Caps are the thing now - baseball caps. Printed with names of businesses, sports teams and vacation spots, baseball caps are heads-up advertising. Considering the number of men who wear caps inside, it’s no longer bad manners. Considering the number of men who wear caps backward, they no longer look in mirrors.

Galoshes are high, warmly lined overshoes. People don’t wear galoshes anymore. They wear boots. Women wear fashionable, leather boots with three-inch heels. These boots may be made for walking - but not far.

Penny loafers are gone too. Maybe they’re out of style because of inflation. Maybe penny pinchers should be nickel pinchers. Maybe bright as a penny isn’t as much of a compliment.

My grandmother loved compliments on how she looked and she loved to gussie up for special occasions. My generation used to dress up for special occasions, but not anymore. Dress down Fridays have spread through the week. Dressing has become so casual that soon you won’t see the sign "Shirts and Shoes Required" on restaurants. You’ll just see those words on formal invitations.

You think you see house painters, but you don’t. What you see are "colorists". A colorist recently colored our home with butter yellow and silver spruce. When I asked him to color the bathroom white, you’d think I’d said a four-letter word.

House painters are gone and they’ve taken dancers with them. Dancers are movement artists now. That’s fine - unless it interferes with Christmas. Would Santa want Movement Artist pulling the sleigh?

Some words have been changed. Others are new. Ringtone, spyware and supersize are on the list of almost one hundred new, Merriam-Webster-approved entries for 2006. Okay, where’s the list of old entries - ones that have fallen out of favor and may fall out of use - like "belt". Yes, I mean a strip of leather worn around the waist. The younger generation of males doesn’t use belts. Their pants precariously hang on their hips. The future of the word belt may hang there too.

Thankfully, the "for better of for worse" part of our wedding vows covers my cooking. I hadn’t cooked before I got married and I still think of "cook" as a four-letter word. Unfortunately, no one else wants to do it. My family would rather eat their words along with whatever I occasionally burn for dinner.

As for the "richer and poorer" part of our vows, John and I have been both several times and for richer is definitely better. You can’t buy happiness; but you can buy solutions for lots of life’s little problems and then there’s less to be unhappy about.

Then there’s the "in sickness and in health" part. Happily, we haven’t had much sickness - other than John’s four or five colds a year. Then you’d think he was fighting for his life. Our bathroom becomes a battlefield with medications lined up on the vanity like little soldiers. Boxes of tissues are strategically placed throughout the house and there’s a battle plan of what tonic or pill to take when. In spite of all that, the battle lasts two weeks. The cold dies a natural death, but John claims another victory and lives to fight another day.

John didn’t do much fighting after he strained his neck at the gym. I suggested he use a heat pad to reduce the pain. Because he continued to complain, I made the suggestion again. Then I went and got the heat pad. I smiled to myself when I realized he was being his own pain in the neck.

Although it pained me to hear it, a friend told me that couples start looking like each other after they’ve been married for a long time. I thought people started looking like their dogs. On fourth look, however, I realized she was right. John and I are starting to look alike. We look like we need a second honeymoon.

I’m at the age when there are lots of "whatever happened to’s" in my life - like glasses. Although I have pairs strategically located throughout the house, I can’t see my way to find them.

When I was growing up, my mother couldn’t find her pencils, scissors or tape. I, of course, didn’t know where they were. It was like her desk was located in the Bermuda Triangle. On the other hand - the one with the "borrowed" pencil - dish soap, laundry detergent and vacuum cleaner bags never disappeared.

Five cent candy, ten cent phone calls and fifty cent coffee have disappeared too. As rising prices drive me away, I must be seeing life through a side view mirror - and inflation is closer than it appears.

I’ve never appeared at class reunions. Although I’ve wondered about classmates, I’ve never been sufficiently motivated to go and find out whatever happened to so-in-so - which, I guess, makes me a "whatever happened to". I think I’ve aged reasonably well and done some interesting things. That’s my opinion anyway and I’m sticking to it.

As I get older, so do my heroes. When one passes away, it’s sad but expected. What isn’t expected is my thinking a celebrity had already died. Maybe I should rethink going to reunions - just to dispel any possible mistakes about me.

At least reunions wouldn’t be one "do you remember when" after another anymore. That’s because people don’t say remember anymore. Now we drop the "re" and say "member".

I bet most people don’t "member" Grover Cleveland was both the twenty-second and twenty-fourth president of the United States. Grover Cleveland’s picture was on the one thousand dollar bill. In case you’re wondering whatever happened to the one thousand dollar bill, the government stopped printing it in 1946.

Now the one hundred dollar bill is the biggest denomination printed. It’s the one with Benjamin Franklin on it - but whatever happened to common sense? His picture should be on the penny. After all, it was Benjamin Franklin who said, "A penny saved is a penny earned".

Glass, on the other hand - the one turning the highly polished, brass doorknob - says secure, at peace and nothing to hide. It also says the owners aren’t likely to cast the first stone.

Stained glass says the same things glass does - stained glass just says them more colorfully. Stained glass might also have a religious significance. It might be a reminder of childhood, Sunday mornings spent counting the panes in the stained glass windows in church.

Then there are entrances that are painted. According to feng shui, a red entrance will bring money into your life. Although my husband doesn’t believe in feng shui, he said he’d paint our entrance red as soon as the guy in the red suit brought money down our chimney.

Okay, no red entrance; but if an entrance is a different color than the house and looks good, the owners are good at compromising. If it doesn’t look good, the house probably belongs to a politician caught in a compromising position. Because politicians are continually changing their minds about political issues, maybe their houses should have revolving doors - red, blue or a color independently chosen.

Large portals are for optimists. They see big things in their futures and want to be sure they’ll fit in their lives. Large portals might also mean the homeowners supersize their burgers too often.

Most houses have doorbells. If owners choose to have a knocker instead, they’re open to change. They know that opportunity doesn’t ring a doorbell. Opportunity knocks.

If owners choose to have peepholes, they’re very cautious and private people. Of course, there is one other explanation. One of the mothers-in-law might live in the area.

We live in a condominium; and when I walk the dog or get the mail, I leave our natural-wood-with-a-glass-panel door unlocked. I have to stop doing that. John wants to know what I’d do if I came home and there was a burglar in our house. I thought I had a good answer. I said I’d apologize to the burglar for being in the wrong house and quickly leave. Needless to say, John doesn’t think that’s "a door able".

LA has the reputation of being laidback and mellow - but dude, have you seen our freeways! When the traffic is Mercedes-to-BMW, bumper-to-bumper, that’s when I need to chill out and keep my cool. But I can’t. I’m sitting in an unplanned, urban parking lot watching the little, red arrow on my temperature gauge go up. When I realize I’m going to have to turn off the air conditioner to keep my car from overheating is when I lose my personal cool. That’s when I need to escape to another dimension and take the "I" out of my reality.

I need to close my eyes and hum my mantra. A mantra is meant to induce relaxation by being repetitive and personal. Eighty percent of LA has the same mantra - "Make me a star". Mine’s different. I’ve had the same mantra since I got married - "Let’s eat out".

For me the problem with meditation isn’t having the right mantra or having the necessary motivation. The problem is when I lie down, when I tell myself to close my eyes and relax, to put all worldly thoughts out of my mind, to focus on the blue light I see in my mind’s eye. The problem is my mind’s eye shuts and I fall asleep.

When I’m successful, however, when I feel surrounded by that blue light, I feel wonderfully refreshed in less than twenty minutes. I feel so refreshed I wonder why I’d ever feel stressed again - but I do. When I’m driving around LA, it’s hard to become one with the world if I can’t find a parking space so I can become one with the supermarket or the dry cleaners.

When I’m driving around LA, I can’t close my eyes and hum my mantra so I practice acupressure. I hold my ring fingers against my thumbs to reduce my stress. I’m sure this would work for other people too. At least it would prevent them from giving other drivers the finger.

Being a newlywed included thinking love made the world go around. I still do; but with the divorce rate continually rising, I believe friendship keeps us from falling off.

Shakespeare believed, "All the world’s a stage, all the men and women merely players … one man in his time plays many parts". I play the part of daughter, sister, wife, mother and friend. I don’t get Tonys for my performances. My awards are compliments and one of the wonderful things about compliments is they don’t need to be dusted.

Mark Twain said, "All the words for the great, American novel are in the dictionary. They just have to be put in the right order". There’s order and there’s the right order. If I could put things in the right order, I think I could solve the Rubik’s Cube too.

Unfortunately, there’s no solution for a fool and his money being soon parted. In fact, Uncle Sam parts money from all of us every April.

When it comes to old fools, however, there is a fool like an old fool. It’s another old fool. If you don’t believe me, there are politicians in Washington who can prove it to you.

Politicians wrap themselves in the American flag to persuade voters they’d give us the shirt off their backs. No, thank you. I’ll wait for a clean shirt. According to the news, there are plenty of politicians with laundering experience.

I don’t know if you need equestrian experience to know you shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Maybe that’s because people look in a horse’s mouth to see how old it is? Maybe the saying should be "Don’t look a female, gift horse in the mouth".

Of course, when it came to a woman’s age, my grandmother would have shared this familiar saying - "If something looks too good to be true, it probably is".

In spite of my mother taking good care of me, I told myself I’d do things differently when I had children. I didn’t. I yelled. I sent my sons to their rooms without listening to their explanations. I made up excuses to get out of chaperoning class trips. One thing I didn’t do, however, was say, "Wait until your father gets home". Because my mother was a single mother, she never said that. She handed out immediate consequences. So did I. My sons didn’t appreciate that. They wanted to be like their friends. They wanted to wait until their father got home.

Because I didn’t have any brothers, I didn’t have any idea how to raise boys. All I could do was my best; and thankfully, my best got better. I discovered boys weren’t girls with penises. I bought Band-Aids instead of Barbie dolls.

When our boys started school, John and I started rewarding them for good grades. As they got older, ice cream turned into money - the better the grade, the more money. Some parents thought we were bribing our sons. Maybe theses parents thought getting a raise for good work was a bribe too.

Although I never thought I’d suffer empty nest syndrome, we had two empty rooms too fast. Eventually, the two empty rooms turned into offices. Now John and I have room to grow. I also have time to think; and if I could do it all over again, I’d want a diploma in parenting first. That way I’d avoid the pain of the unknown and Dr. Blakely would avoid my hot-line calls. "My son’s crying!" "He won’t drink his milk!" "He has a rash!" When I had our first son, John was in Vietnam. While John fought for Uncle Sam, Dr. Blakely fought for my sanity. I think he did a good job. After all, I had a second child.