Fleas are more than just a nuisance. They are a serious problem.
We’re all enjoying the holidays but for this article, I’m leaving threats to animals from the “stuff” people bring into their homes for purposes of holiday celebrations, because every other pet organization is focusing on these holiday threats.
When I was pregnant with my oldest daughter, my husband and I would joke about how we were going to have twin boys. We were going to name them Gearatio (gear ratio) and Gearoil (gear oil) in reverence to my husband’s passion for street rods. Obviously, we didn’t have boys. We have two girls, two and a half years apart in age.
When I heard the latest on the extension of the 2001 income tax cuts, all I could do was shake my head. Despite the alleged voter mandate on lower spending and cutting the deficit, Congress didn’t get the message. Both parties are fighting over how much to add to the deficit, with a bizarre back-and-forth exchange in public over how to do it.
I have to tell you, I’m a little conflicted over this latest batch of WikiLeaks documents.
As a journalist, I believe we should have access to, well, just about everything. The only way to get a real sense of exactly what my government is doing is to be able to read the actual documents.
The first snow of the season has fallen and all the fun Christmas tunes are filling the air, which means one happy thing – a whole pile of helpless husbands will be out desperately hunting for that special gift for their wives.
I’ve heard that necessity is the mother of invention, but I’ve always believed that laziness is the mother of efficiency. When things are running smoothly and efficiently, there’s more time to lie around and do nothing. As a result, I am a huge fan of efficiency.
Apparently it took God until the 21st Century to release a 2.0 version of the Seventh Commandment. According to one pastor, “Thou shalt not commit adultery” should now read, “Thou shalt not Facebook.”
After counseling roughly 20 couples with Facebook-related marriage issues, Reverend Cedric Miller has had enough.
As I was peeling the very sticky wrapping off one of the cupcakes my 13-year old daughter made, I noticed it wasn’t just the cupcake wrapper that was sticky, it was the counter. A friend of mine told me that when her teenage daughter decides to bake, she thinks of a long lost article I wrote when our children were little. It started with “I was a good mom today, I let my kids paint.”
I saw the sign for the Covington tree lighting event next month, and it felt a little sad now that the Mega Tree is gone. I didn’t realize there was a new tree in the middle of that roundabout, since I’m concentrating on not getting killed by the people who haven’t learned how to drive in a roundabout yet.
Every year, during the final weeks before January rolls around again, retailers and automakers go to great lengths to persuade us to buy as much stuff as our credit cards will possibly allow.
Most people do not think about 3-2 counts or a pitcher warming up in the bullpen during this part of the year. Football season and the start of basketball dominates the sports landscape. But for most people in the area, baseball has been on their minds during the past week or so.
Just to warn you up front, we’re talking about “change” again this week. Fortunately, it’s not the Obama-hugger kind of change; this time it’s the kind of change that cities struggle with as they grow.
Maple Valley has to make another review of its comprehensive plan, which is sort of like the city’s map of where the houses, parks and strip malls will go over the next 20 years. It has to be updated every 5-7 years, and we’re due for another refresher.
The recession is over! Yay! Well, at least according to economists, it is. If you read the news much, it probably doesn’t seem like it. If you’re still out of work, or you’re using this newspaper to keep warm, it certainly doesn’t seem like it. Maybe if I start off every column with the good news, we can fool ourselves into believing it.
Demonstrating their frustration with the slow pace of the economic recovery, voters across Washington State and America unwittingly chose legislative gridlock on Tuesday by opting to punish the party currently in power and rewarding the party that caused the mess, guaranteeing both an ideological and a partisan showdown over the future direction of the country.
I don’t know about you, but I’m glad that this election is over. Patty Murray and Dino Rossi sounded like the two most horrible people in the state (if you believe their commercials). Do we elect a guy who favors Airbus over Boeing, and thinks that military service is meaningless, or the lady who votes yes on every tax she can get her hands on and is solely responsible for bankrupting America?
The final hours of the 2010 midterms are upon us. As field teams rev up their get-out-the-vote efforts for their candidates, operatives working for both sides have taken the air war in Washington State to new lows, particularly in the Senate contest, which pits Patty Murray against Dino Rossi.
I’ve been a political junkie for more than 20 years. But this year is trying my patience.
This year is literally the Dumbest election season I have ever seen. There have been bad choices in the past, but this year is just Dumb.
There’s no other word for it.
I declared to my daughter at the beginning of the school year I was not going to 10th grade this year, I had already been to 10th grade and I was not repeating it like I did with her in 9th grade last year. What that meant for her was I was not going to bug her about her homework or track that she was doing it. She knows my expectations and it’s too stressful for me to ride her all the time about homework.
The trickiest part about hearing our elected officials say “we need new taxes for public safety” is that sometimes it’s said just to cover up mistakes from the past. It’s easier to ask for taxes to pay for more police officers than it is to ask for money to expand the park system or pay for public art displays.
Three times the voters have approved initiatives requiring either a two-thirds vote of the Legislature or a majority vote of the people to raise taxes. Three times. Yet Olympia took it away this year, despite overwhelming citizen opposition.
