You don't quite get the concept of the empty nest until you find yourself in the middle of one.

     Now that my kids have graduated and moved to different corners of the world, I find the peace and quiet to be deafening. When my youngest got married and moved out, I had the enormous chore of cleaning her room. Almost two years later (OK, I should have been a little more rigid when she was in high school), I have a nice guest room. I have been on a home improvement kick and have put on a new roof, ...

The Stress Queen recalls the events that earned her the title.

By Debi Beauregard

       I made my first big splash in the pages of absolutely! wearing nothing but a $10 swimsuit from Wal-Mart. I don’t know whether it proved that you readers had a sense of humor or that I did. Since that time, I’ve taken you back to school, to jury duty, and on vacation. We’ve tackled a stint in boot camp and delighted in writing about doing absolutely nothing.

 Some of the best of the past:

      After learning the correct size for a swimsuit is ...

 By Debi Beauregard

       I am thankful I had a safe place to stay during the hurricane. I live in a great neighborhood with neighbors who didn’t blink an eye at taking in a middle-aged woman with a hundred-pound dog.

      I’m thankful my house made it through the storm with no damage. My trees and fence didn’t do quite as well, but they are still standing, for the most part.

      I’m thankful for the cool front that came with the storm. We were able to sleep comfortably without the air conditioning in September. Who would have guessed ...

  The time-honored way of starting the school year is for students to write essays on what they did over the summer. They write of going to grandma’s or of magical nights spent in a tent on the lawn. Grown-ups just go on vacation and then plunge headlong back into life, forgetting what fun they really had before the end of the first workday.

      For several years, a couple of my ...

      “Did you clean your room?” This is every mother’s mantra, our wish, our unfulfilled dream. Sure, on occasion, my kids would clean their rooms. It was usually with the threat of their grandmother coming to visit, and the room had to be “grandmother clean,” which was code for “Mommy is going to go nuts if you don’t get this place spotless before your grandparents come to visit.”

      Recently my last little bird fled the nest. We had a six-month countdown for her to clean and pack her room for her big move ...

Remember when going green meant dressing up for St. Patrick’s Day? Reduce, reuse, recycle, and now repurpose. Wouldn’t you know, I’m always one word behind the times?

Now that Whole Foods is going green on us by eliminating plastic bags, can Kroger, Randall’s, and HEB be far behind? I can barely remember to bring my grocery list to the store — and forget about coupons — I can’t even imagine having to fold and reuse my bags. I will be reduced to being able to buy only as much as I can carry to my car in one trip. < p>< p>

Actually, ...

My parents used to tell me I could be anything I wanted to be. The last thing I ever thought I would be is old.

I mean with a name like Debi, how can I be old? There’s Debbie Reynolds. She’s got to be hitting 75, and she’s still perky for gosh sakes. There are no old Debi’s.

I started taking stock of myself last year when I wrote the boot camp story. I never meant to take the whole camp. I thought I would just be writing a story about a middle-aged, overweight woman trying to keep up with ...

His turn:

The holidays are always a good time to witness what I call the world of female "doublespeak". Double speak is code for statements women make from a conflicted mind that they aren’t really sure they mean.  Things like, “I would love to have everyone over on Thanksgiving.”  

In slacker world you lay low until someone, usually a woman volunteers to have you over out of guilt or obligation, and then you take it. Just wait it out and be ready, it’s a given.  A female’s sense of obligation runs very high during the holidays. She knows something will be ...

Thankfully, the reunion took place at a casual setting. After stepping in horse apples on my way in (did I ...