Went for a massage today. I like to say that, kind of casually, as if it’s part of my weekly routine. Not that it wouldn’t be a part of my weekly routine if I had a little more disposable income and had not inherited my mother’s guilt complex.Whenever my mother tasted something or experienced something or was given something really extraordinary, she’d say, “That’s too good,” suggesting she was not deserving of anything as decadent as a piece of Godiva chocolate.That’s how I feel about massages.They are just too good.I went today because I have been more stiff and sore than usual and because my husband was starting to pressure me about using the gift card to a local spa he gave me two Mother Day’s ago. Rick hates gift cards.  Read more...

Anyone still out there?Re-entering cyberspace, I think, might be more challenging than entering it the first time. Technically though, I never really left, going from the  Chicago Tribune to my blog, which kept me sane after being laid off from the Tribune, to ESPNChicago.com, which saved me.

I began my blog in the weepy hours after being pushed out by the Tribune last April and kept writing as I stopped crying and started to see the hope and humor again, through my first months with ESPN. And then I stopped.I still do not know exactly why I stopped. But I am flattered by the handful of you not including those directly related to me, who noticed. I hope you find me again. And though I can’t promise anything, I hope not to take a three-and-half month break again.  Read more...

I am sitting in the Soldier Field press box right now, not afraid to admit I’m looking forward to the halftime tribute to Walter Payton more than the Bears playing the Cleveland Browns.Today is the 10-year anniversary of Payton’s death from liver disease at 45, and I am filled with memories.  Read more...

Her name was Sharon. Few of us know her last name or each other’s for that matter, but that has never been important.

We meet most mornings dressed for combat, little or no makeup, hair uncombed in my case, and that’s why I love it there so much. It’s the neighborhood “Y” and if your shorts are too long or your outfit outdated, no one cares.

Few of us are close friends, we don’t call each other on a regular basis and it’s little more than a wave if we see each at the grocery store in town. And I’ve always kind of liked that too, in an anti-social sort of way. We come together for an hour each morning and then we scatter, no heavy conversations, no commitments.  Read more...

Blogs pause, but life rarely does.
How to catch up?

Homecoming dances and choir concerts, soccer tournaments and family visits, lots of work, a good thing. Balloon Boy, a bad thing. An evil germ this week that had me searching a website on “Common Cold vs. Swine Flu – How to Tell the Difference.”

An entire website inviting me to analyze my every symptom? I mean, what could be better? My family wouldn’t do it with me, which annoyed me greatly; my husband Rick’s response to my every sickness from runny nose to coma, “You’re fine.” But it would be fun for me, give me something to do to distract me from my suffering.  Read more...