Author: Stacie Chadwick
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Reading Between the Lines When Your Family Cares Enough to Send the Very Best
Recently, I got this card from my husband and kids: On the surface, you could read this as, “You’re an awesome Mom/Wife/Food Sanitation Expert/Cleaning Lady!” Digging a little deeper though, there’s a hidden meaning behind each of their missives, one that involves birth order, timing, and various stages of psychological development. Allow me to explain.…
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What Every Girl Needs to Know About Skin Care and Shaving The Fuzz Off Her Face
There comes a time in every woman’s life when she realizes her husband is connected to a lot of well-endowed Facebook friends under the alias ‘Shazam Man!’ she’s not getting any younger, trades her engagement ring for a boob job breaks free from the constraints of social judgment, and installs a stripper pole in her…
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What Do You Do When Your Child Disappears?
Last Friday, my eight year-old daughter, Essa, stayed home from school with a bad case of everyone-else-in-my-class-is-sick-so-I-wanna-be-sick-too-itis. As a mother, I’ve experienced these strange illnesses before. My son, Taylor, once had I-can’t-go-to-school-because-I-sprained-my-ankle-and-halfway-through-my-day-off-started-limping-on-the-wrong-foot syndrome, and my other daughter, Grace, recently struggled with I-didn’t-get-my-book-report-finished-therefore-I’ll-cry-until-my-face-turns-an-unnatural-shade-of-puke-so-I-can-stay-home-and-finish-it disorder. Needless to say, I’m usually unsympathetic to the sudden onset of these…
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Shortest Post Ever
My youngest, Essa, just got her first email address. Of all the puppies, ponies, and Justin Bieber images available on the World Wide Web, this is what she chose as her inaugural missive. To me. It was titled “Make Drinks.” Did I mention she’s eight? Apparently the fruit and the tree are forever intertwined.
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Beauty Shouldn’t be in the Eye of the Beholder, Especially if You’re Looking in the Mirror
When I was a blossoming teen (O.K. not really blossoming, more like hiccupping and stumbling) living in the land of whiskey and weed better known as Kentucky, I was way too into my looks. Luckily, my mom wasn’t, so when one of her friends paid me a compliment, she’d change the subject and redirect the…
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A Strange Tale of NyQuil, Rodents, and Random Christmas Lessons.
Let me start by inserting a spoiler alert. I wrote this after shotgunning about a gallon of NyQuil. Yesterday I was bragging to my husband, Scot (who’s fighting off a tiny cold and is bedridden for the foreseeable future…likely until America pole vaults off the fiscal cliff) that due to my impervious genetic make-up, I haven’t…
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For The Voices We Can No Longer Hear
I’ve never really used the word “evil”. I don’t like it. Pronouncing it turns my mouth in the wrong direction and my face into an ugly sneer. The word is as powerful as the actions it’s meant to describe, and it makes me feel uncomfortable. Even the juxtaposition of consonants and vowels is wrong, like…
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Learning to Love Chaos (or) Yes, I Adopted A Dog
“In a world that constantly throws big, unexpected events our way, we must learn to benefit from disorder.” Nassim Nicholas Taleb This quote is from “Learning to Love Volatility,” a fascinating Wall Street Journal article I read last month. The basic premise of the piece is that huge, unanticipated events, like stock market crashes, wars, and…
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What Do You Do When The Party’s Still Going But the Hangover’s Already Begun?
Yesterday I expressed an unmistakable political preference through my outspoken alter ego, Gemini Girl, and if the thought of two voices running through one head makes you uncomfortable, try taking a look at the secondary characters rolling around up there. Some people seem to like her. Others don’t. When I was sixteen years old, the…
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Where The H-E-Double Toothpicks Did Halloween Go?
When I was a kid, Halloween was different. It was about freaks, fetishes, and trembling with fear as Mom and Dad searched through a pillowcase full of candy in search of the ever-elusive razor blade. Deep down inside, I always wanted to be that child who’s parents actually found a Smith & Wesson 6” serrated…
READING BETWEEN THE PINES 