Relationships & Family

Open Heart

jbloustein — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 15:19:08 -0500

My family depends on me and that’s the way it should be. I like taking care of them.

Our Daily Baguette

jbloustein — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 15:26:06 -0600

I stared at the letter I was writing on my computer screen and bit into a chocolate croissant.

The flaky, buttery pastry melted in my mouth. C’était delicieux! How could I put into words what these croissants—and the French bakery they came from—meant to our tiny New England town? And what good would my letter do anyway?

I’d heard it that morning. The bakery was closing. Fini. I set the croissant on a plate and looked out the window. The sky was dark and gloomy, winter still not relinquishing its grip.

Cough Medicine Scare

jbloustein — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 12:29:30 -0600

Type DXM into Google or You Tube and you will quickly learn what your teenager probably already knows—cough medicine can take a person on euphoric, psychedelic, or dissociative trips without even breaking the law.

Yes, teenagers know how to get high off of cough medicine. Online they can even find DXM calculators that tell them how much of what brands of cough medicine they can use to get to the four different “plateaus.”

When Life Turns on a Dime

jbloustein — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 13:46:50 -0600

When Valentine’s Day approaches, we think of romantic love.

But that’s not the only kind, as Alice Hennig would point out.

She was 17 when her family moved to a new area in Edmonton, Alberta. One cold Sunday afternoon in February, her parents were entertaining some relatives, and Alice decided to visit a friend from the old neighborhood.