YUCK!

I am trying to contain my joy right now.

No, I haven't won the lottery. Nor did I just a get a big fat advance for a book. It's more exciting than that. You know how they say that health is the real wealth? Well,… Read full post »

Warning: this post contains images that some parents may find disturbing, namely, a picture of Barbie’s waistline.

The Gabriella doll came first. It was an innocent gesture from an old friend of mine who now works for the Princess Headquarters conglomerate otherwise known as Disney. Leavi… Read full post »

Recently a friend of mine, a former Californian who moved to New Mexico to teach at university that dissolved within one year of her new run as a tenure-track professor, was telling me about how much she misses living in the Golden State, although more specifically in the Bay Area,… Read full post »

The Sunday Times magazine ran a piece about early childhood development and the importance of executive functioning, that is, the ability to predict what factors will help a child to "succeed." I read it with interest, trying to strike the usual balanced dose of skepticism and deference to… Read full post »

“Put Simply: Our Healthcare Problem is Our Deficit Problem” —Barack Obama, September 9, 2009

There I was again, watching him, and crying in front of the TV. Not like I was when Obama was sworn in, not out of feelings of pride that we finally have someone in… Read full post »

As a *four-star complainer who still thinks that whining is something you can actually strive to be skilled at, I want to posit an earnest non-complaint here. I could be accused (mostly by myself) of looking too deeply into the bright side, or of still being a neophyte basking in the… Read full post »

“I have heard it said that a complicated childhood prepares you for a career in the arts. I tell you this story to let you know that I am well qualified to be a comedian.” —Steve Martin


In the mid-90s, while people my age were busy with grunge and mourning… Read full post »

I know this much about the three dimensions: up, down; left, right; forward, backward. I realize that space and time are relative, and I don’t have any particularly special insights to add to Einstein’s theory of the space-time continuum. I’m just a mom who is starting to freak out… Read full post »

For a couple of days now I’ve had a picture of a lanky naked man attached to my refrigerator by several of those annoying little Make Your Own Poetry magnets that people seem to like to give me. I am so very proud of this man, tall and slim, with shimmering… Read full post »

The other day my four-and-a-half-year-old daughter and I were walking down the street after leaving our favorite frozen yogurt place. We’d been celebrating her last day of preschool and were headed back to our car so that we could meet up with another kid from her preschool at a nearby park… Read full post »

As one of good my friends says repeatedly, and this is one of the reasons I keep him as a good friend, “we in the neat community don’t appreciate the term neat freak because we find it offensive.” Both my friend and I love being part of this community. So, as… Read full post »

I’ve always liked the idea of seeing life as raw material waiting to be shaped or built or sewn into something useful. But occasionally there are events so trying and uneven that they never quite make their way into the quilt—that is, they never make any sense, at least not in… Read full post »

40 is a Harshad number, an integer that is divisible by the sum of its digits in a given number base. “Harshad” is a Sanskrit word that means "great joy."

40 is a natural number. It follows 39 and precedes 41. In English, forty is the only number whose constituent… Read full post »

As if your list of things to be afraid of wasn’t long enough already, here’s another one to add to it. This is probably not breaking news to anyone, but in the wake of online media becoming a more affordable, though not entirely viable, business model than that of traditional news… Read full post »

When it comes to parenting, everyone has an uninvited opinion they’d like to share with you. Your job is to let them say whatever they’re going to say and to not hit them after they say it. It has been my experience that even those who are not parents inevitably fall… Read full post »

On the drive to the therapist’s office, the rain is beating down on us. We haven’t fully unpacked since our move back to California, so I don’t know where my umbrella is. We don’t talk. What is there to say? You speed along the curvy, tree-lined roads, going far too fast… Read full post »

As I’ve written before here, I am deeply fascinated with the psychology of secrets. I am certain that I am not alone in this fascination. Who doesn’t envy the priest in the confession box, hearing people’s sins, however mundane or egregious, and then doing, I guess—absolutely… Read full post »

The way I see it, you can either congratulate me or pity me. Today I marched into a new field of knowledge, or experience, and, when you really boil it down, anxiety that I didn’t quite realize I was headed into. And all I did was attend a parent orientation at… Read full post »

More Big Love

In the latest episode, Bill, a plainly attractive successful man who already has three respectable, smart, and beautiful wives, turns jealous, even a little belligerent, when he discovers Ana, his potential bride #4-to-be, kissing a younger, scruffier man in the doorway to he… Read full post »

“I steal People magazines from my doctor’s office” (from Flo in Tallahassee)

“I went to church drunk last Sunday” (from Heathen in Lake Tahoe)

“I DID SOMETHING HORRIBLE ONCE or twice..." (your name here)

"I SECRETLY THINK____________ , but no one knows this" (your fa… Read full post »

After listening to the interview that the HBO series Big Love writers and creators Mark Olsen and Will Scheffer did with NPR's Terri Gross, who happens to be someone whose job I have always coveted, I realized why I am a such a big fan of the show. It's not… Read full post »

Yesterday was the first time in my life I felt proud to be an American. So, I made Jell-O.  Read full post »

“I steal People magazines from my doctor’s office” (from Flo in Tallahassee)

“I went to church drunk last Sunday” (from Heathen in Lake Tahoe)

“I secretly fantasize about having two husbands who will do all the cooking and the laundry and satisfy my every need”… Read full post »

Marriage is a funny thing. So many of us don’t believe in it, not in the way we are supposed to—until death do us part, I’m never going to love another woman/man but you, I’m not even going to look at anyone else the way I do you, etc. etc. Those… Read full post »

I’ve watched the horrifying video of 22-year-old Oscar Grant, the unarmed man and BART passenger who was killed on New Year’s Day in Oakland, several times today. For the most part I think You-Tube is a glorious example of democracy in action, and I think the viral effect of this… Read full post »