Microwave Stalactites

By Rhonda Rhea

I opened the door to the microwave to reheat my coffee a few mornings ago, and then realized I just didn’t want to put it in there. Ew. Before the coffee was going in, somebody was going to have to clean out that microwave. It looked like someone had a tiny little ticker tape parade. So much food-confetti, so little space. Worst of all, there were a couple of spaghetti sauce stalactites in there. I like my coffee with lots of sweetener and plenty of creamer. But call me picky, I like it completely without spaghetti sauce drippings. And speaking of “picky,” I thought I might actually need a pickaxe to get to the root of some of those stalactites. Do they make a microwave cleaner that has dynamite as its main component? 

Life can be a little like my microwave. Anytime I’m wondering why it doesn’t taste as sweet, I really have to look at what I might be hanging onto, stalactite-style. Hanging onto self-centeredness, bitterness, laziness—any of those kinds of things—will zap the deliciousness right out of life.

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Scrapping Scrapbooking

By Lynn Rebuck       

I am, to put it kindly, crafting-impaired.

It’s not that I haven’t tried. I have often attempted a new craft, only to discover that I am not well-suited for it.

For instance, I tried Scherenschnitte, the intricate German art of paper-cutting. It didn’t take long for me to figure out that I am just not cut out for it. 

I bought the special scissors, learned the quick cutting strokes, and cut my heart out (well, I almost did, when one day I quickly tucked my scissors in my bra and forgot about them). In fact, I became a little compulsive about my new hobby.

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Trimming Traditions

By Emily Chase

Celebration of Christmas demands that we maintain certain family traditions year after year. Some traditions satisfy the desires of eager children, while others protect exhausted parents. Here are five easy suggestions for trimming those traditions to fit the current season.

Decorating the house is the first challenge of the season. Stores begin decorating their shelves before Halloween so why not follow their example and get an early start? Combine Halloween costumes with Christmas themes and have your kids dress up as a Christmas wreath or an oversized Christmas stocking. When they come home, just have them hang the costume on the front door or over the fireplace mantel. Your neighbors have helpfully filled the stocking with candy treats so you can cross that chore off your list too.

Have you accumulated a mountain of cardboard cutouts covered with macaroni and glitter that your kids made in preschool? Your children are now in high school, and your family tree is beginning to look like more a bulletin board covered with post it notes. Start a new tradition. Recycle those ornaments! Have your children write notes on the back and send them to their former teachers as greeting cards. Think of the joy the teachers will experience knowing the child that emptied the entire bottle of glitter into the fruit punch still remembers them.

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Welcome To Perry, Illinois… Population: 12

By Darren Marlar

I was on my way home from a comedy gig in southern Illinois when my GPS suddenly lost power. I had no idea how much I relied on “Imogene” until she abruptly decided to give me the silent treatment. (I named my GPS Imogene because that’s my mother-in-law’s name and she also likes to tell me where to go.)

I was stuck with a farmer’s soybean field on one side of me, and on the other side… uh… oh, look at that… more soybeans! I looked for a map, or an atlas. Nothing. I pulled out my laptop computer to log on to MapQuest… still nothing. Apparently soybean farmers don’t have much of a need to set up Wi-Fi for their tractors and silos. Sure, the horses, cows, and chickens would probably love visiting websites about animals, but without opposable thumbs, it’d be difficult to type “w-w-w-dot-my-animal-genealogy-dot-com.”

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Christmas Shopping—Bah, Humbug!

By Kathi Macias

I am not a shopper. Seriously! Shopping—particularly Christmas shopping—is right up there at the top of my “despised things to do” list, right along with root canals and skydiving. (Okay, I’ve never actually experienced skydiving, but I promise you I’d hate it. I mean, you don’t have to get set on fire to know you don’t want to be a human torch, am I right?)

The worst thing about shopping is that you really can’t get out of it. When I was a kid, Mom used to drag me and my two younger brothers along on the bus just so we could trudge up and down Main Street and plod in and out of every store along the way. (That was before shopping malls, if you can imagine that!) My feet would hurt, I was mad because I wanted to be home reading a book, and worst of all I had to “keep an eye on” my two little brothers. Oh, that was fun! While Mom pawed through piles of sweaters and socks and underwear—none of which we kids had the least interest in receiving as gifts—I halfheartedly tried to keep my brothers from getting into trouble. They, on the other hand, were completely devoted to finding some new and innovative way of disrupting the entire shopping event. Of course, as I stood there bemoaning my fate and feeling absolutely wretched over the entire state of affairs, it never occurred to me that it wasn’t exactly a walk in the park for my mom; somehow I was under the illusion that she actually enjoyed it!

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