BY EILEEN BRADY
​THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO

One member of our family meets weekly with her friends, and everyone else pitches in to make sure she gets her social time. It’s not who you might think.
Ruthie, our 8-month-old puppy, gets chauffeured Tuesday nights to “puppy pawties,” where she cavorts with Buster and Miley and Cody and Bailey and a roomful of other canine comrades. 
Ruthie loves it so much, she’d drive herself there if she had opposable thumbs.
Each time, there’s a brief puppy version of cocktail hour, with mingling and hugging (and slobbering and rear-end-sniffing). Then it’s down to business with basic obedience commands to learn and practice. And then more play fighting, neck biting and pouncing, ending with each puppy getting weighed on the veterinary scale, equipment that causes anxiety for many pets.
There are field trips to local pet-friendly stores such as Lowe’s and Tractor Supply Co. 
And there’s homework.

BY EILEEN BRADY
​THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO

On a January morning almost four years ago, my daughter was with friends in her kindergarten classroom just a couple of blocks from our home.
But I was 25 minutes away at Fort Belvoir, a large Army base in Virginia, when my phone rang. 
Another kindergarten parent was calling. Our children’s school was on lockdown. There was a shooter in the neighborhood. That was all the information my friend had.
Panic swiftly arrived, followed by a primal desire to get to my child, complicated by distance, strict speeding laws on base and urban traffic.
I can still remember the shade of the tree over the parking spot where I took the call; the angle from the entrance to where I was heading; the repeated cell-phone calls to reach my husband, who couldn’t be awoken at home that quickly after finishing a overnight shift. It’s all part of my flashbulb memory.
Slowly, details emerged: the man with the gun

BY EILEEN BRADY
​THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO

It's beginning to smell a lot like Christmas.
And I’m not talking about pine.
We have never had a fresh-cut tree, but we have always had fresh-baked cookies around Christmastime. So the scent of sugar, flour and eggs wafting from the oven is a major sensory tradition in our family. 
And then, each year, Christmas cookies become the driving force for New Year’s resolutions. But let’s not think about that now.
It seems that each geographic region we’ve lived in celebrates with its own particular Christmas cookies, and I’m often surprised when someone has never tasted a cookie that’s considered a staple in other places. 
We made snickerdoodles two years ago for my daughter’s teacher in Virginia, who fell in love with them and had to have the recipe. I hadn’t know there was a person on the planet who hadn’t eaten a snickerdoodle. Surely they aren’t an Ohio-bred Christmas cookies, a la buckeyes, are they?