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For more than 15 years, I have gone every month to the same beauty shop and to the same colorist. And after I go through the process of a single process to cover the gray in my once dark hair, I am sent to the shampoo section. That’s where a newbie, in training, is assigned to soap and rinse my tresses. And it’s invariably a different person each time. I’ll call her (sometimes a he) Shampoo Person. While Shampoo Person scrubs away, my tongue starts wagging. I have fine-tuned a standard repartee that I use with each new person. It...

Sweet stuff can have a less than sweet reputation. It can be bad for us, all that sugar and carbohydrates. But who can resist a spongy, cakey, buttery Madeleine cookie dipped in rich dark chocolate, a spicy Aspen cookie with cinnamon, raisins, mace and other flavors reminiscent of Fall, or the best American chocolate chip cookie, a hot circular crisp of butter, flour, sugar and chocolate (sometimes nuts, too) that’s delicious and flavorful. Though we’ve written together for 30 years and discussed everything under the sun, we never initially shared about our mutual love for cookie baking and eating that...

I live in a little hermetic world in an urban/suburban enclave in St. Louis County, Missouri. Now that I live alone and write from home, most days are fairly routine—writing in the mornings (and some afternoons), taking a 30-plus minute walk outside or on my treadmill in bad weather, saving most afternoons to interview sources for articles, set up meetings or lunch dates, going to the library, and doing volunteer work. Evenings are relegated to staying home, reading and watching old movies, happy hours with friends, going to concerts, or attending lectures or plays. Yet, life is never really that...

When was the last time you stepped out of your comfort zone to try something outside your usual routine? Perhaps you prepared a new recipe that required a new skill, tried a new ritual to observe a holiday or volunteered for a project you knew little to nothing about but which you hoped would help others. Did it feel a bit, somewhat or very uncomfortable in the beginning? Was it a disappointment in the end or a way to celebrate that you could venture far afield of what you expected of yourself? It’s so easy to stay with the tried...

On an excruciatingly hot, muggy St. Louis afternoon, the kind of heat that causes the sticky black tar on an asphalt driveway to bubble, I succumbed to my independence--temporarily.  It happened when I had to contend with a dead car battery in the parking lot of a day care center where I read weekly to underserved preschoolers. Although there to teach kids to love books, I was the one who learned the bigger lesson.   Since suddenly single seven years ago, my new mantra, “I can do it myself,” was in danger of dying just like the battery in my car...