Author Archive

How Do You Do It?

Randy Foster | July 16, 2010 | 5 Comments

I missed my risk entry this month.  Totally missed it.  Two days later, I noticed.  This isn’t supposed to happen.  I should be able to handle all my commitments.  I don’t really have all that many.  I’ve pared down to the minimum.  There’s the kid — enough said about that — and then there’s the [...]

Do You Hate Me Now?

Randy Foster | June 14, 2010 | 9 Comments

For the past 16 years, I have been mothering a mostly delightful child.  OK, let’s be more specific.  For the first 12 years, an entirely delightful child.  Then things started to change.  And now, 16 years into motherhood, I can truthfully say I feel like I’m living with a possessed alien.  I’ve never known such [...]

The Idiot in the Room

Randy Foster | May 14, 2010 | 6 Comments

There is nothing like a new job to make you question your intelligence.  Your competence.  How you spent the first 35 years of your career and what happened to all your vaunted abilities.  What my new boss was thinking when she hired me. I’m no rocket scientist but I can usually keep up.  That’s all [...]

The Risk of Losing My Mind

Randy Foster | April 13, 2010 | 2 Comments

So I did the thing I never thought I’d do.  I swore I would never do.  I prayed I wouldn’t ever have to do.  I took a job that involves commuting. Just hearing the word – commuting – brings on near-convulsions.  I recognize this is a commuter town.  People here, normal people, people like me [...]

Not Being Careful What You Wish For

Randy Foster | March 14, 2010 | 5 Comments

Recently, I accepted a wonderful job offer after having been unemployed and income-less for more than 5 months.  I am as excited as I am relieved to be starting this great new adventure, but not a little terrified too. You see, I worked for the same company for 22 years.  I guess that makes me [...]

Rebooting a Love Affair

Randy Foster | February 14, 2010 | 5 Comments

How very fitting that I should be submitting my February risk on Valentine’s Day, for the risk I am taking now is in returning to a relationship that ended in 2008.  And not just any ending, I might add, but a spectacular flame-out, the details of which I am too embarrassed to describe here except [...]

Making A Life Over, One Week at a Time

Randy Foster | January 14, 2010 | 1 Comments

I joined a Life Makeover Group this week.  It’s actually a group of women who have been meeting this way for years but things kind of fell apart, so they are reinvigorating the group and taking in new members.  So far, I’m one of two newcomers. There is so very much about me that needs [...]

If I Were Smarter, part II

Randy Foster | December 26, 2009 | 2 Comments

OK, so this is the entry I was hoping I would not have to write.  The risk I took last month in allowing my daughter to prove her trustworthiness did not turn out as I had wished.  If y’all remember, I left town recently for a beach vacation and left her in the care of [...]

If I Were Smarter, I Would Worry

Randy Foster | December 14, 2009 | 5 Comments

My daughter told me not to worry.  She should know better than to say such a thing.  I’m a bona fide 100% Jewish mother, and that means worrying is built into my DNA.  I worry if there’s nothing to worry about. But I’m a grown up girl, Chelsea insisted, almost 15.  It will be fine, [...]

In Stainless We Trust

Randy Foster | November 12, 2009 | 7 Comments

The squealing wheels of the oversized hand truck are the first harbinger that my new appliances have arrived.  Owing to HH Gregg’s willingness to sell me four brand new kitchen appliances while not charging me any interest for the next two years, I have taken the plunge and gone stainless. The decision has left some [...]