Everyone has a "naughty" friend their childhood. The one that pushes the teacher's buttons, the one who gets in trouble at school yet acts like an angel at home, the one who lies and gets away with it (most of the time), and the one who smokes and drinks well before its appropriate or legal.

That friend of mine was Erin. 

We played the Ouija board, toilet papered houses (I swear it was for school) and loved a good, innocent prank. 

One day after school in my basement, we decided it would be a good idea to prank call the operator (remember you could just hit zero?) and sing her the song, Smooth Operator by Sade. Mind you, * 69 may have entered the scene, but caller ID wasn't a thing yet. This operator was no dummy. As soon as we got through enough Sade to have us doubled over in stitches, we hung up the phone. 

Not a minute later, the phone rang. And whaddya know? 

It was our operator friend telling us she was so smooth that she knew the number we were...

Is it me or are celebrities going further off the deep end of reality?

If you haven’t already heard about, read or listened to Gwenyth Paltrow’s (aka GP) latest interview with Dr. Will Cole, you’re in for a doozy, because GP is officially out to lunch (well, not literally because she apparently doesn’t eat lunch or breakfast but I’ll get to that in a second). I refuse to post the link to her interview because it’s full of dangerous ideas.

The interview with Dr. Cole, a chiropractic doctor, opens with her being embarrassed that her IV drip was still connected. I’m sorry, but I thought IV’s were reserved for those who were sick and actually needed real medical care? Apparently, Gwenyth likes to mainline her vitamins because multivitamins are just so 1980’s. I can already smell the smoke from the flames that will go up about this interview, but I keep listening to the dumpster fire. 

Gwenyth moves on from the IV’s...

My son ran towards me with an enormous, squirmy frog dangling from his hand. 

“Finally!” he shouted. It had been over an hour of searching before he caught this elusive Spring Peeper. 

I ran towards him to see the evidence because minutes earlier I had given up the search and started walking home. 

We live near a wooded area with several small ponds (aka vernal pools) which are a hot magnet for Spring Peepers. The sound of these nocturnal creatures rivals a gorgeous orchestra and makes you feel like you're in the middle of the rainforest. It’s a true sign of New England Spring when this evening melody fills the air. 

We'd been listening to this critter chorus for a few nights and our draw to hunt for these frogs felt like following a siren song. We simply had to go!

Yesterday late afternoon when the orchestra started tuning up, we donned our rain boots and jackets and headed toward the music. 

We searched the pond edges, nothing. 

We...

I’ve found myself doom scrolling on Facebook lately. 

We’ve recently moved which has prompted a flurry of activity on Facebook marketplace. I normally don’t like to hang out in Zuckerburg’s world, but I made the exception so we could unload our stuff. 

Whenever I check one of my “for sale” listings, I inevitably see the first story in my Facebook feed. Those evil geniuses know how to suck you down their rabbit hole. It really is hard to stop at that first story and the doom scrolling begins. 

Yesterday, the top post was from a friend who had my scrolling thumb hovering in mid-air after I read her announcement: “day one ready to reset, no gluten, dairy, sugar, wheat, coffee or alcohol for 30 days wish me luck!!!”

My heart sank as I read the over 60 comments which sounded mostly like this:

“You got this!”

“Good luck!”

“Gooooood for you!”

“Get it girlfriend.”

“Yay!...

A friend of mine just sent me this text:

"I was thinking about you this week. Do you still work as a nutritionist? I would like to lose xx pounds, but more importantly learn how to eat and how to maintain my weight!"  

After getting over my cringe-worthy reaction to my past work as a nutritionist who solely focused on weight loss, I shot back this reply:

"Hi! Actually, I work as a diet recovery and weight neutral coach helping women who DON'T want to diet anymore. Diets really only work for a tiny fraction of people and they can often make health worse in both the short and long term. LMK if you want more info!"

My friend, like so many other women I've talked with replied with this: 
"Yes! I want to change my way of eating and not diet anymore!" 

Here's where things are starting to sound familiar, aren't they?

I pipe back in with:
"I really don't work with women who have an underlying goal of weight loss. Health and weight are very often falsely tied...