Rosie Preston

By Rosie Preston  New Year’s Day is a way to measure time to us, with the importance of a birthday. It is an exciting day for me, even though I’m embarrassed to say the last two years, I fell asleep before the midnight hour! Still, as I thought about it last night, all comfy in

By Rosie Preston This is the season to be bombarded with trying to fulfill our loved one’s Christmas wishes. It is a wonderful time of year and I love to buy gifts, especially for the children. Most kids request what they have seen or heard about and will entertain them for a while. The true

By Rosie Preston Well, it’s almost time for the Iron Bowl, the most exciting game for all football fans who live and breathe the game. I will tell you right away that my husband is an Alabama fan. I come from a long line of Alabama fans, and I am experienced with the excitement of

Dearest mother, How the time has flown, yet each year has brought joy, love, pain, and yes, even rejection. I’ve learned to live with all of it during my lifetime. But yesterday as I visited with you, I was so happy to see your sweet face. It had been almost four weeks since I’d been

By Rosie Preston Every day, I wonder if I will ever feel wise. I think I’ve reached the Golden Years, and I’m remembering the days when children listened to their elders and didn’t question a word. I’ve found my children will listen and roll their eyes. They don’t believe that my memories have any value.

By Rosie Preston During my lifetime, I’ve attended many parties, all involving friends making plans to celebrate different types of events. So you can imagine when I tell you that I’ve recently attended the two wildest parties ever! It seemed everyone was arriving at the correct time. Cars were being parked and re-parked as drivers decided

By Rosie Preston I hold many dear memories of Noccalula Falls, the first being that I grew up on Lay Springs Road in Gadsden, about two miles from the falls. When I was barely able to walk, my dad and I would follow Black Creek until we reached the falls. It was quite a walk

By Rosie Preston One wrong move on a certain morning caused a ripple effect on the rest of the day. May I explain? The alarm clock woke me at 5 a.m. and I jumped into the shower. After using my towel, I threw it over the shower rod. The towel hit the bathroom light, which

When it’s least expected… It had been a while since I had used my steam mop, but this was a day I really needed it. I filled it with water but no steam came out. With a screwdriver, I took it apart where the water was supposed to go through a little tiny tube, and

By Rosie Preston Strange title for a column, you think? Even though I looked forward to my granddaughter beginning another school year, I find myself daydreaming as I watch her enter her school. I think back to my very first day of school. There was a special kind of electrical current in the air! Carrying

How to choose a daycare, Part II A class I took in college, called “Early Childhood Education” ended with our last grade based on writing a thesis on the subject of positive aspects of owning or choosing a daycare center. I’ll never forget the end of my paper, which said, “A daycare does for money

How to choose a daycare In today’s world, it is a rare event when a parent stays home with children rather than work outside the home. The one question people ask is if daycare affects a child’s behavior and development. Well, it all depends on the quality of care. After spending 15 years either working at,

By Rosie Preston Last week I shared some tips about using Dawn dish detergent and vinegar to save money and time. Maybe you will find some of the following tips useful. The first tip is a great way to trap fruit flies. I know they seem to come to my house each summer, and I

Tips on cleaning with vinegar There has been a loss in our household income during the past two years, so I became very frugal. It hasn’t hurt at all, and I’ve discovered a few ways to save by using inexpensive products to clean my home. It is amazing how many ways we can use vinegar

Every day, breaking news updates us about one crisis after another. How do we overcome the catastrophes? This definition does not imply just what is going on in our physical world but in our emotional and spiritual worlds as well. Using the word ‘today’ is significant because it is impossible to change yesterday and we

By Rosie Preston My children are grown-up adults, and lately I wondered if they have gathered the family together and discussed all the things I am forgetting. “Mom, how could forget to mail those bills for me?” my daughter questioned. My son followed with, “She forget to make my bank deposit!” How could I explain

By Rosie Preston It occurred to me the other night that I don’t get anywhere fast, so I knew that it was time to start re-thinking my plans. I may go two steps forward and one step back, which was happening quite often lately. The ability to live as I had in the past –

Finding my friend in an unexpected situation at a nursing home where her sister-in-law resides became quite a learning experience. And because it could happen to you, I decided to share it.  Because my friend was involved in helping a patient other than her family rub a cramp out of her foot, she went through

By Rosie Preston It’s been 11 years since my daddy passed after years of suffering from Parkinson’s Disease. Afterward, my sister Mary and I brought our mother to my home to take care of her. We loved taking care of my mom, with our only heartache being that she could not remember when to take

By Rosie Preston I called a pest control company several weeks ago because in the middle of the night I’d heard a terrible noise under my bathtub, which is one of those new lightweight ones where there is a space between it and the floor underneath. I was positive that it was a raccoon, as

By Rosie Preston Dear readers, Mother’s Day will be celebrated this coming Sunday, and I have bittersweet emotions. I love my dear mother so much. Yet, as I visit her at the nursing home where she has been a resident for several years, my main heart wants more than anything to be able to care

The following piece is an example of the creative writing of my the granddaughter Breanna, who pictured with me this week. She will be 13 on April 26. I think she’s written several good poems for her class at Episcopal Day School. An Ode to Mocha “My lovely, feisty cat, Mocha, you are a loved

A short piece by Carl Sagan… What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the

With each passing year, we are living a journey that continuously changes, sometimes by our choices and others by unknown forces that could not have been planned for. My present age finds me being a daughter, mother and grandmother, and my fifth great-grand-baby girl was born last night in Colorado. The word “great-grandmother” always makes me

Phil was walking down the hall talking to himself. I was a little curious until he reached me and asked, “Guess what I found on the front porch?” He then reached into his coat and pulled out a little Siamese kitten. He continued to soothe the kitten. Sighing, I replied, “I didn’t think we were

Don’t tell Momma… It’s been years since my three grandchildren were young, and I was sitting with them while my daughter had a night out. After dinner, I decided to give them a bath and get them ready for bed. I then heard Dakota say, “Nana, Brittany is going through Momma’s drawers, and she is not

Rites of passage… Looking at a recent selfie photo of me and my granddaughter, I find myself trying to look around some miraculous corner on the photo so I can see if that’s really what I look like in today’s world. I admit it is me. It’s the ‘me’ who has finally accepted that I’m

On the news a few days, ago I heard the still-popular Barbie doll was celebrating a birthday. It is hard to believe she is turning 60 years old. I’ll never forget the first Barbie I received for Christmas when the dolls hit the shelves. Upon doing some research I found that Barbie is a fashion

By Rosie Preston It was several years ago when my three grandchildren were under the age of five. Even though it’s been a while, I decided to publish this story again because I frequently find myself transporting my great-grandchildren and often finding laughter filling my car. It’s amazing that in today’s world, I meet so