Yeah right, Mom… Whatever… Uh huh, sure, Mom… Ok, whatever you say… Gimme a break, Mom…  (Cue the eyes rolling into the back of the head!)

Let me reassure you all that I make no claims to be an expert at doling out advice.  I am not a rocket scientist, psychiatrist, psychologist, celebrity chef, renowned homemaker or anything remotely that exciting.

…I’m just hoping that collectively we’ll be experts!

I hold out no hopes that one day my beach rose will read this and actually follow our advice…

though she should.

This is my first tip.  Mom says, read this blog!  (Do I hear an “Oh please, Mom…”?!)

The weight behind my “words of wisdom” lay in the fact that I’ve learned through personal experience and want to help ward off unnecessary embarrassment, hand-wringing, etc that comes from learning life lessons the hard way – by living through them. Granted surviving life’s hardships is a necessity in character building, right? (At least that’s what my Mom always said!).  But maybe avoiding some of them would be a nice treat?!

Wouldn’t it be nice if you got a manual, step-by-step instructions on how to live your life with the least amount of aggravation, angst, anxiety, humiliation & failure from the day you were born? Well, I promise that this isn’t a tutorial on how to live your life. (That would definitely provoke eye rolling!) Instead, consider this a bit of insight into what I’ve found worked in my life & what would have helped to know about those things that didn’t work so well along the way.