By SHARON RANDALL, Scripps Howard News Service

Be careful about what you preach, because sooner or later, somebody will hold you to it.
I learned that lesson from my granddad, an itinerant preacher who worked for the Lord, as my grandmother said, when he couldn't find a paying job.

If you've celebrated as many birthdays as I have, you've probably had your share of gifts. All deserved, I'm sure.
What's the best gift you've ever been given? Chances are it wasn't wrapped in pretty paper. The things that make us truly happy are often hard to wrap.

My birthday is coming soon, but you don't need to wish me well, unless you really want to.
That's what my grandmother used to say. I'm getting more like her with each passing year.
I'm looking more like her, too, except she had 12 babies, and I've had only three, so my bosom isn't quite resting on my belly. Yet. Maybe by next year.

In February, when thoughts turn to love, I think of the year when I was 12, and two people I'll not soon forget: A good old woman and a very odd boy.

Sometimes the best we can do is feed one another. Stomachs or souls, all need to be filled.
Have you ever seen a blind man fry a dead chicken? My brother, blind all his life, has been cooking for years.
He's fried his own chickens, washed his shirts, shaved the whiskers off his face, if he felt like it, and asked for nothing more but to live his own life.

My brother, who's been blind all his life, has his own ways of seeing things.
Rather than relying on his eyes, he depends on his hands and his feet and his ears and his nose and even, yes, his tongue. You should see him take a good look at a bowl of peach cobbler.

The ragged and bloody fabric of history is woven with threads of countless personal stories, unrelated, yet intertwined, each making the others stronger.

My husband is a good and caring father. And we've got the tomato-sauce stains on the ceiling to prove it.
We met, he and I, almost 20 years ago, when he came to work at the newspaper where I had recently started writing a column. For a time, he was my editor, a pretty good one, as I recall, though a little stingy with praise for my work.

Sometimes I have a tendency to make a bad thing of good intentions. Like the time, years ago, when I decided to change the wallpaper in the living room (I mean, how hard could it be?) and was much surprised to find, when I ripped off the old paper, the plaster came down with it.

Late one night last October, I was sitting in our yard, looking out, as I often do, on the lights of the Las Vegas Valley.
My husband had gone inside for a moment. I closed my eyes, listening for coyotes and was puzzled by a whirring noise.
Looking up, I saw an enormous flying object -- dazzling white with flashing lights -- hovering overhead.