By: Mary Fran Bontempo To hear an audio version of this post, click the play arrow below. They asked for the shoes and the jewelry back. Once the now-former Pope Benedict XVI announced that he would be retiring from the papacy (and who knew that was an option?), his title as head of the world’s 1.18 billion Catholics wasn’t the only thing he had to return. The ex-Pope does get to keep a [...]
By: Mary Fran Bontempo To hear an audio version of this post, click the play arrow below. Hearts. Flowers. Candy. Jewelry. Ah, the stuff of love and Valentine's Day. As is the retail world's M.O., right after Santa high-tailed it back to the North Pole, the red hearts, cupids and arrows of Valentine's Day popped up in stores like a rampant case of chicken pox in a classroom of unimmunized first graders. I suppose [...]
By: Mary Fran Bontempo To hear an audio version of this post, click the play arrow below. Apparently, I'm not the only one with light bulb issues. During Sunday's Super Bowl, the lights went out in the New Orleans Superdome. Out. During the Super Bowl. Tell me that's not going to freak you out, especially if you've spent a fortune on tickets and going to the game is your dream and you're [...]
By: Mary Fran Bontempo To hear an audio version of this post, click the play arrow below. Apparently, I have commitment issues. Do not tell this to my husband, to whom I have been married for thirty-one and a half years. He might start to worry. Or, he might start to wonder why I didn’t inform of this before now, providing him with a possible out. But it’s not about him, or marriage, [...]
By: Mary Fran Bontempo To hear an audio version of this post, click the play arrow below. I've been spending a lot of time looking at colors lately. In the fall, I made the clearly ill-thought out decision to repaint both of our bathrooms as well as our powder room, foolishly believing that by Thanksgiving (HA!), I'd have three "new" bathrooms. I'm still hoping to have the painting done by Thanksgiving, but now [...]
By: Mary Fran Bontempo To hear an audio version of this post, click the play arrow below. I'm enjoying many things about my kids getting older--not the least of which is that they now do their own laundry. But by far the most gratifying side effect of their maturing is their slowly dawning realization that their mother--me--is not the only "crazy" parent in the house. It's safe to say that every woman [...]
By: Mary Fran Bontempo To hear an audio version of this post, click the play arrow below. I’m going through withdrawal. It’s not about smoking, or, heaven forbid, something more sinister, although sometimes it feels like it. It’s about coupons. For weeks—scratch that—months, leading up to Christmas, I was a coupon-clipping maniac. I scoured the newspaper, mail, internet, you name it, for any little scrap of paper that promised an additional discount on [...]
