Last week there was a chance that a group of family friends might come for dinner, so my husband and I had what is quite possibly the most useless conversation we ever had about what to feed them. I just had to write it down.

My husband got a new car. A nice one. Yesterday I took it out for a drive. It was so nice to drive a sports car that isn’t a minivan full of donut crumbs and extracurricular shit like Irish dance shoes, smelly socks, recorders, hockey sticks, underpants, moldy towels, crayons that got nuked into the [...]

Last week NPR was talking about parents that actually hire people to scare the crap out of their children. Apparently there’s an evil clown in Switzerland you can hire to stalk your child for the seven days leading up to their birthday – culminating in a terrifying pie-in-the-face surprise attack on their “big day.”

I just finished reading The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson – an “engagingly irreverent book” that shows you how to spot a psychopath. You may be wondering why I read this book. It wasn’t because I was wondering if I’m a psychopath (although I do have some of the traits on the list). I just thought it [...]

I’m posting one of my questionable parenting techniques: how to stop your kids from bickering in the backseat by blasting really loud rock music. Although it’s very effective, this technique can only be used once in a blue moon, otherwise your kids will rebel and go all goth on you. First, make sure that the [...]

This is about the day I finally got to meet Czeslaw Milosz, the Nobel laureate who could tell me about my grandfather.

This is an excerpt from my novel, the story of a young woman on the verge of adulthood who is coming to terms with the impending death of her alcoholic mother. Each chapter is named after a self-help book, of course. (-: Also, this is the second-to-last chapter, and although my novel is semi-autobiographical this [...]

I had a surreal day last Tuesday. Fi takes music lessons at a concert hall just outside of D.C. so after I drove her there, I found a comfy spot on the couch in the waiting room where I could binge-read for two hours. The waiting room was filled with beautiful people milling about – [...]

As you may know, I’m celebrating my 1 year blogoversary this month with Alison at Mama Wants This who is also celebrating hers, and I’m spastic about it. Over 100 bloggers have already linked up with Blog Bash this week, tweeting each other’s links, and sharing about it. It’s become a real celebration up there.