Believe it or not, we were taught those things properly in civics class circa 1987. My parents were the king and queen of overdrafts.

My dad never used any of his VA benefits except for the GI Bill. I’ve never understood that. But then again he had a rich father who gave him money for the down payment on his house. My dad himself was never rich. College professors aren’t rolling in money like admiralty lawywers.

My parents were hopeless about money all their lives. They spent what they felt entitled to spend, and my grandfather (who was rich) bailed them out. A LOT. My mom (whose mom was an impoverished single parent) went to boarding school with a bunch of rich kids and wanted more than anything else to be rich like that too…

My granddaughter had a Blue’s Clues music box that was absolutely earsplitting. And it’s all my fault because I gave it to her.

The number of Whole Foods stores participating in this is pathetic. We have a new WF only a couple miles from our house, but if we try to get delivery they pick one that’s 12 miles away across a really miserable stretch of freeway. No thanks.

This notion has a finite life span. My kids are 42 and 39 and have outlived their usefulness as excuses.  :)

Back in the pre digital age my father got a lot of joy out of taking subscription cards out of magazines and postcards from companies peddling free demonstrations and filling them in with the names and addresses of people he didn’t like.

It will probably take a while to find, but The Awakening with Charlton Heston and Stephanie Zimbalist is one of the worst movies ever made and you will love it. And it even features Ian McDiarmid without his yellow eyes.

I’m old. School lunches were an either/or proposition. Either you gave them 30c in the morning or you got no lunch. Or you could bring a lunch from home, assuming your mom remembered to go to the grocery store.

Tater Tots were invented when I was a little kid. My dad loved them, like he loved all food gimmicks. But like patty shells and canned chicken a la king and Chun King chow mein that came in three cans, those remnants of the 50s can vanish from the grocery stores and I won’t even notice.

We use denture tablets in the drip coffee maker and the Aeropress.

If you really want to see a movie about an aging star coming to terms with what he once was and no longer is, you can’t do better than The Last Movie Star with Burt Reynolds. Damn, that took courage to make.

This is one of many reasons why we never travel anywhere for the holidays. Found your own traditions right there at home.

I would love to take my granddaughter (who has two mommies) to Drag Queen Story Hour. I’ll have to see if anyone near us is presenting one.

He sure as hell doesn’t look like Woody Allen.

We get so few trick-or-treaters here (neighborhood has no resident children) that we buy the candy at the 99c store. A bag or two is all we need and usually we have most of it left over.

That vinegar/water mixture is a reasonably effective ant killer. We spray it on the ants when we’re out of Terro baits.

My husband used to do the same thing. Soap bars, shampoo bottles, you name it. “They’ll just throw it out,” he would say. “I can use it when I go camping.”

If you can get at the speaker on the inside, stuff it full of tissue.

Tuna in oil (which is a lot tastier than tuna in water) is a good place to start. Then Miracle Whip and sliced bread and butter pickles on top. That’s it.