The Internet is a wonderful invention. Information that once required a visit to the library is now available in seconds. Although I’ve retrieved useful information from the Internet on everything from the weather to how to remove wallpaper, I also enjoy wasting time online, particularly on Facebook.

I can rationalize my decision. First, Facebook is a great way to keep in touch with family. I check Facebook on my lunch break to see if there’s any new pictures or videos of my grandchildren and I’ll check in at night to see if anyone in my family’s posted pictures. We live far from each other, and Facebook keeps me up to date on what’s happening in my siblings’ families.

Just like when the old codgers sat on the front porch and talked about the weather, Facebookers do the same, except in cyberspace. come up with all kinds of weird names for freezing weather – Icepocalypse and Snowmageddon are my favorites.

On Facebook, you can learn about the 50 foods you must never eat after a certain age and get warnings to not undergo Botox treatments or you’ll end up looking like an Egyptian mummy.

There are also miracle foods and secrets to keep us looking young that, up until Facebook miraculously came along, have strangely never been revealed.

Speaking of foods, Facebook is full of recipes from how to stuff artichokes to how to grill zucchini. Over 48,000 people like the healthy recipe page while over 202,000 people like the chocolate recipes. That many people can’t be wrong.

Then there’s the practical side of Facebook. Every insurance company in America has a Facebook page. Better yet, Facebook can save me to 70 percent on furniture and hook me up with major discounts on clothes that look like they fit a Barbie doll.

Think the end of the world’s coming? Facebook has you covered. You can discover how to grow 100 pounds of potatoes in a four-foot garden and join the other crazies because on Facebook, conspiracy theories spread like butter on a hot bun.

Luckily, there’s always a rational Facebooker who posts a link to Snopes.com and straightens out all who believe roach eggs are mixed in with glue on the backs of envelopes.

There’s Throwback Thursdays, a place for you to post every embarrassing picture of yourself from the 1970s wearing tube socks and short shorts with white piping around the edges.

Some of my Facebook favorites are the selfies. There are very few people on Facebook who haven’t held their phones up over their head, smiled and snapped a selfie and then posted it to Facebook. When your mother posts a selfie, you know it’s time to find something else to do with your phone.

And then there’s the complainers. They post about everything rotten in life, but I wonder if they realize they’re part of the problem by consistently griping about every single thing that happens.

I decided not to add to the wasteland. I don’t post what I had for dinner, send out chain emails or send you a link to watch my Facebook movie.

I don’t play Candy Crush, I could care less about the secret Ellen’s been hiding and I’m not interested in taking a Carnival Cruise. I just want to see pictures of my grandchildren and drool over the chocolate pie recipes.

And if there is a magic pill that will make the pounds drop off and the wrinkles go away, there’s only one possible place to find it – Facebook land.  

 This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

I don’t consider myself a prude, but lately I’ve been clucking my tongue over the antics of female performers who are selling their souls for a bit of notoriety.

The Grammy Awards were the latest debacle in a long line of young women who think taking off their clothes and performing lewd acts is the only way to establish themselves as a “serious artist.”

Case in point, Katy Perry. She became well known and admired for her beautiful renditions of Christian music. One of her biggest hits, “Firework,” called for people to believe there was a spark inside themselves.

Now she’s pole dancing with demons on national television.

We’ve long watched young girls come bare it all for fame:  Britney Spears, Lindsey Lohan and Miley Cyrus come to mind. They went from pre-teen idols to 20-something sleaze bags, all for fame and fortune.

No denying they’re the talk of the town, from bloggers slamming them to their sexy videos attracting viewers by the thousands. Perhaps it’s brilliant marketing on their part because they’re financially successful and popular, but that’s a twisted path to success for women in our country.

These performers are a small slice of Americana. I firmly believe parents are the true voice of reason when it comes to teaching youngsters about the true meaning of success. The Dove Corporation is one of the few industries doing something positive for young girls.

 

The Evolution of Beauty

A few years ago, Dove created a video “The Evolution of Beauty.” A female kindergarten teacher underwent an all-day make-over session. Stylists curled her hair and professional cosmetologists  caked on the make-up. Then the Photoshop magicians made her neck longer, reshaped her face and plumped up her hair.

The meaning was how can we define beauty when reality is so far removed from what’s on the pages of fashion magazines and on billboards.

They followed up that campaign with “Real Beauty Sketches” where women were asked to describe themselves and a police forensics artist drew what they described.

Afterwards, the women were asked to find someone in the waiting room to visit with. Later, the forensics artist asked them to describe the person they’d talked with. The results were striking.

The women were harsh and judgmental about their looks yet the people who talked with them described their new friend in gentler terms and much more accurately. The women were quiet and circumspect, wondering why they’d been so hard on themselves.

Dove’s latest project is entitled “Selfies.” A professional photographer talked with pre-teens and their mothers about their looks. All were critical of how they looked and found fault with their facial features.

The photographer then asked the girls and their mothers to take self portraits, or “selfies” with their cell phones. The moms self-consciously posed with their daughters and then they began to have fun with the photos.

Dove enlarged the selfies and posted the portraits in a large gallery. They gave guests Post-It notes and asked them to comment on the pictures. All the comments were positive – what a beautiful smile, love your eyes and confident smile.  

The girls and their moms were reminded that true beauty comes from being strong and brave and being happy with yourself.

Not from acting like trash.

These self-proclaimed successful artists could learn a thing or two from young girls who came to understand the real meaning of class and beauty these Hollywood flashes in the pan have forgotten – ignite the spark in yourself and remember real beauty comes from within.

 This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

Photographs capture special moments in our lives, so it was with disappointment I realized I missed the opportunities I had over the holidays to take a picture with my eldest son.

I’m not one for being in the picture. I’m usually behind the lens, so photos of me are few and far between. But I wanted a picture of my son with me, especially as Nick lives over 8,000 miles away and visits once a year.

I had only one chance:  when I’d drop him off at Hobby Airport for his flight back to Taiwan. We pulled up to the curb, and the walkways were packed with frazzled travelers. I grabbed my camera and a passerby agreed to snap the picture for me.

One click. One picture.

I checked the screen, saw the image was there, hugged my son tightly and told him to let me know when he got back to Taiwan.

As he rushed off into the crowd, I said a prayer, asking his guardian angel to keep watch over him on his travels. On the way home, I’d glance at the camera, knowing for the first time in 10 years, I’d have a visual keepsake of mom and son.

Life came bounding along and I put downloading the pictures on the back burner. One morning, I lent my camera to a group of students, and when they returned, they asked me to check their photos.

I started scrolling and realized there were only seven images in the camera.

I tried again.

Just seven photos. My heart started pounding when I realized I’d never downloaded that picture of Nick and me at the airport.

Pulling the card out of the camera, I inserted it into a card reader, downloaded the images and looked at the computer screen.

Just seven photos.

I was devastated and began to cry, beating myself up for not doing what I knew I should’ve done, knowing I wouldn’t have a chance to have that picture taken again for another year, if that.

At that moment, Jeff Peterson walked into my room.

Jeff is the new computer information technician for our school, and he just happened to stop by. Although we’d never met in person, he instantly knew something was wrong.

When I tearfully explained what happened, he said he might be able to get the pictures back. Unless, he cautioned, someone had reformatted the card. Then all the information would be lost forever.

I handed the card over, sniffling, asking him to please do what he could.

Ten minutes later, I heard a ping, notifying me I’d gotten a new email. It was from Jeff with a photo attachment – the picture of Nick and me at the airport.

Of course that started the tears all over again, but this time, they were tears of relief.

I’ll never put off downloading pictures again and I’ll never doubt my guardian angel is watching over me.

One evening, she was disguised as a man who stopped to tie my Christmas tree back to the roof of my van because I hadn’t tied it tight enough.

She was once a mechanic who replaced a thermometer in my overheated van and didn’t charge me, seeing I was stranded in Mobile with my young sons.

On a trip to Louisiana, she was riding with me through the driving wind and rain as I crossed the Atchafalaya Basin.

This time, she came into my life wearing loafers and a tie and gave me back one irreplaceable moment in time.

 This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.  

A few years ago, a radio station was honoring the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. by playing all of his recorded speeches.

Because I’d read excerpts from the “I Have a Dream” speech, I thought I knew the main facts about the late civil rights leader. But I discovered there was so much more to Dr. King than the “free at last” line.

His speech about talking to his young daughter about why she couldn’t go to the local amusement park “Fun Town” is heartbreaking. There was only one reason his 4-year-old daughter couldn’t go to the park – the color of her skin.

Most of us have visited Disneyworld, Fiesta Texas and other amusement parks and we know how much fun those places are.

But not Yolanda King.

She was told she couldn’t go to the most fun place in town because she wasn’t a white child. I cringe thinking about the many parents who’ve given the same humiliating talk to their children, that they aren’t the right color or the right sex or the right nationality to enter places.

Because these prejudices still exist, tolerance and acceptance are lessons we should be teaching our children, and MLK Day is a great place to start. But instead of concentrating on exactly what King stood for in his life, we’ve turned the January holiday into a clearance and mark-down sales event.

That we’ve done so is ironic, especially when studying King’s  1967 “Beyond Vietnam” speech.

He said that when machines and computers, profits and property rights are more important than people, we’re in deep trouble. Almost 50 years later, I’d say he’s right.

Many people will text a friend instead of having a face-to-face conversation. We watch or listen to something on an electronic device while eating meals, getting dressed, driving to and from work and even when exercising.

In the evenings, we’re glued to our flat-screen TVs, iPads or laptops instead of thinking about what’s just or intolerant in life or engaging in meaningful dialogues with each other.

And we’ve convinced ourselves that hash tags and smiley faces are a suitable replacement for a person-to-person smile or hug. We don’t need computer-generated road signs when we can look in a friend’s eyes and see despair, happiness or grief.

King believed that through meaningful dialogue with each other, face to face, we would see we are more alike than different. He believed deeply in God and that one day people of color would be free.

But he wasn’t a dreamer. He was a realist.  

King knew about the deplorable slums in Memphis and Atlanta. He knew people of color were lynched to the applause and cheers of white people. He knew he couldn’t sit in the front of the bus without being arrested and then beaten to a pulp.

He knew he had to demand change and he did so from the very beginning of his career in the 1950s.

King stood alongside the Freedom Riders in 1961 and 1962.  He was there in 1963 when the Civil Rights Bill was passed. And he was silenced in 1968 when an assassin’s bullet took his life much too soon.

On Monday, when the media is saturated with advertisements for blow-out sales and most of us are home relaxing on a paid holiday, remember the words of the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

To paraphrase:  Some things have always been wrong and they will always be wrong. But some things are right and will always be right.

Justice and equality for all are ideals that are always right.

 This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

I’ve always been fascinated by cars and driving. Luckily I came of age when muscle cars ruled the roads. Back in the early 1970s, our school parking lot was filled with fabulous cars – powerful Ford Mustangs, fast Dodge Chargers and yacht-long Rivieras.

For me, the real thrill was sitting behind a skinny steering wheel, my hand on a rumbling floor stick shift and then gunning a powerful engine.

My dad taught me how to drive when I was 13 because I begged him constantly about wanting to learn how to drive. I remember bucking down the street in our old Ford, trying to ease the clutch while praying I wouldn’t hit any of the garbage cans on the side of the road.

When we’d take long road trips, I sat in the front seat where my dad dispensed driving tips about how to judge distances, how to keep a steady speed and how to safely pass another vehicle. 

On the day I turned 15, the legal age to drive back then in Louisiana, I was the first one in line at the driver’s license bureau and elated when I walked out with my license.

My parents let me have my dad’s beat-up Pontiac Executive, and I drove everywhere, including to school every day. The highlight of my early driving days was when I learned to master the big curve near the governor’s mansion on Interstate 110 without tapping my brakes.

Everything was going well until three friends and I were returning from a high school marching camp at LSU. A week in the Louisiana summer sun had practically melted us, but we’d survived and were glad to be off our feet, heading home in the Pontiac.

I still wasn’t good at reading freeway signs, and instead of taking the exit to north Baton Rouge, I accidentally took the exit for the old Mississippi River Bridge, the one obstacle I said I’d never tackle.

Built in the 1940s, the structure was steep with narrow lanes and no shoulder. For someone who’d never driven over a bridge, the prospect of driving over the overpass was terrifying.

My friends were screaming as we headed for the old bridge, and I broke out in a cold sweat. I gripped the steering wheel, my heart pounding, and we slowly ascended the monster.

I held my breath going up and exhaled at the top. But then I realized – not only did I have to go over the bridge, I had to come right back over it to get back on the right road.

Somehow we managed to do both safely, and I’ve avoided that bridge for years. I’d sit in bumper-to-bumper traffic for an hour on the new bridge just to avoid having to drive on those narrow lanes way above the Mississippi River.

Recently, I needed to drive over the old bridge to go to my sister’s house. Approaching the bridge, I tried to calm my beating heart by telling myself that terrifying trip was over 40 years ago, and I’ve driven over hundreds of bridges since that hot summer.

Approaching the giant orange monster, my stomach tightened up and I gripped the steering wheel.

Just like I did so many years ago, I held my breath on the way up and breathed a sigh of relief and triumph when I crossed over into West Baton Rouge Parish.

Conquering fears isn’t easy. Sometimes all it takes is holding our breath and taking a step. Or in my case, a trip over the river.

 This column originally appeared in The Fort Bend Herald.

It’s the second day of 2014, the day we swear to fulfill all our New Year’s resolutions. We will get those running shoes out of the box and run that 5k in March. We will replace the whole milk with skim milk, and we’ll tell the waiter to hold the chips and salsa.

As if.

I’ve made hundreds of New Year’s resolutions and most fell by the wayside long before Valentine’s Day. But not making resolutions at the beginning of a new year somehow seems unproductive. People ask what my resolutions are and I rattle off the normal ones – eat healthier and lose weight.

And then here comes the chips and salsa.

Busted.

However, I’m someone who likes to make lists. I always carry around a to-do list, so having a check-off list for the new year is a compulsion I just can’t shake.

But instead of calling them resolutions, I’m going to entitle my 2014 New Year’s list my hopefuls. I hope I can accomplish these or least give each one a good try. So here we go:

• Laugh more. I’m usually an optimist and a cheerful person, but I find myself criticizing myself more often instead of laughing at my mistakes. Two thousand and fourteen will be the year I’ll give myself a break.
• Learn more about my cell phone. I’ve had this cell phone for over a year, and my son just showed me how to record my voice which becomes a text message. No more complaining about how much I detest text messaging because it takes me so long to type out the message. No more replies of “OY” instead of “OK” because I can’t get my pudgy fingers on the right buttons. My sons should expect full diatribes now via text messaging.
• Watch more YouTube videos. Laugh if you will, but there’s a wealth of information on YouTube. I could learn how to rebuild a motor, macramé a bedspread or speak Chinese by watching YouTube videos. Plus any time I want to hear Frank Sinatra sing “When I Was 17,” all I have to do is jump on YouTube and I’ll find Ole Blue Eyes.
• Get outside. With a day job that keeps me inside 10 hours a day and a short walk to my car, it’s easy to avoid being outside. Instead of staying cooped up – I know you’re thinking watching YouTube videos – I want to get outside and explore my neighborhood on foot instead of from the front seat of my car.
• Stop reading end-of-the-world stories. From wrist watches that count down the rest of your life to doomsday movies, I’m getting paranoid about asteroids hitting the planet, robots taking over the world and the government using chemtrails to alter the environment. No more. The end’s coming whether we like it or not. Until then, I’ll simply enjoy my chips and salsa.
• Eat healthier and lose weight. No way I can compile a list of hopes without putting these on there. After all, these two have been on my list since I was 16 years old. Life just wouldn’t seem the same without these old enemies.

And last but not least, say something nice to someone every day. Too often, I’m in a hurry and don’t take the time to give a much needed pat on the back to those who deserve it. And that includes saying something nice to myself.

So… nice job on finishing this column.

Check one off the list.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

    The Christmas wrapping paper’s in the recycle bin, the eggnog carton is empty and there’s only crumbs in the cookie tin. No more “Frosty the Snowman” on the radio, there’s a gazillion diet articles being published and we’re lining up at fireworks stands to ring in the new year.

But before we light up the Roman candles, let’s take a look back at some of the high, and low, points of 2013.

We added two new words to the dictionary. The first was Obamacare. No matter if you feel like we’ve taken a step toward Mother Russia by making everybody sign up or we’re finally taking care of those who need medical care but can’t afford it, Obamacare is now officially part of America’s lexicon.

Unfortunately, we added a horrible word, “twerking,” thanks to a how-low-can-she-go reinvented Miley Cyrus. I cringe thinking that the only way for a young woman to be taken seriously is to flaunt her practically naked body and stick her tongue out.

But then I remember two young women the same age as the Cyrus train wreck — Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teen who was shot by terrorists but continues to speak out for equality for women, and Elizabeth Smart who shows grace, class and courage by encouraging women to stay strong no matter what happens to them. Those two outshine celebrity blips like Cyrus every day of the year.

Then there’s the pair of Southern favorites who made the headlines. Butter’s best friend Paula Deen was lambasted for her racial comments, and down-home ZZ-Top clone Phil Robertson was vilified for his comments about homosexuality. I wish we spent as much time talking about how to make sure no one goes to bed hungry as we did about these two.

We spent a lot of time in front of our flat-screen TVs this year, thanks to popular series like “Breaking Bad,” “Downton Abbey,” “Game of Thrones” and “Mad Men.” As a writer, it’s refreshing to see people flock to the small screen because of excellent story lines.

Americans continue to line up at movie theaters that boast bigger-than-life 3-D action while watching Hobbits battle beasts with names we can’t pronounce.

Millions plunked down their movie watcher cards to see Robert Downey Jr. beat up bad guys in ‘Iron Man 3.” Romantics flocked to see the “Twilight” movies but rock-’em, sock-’em movies beat out love — $409 million for our favorite Marvel super hero versus $69 million for the star-crossed vampires.

No matter how much we tried to escape reality, anguish washed over us in 2013. On Patriot’s Day, two vile bombers killed innocent people who were watching the Boston Marathon, and, a year later, we still have no answers as to how someone could walk into a quiet elementary school and kill innocent children.

We continue to hold our breath as North Korea rattles its atomic missiles, we keep a wary eye on the Middle East and fear the Chinese. But all is right in the SEC world because Nick Saban decided to stay at the University of Alabama and not come to Texas.

A new leader for the Catholic Church, Pope Francis, reminded us that the best blueprint for life is to not judge others for who they are but to embrace all people, from gays to sinners to believers to non-believers.

None of us know what 2014 will bring but if we follow the example of Pope Francis, Malala and Elizabeth, I think we’ll start off on the right foot.

Happy New Year!
This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

Growing up Catholic, there’s a few givens – we’ll feel guilty about most things in life, a crucifix is a staple in our home and we will always be surrounded by cousins.

Guilt is the cornerstone of my life, the crucifix – with holy water – hangs in my dining room and I have 27 first cousins on my Dad’s side and 25 first cousins on my Mom’s side.

Our family had a lot in common with our cousins in Lake Charles, La., mostly because we had a cousin our age. I hung out with Sylvia who was one year older than me. Mark was my brother Jimmy’s age and so on right down the line.

In the middle of that interlacing was my cousin Sam. His escapades were legendary. If the “Indiana Jones” movies were running back then, we’d have all bet the Baltimore Catechist that Sam was the closest thing to Indy we’d ever seen.

He was up early and went to bed late. He was the one climbing every tree in the yard. Once, Sam rode his bike off the roof and he and the Schwinn got tangled up in the clothesline, narrowly escaping broken bones. He ran away from home at least once a week, and he did all that with a huge, I double-dog-dare-you smile on his face and a laugh that lit up the world.

Sam believed in taking a chance, because, he said, no matter where you landed, the ride was so much fun.

 Striking Out

When Sam was 17, my uncle said since Sam thought he knew everything, he should get out on his own. Sam took on all kinds of odd jobs to make ends meet. Eventually he started his own building company but then he began working with New York Life.

Sam worked hard to catch up on all the financial lingo and never stopped believing in himself. Twenty eight years later, Sam is the 2013 New York Life Council President with more sales than any other agent in the country.

According to an article written about Sam, he accomplished this goal by changing how he looked at life. He looked inside himself for answers and stopped blaming others.

He altered his outlook, from life being a series of unfair hurdles to seeing life as manageable opportunities. Over the years, he built a wildly successful business.

He and his wife, Denise, are the proud parents of two beautiful daughters, a handsome son and they’re the hosts for the weekly Hebert Sunday dinner and the annual Hebert family reunion.

When my father passed away, Sam was the first person at the funeral home and his shoulder was one I sobbed on. Later, it was a unanimous decision for us to give Sam my Dad’s ring because Sam was one of my Dad’s favorite nephews.

 Sam wears that ring every single day, and I love how he cherishes my dad’s memory and models my Dad’s passion for adventure.

Through all the ups and downs in his life, Sam’s blueprint for success is straight forward – envision a life that for you is ideal, hitch your intentions to that vision, plan not to fail and then go make it happen.

As I watch a YouTube video of Sam’s talk to NYL agents, I can still picture that gangly kid on his banana seat bicycle, an impish smile on his face, ready to take on the next challenge.

I’m grateful every time I think about that wild child cousin who’s now influencing others to follow their dreams. Even if it means hitching yourself to a bike and riding it off a roof to get there.

 

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

Ho, Ho, Ho. Merry Christmas.

Or so the sentiment goes.

Although I love this time of the year, I procrastinate about Christmas decorating more than any other holiday.

For the Fourth of July, I bake that red, white and blue sprinkle cake two days early. Two weeks before Halloween arrives, I’ve stocked up on candy bars and lollipops.

The Sunday before Thanksgiving, I’ve got the turkey defrosting in the fridge and all the ingredients for pecan pie, sweet potato casserole and cornbread dressing lined up on the counter.

However, Christmas is one holiday where I put off decorating until the very last minute. It’s not that I don’t have reminders all around. Stores put up Christmas decorations right after Labor Day and the ad flyers appear in the newspaper starting in October.

It’s not that I’m a Scrooge. I’m tuning into FM 99.1 on Thanksgiving Day so I can start listening to Christmas songs, my favorite being Nat King Cole crooning about chestnuts roasting on an open fire.

It’s simply that I have a hard time getting excited about taking down 10 boxes from the attic, unpacking them, taking down and putting up decorations and then reversing the process two weeks later.

 

The Guilt

There’s plenty of reminders that I’m dragging my feet. I see families dressed up in holiday sweaters taking pictures for their Christmas cards and I cringe – one year, I sent my Christmas cards out in February.

I look online at friends’ posts on Facebook, and they’re already two weeks into the “Elf on the Shelf” adventure. I’m still trying to figure out how to play that game.

Most of my friends already have red and green Christmas towels in the guest bathrooms along with ceramic Santa soap dispensers. I’ve never seen the practicality of paying almost $10 for a towel I’m going to look at – horrors of horrors if anyone actually wiped their hands on that towel – for less than a month.

Driving around town, I feel guilty as I see house after house with a lighted Christmas tree in the front window. To rub salt in the wound, most of my friends had their tree up the weekend after Thanksgiving.

I rationalize my delay comes from going through so much work for such a short period of time.

When I put drapes up, I expect them to look good for at least 10 years. I keep couches for at least 15 years and once I buy bedroom furniture, it’s in that bedroom for good.  

For Christmas, not only do I move furniture and knick-knacks around and spend all afternoon sweeping up pine needles and wrapping presents, the whole time I’m wondering why I’m doing then because it’s all over in a day and then, two weeks later, I get to do all those chores in reverse.

I’ve tried all the rationalizations – it’s the spirit of the holidays so get over the amount of time it takes to put up the decorations. I’ve even tried boot camp thinking – stop the whining, get down the boxes and create a festive atmosphere for my family.

I’ve tried guilt – what a Scrooge I am for not jumping on the Santa band wagon right after Thanksgiving so I can enjoy Christmas longer.

Nothing works. Besides, my procrastination has paid off.

One year, we got our Christmas tree for half off because I waited so long to get it.

Sigh.

I can see Santa putting coal in my stocking right now.

And I deserve it.
This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

When we first moved to Texas, we got some good advice about the weather. If we didn’t like it, just wait a couple of days. It would change.

That’s certainly true of the weather this week. We started out with blue skies and summer temperatures. By the end of the week, we’ll be back in the 30’s with an 80 percent chance of rain.

No wonder we’re all sniffling and sneezing.

Shunning the Cold

Because I’m a Southerner by choice, cold weather is a repellent for me, and I hibernate inside until the mercury rises above 70 degrees.

I’ve found a lot of ways to keep myself occupied while waiting for the sun to return – cleaning out closets, rearranging furniture and, when the arctic blast lasts for more than a week, categorizing my T-shirts by color.

But working around the house gets old, so if I know the mercury’s on the way down, I head to a Fort Bend County library for a few classic movies or I search online for some of the best movies from my childhood.

One of my all-time favorites is “Some Like It Hot” with Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon and Marilyn Monroe. Although Monroe lights up the screen, it’s Jack Lemmon who really steals the show.
I’ve watched “It’s A Wonderful Life” at least 50 times because I never tire of the story of how Clarence earns his wings and how George Bailey comes to understand he’s really a blessed man.

My mom gave me a love of the melodramas from the 1950s and 1960s. I can’t count the number of times we sat through “Imitation of Life” with Lana Turner. We always cried when Annie dies and her daughter realizes how wonderful her mother had been throughout her life.

“Madame X” is another Hebert Girl classic, and I tear up just thinking of the ending scene where Lana Turner’s son comforts her on her death bed, not realizing she’s his mother.

The Master – Cary Grant

Today’s teens think actors like Orlando Bloom and Channing Tatum are the epitome of dashing and debonair. They don’t have a clue that the grand master of cool sexy is Mr. Archibald Leach, otherwise known as Cary Grant.

He’s known for many roles, but my mom’s favorite, and mine, is “An Affair to Remember.” I identified with Meg Ryan and Rosie O’Donnell in “Sleepless in Seattle, which relies heavily on the Grant movie, because like them, I’d memorized huge passages of that film. And, yes, winter is cold for those with no warm memories…

Movies that always make me feel better on those cold rainy days are the old MGM musicals. There’s no way a person can stay miserable when Gene Kelly’s dancing and singing in the rain. Nor can viewers keep from smiling when the Pontipee brothers are singing about “Sobbin’ Women” in “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.”

My favorite snippet on YouTube is the opening song from “Fiddler on the Roof” because my family has watched that movie together so many times, we sing along with every song and recite the dialog along with Tevye.

Watching movies together is a tradition that binds the Hebert Nation, just as it did my mom and me so many years ago when we’d snuggle together on the couch and watch old movies on rainy, cold Sunday afternoons.

Most of the time, I want the rainy cold to go away. But when I’m huddled underneath a blanket, watching Cary Grant, Lana Turner and Jimmy Stewart, there’s no place else I’d rather be.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.