On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was standing in our hallway bathroom, staring at a wall, when the phone rang. It
probably took me a few rings to snap out of my trance—after all, bathroom remodeling is serious business. But after I answered the phone, deciding on paint color and tile
didn’t seem so important anymore. It was Andy calling from work, telling me to turn on the TV and see the events unfolding over 1,500 miles away. I put
down my tape measure and watched in horror. It was so unbelievable, at times I felt as if I was watching a twisted episode of Batman where the villains were winning,
in an over-the-top, diabolical way, using only a few people and a few box cutters. The atrocities kept happening, and somewhere, you just knew
…
Category: Sharing Stories
When Your Child’s Email Gets Hacked: My Look Into the Evil World of Spamming
I guess our first clue should have been when our preteen daughter, Emmie, couldn’t get into her email account a few
weeks ago– she said it wouldn’t let her in, and she figured that maybe she’d forgotten her password, even though it was the only one she ever used, and it always popped up automatically from
our home computer, anyway. (Her email service says that’s a sign that the account might have been compromised.) But unknowing doofus parents that we are, we just went on
about our business as she answered the security questions and reset her password (she chose to “change” it to the same one as before). Then yesterday morning, suspicious emails, with blank
“subject” lines, started arriving from her address, several every few minutes, into my inbox and into everyone else’s in her address book. They contained a link to a “pharmaceutical” website, a
site that contained descriptions of just how their products would help male enhancement and performance. It’s bad enough we all get …
A Bang-Up Time at Westminster Abbey
What an experience it was. As I sat in my seat at Westminster Abbey, I almost pinched myself. I can’t believe I’m sitting here. I knew I’d
probably be sitting there for awhile, so I tried to drink it all in and memorize every detail…the soaring architecture, the sculptures, the paintings. Was that Sarah
Ferguson, Duchess of York, sitting next to me? No, turns out it was a young advertising exec from north of London that looked very much like her—but she was friendly, and we struck up a
conversation. I wondered where my husband was sitting and wondered if we would be able to find each other when this was all over…we’d gotten separated when I took too long staring at
Elizabeth…
No, I didn’t get to attend the latest Royal Wedding, but watching the news and …
Updates
Time for an update on previous blog posts, especially in light of the “archived” post just published on
Mamapedia:
Emmie has
decided to play an instrument in 6th grade band…and the instrument is…drumroll please (how appropriate)…drums! Well, actually “percussion”. Which means xylophone, several different kinds
of drums, tambourine, castanets, gong, washboards… —anything to fill out that “wall of sound”. Our exchange student may want to run and …