YESSSS!!!! Today is the day we look forward to every year. As soon as it's past we count approximately 365 or so days till it comes again. We plan, we dream, we make lists. Maybe next year we'll start decorating the house for it and sending out cards. It's (insert trumpet fanfare here) TAX RETURN DAY! Tax Return Day is the one day a year I can afford to take my large family to a restaurant that doesn't have color pictures of the food on the menu. Then I let my little darling shop fo...

I found a box of kitchen matches in my 6yo son's bedroom. We've had the fire safety talk, so I figured that this infraction calls for a punishment. I believe the punishment shoud fit the crime, logical consequences, all that stuff we learned at Mommy school. I have heard of some parents who touch there children with a burnt match to teach them that fire hurts. They argue that it is better to have a little burn than to be engulfed in flames. This teaches children that big people have permis...

Call me Maggie. It's not the name my parents chose. Not exactly. They named me Margaret after my grandmother, a sweet-faced, white-haired woman who wore support hose. The name fit her. For short, they called me Peggy after a sister of a sister-in-law, perky and popular. The name fit. Her. My parents doomed me to a life of forever explaining how Peggy is short for Margaret. The same way Dick is short for Richard, only less phallic. My family name is Mitchell. So I was doomed to a life of fo...