers wrote it in 1972, which may have been the year you were born, or the year your children were born, or ten years before that, but the words are timeless. I’ve been thinking about them a lot. I don’t have many close…

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Do you multi-task?

More aptly, can you multi-task? Some people can’t. Some do it now and then. Some are able but unwilling. Where do you fall on the spectrum? I’m of the able-but-unwilling school. I used to multi-task more than I do now, and age has something to do with that. But it’s a positive thing. I’m wiser…

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Sleep habits of the grudgingly mature

Here’s a pressing question: Does the need to pee wake us up, or do we wake up for another reason entirely and then decide to pee? And another one: Do we wake up early because our eyelids have thinned out so that even the first light of dawn penetrates, or do we wake up early…

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I won’t grow up!

Peter Pan had it right. If growing up means no more fun and adventure, I don’t want to grow up either. I like fun and adventure – like doing new things – like challenging myself. I like doing something I never imagined myself doing. Oh yeah, sometime it’s daunting. I have a comfort zone, just…

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Where’s your comfort zone?

I had a heart-to-heart once with the guy who does my hair. He’d been doing it for a long time, but we were increasingly at odds about style, cut, and color, with him urging me in one direction and my urging him in another. Finally, seeming exasperated, he said, “Barbara, you need to get out…

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