It's no secret: moms and daughters get closer as we get older. When you're younger, it seems you don't' have much in common with your mom. She doesn't understand your life. How you really are in love and you will not grow out of it. When you're a teenage girl you don't realize that Mom is right: you're not, really in love. And yes, you will grow out of it.

Mom calls those my "Drama Days".  Now I'm a mom, wife,  personal shopper, maid and chauffeur just like Mom was. And I'm also chief shoulder to cry on — now that my daughter has entered her own Drama Days. So when she rolls her eyes at me and insists that I just don't get it, I don't take it personally.

Someday she'll grow up just like her mom did. Someday we'll be best friends just like her grandmother and I are. And someday, probably after she's a mom, too, she might even come to me and say, "Mom, you were right. About everything." Just like I did.

Your "Happy Mother's Day" Gift Guru
Linda

Here Her Majesty is seated in the Green Drawing Room holding her youngest great-grandchild, Princess Charlotte (11 months). As is tradition, the youngest members of the royal family are gathered:

• Charlotte’s older brother, Prince George (2)
• Mia Tindall (2)
• James, Viscount Severn (8) 
• Lady Louise (12) 
• Savannah (5) 
• Isla Phillips (3)

I can't believe the school year is almost over. Lucky for me, I like graduation ceremonies, because I'll be going to a few of them this year. Whether it's a college, high school or even middle school rite of passage, the ceremony marks the students' accomplishments as they go forward into a new stage of their lives.

Graduations aren't just rites of passage for students. We parents pass into a new life, too. We pass from being homework helpers, chauffeurs and football moms and soccer dads to being "empty nesters" whose kids call home from college to ask for money or to say thanks for the care package. Instead of telling them to clean up their rooms, we try to figure out if the newly emptied space will be an office or a craft room. We pass from child-adult relationships to adult-adult relationships with our children.

But even after college, after marriage, after children of their own, sometimes we'll still look at them and see a child in diapers looking up at us with wonder and curiosity. Those moments never leave us. As my sister says, "Memories. That's one of the best things about being a parent."

Your "They Grow Up SO Fast" Gift Guru,
Linda

April 13 is National Scrabble Day. It's not a well-known holiday — except to word lovers. But it can be a fun day with family and friends. I went poking around on the 'Net to see how people celebrate the wordy holiday and here's what I found:

First, of course, play scrabble! But there can be more to it than that.

• Throw a scrabble party for friends, relatives and other word nerds.
• Play one of the new and fun Scrabble-based games to make play more difficult and interesting.
• How about serving up some Scrabble tile cookies? Here's a great recipe.
• Use new words added to the dictionary for the New Age like "selfie", "bromance" and "hashtag" and let the challenges begin!
• Find a local tournament and play against the best of the best.

Finally, try to use the word  Oxyphenbutazone, which is an anti-inflammatory drug, to get the highest possible score for one word. Of course, your odds of being able to do that are similar to winning the lottery, but if you did, you'd score 1,778 points in one play!

Your "Wordy" Gift Guru,
Linda

Baseball season is here! The action starts on Sunday, April 3 with three matchups, including ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball game, and then really kicks into gear with 12 games on Opening Day, which also happens to be Square Root Day, April 4.

When I was a girl, I loved baseball because I loved watching the boys — on the field and off. But now, when the "boys of summer" return, I'm in it mostly for the game. Mostly.

Real baseball fans know that the game isn't the only reason to head out to the ballpark. Ballparks have dozens of attractions and amenities now, including our own Tropicana Field which has a 10,000 gallon fish tank where you can see and touch cownose stingrays. Fans like me care about a great ballpark almost as much as whether our team is winning. And "The Trop" as we call it around here, gives Rays fans a truly great place to go on game day.

But it's still the universal experience of a day at the park that keep fans going back to games. Things like like tailgating with friends, the smells of greasy food, doing "the wave" and singing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" at the top of our lungs in the seventh-inning stretch...that's the stuff summer days are made for!

And getting an eyeful of the boys of summer, well, that doesn't hurt either.

Your "Batter Up" Gift Guru,
Linda

Photo by the City Of LaGrange Animal Shelter

The City of LaGrange Animal Shelter in Georgia took in two motherless, homeless puppies with a big problem: they were too young to eat solid food.

Enter two mama cats. Both of the friendly felines were nursing their own litters of kittens and it seemed they have no problem adopting another mouth to feed. Despite the fact that those mouths belong to their natural "enemies".

I guess their mama's instincts overcame any canine-feline differences. The cats will continue to nurse the pups as part of their family until they're healthy and ready for adoption.

Your "Things That Make You Go 'Awwwww...'" Gift Guru,
Linda

Do you believe in fairies?  These barren circles in the dry grasslands in the Namib Desert in Namibia, Africa have long been called "fairy circles" because no one could explain how they got there. Locals believed they were created by fairies dancing in circles during the night.

For a long time, it was thought that this was the only place these circles existed. But two years ago, researchers discovered similar circles in another dry landscape — the remote outback of Australia. Locals there thought the circular gaps were made by dragon's fire and some believed they were UFO landing spots.

But scientists are a tenacious lot when they get curious. So researchers started looking into these fairy-dragon-UFO spots. They came up with three plausible explanations:

1. Carbon monoxide gas was rising upward from underground, killing all the vegetation.
2. Insects were feeding on the roots of the grasses.
3. The grasses organized themselves in the mysterious patterns to obtain water, which is scarce in the region.

After finding similar patterns in other dry and remote areas, such as trees that organize themselves into stripes on mountainsides, they were able to settle on theory #3. Which is all very interesting, but sort of takes the fun out of it, right? Me? I like to think the circles might still turn out to be something mystical and magical — like fairy dances at night.

Your "I Believe In Magic" Gift Guru,
Linda