Middle Age Mommy - Keeping It All Together

Spring has arrived in the south.  It is beautiful.  The trees are blooming, bulbs are pushing up, and the temperature is wonderful.  Everyone is sporting their flip flops and jockeying for position on the patios and decks of local restaurants and bars.  I have lived in Atlanta since 1990.  In that time, there have been a handful of scary moments with the weather, specifically tornadoes.  Just a few years ago, downtown was ravaged by a twister.  The storm struck the 71,000-seat Georgia Dome at 9:45 p.m. during a Southeastern Conference tournament basketball game. It shattered windows and tore roofs from buildings, including CNN Center, before continuing into several residential neighborhoods.  We are in-town dwellers, and that was a pretty scary storm.  We were oblivious to it, in the midst of hosting a dinner party, but someone did comment that it was a little windy outside.  Just down the street, literally, less than a half mile, the...

I was about 10 years old before I discovered the Beatles.  Do the math.  I was born in November of 1963, and the Beatles first US tour started in February of 1964.  That made me 3 months old.  Fast forward to my  grandparent's home in Georgetown, Kentucky, somewhere around 1973...my grandmother handed me a few 45's she thought I might like.  What she put in my hands, were several early Beatles records that my aunt had purchased in the early 1960's and never took with her.   I did not know that I had been given the gift of original early Beatles 45s on the Capital yellow swirl label., but what I discovered was "Ticket to Ride", "Please, Please Me", and "I want to Hold Your Hand".  I flipped.  My musical exposure up to that point had been my parent's Peter, Paul and Mary albums, Kingston Trio and the Smother's Brothers.  My Republican parents had a penchant for counterculture music.  I had just started listening to Top 40 radio ...