back to slow

“Rule number one is, don’t sweat the small stuff. Rule number two is, it’s all small stuff." Robert Eliot A few months ago I drove over a deep pothole and instantly knew my tire was busted.  On the way to the car place, I was explaining to my daughter, in a slightly exasperated, woe-is-me voice, that we were going to get the car fixed. I explained that she had to be patient because it might take a long time and we would have to wait until the car was done to drive home.  She stopped playing with her dinosaur and started bouncing excitedly in her car seat. "Mommy is that the place with the table and chairs and the kid toys?!" "No honey, we're not going to a restaurant or the library. This is the car place." "Yeah, where we get our wheels fixed?" "Yeah, that one." "Mommy, there's a table and chairs and lots of toys there! Are we gonna play with them?!" I was too preoccupied at that moment to answer her ques...

I remember being 6 years old in my dance class. My mom walked out of the parent waiting area and offered me some of her Sprite. Two sips in I heard the teacher say from the front of the room, "That's enough. She doesn't need any more sweets." The other girls snickered.  I remember being 8 years old and dreading my parents' friends coming over. Their youngest child was my age and wasn't the nicest kid. One day, out of nowhere, she poked me in the stomach and said, "Boy, I'm glad I'm not chubby."  At 12, the two boys who bullied me, cornered me in the school hallway, got right up in my face and sneered, "Why are you so ugly?"  At 14 years old, my best guy friend told me that he would be interested in dating me if my legs were a little leaner and more defined.  At 16, I decided not to eat doing school hours so I could look like the girls in my Seventeen magazines. At 22 years old, I worked at summer camp (the fittest I h...