By Boston Skirt, Tuesday, March 09, 2010, 0 comments
Who has time these days to work a 9 to 5 job, get the kids to all their activities, go to the gym AND prepare healthy and delicious meals? While we can't help you with your work schedule or fitness routine, with the aid of Personally Prepared by Susan, home cooked meals, kitchen organization and a fully stocked fridge are all taken care of. For busy moms on the go, Susan Goldstein offers her services in order to make life less stressful, by personally cooking and baking exactly what you want, customized to your family's tas
When we were engaged to be married, back in the halcyon days of early 2001, my husband and I participated in an elaborate mating ritual that has taken hold deep within American culture. We registered for gifts. Daily cutlery, heavy silver forks, All-Clad pots in several different sizes, formal china for all those state dinners we would be serving, gravy boats, nesting mixing bowls and a much-longed-for salad spinner that retailed for $25.99. Among this orgy of conspicuous consumption was a set of everyday dinnerware from Villeroy and Boch.
The palm reader giggled as he ran a finger over my hand. “You’ll be poor and you’ll be rich, but you’ll always be bad with money. Fortunately, you’ll also always have someone to take care of you.” I rolled my eyes. I just wasn’t that kind of girl.
We were waitresses, all of us, with different stash spots for tips. Mine was a tattered old envelope in my underwear drawer. I kept the amount written on the front, scratched out and rewritten over and over, to keep myself in the know and to protect from unlikely thievery.
I got my first clue things were shifting when they changed the name of the Personnel Department to Human Resources. That title brought to mind bodies wearing pressed suits and hanging from huge hooks, cycling around on a motorized rack like the one in the dry cleaners. A neat filing system, it displayed unlimited selections to replace the used-up models that had been piled into the roll-off dumpster in the alley. My second clue arrived the morning after the merger papers were signed.
What does a life cost? In 1987, I knew exactly: $150,000. One of my major responsibilities as a hospital department manager was obtaining authorization from insurance companies for bone marrow transplantations. The insurance companies had an equally fierce responsibility to try to deny them. With the help of the oncologists and hematologists I worked for, I wrangled by telephone and mail with authorization specialists for months on end.
By Skirt.com, Tuesday, February 02, 2010, 0 comments
So your BFF just had a baby, your boss is in the hospital or someone you know just dealt with the loss of a loved one—it's time for the troops to rally around the kitchen and whip up some casseroles and comfort foods. Enter TakeThemAMeal.com.
The task of coordinating a meal schedule for caring cooks who want to help can be overwhelming for the family involved. This site is an amazing tool for everyone to fill out what and when they're delivering dishes and notifies the recipient as well.
Leave it to a group of women to invent this brilliant take-care-tool.
By Skirt.com, Monday, February 01, 2010, 0 comments
campaigns with the National Partnership for Women and Families. There are resources for getting involved with health care reform, balancing work and family, reproductive health and workplace fairness.
By Skirt.com, Monday, February 01, 2010, 0 comments
the conversation with your kids. The Parents’ Sex Ed Center section on the Advocates for Youth website has resources to begin talking with your children about sex.
By Skirt.com, Monday, February 01, 2010, 2 comments
workings of serendipity. My friend Ruthann, 90 years old, had a big grin on her face when she told me how she met her husband. She taught at a junior high school and parked in the same parking garage every day for nearly 20 years when she finally struck up a conversation with Norton, who had been teaching and parking there for just as long. They were both 40 years old. Once married, they had a sunny 30-plus years together, just the two of them in a sprawling white house in the hills, until he collapsed one day while picking raspberries.
Their meeting can’t be characterized as a near-miss. I picture Cupid yawning lazily near the parking garage entrance, or napping once in a while in a green lawn chair next to the elevators, his cache of arrows spilling across his lap while he snoozes, waiting for the perfect week, the perfect year to bring Ruthann and Norton together. Maybe spring, he must have thought to himself, they’ll finish grading papers and have the summer together with picnic baskets and rowboats, if Norton doesn’t get cold feet. No, better to take up the bow and let the arrow fly in winter, when snowy nights bring a longing for firelight and quilts and the pleasure of cold hands made warm by another’s touch.
workings of serendipity. My friend Ruthann, 90 years old, had a big grin on her face when she told me how she met her husband. She taught at a junior high school and parked in the same parking garage every day for nearly 20 years when she finally struck up a conversation with Norton, who had been teaching and parking there for just as long. They were both 40 years old. Once married, they had a sunny 30-plus years together, just the two of them in a sprawling white house in the hills, until he collapsed one day while picking raspberries.
