My father can’t remember my birthday.

“It’s August third, right?”

“No, Dad. Ken’s birthday is December third. Mine is August fourth.”

“Oh, that’s right.”

He can’t remember my children’s ages or grades.

“Emma is in fifth grade.”

“She’s in seventh grade, Dad.”

“Oh, that’s right”

But there is one thing my father never, ever forgets — Valentine’s Day.

I don’t know how it began, but it has become “our” special holiday.

I didn’t appreciate my father’s February efforts in my younger years. But now that I have a daughter who is almost a teen and continually argues with my husband, I can appreciate how this heart-filled holiday has come to mean so much to me and my Dad.

You see, I was once just like my daughter. I headed into my teen years with a smart-mouth and an attitude sometimes even a mother couldn’t love. My father didn’t like the music I listened to, the movies I watched, or the fact that I hated helping around the house.

It annoyed him that I refused to even try hunting and baseball –- activities he shared with my brothers. The more he pushed, the more I dug in my heels.

But on Valentine’s Day, Dad would bring me the biggest, reddest, sweetest card you can find at a Hallmark store. It always has some soppy verse inside -– but that’s not what moved me. It’s how he signed it.

“I’m so proud to be your father. Love, Dad.” Or “I will always be here for you. Love, Dad.” Or simply, “I love you more than words can say.”

To this day, Dad still sends me a Valentine’s Day card. I still cry when I read it. Maybe it’s because my dad doesn’t speak easily about his feelings. We never lacked for his hugs and kisses and attention as kids, but he never spoke a lot about how he felt about anything, let alone us kids.

So when he puts those phrases down in his own handwriting, well, I feel pretty darn special.

You know what else makes me feel special? My brothers don’t get cards. Just me. It’s between me and my Dad.

My daughter is 12. My husband doesn’t make a big deal out of Valentine’s Day, but he also tells our kids every day how much he loves them.

Still, I hope he finds a day -– Presidents Day, St. Patrick’s Day or April Fools Day – that becomes his holiday with Emma.

Because sometimes daughters need a reminder that Daddy loves them.

The concrete sparkles, and Jacquelyn Dixon lifts a tanned, manicured hand to her forehead to shade her eyes. Satisfied with their progress, she turns to face the two men installing cabinetry in the kitchen to her right. That’s when a tool sails through the air, landing aside her worn, black tennis shoe.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to throw that at ya,” a worker says as he picks up the tool.

“I was going to get it and throw it right back at you,” she says. The young worker grins and gets back to work.

Jacquelyn still has a list of things to do for this home on Bennington Court in Asheton Lakes, a subdivision off Highway 280. Wooden boards and work stations clutter the living room to Jacquelyn’s left, but she sees through the jumble and imagines the fireplace she will design, and how it will look like when a family calls this house home.

In her fifteen years as a builder, she has never made two mantles alike, she says. They are her special project, a custom touch in each of the two dozen homes she’s built as the proprietor of Real Life Builders, which she founded in 1997.

It wasn’t exactly the birth of an empire. She is still the builder, manager, designer, secretary, and gopher for a company that specializes in custom-built homes. She is also in the addition and remodeling business, with her trademark ReInvented Living.

“I’m self-taught; I never went to school to learn construction,” Jacquelyn says.

“If I can do this, others can. I know there are more women who have the knowledge,” she says. “It’s just like any other job: you get tested at first, but growing up I was never led to believe I couldn’t do something I put my mind to.”

While women remain uncommon in the construction industry – slightly less than ten percent of all contractors are female – it’s not because they don’t belong in the business, Jacquelyn says.  Women multitask easily, and many have a natural attention to detail, she says — great traits for the construction industry.

“It’s not a pretty job, but it’s rewarding. I can ride around and say, ‘I built that, I built that,’ and what I build are people’s homes. It’s where they live; they raise their children there,” Jacquelyn says. “It’s a big deal. So many people move into their house and never give a thought to the hands that put it together, but it goes even beyond the hands. It’s somebody’s heart and soul in that house.”

A website she created, Broadbuilt.com, encourages women to enter the field, and aims to unite local women builders.

JACQUELYN GREW up on an eight-acre farm in Montgomery, the oldest of five children. Construction was a familiar sight there; her father built concrete silos, and his plant and office were on the farm. Her dad taught her how to build pens and feeding troughs for their many animals, providing practical lessons in dimensions, wood types, tools, and the use of wire, screws, hinges and nails, she says.

“It’s like we were building little homes for the animals, but man, I hated every bit of it,” Jacquelyn says. “And that’s just it, you hate the things you’re made to do when you’re a kid, and later on in life, when you’re working, you realize that’s when you learned the stuff you know.”

Outdoors she reluctantly took up building, but indoors Jacquelyn took quickly to another kind of construction: sewing.  Her mother taught her the basics when she was nine years old. She learned fast.

In a fourth-grade 4-H sewing contest, she decided to sew circles around competitors by making a skirt as the fifth graders were doing instead of the apron fourth graders were supposed to make.

“People asked me, ‘Are you sure you can do that?’ When somebody asks me that, that’s a challenge to me.”

“I thought, ‘Well, I can make a skirt.’ So I did. And I got top ribbon.”

The next year when Jacquelyn was in the fifth grade she made an A-line dress, which is what the sixth graders were making. By junior high, she made her own clothing. When she reached her twenties, Jacquelyn was sewing herself cocktail dresses out of patterns she created on paper bags. It gave her the opportunity to put her own spin on the design, she says.

Her creative energy receives a different showcase in her home office, where her paintings and sketches decorate the room. An easel by a window holds a painting of the view looking down a winding staircase at the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. “I just did that a few weeks ago,” she says. Detailed drawings of a mallard and an eagle hang on her office walls.

She applies the same sensibility to construction that she applies to her artwork.

“A house is just one big giant canvas,” she says. “In drawing and sewing, you have to pay attention to details and instructions. With painting, its about being able to see the end product before you even get started,” she says. It’s the same way with houses.

JACQUELYN LEFT the farm at twenty-one, when she married. She and her husband, Randy Dixon, had two children, Lori and Steven. In 1992, they decided to move to Auburn. They hired a builder to build them a home, but planned to do lot of the work themselves.

One Saturday in May, Jacquelyn was working in the new home, installing blocking for fixtures in one of the bathrooms, when she was nudged by a strange feeling of something amiss. Her husband had taken six-year-old Steven to work with him; they should have come home an hour ago. Jacquelyn walked to a neighbor to use the phone. That’s where police found her. Randy and Steven had been in a car accident, police told her. They would tell her no more.

“All I want to know is if they’re going to live,” she told the police. “They told me they didn’t think so.”

Her heart sunk under the weight of the news. She prayed they had it wrong.

Steven was already on his way to Children’s Hospital in Birmingham, and on Jacquelyn’s request, her husband was flown to Birmingham behind him.

Randy, thirty-four, died before the helicopter landed. Jacquelyn was thirty-three. They had been married twelve years.

“I didn’t really have time for it all to register, but I knew there wasn’t a thing I could do for Randy,” Jacquelyn says. “When I saw Steven, they were getting him ready for surgery. He still had blood on him, but as soon as I looked at him I knew he was going to be OK.”

She had to be with Steven round-the-clock while he was in the hospital, but her eight-year-old daughter Lori wasn’t allowed there. Still, sometimes she smuggled Lori up to Steven’s room for sleepovers. “The nurses never said a thing about it,” she recalls. “They knew what I was going through.”

After his initial surgery, Steven had to relearn the simplest things. “He didn’t know an eye from a finger. He didn’t know people. He didn’t know anything.” Jacquelyn ferried him from appointment to appointment – occupational therapy, physical therapy, speech therapy – seven days a week, twice day. In November, Steven went for a second surgery, one so risky doctors told her his chance of survival was no more than twenty percent. She kept that to herself.

“I didn’t tell the family. I didn’t want them worrying. I didn’t want it getting back to my daughter.”

But Steven was strong. He was released from the hospital two days later.

“IT’S JUST MEANT for him to be. Period,” Jacquelyn says. “You learn that different things in your life happen for a reason. You either let it break you, or you see who you really are, and it does not matter what other people think or what other people say. It’s about what’s right for your family, period. As long as you know you’re living an honest, truthful life. It does not matter.”

Today, Steven lives in Auburn and owns his own videography business. Lori teaches high school French in Georgia.

The house she had been working on was finished and sold. She and her children didn’t move to Auburn until 1994. This time, she drew plans for a house, hired a builder, and then hung around the building site seeing how it all came together.

“I was there every day,” she says. “I really loved being in the middle of it all. I was probably in everybody’s way the whole time, but I was trying to soak it all in. It was intriguing to me, what these guys were doing, but I never even gave it a thought that women could do this, too.”

Other small design projects popped up that year for neighbors and friends. Then in 1996, a cabinet company owned by a local builder hired her.

“I’d never done anything in cabinet drawings, but I could draw, and they knew I could draw,” she says. She became a frequent visitor to job sites, taking measurements, and builders started to notice. “They encouraged me. I understood the lingo, I know what I was doing. Several told me I ought to take the builder’s license test.”

In August 1997 she did just that, and passed on the first try.

She started her company immediately afterwards.

Entering a field dominated by men did not faze her. She knew she had to prove herself as a contractor regardless of her sex, and so she did, she says.

“I got in there with the guys. I got in and just spent all my time on the job sites working with the subs,” she says. “You don’t have to be the plumber or the technician, but you have to understand what he’s doing. You have to be willing to crawl into the attic or under the house.”

She immersed herself in learning the industry. Along the way, she met many different subcontractors, some of whom would end up working for her.

Douglas Stuhr, an employee of Graham Heilman Cabinetry in Columbus, has worked with Jacquelyn for about four years. The company creates custom woodwork. Stuhr and owner Graham Heilman are working on Jacquelyn’s Asheton Lakes project.

“My first impression was that she’s confident. She’s got a sense of humor, too,” Stuhr says. “One day I was joking about throwing my trash in the backyard of a site and she came back with a line about how she’d see to it then that I wouldn’t be doing any more work for her.”

For the subs, working on one of Jacquelyn’s job sites is all about teamwork, respect, and communication, Jacquelyn says. James Warren, owner of Warren’s Concrete, has worked with Jacquelyn for 15 years as the labor behind her driveways and concrete slabs.

“She knows what she wants. She can be a little tough, but what she wants, I can do, so we don’t have a problem,” he says. “I feel like I’ve known her all my life; I call her Jac, while everybody else calls her Jacquelyn. She trusts us on what we do, and that’s the main thing.”

In the fall of 2001, Jacquelyn had a career-defining moment. William Walker, president of Auburn University from 2001-2004, and wife Myrna Walker, wanted to talk to her about building them a hope. They met, she prepared a bid, handed it over, and waited for their decision.

Four or five days later, Myrna Walker called. “She says she had been telling everyone all weekend long that I’d be building their house, but had forgotten to call and tell me,” Jacquelyn says.

“I was so excited, and that right there told me I’d made it.” They chose her, a woman, with no college education and no Auburn ties.

In 2007 Jacquelyn made one more big change in her life. She married Mike Swain. June 5 will be her fifth anniversary.

“He’s a pretty nice guy,” she says. “He’s so supportive, I don’t have to be the one doing it all.”

MYRNA HAD known Jacquelyn’s name almost as long as Jacquelyn had built houses. She liked their distinct styling and Jacquelyn’s focus on customized homes, Myrna says.

“I often refer to myself as a ‘displaced Texan’ even though I’ve lived in Auburn for over twenty years and love it. I wanted Texas architecture, and the house very definitely turned out a Texas house; we call it The Alamo,” Myrna says. “We had such fun. Jacquelyn is an artist.”

Jacquelyn keeps close contact with her clients during the building and designing processes, she says. This allows her to personalize their homes by incorporating their interests, roots, and styles.

And she likes to try new things. That led her to put outside lights inside or use an airplane wing design to build a bunk bed. For the Walkers, she installed a custom-made stained glass window in the hallway.

Myrna says the window is the home’s most personal touch. “Light shone through it into the next room, and it was beautiful,” she says. “Her recommendations were always so on. I’ve left my mark with that house, and she did too.”

At the construction site in Asheton Lakes, Jacquelyn walks outside, crossing through the back yard on her way to check the driveway. She says she plans to use James Warren’s tractor later to do some work behind the house. Warren looks over at Jacquelyn and lets out a low chuckle.

“Jac thinks she can do anything,” he says. “She’s always wanting to use my tractor.”

When December rolled around, my dwarf Myer lemon tree was in full bloom.

Last year I replanted it in a large container because it was root bound. I moved it into my back-porch greenhouse November 1. And then I pulled off its single lemon. Within a week, it was covered in sweet-smelling flowers – just like the song promised, if you’re old enough to remember it.

My Myer lemon is one of five citrus trees in my garden; there is also a dwarf lime, a dwarf satsuma and lemon, and a standard satsuma and lemon, which can reach eighteen feet. The standard-size trees are planted in the ground at the end of my greenhouse. I provide covered protection during the winter and I keep them pruned so they will not grow too large to cover.

So there’s your proof. We can grow citrus in central Alabama if it’s protected from sharp temperature drops and prolonged freezes. Tangerines and mandarins are the hardiest of the citrus, but even these will not tolerate extended cold without some kind of protection. That’s why I favor dwarf varieties kept in containers. I can move them to safety during cold spells.

Citrus trees are self-pollinating, meaning that a single tree will bear fruit. In Spring small clusters of wonderfully fragrant cream-colored flowers appear. Temperatures must be above 55 degrees for six months for fruit to develop, with warmer temperatures making the fruit more flavorful. Citrus needs full sun and grows best in a sandy-loamy soil. But they will do fine in nearly any soil type as long as it drains well.

You can use just about any potting soil mix, since they are usually a good mixture of peat, sand, perlite, and vermiculite. Decide what size pot to use based on the tree size, but eventually your tree will be in a fifteen- to thirty-gallon pot. You will need strong arms to move this in for winter. I bought a thirty-gallon pot and attached four two-inch metal casters to the bottom. Now I can move the plant by myself.

If the holes in the bottom of the pot are few or small, add more to ensure that the soil drains properly. While citrus likes lots of moisture, they do not like wet feet. Plastic pots retain moisture; so check the top two inches of soil before watering. It should be dry to touch.

Fertilizer is important. Use a slow-release balanced fertilizer, such as 8-8-8. Even better is a balanced fertilizer with trace elements such as iron, magnesium, and manganese. There are also fertilizers specially formulated for citrus trees. As with all fertilizers, follow the manufacturer’s directions.

Now that I’ve told you the rules, let me tell you about an eighteen- to twenty-foot rule breaker, full of lemons, in Opelika! I saw it the first week of December and stopped to chat with the homeowner. It is a ponderosa lemon and has been there for years. My research says this isn’t a true lemon but a hybrid cross of a lemon and a citron. But, the research also says it is not very cold tolerant; the Myer lemon is considered more tolerant than a ponderosa.

Obviously, this tree was never told it could not grow here, outside.

I hope that you will consider growing your own citrus. After all, when life gives you lemons, nothing is more satisfying than making lemonade from your own tree!

You know that animal prints are always all the rage – they’re basically neutrals at this point and fashionistas dare to wear them with anything and everything.

I love it.

But, recently, I find myself with a new, strange animal-print obsession. I’m not talking leopard spots or zebra stripes. No, none of that. (Although, trust me, what I do have isn’t going anywhere, it’s just taking a little break from the heavy and constant rotation.)

I’m swooning, lusting, clicking like mad through every online retailer I can think of to come up with animal printed anything. Dresses with horses, tops with cats, skirts with fish.

It might sound kitsch, and I guess it is, but it’s also so much more. It’s fabulous. It’s fun. It’s totally unexpected in all of the best ways.

I’m making it mandatory. Just try it. Go with me on this one. You won’t regret it.

I guess it all started a few years ago when Marc Jacobs introduced those cute ballet flats with the mouse face. Yeah, you know the ones. We all lusted after them, saw them online and in stores, but, holy price tag, Batman! How many of us would be willing to shell out a few hundred bucks for ballet flats just for the ironic cuteness of mouse shoes?

Not this lady.

I forgot all about the shoes until I recently noticed blazers with sparrows, fancy work blouses with horses, scarves with bumblebees. The cuteness and surprising sophistication was overwhelming. Most of the pieces aren’t so animal intense that, if you were, say, out in public, someone would look at you and shout, “Whoa! Are you a walking ad for the Kentucky Derby?” or “Here comes the crazy cat lady!” We’re not talking in-your-face oversized animals here.

The prints are small and delicate, whimsical, and dialed-down so you could wear many of these pieces to work, to party, to the grocery store, to take out the garbage, to sleep. Anywhere – you won’t want to take them off.

That’s not a bad thing. Like you change your go-to colors by seasons, you can do the same with animal prints – doe in the winter, butterflies spring, bees in summer, squirrels in fall. It’s so sweet my teeth are starting to hurt.

In all seriousness, if the whimsy frightens you, tame it. Don’t pick up the horse dress. Start small instead – a scarf with the silhouette of little dogs or cats. Or, do the dress but, since it’s still a bit chilly, wear solid tights, boots, and a sweater or jacket over top to break up the focus.

You can do it. You should do it. If I had a hypnosis kit, I’d say “You will do it.” And it will feel great. You will look great. And, let’s be honest, who doesn’t want that?

I’ve never entered a chili cook-off and am perfectly content to believe that my chili is the best chili out there. But like other employees, students, and family members of the Auburn University Harrison School of Pharmacy, I did help judge its Fourth Annual Chili Cook-off.

Each region of the country has its own chili tradition. Even in this group of twenty participating faculty and students, I was amazed by the different styles and flavors. I picked three of the twenty that I truly liked and begged for the recipes. I mention the begging because my own chili recipe is almost sacred. I cannot get upset when my requests are refused. But two of the chefs were generous, and I must thank the two young chefs profusely. I know how hard it is to write down exactly what you did to make the best pot of chili ever.

Before I give you the recipes, here are some tips to help you create your own signature chili.

• The spices you add to your chili will add a more flavorful depth if you toast them with your meat.
• If you’re using ground beef, drain the fat before you add spices. It doesn’t add any flavor and if you try to remove it after the chili cools, you could lose the spices and herbs you added.
•  When using fresh herbs, add them at the end of cooking. If using dry, add them just before simmering.
•  If you are reheating a pot of chili, a handful of fresh herbs will brighten the flavor.
• Finally, to help alleviate the after effects of the beans (this is something my sister taught me after she worked for a year as a cook in a government facility), cut a whole apple in quarters, core it, and add it to the pot. Let it simmer in the chili; it will not change the taste. Before serving the chili, remove the apple and throw it away.

At my house we eat chili over shell noodles. I have friends who like it over rice and some who eat it over cornbread. There is no wrong way to eat chili.

The Colored Chili

Mohammad (Mo) Rahman, a third year pharmacy student, and a few of his cronies, created this fresh tasting chili.

• 3 pounds of ground turkey
• 1 ½ bell pepper (a mix of red and green)
• 2 small onions, chopped
• 1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and chopped
• 2 tablespoon of olive oil
• 4 tablespoon of chili powder
• 4 tablespoon of cumin
• 4 teaspoon of cayenne pepper sauce
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 3 cups of frozen corn
• 2 (32-ounce) can chunky-style crushed tomatoes
• 3 cups of chicken stock
• 1 ½ tablespoons of brown sugar
• 12 ounce bag of Aidells Chicken Meatballs (Hawaiian style with pineapples)
• Green onion and sour cream to garnish

Sauté the vegetables and ground turkey in separate pans. Put both in a crock-pot along with all ingredients except meatballs, green onions, and sour cream. Prepare the meatballs as instructed on the package, chop to small pieces, and add to the crock-pot. Cook 2 hours on high. Serve with green onion and sour cream.

Jacob’s Red Rooster Chili

Jacob Boydston is a second year pharmacy student. I really liked the way he used black beans as well as pinto beans in his pot.

• 2 pounds ground chuck
• 1 tablespoon freshly cracked black pepper
• 1  29-ounce can tomato sauce
• 1 29-ounce can whole tomatoes, quartered
• 1 15-ounce can black beans
• 1 15-ounce can pinto beans
• 1-2 tablespoons canned jalapenos, diced
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 4-5 cloves of garlic, diced
• 1 medium-large yellow onion, diced
• 2 tablespoons Mexican oregano
• 1 ½ cups beef broth
• 3 tablespoons ancho chili powder
• 1 tablespoon chipotle chili powder
• Cayenne pepper to taste
• 1 tablespoon cumin
• 2 teaspoons paprika
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• Salt to taste

Season ground chuck with one half tablespoon of fresh cracked black pepper and brown in a skillet. Drain and add to crock-pot along with tomato sauce, whole tomatoes, black beans, pinto beans, and jalapenos. In another skillet add 2 tablespoons of olive oil, just enough to cover the bottom. When oil is hot, add garlic, onions, the remaining half tablespoon black pepper, and 1 tablespoon of Mexican oregano. Sauté over medium heat stirring several times to keep from scorching. When onions are translucent, add to the crock-pot. Add beef broth, ancho chili powder, chipotle chili powder, cayenne, cumin, paprika, sugar, and salt to the crock pot and stir. Cook on highest setting the highest for 1 to 2 hours and taste. Adjust spices and add more beef broth as needed. Cook for additional 1 to 2 hours.

Heida’s Chili

I’ve been making chili for so many years it’s really hard to write down my recipe. This is a much simplified version. I generally make three times this much and, depending on the season, will use fresh ingredients as well as canned. 

• 1 pound ground beef
• ½ pound hot pork sausage, without casing
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 1 green pepper, chopped
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 3-ounce can chilies, chopped
• 1 tablespoon jalapeños, chopped (optional)
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• ½ teaspoon black pepper
• ½ teaspoon white pepper
• ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
• ¼ teaspoon ground cloves
• ½ teaspoon ancho chili powder
• ¼ teaspoon chipotle chili powder
• 1 tablespoon hot Mexican chili powder
• 2 cans red beans
• 2 cans tomato sauce
• 1 can diced tomatoes
• 2 tablespoons ketchup
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• 2 teaspoons dried basil

Brown the ground beef and sausage in a large Dutch oven. Simmer uncovered until the liquid cooks off; drain and discard fat. Stir in onion, green pepper, garlic, chilies, and jalapenos. In a separate small bowl, mix sugar, ground peppers, cloves, and chili powders. Sprinkle the spice mixture onto the meat mixture and stir about a minute to toast the spices. Add beans, tomato sauce, tomatoes, and ketchup. Bring this mixture to a boil; turn down the heat and add bay leaf, dried oregano, and basil. Simmer the chili uncovered one hour, or longer for thicker chili.

Winter White Chili

This is a much milder chili and a different style. It’s great with hot pepper cheese, and if you really want it hot, pass the jalapenos. If it’s too spicy, a dollop of sour cream will take the sizzle out.

• ½ cup onions, chopped
• ½ cup green pepper, chopped
• ½ cup celery, chopped
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 2 15-ounce cans great northern beans
• 1 cup chicken broth
• ½ cup green salsa
• 1 3-ounce can green chilies, chopped
• 2 cups cooked chicken, chopped
• 1 tablespoon Emeril’s Chicken Rub
• Cooked rice for serving

Sauté the onions, pepper, and celery in olive oil. Add the beans, broth, salsa, green chilies, and cooked chicken. Bring to a simmer and stir in the Emeril’s chicken rub. Simmer for about 30 minutes and serve over rice.

My friend and coworker Noelle is a registered dietitian, and a perfectly petite size two. So I was astonished to learn during one of our many wellness presentations, that she used to struggle with her weight.

But that all changed with a visit to a veterinarian.

You see Noelle loves her fur-babies. When she was told that her beagle Ginger was heading toward arthritis and a shorter lifespan without regular walks, she started walking.

So our beloved pets can motivate us to get more exercise. And that’s not all they do. A wealth of studies shows the benefit of pets on cardiovascular disease, aging, and dementia. Dogs can urge us out of the Lazy Boy and make walks more fun. You may have to convince your coworker into joining you for a stroll, but dogs seldom need coaxing. They are never too tired, don’t have other obligations, and most don’t mind a little rain. One study showed that pet owners have parental-type pride in their pet. They love their dogs, are proud of them, and are willing to sacrifice to meet their dogs’ needs.

The 2007 American Veterinary Association statistics indicate that thirty-seven percent of households include one or more dogs. That’s forty three million households! If we can key into the motivational aspect of pet ownership, the sixty percent of Americans who are overweight might have their answer. The forty percent of household pets that are overweight will benefit as well.

If you are thinking about starting an exercise program, you should speak to your doctor. If your beloved dog is participating with you, a trip to the veterinarian is also in order. Vets see patients with painful hips and ruptured ligaments, so check first, and start slowly. If you or your pooch have been sedentary, begin with a walk to the end of the block, or a ten-minute saunter, then gradually increase to thirty minutes most days of the week.

Owners can gain a stronger heart, lower blood pressure, more energy, and denser bones. Dogs will be calmer – and often behave better –and regular walks also help with bowel problems in older dogs.

Noelle’s latest passion is yoga, at which her beagle is less adept. Still, both are walking regularly and staying in tiptop shape. You can too, and your motivation may be lying at your feet.

I know. I cannot tell you how often I bridle when I see a news report about some new medical recommendation. In 2002-03, when multiple studies came out relating to hormone replacement  (a topic I’ll save for another column), my family had to hide all potential projectiles from the den to keep me from destroying our flat screen. The number of patients frightened by those stories made me realize that you really cannot break medical data down to a sound bite. To be useful, the data must be considered in light of the individual and her life and health.

Take Pap smears. We often take this revolutionary screening test for granted. When Drs. Georgios Papanicolaou and Herbert Traut published their book on cervical cancer screening in 1941 (aren’t we all glad we don’t call it the Traut test?), women didn’t learn they had cervical cancer until it was too late to treat it.

Papanicolaou and Traut applied the principle used in lung cancer diagnosis, in which fluids coughed up from the lung were examined under a microscope. They discovered it was easy to distinguish normal cervical cells from abnormal cells under a microscope. The resulting screening test proved relatively cheap, accurate, and easy to perform – well, for the physician. As the nurse in my practice says, “If you liked it, we’d worry about you.”

We know even more today. We known that Human Papilloma Virus causes cervical cancer. And because almost seventy percent of sexually active women (which is probably an underestimate) are exposed to HPV at some point in their lives, abnormal Paps aren’t unusual.

This increased knowledge led to a change in Pap test recommendations by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. The new advice calls for a first Pap smear at twenty-one, then annually until thirty. After this, if a woman has three normal exams in a row, the patient can reduce testing to every three years.

But people are often confused by this recommendation, most often because many people use the terms “Pap smear” and “pelvic exam” interchangeably. They are completely different. The Pap is done as part of a pelvic exam, usually when the pelvic is part of the annual gynecologic exam. Many women will hear this change and think “Woohooo! No visit to the gyn for three whole years!”

But women still need a yearly pelvic examination to screen for abnormalities of the vulva (the outside), the uterus, and the ovaries. The Pap is only one part of the exam.

It’s important, too, to remember that HPV is transmitted via sexual contact, so if a woman who was on the three-year plan changes partners, a new viral infection is possible. It’s time to get a Pap test again. And, as in any other test, the greater the frequency of use, the more likely an abnormality can found, evaluated, and either treated or observed, whichever is most appropriate.

It’s definitely good to have medical recommendations from bodies of experts, but when it comes to your health, your needs and circumstances should drive the health-care discussion, not what you see on the nightly news.

You can enjoy cool afternoons and evenings outdoors, and it can trump indoor comforts, if you just apply a little heat. A fireplace or fire pit not only keeps things toasty, it pulls everything together as the focus for your outdoor living space.

For our family, the fire’s warmth creates a welcome natural hangout at the end of a day. We spend time catching up while watching the dogs play.

Fire pits are very popular and there are hundreds of choices, from the chiminea that started it all a few years ago, to stone fire pits, polished fire bowls, and tables with fire in the center. These fire pits burn wood, natural gas, propane, or alcohol-base gel. There are options for any pocketbook.

Portable fire pits

The simplest choice is a fire pit. If you go this route, consider location first. Never locate fire on a wooden deck. You might be surprised how readily stray embers can burn through a deck. Stone, brick, or concrete surfaces are best. You can find rugged copper fire pits and even modern stainless designs at many hardware stores. They start at about seventy-five dollars.

In-ground fire pits

With the right fire pit, you can relive those campfire experiences of many a summer camping trip – and skip the pit toilet routine entirely.

Making one is as easy as digging a hole in the ground, filling the bottom with gravel, and lining the sides with stone.

So find your spot, not too close to the house and away from overhanging branches, and begin.

• Step 1:  Draw four-foot diameter circle with spray paint.
• Step 2:  Dig down one foot, keeping the sides of your pit vertical and the bottom smooth. Then, return to the center and dig another hole, this one one-foot wide and one-foot deep.
• Step 3:  Fill the hole and base with 6 inches of ¾-inch drainage gravel from the hardware store. Level the gravel. It will be the base of your stone walls.
• Step 4:  Line the inside walls with large stones. They should rise above ground level about one foot.

Finally, stack wood in the center, ignite, and enjoy.

Items needed:  Shovel, drainage gravel, large stones. The project can cost as little as twenty dollars or as much as a hundred and take a day to complete.

If you’re not into roughing it, an above ground pit can be spectacular. They can be built of brick, flagstone, fieldstone, or cast stone to create a rustic or modern look.

My most recent fire pit was built of fieldstone right in the middle of a concrete patio. If you’re short on space, build near the edges or on a corner. If you want a natural gas starter, it must be installed first, work that requires a licensed professional. Consult with a knowledgeable landscape designer or stone professional before you go forward.

Fireplaces

The outdoor structures serve as a handsome anchor for your gathering spot and can be freestanding or attached to your home.

You can use a fireplace to screen an undesirable view. Make sure to coordinate it with your home’s exterior in both its style and materials.

Search the web for ideas, and then create a plan to fit your outdoor space. You will need to work with a pro to build your fireplace, and the cost can mount to a few thousand dollars.

When selecting a design, consider adding side walls to the fireplace to create extra seating, or if you like to barbecue, make one side a grill, with a propane tank and additional storage.

This can be the best time of year to spend time outside. The right fire feature can make it perfect.

When it comes to painting my nails, I am really – let’s be honest – lazy. I once read a magazine article about Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen where one of the twins said they like chipped nail polish. That was the only excuse I needed to let my nails go. I should have grown out of that. But even looking at my nails now, as they dance across my laptop keyboard, I’m noticing that there’s hardly any nail polish left from a paint job I did, well, a month ago. One nail is completely naked.

But as I spend more (scratch that, way too much) time on Pinterest – an online bookmarking Web site where you can see what everyone else is into – I’m seeing alternative nail styles that could, possibly, persuade me to be better about maintaining a solid coat. There are nails that look marbled, nails for news hounds, and inventive twists on French tips. So many possibilities! There’s even one style I saw that creates a “mural” of an underwater scene with an octopus. One of its tentacles reaches from the index finger to the middle finger. Genius.

Most of these come with fairly simple tutorials that I will pass on for anyone brave and bold enough (and less lazy than I am).

Newsprint nails:  This is the coolest style. I haven’t actually tried it yet, but it’s on my to-do list. Plus, it looks super easy.

First, use a light base coat – a white, beige, or nude color would probably work best, but if you want extra pizzazz, try light pink or blue. Just don’t go with anything that’s very dark.

Next, find a newspaper and rip up a page with a lot of text on it – you need ten pieces that are big enough to cover your nail. Then pour yourself a shot – or two if you’re thirsty – of gin and, once your nails are dry, dip one finger into the alcohol for about 25 seconds. Immediately put the newsprint on top of the nail and press down for about 10 seconds with a cotton ball. Finish the look with a clear topcoat. Ta-da! Easy, right?

Marble nails: This is a little more complex and looks a little more time consuming, but the outcome is really neat.

First, you’re going to need at least two colors of nail polish. Paint the nails you want to marbleize with a base coat – white will make the other colors pop more. Use a clear tape to cover the skin around the nails. Using a cup of filtered water, create a bull’s eye by adding a drop of polish to the water one color at a time, or you can alternate two or more colors. The more rings you have, the better. Next, take a toothpick or needle and stir to create a swirled pattern on the water.

Keeping your nail parallel to the design, dip it into the swirl and under the water. Hold it there while using a toothpick or a Q-tip to clear the excess polish from the cup.  Remove your finger and, viola! Remove the tape and you should have fabulously fun marbleized nails.

Other, less dramatic but still glamorous, styles could include a matte nail with a glossy French tip in the same color. Maybe you would prefer a nude nail with a thin tip in a bold color — or colors if you’re feeling feisty. For the holidays max out and get glitzy with a glitter polish.

Go on, give it a whirl – or twirl if you’re marbleizing – and show the Olsen’s that pretty polish dominates the scrappy chipped nails. Your willingness to try it could inspire me to be better about my habits.

By Taylor Dungjen