As a new school year approaches and I see parents doing back-to-school shopping, it’s easy to get nostalgic. When my youngest daughter Lindsay was in Kindergarten, her class took turns taking their class mascot “Flat Stanley” home. Flat Stanley was a cardboard boy and the kids were supposed to take pictures of him wherever they went so they could chronicle his activities.

When you meet my granddaughter Kinsley, who is 18 months old, the first thing you notice is her bright red hair. The second thing you notice is her hot temper, which is often associated with redheads. She will definitely let you know if she doesn't like something you've done, such as turn off the water in the bathtub, use the yellow sidewalk chalk, or eat her french fries! My daughter Autumn claims her baby girl has a split personality. I say she’s going to pay her mama back for every bad thing she ever did when she was growing up!

Sometimes when sending personal emails (or on facebook), I use all lowercase letters with no caps and a friend recently commented on that. I laughed and asked if he had a fear of lowercase letters and went on to make up a word for that: microalphaphobia. I said this as a joke and then felt badly because some people (including myself) have real phobias and it’s not a laughing matter. I suffer from claustrophobia, or a phobia of confined spaces. 

Yesterday while I was eating lunch, I  realized I had a headache. Then by 3:00, my throat started to burn and I knew it was coming. Again. Something I’ve been dreading and hoped had passed…my allergy symptoms had resurfaced after a couple weeks of feeling good. All of a sudden, I can’t breathe, my throat is scratchy and burns and feels as if I’ve poured hot lava down it, and my eyes are bloodshot and itch so badly I want to scratch them out with a claw hammer.