I can't see my neighbors' houses. Sure, there are nights in the winter, when the leaves are gone and the snow isn't blowing and a certain light is on, that I can tell there's a house there. But most of the time, we live in peaceful oblivion from each other. I know my neighbors. I know their names and their dogs' names and their kids' and grandkids' names. I especially know what they drive.

My 16-year-old son left last month for a year in Sweden. I love my son, but there's something to be said for letting someone else raise him for a year. Even though I'm experiencing an empty nest years before I thought I would, I'm having a blast. I've been staying out late, going to movies and gathering with friends. I cleaned the house and it stayed clean.

My car broke down on the first day of my vacation. Perfect. Seriously. It was perfect. We spent a lazy morning reading in the sun, then decided to head toward the water.

These last few weeks, I've been seeing our region through the eyes of a tourist. A souvenir-hunting tourist. My son leaves in July for a year in Sweden through the Rotary Youth Exchange program. We're gathering gifts for the various people he'll live with and meet throughout the year. Because I'd never thought about it -- much less shopped for it -- it hadn't dawned on me that you could buy socks with cherries on them, barrettes with cherries on them, shot glasses with cherries on them or tea cups with cherries on them.

My name is oddly spelled -- a combo of my two grandmas' names -- so I long ago gave up being fussy about making sure it was correct or meeting anyone else who spelled it like me. When Google first launched, I searched on my own name, which, by the way, isn't a wholly vain thing to do. The results were anticlimactic. But, following tradition, "Jodee Taylor" was one of the first things I searched for on Facebook.

The summer I was 16, I worked at Bardon's. It was pretty much the perfect job -- I saw all my friends, I could walk or ride my bike there and there was ice cream. It was like my life at the time, except I got paid. Still, I bolted after a few months to take a job with the forest service in the U.P. What can I say? I was 16 and ready to get out of Traverse City. During the time I worked at Bardon's, however, I invented the Hot Fudge Marshmallow Milkshake.

We have both ducks and chickens on our little farm. They're pets, not meat. Last summer, a broody chicken took to a communal pile of eggs. She hatched two chicks and a duckling. This duckling, raised by chickens, gives a fascinating twist on the old nature vs. nurture debate.

The two towns I live between -- Kingsley and Fife Lake -- have new libraries. Fife Lake's has been open for a couple years, but it still has that new-library feel to it. Kingsley's opened just this month. I cried the first time I went in.

>We like to sit around the newsroom and talk about the future of our business. No, not really. We're too busy putting out a newspaper. We don't have time for philosophical discussions. Other people are doing it for us. Newspapers are dying. Newspapers are changing. Who reads newspapers anyway? I do. And so, apparently, do you.

When we were growing up, my dad would take us, one by one when we reached a certain age, out to deliver presents his Rotary club had collected for a family in need. After we'd get done dispersing the gifts, when the warm, fuzzy feeling was still within us, he'd hand us "The Santa Letter."

We just got back from Thanksgiving in Montreal, a 13-hour, one-way trip from Kingsley. We didn't use a map. The GPS is one of the world's best inventions, as far as I'm concerned. Ours has a suction cup that attaches it to the windshield and my husband opted for the voice of an English lass he dubbed "Lola."

Kimberly McKerchie, one of the members of the Record-Eagle's undecided-voter panel, said she cares more about this presidential election than any other race in which she's voted. We probably all do. It's exciting. So ... why don't we get excited and vote in the elections that hit us close to home?

My son had his first foray into civil disobedience this fall. He's hooked. The corporation that owns my son's school dismissed the principal on a Wednesday. No reason was given and no one even officially told the students the principal was gone. The frustrated students were in planning mode before the last bell of the day rang.

What do you call someone who fits in between "family" and "friend"? Who are the people who aren't technically kin, but they're still the people you depend on, people you'd take a bullet for, people whose dirty laundry you're familiar with but you still love them? For me, it's the Labor Day picnic people.

I got a kick out of a recent New York Times story about parents sending their kids off to sleep-away camp, then checking on them multiple times a day. The story was hilariously headlined "Dear Parents -- Please Relax, It's Just Camp." My own kid, 15, went to camp this summer for two weeks. It was math camp at the University of Michigan and I still am stunned that I raised a kid who wants to go to math camp.

Finally, Malawi gets the spotlight. Thanks, Madonna. Your movie and upcoming appearance at the Traverse City Film Festival have put this tiny African nation on the lips of people who had never heard of it before. My sister, Dr. Terrie Taylor, a native of Traverse City, has been running the Blantyre Malaria Project in Blantyre, Malawi, for close to a quarter-century now.

Death is a frequent enough visitor to our farm that I'm nervous every morning and evening when I go out to the barn. Our dog killed a duckling the second day we had them. He just wanted to play with it, but the result was tragic. It turns out chickens can just up and die with no sign of illness or distress. Their little hearts explode or something.

We just had our basement finished. It doubled the square footage of our house. There are only three people in my family, so we weren't put out with 1,000 square feet. We could still get away from each other and, while we tripped over the dog a lot, we didn't necessarily trip over each other. But there are books. In fact, there are about 2,000 books.

Raising a baseball fan is no big deal. You've got a little kid following you around everywhere, with a baseball game going in the background. When you hear the crack of the bat or the roar of the crowd, you shush the little kid (gently and lovingly, of course), listen to the action, then let the kid resume the autobabble.