It’s only the end of July, and boy, haven’t we had one heck of a tourist season already here in Mahoosuc Mills! I don’t get it. Some of these people from away drive hundreds of miles in their fancy SUVs to get away from it all, then they complain that it’s not more like home. “Don’t you have a Starbucks in town?” “The cell phone coverage stinks.” “The loons are keeping me up at night.” Folks, if you wanted to be miserable, you could have saved the gas and stayed home. Not everyone is like that, of course. But the ones who are kind of stand out. Down to the A&P, it’s been wicked busy, …

I have a whole chapter in my book, The Sweet Life, about how to deal money because money, or lack of it, can cause a lot of stress in a marriage. Now, I don’t give any advice on how to invest your hard-earned cash. I just share ways to approach money on a day-to-day basis, things that have worked for Charlie and me. Some of it we’ve been doing since we got married, and some we had to learn the hard way. I want to save you some pain. I’ve heard that rich people find it kind of tacky to talk about money, but for the rest of us, well, we gotta. I’m not saying …

This week’s blog appears in my book, The Sweet Life, but it bears repeating. ‘Tis the season. Up ‘til the economy tanked, “staycation” wasn’t even a word. There’s a reason for that. See how only half the word resembles “vacation”? That’s a hint as to the outcome of most staycations. At best, they’re kind of like a vacation. At worse, they’re more like a week spent in the Gulag. Charlie and me learned this the hard way a few years back. We’d never taken a staycation, so we thought we’d give it a try. We even made a plan, well kind of. We’d scrape and repaint the deck the first weekend, ‘cause it needed it …

Ran into Franny Ward down to the A&P the other day. She was standing in the express lane looking happy as a clam. I was about to go on break anyway, so I shut of my register light and went over to say hi.  Along with me and a handful of others, Franny is one of the Saturday morning regulars with Patsy down to Hair Affair. It’s always the same bunch of women, reading the same magazines, under the same hairdryers, dishing about celebrities and locals alike. We are equal opportunity gossipers. Did you see that movie “Steel Magnolias?” It’s kind of like that, only with snow or black flies. I call us the Sturdy …

I haven’t always been the best sleeper, and Charlie’s snoring doesn’t help. Menopause, either. Though to be honest, I crossed that bridge a long time ago, so technically, I’m post-menopause, which sounds like I’m just this side of dead. Anyhoo, that’s how I’ve been sleeping lately, like the dead, and it’s blissful. Why the improvement? I’d say it’s a combo platter of a few things. First and foremost, Charlie started doing a couple hits of nasal spray before he goes to bed, and it’s made all the difference in the world. His snoring has ratcheted down to a soft purr. I know it’s the nasal spray because during the day when he’s dozing in the …