Last week I saw an interesting post on Facebook titled: “Seeking Kelowna, BC Firefighter named Brent.”

The 300 word post was written by a man named Tom Argall from Brampton, Ontario. He explained that his mother had just been visiting Kelowna and had tripped on a bit of raised sidewalk, falling hard, breaking her arm and bruising her face. Luckily an off-duty firefighter was driving by, stopped and came to her rescue.

Tom ended his post with this:

“I want to thank Brent. I’m over two thousand miles away and I don’t know his last name, but I’m appealing to the six degrees of Facebook to send the message. If you are reading this and you know a Kelowna, B.C. firefighter named Brent, please thank him for me. Shake his hand, hug him, buy him a beer, whatever your preferred expression of gratitude may be. Last Wednesday, wherever he was going, whatever he had planned for the day, whatever was happening in his own life was suddenly irrelevant and secondary to him because a total stranger needed help. We need more people like that in the world.”

He posted his two paragraphs on Facebook a week after the accident on May 1^st. Before going to bed that night he was pleasantly surprised it had already been shared by 99 people. When he awoke in the morning he was amazed it had been shared over 250 times. By May 3rd, his request had been shared by a whopping  2400 people, and within an hour of me sharing it, Brent’s last name was revealed as Beselt.

But Tom already knew that, because, by then, he’d received a message from the man he was looking for.

“I’m not on Facebook,” Brent said. “So I sent him a note through my wife’s account after being asked by so many people if it was me. Even friends from Spain and Saskatchewan contacted us about his post. It was crazy. I was just doing what anybody would have done.”

Tom was happy to hear from him. “I read his message to my mom and she cried,” he said. “In a good way.”

The 77 year old, now in a cast and recuperating nicely, was incredibly appreciative and touched by the kindness of a stranger. Not just one stranger, but many.

A nurse had also stopped to help, and then later visited her in the hospital. There were others that offered assistance too.  And now over 2700 people on Facebook have shared a simple request of a son wanting to thank a stranger for helping his beloved mother.

“Brent was a real hero,” Tom said. “ But so was everyone that helped. I’m very grateful to them all.”

Human decency is alive and well in the world, and there are millions of examples of it being displayed every day. Unfortunately It’s the crazy, negative and tragic stories that get most of the press, which can give the impression we shouldn’t expect kindness and compassion from strangers. We should.

The vast majority of us human beings are more loving than we think. Let’s open our eyes, and hearts, to that.

And if anyone knows the nurse named Kim from Kelowna General Hospital who helped Tom’s mom, please let me know. He’d really  like to say thanks.

Lori Welbourne is a syndicated columnist. She can be reached at LoriWelbourne.com

Call me crazy, but I miss renting movies. I’m not talking about ordering the on-demand shows from cable or Netflix, but physically renting them the old fashioned way – from a video store. That outing used to be a weekend ritual for our family.

Rarely did we know what we’d be taking home until we got there and looked. My husband and I would usually start off doing the rounds together, checking out the new releases before venturing over to the shelves where the older films were displayed in their faded covers; me in the drama and comedy sections, he in the action and thriller. Paul would pick out one or two, and I would pick out one or two and then we’d haggle. Our kids would be in the family section doing the same. More often than not, they’d choose movies they’d already seen. Sometimes we would as well.

It was fun. Even if one person was getting on someone else’s nerves because he or she was taking too long to decide, the experience itself was great.

Of course, if you’d asked me at the time if I’d rather just order shows less expensively, in the comfort of our own home, and not have to pay the late return fees that we almost always incurred, I would have said yes. But I wouldn’t have anticipated just how much I’d miss perusing the aisles in person.

Even decades before that I frequented video stores. In high school my best friend had wealthy parents and therefore owned a brand new state-of-the-art Beta video machine. Being the only one from our group who did at the time, her house became our movie-watching hangout.

We didn’t stop going to theatres – we still bussed downtown for matinees whenever we were allowed. But to rent a show and watch it at night while lounging around eating

homemade popcorn became a wonderful treat for all of us. And picking out the movie at the little rental place beforehand felt magical.

Like my children, we often rented films we’d seen before and would watch them repeatedly. Other times we’d choose them based solely on their covers. Occasionally we’d take advice from the video store owner and rent something completely inappropriate for our age, such The Postman Always Rings Twice or Last Tango in Paris. We would then vow never to take a recommendation from him, or any other adult, in the future.

Over the years the prices dropped and all our families eventually bought video machines. By that time only VCRs equipped for the larger, inferior VHS tapes were being sold, but we didn’t care. We were just happy to watch movies we wanted to see, when we wished, and without commercials.

As with everything in technology, things evolved and those big clunky video tapes we all marveled at when they first came out were replaced with sleek skinny DVD’s that allowed us to pause, select scenes, and never rewind again. Now even those are starting to become a thing of the past for so many of us.

Being able to order movies and TV shows digitally is delightfully convenient in some ways, but the excitement and adventure in hunting for cinematic treasures, new and old, good and bad, is not what it used to be.

Thankfully there are still a few places left for people like me to rewind and revisit that wonderful, magical feeling of our former weekend ritual.

Lori Welbourneis a syndicated columnist. She can be contacted at LoriWelbourne.com

I am a procrastinator. I wish I could say that I wasn’t, but I can’t. It’s very much a part of who I am.

No matter how much time I have to accomplish something, I always end up putting it off until the very last minute. I was like that with school, and decades later, I’m still like that with work. Even with tasks that I love.

This column is a good example of that. I have all week to do it, and because of its slice-of-life anytime feel, I could write a different article every day for ten days and build up a collection to pull from on deadline. But do I do that? No, I don’t.

For years now it’s been suggested that I do. I have friends – organized people who are cool as a cucumber because they’re so darn organized – and they have told me to write at least one or two extra stories to alleviate some of my anxiety. They explain how much better I would feel if I knew I had an article or two waiting in the wings just in case I got sick, or one of my kids got sick, or I couldn’t think of something to write about at the 11^th hour. I nod my head and I agree with them completely. I then vow to start on my first backup column immediately, but something more pressing always comes up that I end up doing instead.

Years ago I asked a psychologist friend for his advice in the hopes of fixing myself. He asked me why I didn’t like leaving things to the last second, and I told him I didn’t like the pressure, particularly when I was overwhelmed with too many other duties at the same time. He then asked if I was still able to get any work done under that kind of stress, and I said yes.

“Sounds like it might be working for you,” he replied. “Maybe you should just relax and accept it as a method to your madness.”

I guess I did, or I would have changed by now. But going forward, do I want to keep working exactly like this when I’m as busy as I am? The answer is no.

Eager for help, I decided to consult Google for some guidance. What was I looking for? A couple helpful suggestions, that’s all. What did I find? Well, the first thing that came up was a list of “101 ways to get organized.” Yeah, okay. That’s about 100 more than I wanted.

What I was really needing to see in that moment was one word: Simplify. Once I saw it in that huge Internet pool of information, it’s what stuck out for me most. I have now printed this lovely word out and tacked it to the wall above my computer.

After years of my daunting to-do list getting longer instead of shorter, I am about to get ruthless with it and truly prioritize.  Some items will get pushed down the page and some will get pushed right off.

One thing I know for sure is that writing a backup column will finally be added to the list. And the only other thing I know right now is that it will be placed somewhere near the top.

Lori Welbourne is a syndicated columnist. She can be contacted at LoriWelbourne.com 

On a recent day when my kids were out playing with their friends I went on a cleaning rampage. It felt good and I didn’t want to stop. But eventually the alarm went off and the time I had allotted for household chores was over. It was time to get back to work.

Sitting down with a cup of coffee in my neat and less cluttered home office, I felt calmer, as if my mind had been organized as well.

And then I heard the dogs barking, the front door opening and a gaggle of children laughing and running up the stairs. I couldn’t help it – I groaned.

“The house is clean,” I announced to my kids and their friends when they asked to play inside. “So, yes you can play here – but you’re not allowed to mess it up.”

“We won’t,” they promised. And then they did exactly what I expected them to do: messed it up.

It’s not that they didn’t try to keep the place tidy. They did. But, like Pig Pen in the Peanuts comic strip, dirt seems to follow these people wherever they go.

They’re young and I want them to have fun. I want them to run around outside and get grubby at the park. I want them to pull out costumes and play dress up in the basement. And I want them to prepare snacks for themselves in the kitchen and experience some independence. But at the same time, I don’t want them to leave any evidence behind that they were ever here. I know – that’s not reasonable.

Keeping my house somewhat orderly with the husband I have, two children, two dogs and many young visitors has been an ongoing challenge for years. I’ve even wondered at times if I was meant to live alone as a spinster where I could keep my little abode spick and span with nobody to clean up after but myself.

I know I wouldn’t really want that though. It’s just a fantasy I imagine when the house becomes a pigsty.

The reality of my life is that as much as I crave organization, it eludes me. Like so many parents, I don’t have enough time.

“If only we could buy hours,” I’ll often say. “I’d buy a few extra of them every day.”

Unfortunately I can’t do that. Or wait, maybe I sort of can.

A few months ago I hired housecleaners to come every other week in order to gain some additional time. I was reluctant about doing it, and part of the reason was that I grew up with the notion that housecleaners were only for rich folks, and we’re not rich.

My other reason is that I knew that if I hired professionals, we’d have to be organized enough and schedule in time to clean for the cleaners.

“Why do we have to put our stuff away?” my kids asked before the first visit from the cleaners. “Isn’t that what the maids are for?”

“They’re not maids and we’re not royalty,” I said. “The cleaners will think anything lying around must be garbage and they’ll just throw it out. If you don’t want that to happen you’d better put your things where they belong.”

Worked like a charm.

How wonderful to not only come home to a tidy house, but to a clean one as well. It literally felt like someone had given me three extra hours of time.

Whether we’re able to keep up with the cost of the outside help or not, I’ve decided I like the strategy of allotting specific times to tackle the cleaning of the house and warning my little Pig Pens, as well as their Papa Pig Pen, to prepare accordingly.

Having a clear, less cluttered mind for me requires some strategizing, and I’m the only one who can make that happen.

Lori Welbourne is a syndicated columnist. She can be contacted at LoriWelbourne.com

Last week, I was told that I looked really good for my age. A couple of days later a friend said that I was probably a real stunner when I was in my twenties. On both occasions I believe these people intended their remarks to be compliments. But to me, neither of them felt exactly like that.

I thought it odd they tainted a perfectly nice thing to say by bringing age into the equation, but remarks like these are nothing new.

As with many things that amuse and/or puzzle me, I put the comments on Facebook and asked people which of the two they’d rather be told. Most saw the remarks as backhanded compliments, and didn’t like either. Some offered up funny things they’d been told themselves:

“You look good for someone your size. ”

“I like your haircut, it’s ten times better!”

Also: “You look slim from the front.”

Backhanded compliments have continued to fascinate me, ever since I received one from my first boyfriend.

“You’re pretty,” he said. “You could never be on a magazine cover or anything like that, but you’re pretty.” I remember sitting there dumbfounded, trying to figure out if he intended to be insulting or if he was simply clueless. I found a smarter boyfriend after that.

Over the years I’ve encountered many incidents where I was left wondering what was meant. I finally got up the nerve to ask when I was 25 years old.

“You have a nice figure for such a big-boned girl,” a co-worker had told me.

“I can’t tell,” I said timidly. “Did you mean that as a compliment?”

“What are you talking about?” she responded, confused.

When I said it would have felt more flattering if she hadn’t added the big-boned part, she looked at me like I was a raving psycho, so I dropped it.

When this kind of thing happens now, I might wonder their intended message, but I rarely bother to ask, because it’s not important what they think of me.

I must confess though, I have also said some stupid things.

A few nights ago I met a gorgeous, young lady with super long, brown hair and I told her she looked like Alanis Morissette. I wanted to add that she was an even prettier version of the singer, but instead of saying that, I said this:

“You look like Alanis Morissette – but less horsey.”

Everyone around us laughed, including her, so I felt safe that it was regarded as funny and nothing more. But it occurred to me later that I may have insulted her, which was not my intention at all.

The fact is, I think Alanis Morissette is beautiful and I thought the girl I met was even more beautiful. But how would she know that? Maybe she was left feeling that I was some old hag giving her a backhanded compliment, exactly the way I felt when the woman commented on my “big bones” twenty years before.

The point is, we never truly know what people are thinking or if their words are sincere. But it shouldn’t matter. What matters is what we think of ourselves.

I’m trying to teach my nine-year-old daughter that concept, since she’s at that age where backhanded compliments and in-your-face insults are a frequent occurrence.

Life is too short to take negative, or perceived negative comments, personally. What others say and think about us is their business, not ours.

As the former First Lady of America, Eleanor Roosevelt once said: “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

She couldn’t have been more right about that. Those are words worth living.

Lori Welbourne is a syndicated columnist. She can be contacted at Lori Welbourne.com  

When a meteor exploded over Russia last week with an estimated force of 20 atomic bombs, I was reminded of how teeny-tiny we Earthlings really are. I didn’t always think of myself in that way though.

As a youngster I thought the world revolved around me and that the moon was following my every move. Whenever I went for an evening drive I’d sit in the back seat of the car gazing out the window, and there it was, right above me. When I went to sleep at night, the moon was always there too, waiting for me to say goodnight before I nodded off.

I remember the first time I laid on the ground looking up at the stars, finally grasping just how vast our world truly is. I don’t remember how old I was at that moment, but I recall, for the first time ever, feeling overwhelmed, as I realized that I was just one of a gazillion creatures in an astronomical solar system we know little about.

I became more interested in the world outside my own after that, and I started to understand how vulnerable we all are. Not just to the mysterious stuff that’s going on beyond our own planet, but to “Mother Nature,” and anything that can happen beyond our control.

Ironically, this newfound realization didn’t scare me, but instead, made me feel more fearless. It still does.

Somehow understanding that I’m just a miniscule piece of the puzzle and not nearly as important as I sometimes think, helps me relax and enjoy life for what it is.

The news of the enormous meteor explosion over Russia, coupled with the news of the gigantic asteroid skimming our planet near Australia hit home and left me pondering my place in the world again.

Who cares if the house is a mess or I’m way behind with work or someone is angry about something I wrote in a column?  I’m just one little ant doing my best on the big old anthill and hoping a giant foot doesn’t come crashing down on me any time soon.

Of course, this perspective never lasts long and I always go back to taking myself more seriously than I ought to. But I like to think that I’m getting better as I age. In many ways I know I am.

As the years go by I care much less what others think, and much more about being true to myself. We may only live once, so we might as well try to live as authentically as we can.

And when it comes to the stress of raising children, living life and working towards big goals, I do everything I can to enjoy the process.  When I fail, I’m lucky to have allies that will help.

“Imagine today is your last day,” one of my friends will say if she knows I’m stressed out about something. “Cherish what’s truly important, because you never know – you could get hit by a bus tomorrow.”

Or a meteor. Or an asteroid.

Remembering that life is a gift and that there’s no guarantee of its length can be like pumping gas into our fuel tank when it start running low. It’s important to keep on the winding road of life, and to thank our beautiful moon as we drive it.

Lori Welbourne is a syndicated columnist. She can be contacted at LoriWelbourne.com 

Watching television was an extremely restricted activity in my house growing up, and for that reason, I couldn’t get enough of it.

My little brother and I weren’t allowed to watch it all the time like our lucky-duck friends were. And, as a double whammy on the meter of unfairness in our lives, our mom and dad were much younger than the parents of our pals, yet they were stricter than all of them.

In grade five I started babysitting my seven-year-old brother in the afternoons when our folks were still at work. Our mom instructed us to do homework after school, and once we finished we could read a book or play a board game. Under no circumstances were we to turn on the “boob tube” that would rot our brains.

But reruns of groovy shows like The Brady Bunch and Bewitched were on at that time, so there was no possible way we could adhere to such an unreasonable rule when left alone like that.

With 12 glorious channels to choose from, there was always something exciting to see on our old black and white, and every day we’d watch it for as long as we could.

An hour or so later, when we heard a car pull into the driveway, we’d quickly run up to the telly, turn the knob to the dreaded “off” position, run back to the couch and crack open our books before our mom or dad even opened the front door.

If our father was the first to arrive home he would sometimes touch the top of the TV as he walked by it. Jeremie and I would hold our breath and look at each other nervously, praying he wouldn’t notice its warmth. He never did.  Years later we found out that he knew exactly what we were up to, he just didn’t mind.

I  now have that same attitude about the television with my own kids, and I allow them to watch it. Within reason.

Sam and Daisy are like my brother and I were. If they had their choice, they’d start their day with the TV on and that thing wouldn’t be turned off until they fell asleep in front of it, well past midnight.

“We cancelled cable the day we became parents,” an acquaintance told me last week. “Children who grow up ‘watchers’ do not become ‘doers’.”

I wonder if there’s statistics to prove that. Probably. There are studies and statistics that can prove just about anything.

All I know is that I don’t believe the TV will render us useless. I was obsessed with it as a kid, but I’ve seen very little of it as an adult since I’m always too busy doing something else.

Yet, despite my lack of tube time, my fascination with pop culture persists. I can thank the Internet for that.

Surfing the web makes it easy to keep up with what’s going on in TV land without having to actually watch it.

If I want to find out who Honey Boo Boo is, I don’t need to look for her show the old fashioned way and watch the darn thing. All I have to do is Google her name and up pop videos – with subtitles – that show me in a matter of minutes.

“I would never have cablevision,” a young friend told me last week. Oh boy, I thought, bracing myself for more judgment.

“Why would I?” he then asked. “I can get anything I want from Netflix and YouTube.”

Good idea. I should look up The Brady Bunch and Bewitched to show my kids. Now that would be groovy.

Lori Welbourne is a syndicated columnist. She can be contacted at LoriWelbourne.com

My son’s room has an odd odor. It doesn’t seem to matter if it’s clean – which is rare – or a pigsty, which is common. Whatever state I find it in, the unpleasant stench remains.

Strangely enough, I’m the only one who seems to notice. When I open his door I’m immediately assaulted by the stink, but whenever I ask about it, no one else has a clue what I’m referring to.

“I don’t smell anything,” my 12-year-old son will say as he takes a whiff while playing video games with his friends.

“Yeah,” his pals will agree, looking at me with concerned expressions as though I’m a confused old lady. “We don’t either.”

Even my husband barely notices it and will say it’s so subtle that it’s nothing. Yet for me and my keen sense of smell, it’s not nothing, and although I can’t pinpoint what it is exactly, I find it offensive.  It’s like a weird mixture of stale air, sweaty socks and moldy something or other.

I’ve tried sniffing it out, tearing his room apart, sweeping everything from under his bed and cleaning out his closets. But even after I’ve changed his sheets, washed his floor, thrown out his garbage, opened the windows and put my eager nostrils to everything I can find, I’m still left wondering what it is.

His backpack, thankfully, is far more obvious. Last week I opened it and the reek was overwhelming.

“What in the world?” I asked as I pulled out a mashed banana and a rotting, half-eaten apple. “What else is in here?”

Dumping the contents of the bag on the floor I also discovered a punctured orange, another bruised apple, an open tube of yogurt and a stack of wet homework that had disintegrated into pieces.

Revolted, I looked at him like I’d found a dead body.

“This is a brand new backpack,” I scolded. “This is exactly how the last one got ruined.”

Apologizing, and promising to put his leftover lunch in the fridge in the future, he meant well, but I knew this would happen again. It’s not that he’s a bad kid, he’s actually a terrific one – he just can’t seem to remember to take care of his stuff. Apparently it’s not all that uncommon amongst his peers.

After he failed to find his missing ski jacket and the three hoodies he’s been looking for over the last couple months, I decided to check out the lost and found at Sam’s school.  It was like a store in there.

Unclaimed shoes, jeans, shorts, t-shirts, sweaters, hats, gloves, hoodies, coats and bags filled several large bins.

As I went through the huge piles, I wondered if other parents knew about this crazy corner of the school where lovely presents go to die. If their kids are anything like mine, maybe they’ll luck out and recover some of their valuable items in there.

I, unfortunately, did not. I’m still on the hunt for his misplaced jacket and hoodies.

The true mystery that I’d like to solve, though, is the culprit behind the nasty smell in his bedroom. Now that would satisfy my senses.

Lori Welbourne is a syndicated columnist. She can be contacted at LoriWelbourne.com 

When I was a kid my parents dragged my little brother and me out for an afternoon of shopping at a brand new furniture store called Ikea. It was the biggest store I’d ever walked into, and as we passed through the front doors for the first time, Jeremie and I were in a state of bliss. Not because of the huge array of household items that had our mom and dad excited, but because of something we’d never seen before: a gigantic ball pit.

Tugging on our father’s coat, my brother pleaded to join the young children inside of it. Instantly I felt jealous because I knew he was small enough to join in on the fun, and I was not.

As he flailed his seven-year-old body gleefully about in the large clear box of colorful balls, I had to slump my 10-year-old self around the big boring store with my folks. I was not a happy camper.

As the years went by, every time I saw a ball pit I’d think about that day. It was my first memory of feeling too old to do something that I really wanted to do. Little did I know that my time would come.

A couple of decades later indoor playgrounds had popped up all over the place, and as the mother of a toddler I finally found myself on the inside. Excited, I took my sweet little boy up the stairs and sat him on my lap at the top of a giant slide. Together we looked down at the beautiful ball pit below us and I whispered in his ear: “Are you ready?”

“Yeah!!!” he shrieked with joy and down the slide we went, flying into the balls like I’d always wanted to do.

It was just as fun as I’d imagined. Maybe even more so because I got to share it with the love of my life. But after a couple more times I’d had enough. My 18-month-old son, on the other hand, had not.

Like the Energizer bunny, Sam wouldn’t quit. It was exhausting following him up, down and around the large plastic structure, folding and unfolding myself into tiny nooks and crannies. Acute claustrophobia hit me hard more than once, and I went home with a massive headache, sore muscles and a bad kink in my neck. At the end of the day, it was not the experience I’d envisioned.

Yet as my kids got older and became more independent, play places like this one became my savior, and like an office to me.

“How can you work with all this racket?” one of my friends asked when she saw me writing a column in one such place last week.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I can’t really hear myself think, but I find it oddly relaxing in here. No laundry or dishes to do, no entertaining the kids, it’s just me and my work.”

By that point I’d been sitting in the same spot typing away on my laptop for almost two hours. Every so often one of the sweaty kids I brought would interrupt and ask me to watch them do a cartwheel, or ask for some money for a much-needed drink. But even with all the noise and distractions, I was in a state of bliss.

The only thing that could have made it better is if they had an Ikea for me to shop in.

Lori Welbourne is a syndicated columnist. She can be contacted at LoriWelbourne.com

My husband turned fifty years old last week and I threw him a party. I’m not particularly good at that kind of thing.

In fact, it had been so long since I planned a shindig for grownups that I forgot why I didn’t like it.  To my surprise, I actually started getting excited about the event in the weeks leading up to it. I had fun ordering the cake, the giant card, the food, the DJ, the decorations, the customized bobblehead and picking up the most beautiful dining room table made out of 100-year-old barn wood that I’d commissioned for him months before.

What was less fun was that feeling of responsibility for everyone’s enjoyment the night of the celebration.

The sight of any lone person or couple not mingling caused me stress and I felt frustrated that I was unable to talk to everyone as much as I wanted to. I tried to shake off those feelings because I knew they didn’t make sense. When I go to a party I don’t expect the host to introduce me to everyone or hang out with me all night. I hardly expect to see much of them at all.

But, as it turns out, my anxieties didn’t stop there. I also managed to get a wicked cold that same day, developed a pounding headache as the night progressed, and became even more forgetful than usual.

Despite the fact that people seemed to be having a good time and the party didn’t end for some of them until 4:30 in the morning, I kept thinking about what I could have done better.

As I lay in bed trying desperately to fall asleep, I started mentally listing off the things I should have remembered or done differently.

“It was perfect exactly the way it was,” Paul said when he realized I was beating myself up. “No one’s ever thrown a party like that for me before. I had a blast!”

And, really, that’s what mattered most. Of course I wanted everyone to have fun and I wanted everything to go as planned, but if he hadn’t enjoyed the night, none of it would have been worth it.

He was an excellent guest of honour and much less neurotic than I was as host, or would have been if I’d been in his shoes. He tried to talk to everyone, but he didn’t stress that he missed a few. He also didn’t take on the responsibility of other people’s level of enjoyment. He simply relaxed and had a great time himself.

If only I could be more like him.

In our 19th year together, he’s still teaching me a thing or two about what’s truly important, and hosting the perfect party isn’t one of them.

What’s paramount for him are his beloved children, his wonderful family, his loyal friends and living the happiest, most fulfilling life he can. He’s not the type to get hung up on petty details. When he does something, he does his best, kicks back and lets it go.

“I want to be more like you when I grow up,” I’ll often tell him. Only four years his junior, I’d better hurry the heck up.

 Lori Welbourne is a syndicated columnist. She can be contacted at LoriWelbourne.com