The Olympics ruined my health
The stories I remember are the ones about little kids watching an inspiring Olympic athlete win a gold medal, practicing with that picture in mind for years and then winning one for themselves.

The people in the car go … crazy
There’s a feverish desire to make up for lost time at our house as summer comes to a sudden, screeching, painful halt with the first day of school on Aug. 18.

If I were a horse …
Four-year-old Natalie couldn’t believe she was going to see a real horse.

Dry ice cure
The radio announcer just had said, “There’s a slight chance of scattered thunderstorms” when hail began banging against my windshield so hard that the visibility was worse than in a heavy snowstorm.

A really, really long time ago
If you want a short-term prediction, stick with the radio weather forecast or go online.

‘A horse walks into a bar …’
Here’s my advice -- don’t ever, ever miss Parade Day in Casper.

‘Crikey! Let's go help wildlife’
I love the sentence in the headline so much that I should probably stop writing now.

Surprise!
Talk about fool’s luck.

Ghosts from a war bird past
Bob Hope entertained there, test pilot ace Chuck Yeager was training when he crashed nearby, and 124 airmen took off from its runways to die in eight different plane crashes in Wyoming.

Out with the pencils, in with the iPods
Be prepared for a sentimental column this week. And it’s fitting, since you can’t turn around this time of year without bumping into a graduation of some kind.

My own book
I don’t know how it happened, but I had forgotten a few of the best things about first-graders.

Liftoff at the concert
Though I’ve never taken off in a rocket headed to outer space, I imagine that the energy at a sold-out music concert might give the same feeling.

Recipes we love to death
It's very easy to find your favorite recipe in the tattered old cookbook that lost its back cover and most of the table of contents.

Decisions, decisions …
You would think that on May 1, it would be time to put the flannel sheets away. If you did that in Casper this year, you would wake up the next day with two feet of snow on the mountain, 4.8 inches in town and be really sorry you went to chilly, light cotton.

Time to garden
Do you suppose that a 75-degree day means that it’s time to quit skiing?

The princess and the blueberry
There’s a blueberry missing in my car, and I don’t mean a telephone.

It’s the last … (And other lessons the first child taught me)
“It’s the last school conference at grade school,” I thought sadly as I sat at the small table, my knees scrunched up by my chest.

Leave the eggs in the hall
It’s taken a while for someone to figure out that dressing an adult up like the Easter Bunny could bring parents and their kids into stores.

How much is that fishy in the baggie?
When my daughter joined 4-H, I didn’t imagine that the first animal we’d encounter would be a goldfish.

Inside the strange world ...
I virtuously was buying carrots and milk at the supermarket one day last week when I was startled to see the headlines on Star magazine.

Leaping over hurdles to get back outdoors
"Hey, I went skiing yesterday," I told Bruce Lamberson, who lives on Casper Mountain and is always up for a conversation about the snow.

Shall we dance?
The person having the most fun at an elementary school dance on Friday was a toddler.

A Casper story n by way of Peru and Poland
He was born in Poland, she across an ocean and a continent -- in Peru.

Mascara and the married woman
“I just can’t understand why women who are married spend so much time putting on makeup,” said my pre-teen daughter to me impatiently one morning while trying to get us out the door to meet her friends.

There’s no yellow in green
Hybrid fever hasn’t swept Wyoming at this moment, but across the country there is a breed of car driver that is racing to a different tune. They are competing to be Most Fuel-Efficient Driver in the World.

Crossways with my crossword
Now they’ve gone too far.

Trash can dances with wolves
Only a selected few dog owners truly will understand the appeal of a trash can that has been field tested by wolves. Maybe the owners of the golden retriever I heard of that ate the siding off of a house would get it.

Thorns for sale
Things were a little giddy in the elementary schools during the last week before Christmas vacation. That may be the only explanation for one of the oddest entrepreneurial schemes I’ve seen.

My books of the year
One of the good things about having your children leave behind their little-kid years to become “young adults” is discovering young adult books yourself.

Subtract One
Do you need something else to worry about this Christmas? How about taking the Quick Christmas Stress Test at assessmentgenerator.com?