Mary Schmidt, Author at All The Single Girlfriends

Acting Like a Grown-Up

Aug 31, 2011 by Mary Schmidt

Some believe this means being boring. Staid. No fun. All responsibility and no spontaneity. Au Contraire. Of course this is just my perspective, but… Being a (single) grown-up means: You can decide when it’s time to act silly…and enjoy doing so…without worrying about what others think. You can designate one day a week as the “blob day.” Mine is Sunday. With a few rare exceptions, I do absolutely nothing that I don’t absolutely want to do. Oddly enough, some Sundays are my most productive days… You can choose to have cold cereal for dinner, and enjoy it. (Some nights this is JUST the thing for me. No sad little single moaning here. I love Weetabix, with very, very cold milk.) You’ve learned that kindness is both a virtue AND a skill. A skill that...

The “Thing Thing” (Clean your cabinets!)...

Aug 1, 2011 by Mary Schmidt

I recently moved my mom, aka “The Momster” to Albuquerque. As such things go, I couldn’t move most of her material possessions. Too much stuff. Too little time. Too many and higher priorities. And, as I spent hours digging through drawers, closets and cabinets…much of it appeared to not have been touched, much less used in years, if not decades. ALL of it coated in multiple layers of deep, deep brown nicotine (Hey, wasn’t this white when I sent it as an Xmas present? Ack. Ack.) So, what the hell to move??? – especially given Mom’s directive to “do the best you can.” Still, I tried…digging out old family jewelry…sifting through piles of paper… trying to get the things that would really (I thought) mean something to the Momster. All while breathing in decades...

I Hope Happiness IS Contagious

Jun 29, 2011 by Mary Schmidt

Friends and regular readers of my writing here and at Lipsticking know that I’m going through some major adjustments with my mother. Fiercely independent. Unwilling to ask for help. Unwilling to accept help. Well, that explains me…but it also explains why my mom ended up where she is…in an assisted living home here in Albuquerque, with multiple major ailments. So sad. Too late. She simply can’t live alone anymore. (She’d HATE my telling you this. She considers someone asking her where she went to high school a major invasion of privacy (!?) More about that – generational differences and various conceptions of social interaction in another post.) All that said, Mom is doing amazingly well, adjusting to living with seven other women, in a city she never liked, in a home she didn’t choose,...

Southern Fried Rice

Jun 24, 2011 by Mary Schmidt