NPR Causes Wrinkles. It’s True.

Filed Under All Posts, Beauty, Humor, Parenting, Prudence Baird | 3 Comments

Botox causes brain damage. Cell phones cause brain cancer. Teenage children cause brain implosion. Okay, that last one is NOT true—but they do make you feel like your head is going to explode.

Especially when you are trying to hear on NPR a report about the link between brain damage and Botox that was just discovered by an Italian research team and your teenage son is talking about — what? I very exaggeratedly turn UP the volume on the radio and shake my head at him.

These actions are apparently universal American body language code for “Please speak louder,” because he leans into my face and says — what? Read more

Politics: Breakfast of Champions

Filed Under All Posts, Family, Melissa Howden, Politics | 8 Comments

In my Father’s house, politics has always been the breakfast of champions: coffee, oatmeal, two newspapers and commentary. Skipping the oatmeal, my own routine follows what I learned as a child—only I read my papers online.

My father was the youngest Mayor of the small town we lived in for the first six years of my life. From the time I could talk, when I went anywhere with my father I said, “We’re going “politicking,” which usually meant coffee and pie with the local movers and shakers at the Royal Café.

As a four-year-old I learned “the wave” while riding with Santa Claus and my father, the Mayor, in the Christmas parade down the main street of our town. Read more