I have allergies, so I get the big package at Costco - 48 of them for $27 - that's the cheapest. But you can get it at your local grocery in a much smaller package for an affordable amount. Also, you can go the generic route (it's guaifenesin, an expectorant) but you can't get the extended 12-hour pills - I guess…

Mucinex. I know it's gross, but you need to get it to come up and SPIT IT OUT. Ugh. Same for allergies. The snot is actually dead soldiers: your own body's immune system fighting off the attacking virus. Or, in the case of allergies, fighting off something that is really not a threat (like ragweed). Either way,…

I did my laundry but I can't go to the bank because it's Sunday. I will have to pass on forming an opinion on Miley, but I did like the segment under discussion here.

I have a pretty good story about my time in shop class. First, it was a fraught thing, letting girls into it. The head shop teacher (Mr. Campbell) was dead set against it. The school board apparently voted to allow girls in shop (and boys in home ec) in the summer of 1972, so the school year 72-73 was the first, in…

Wow, your dad sounds pretty awesome! The funny thing is, clothes did not used to be so cheap. This is really a phenomenon of the 90's, and free trade (no comment here about its effects on union labor in this country; and disclaimer: I was always a Clinton supporter). Back in the olden days of the 60's, 70's, 80's,…

Oh this is so funny. I learned from my mom and her mother, my grandma. Mostly from mom, though, and she was so disdainful of everything she had been taught in home ec (back in the 1950's, when she was in high school, all girls HAD to take home ec). She engineered her own methods of marking darts and pleats and…

Amen to all of those!

I love this! I go in and out of the sewing thing, but it's the most wonderful skill to have. Yes I would love pics!!!

2 words: Pinot noir!

They went after contraceptives first. In 2003, the right wingnuts in the Texas legislature made birth control pills unavailable to teenagers under 18 without parental consent, thereby causing plenty of unwanted pregnancies. Then in 2011 they eliminated all funding for contraception and caused many family panning…

Actually, the oil industry is once again saving the day, fiscally speaking. The counties get to levy property taxes on the minerals that come out of them, AND the state gets a severance tax. http://www.texastribune.org/2013/04/30/tex…

I just accidentally had the good sense to go to a national park the last week of September (it's closed now) and I saw a couple of tarantulas on the trail the last day I was there. They were both really big (and not together; about 1/2 mile apart) so I assume they were both females. So pretty and fuzzy! I hope they…

Poor thing! Try vodka. Oh, yeah, kids. Nevermind.

If you still have kids to put to bed, you're not as old as I am.

Watching the White Queen and getting packed for our trip to West Texas tomorrow. Big Bend! The Gage Hotel in Marathon! Marfa Friday and Saturday! I'm psyched!!!!

Ditto here.

Well, I am out of there anyway. Even if they get women priests who are authorized to hand out birth control pills at St. Whoever's Free Clinic in the basement, I am still a retired Catholic. Enough already.

Let me know if you're ever in Austin and I'll take you to Costco where you can have all the free samples you want. You just tell them, I'm kind of hungry, missed lunch, or whatever and they say, oh here, take some more samples. Seriously.

I loved when Dolly was on the Tonight show and Johnny Carson asked her what she thought of Whitney's version of her song. She said she loved it and she just wanted Whitney to know that she had written lots of other songs that Whitney was also welcome to cover. I think she invited Whitney over to look at her…

I have come to believe that we need some big posters of photos of ACTUAL dead women who died from illegal abortions, to wave at the fetus poster wavers. I am ready to wave those pictures at the (mostly male) assholes who care so much about "babies" and nothing whatsoever about the women who bear them.