I wasn’t the happiest of teenagers and didn’t have the best of relationships with my parents. Our combative relationship reached its peak when I was a junior in college and my very religious parents found out that I was sleeping with my college boyfriend. Being the good and emotionally repressed Catholics (and college English majors) […]
The Top 5 Ways To Prepare For Dropping Your Child Off At College
Two weekends ago I took my 18 year old daughter to college. We flew out together to a campus on the other side of the country, where I helped her move into her dorm room, bought her a veritable sh**t load of dorm supplies at Target, helped her buy her text books (meaning I provided […]
My Visit to The Mount – Edith Wharton’s Estate in Lenox, Massachusetts
I recently had the chance to visit The Mount, Edith Wharton’s home in Lenox, Massachusetts. The estate is beautiful and we happened to have some of the best weather of the entire summer for our weekend. Until this trip, I didn’t realize how prolific Edith Wharton was; she wrote over 30 works of fiction and […]
A Book to Help You Prepare for Chemotherapy: “Getting Past the Fear” by Nancy Stordahl
One of the things that scared me the most during my breast cancer process was the fact that I was going to have to go through chemotherapy. When I first found out that I’d need chemo, I panicked and spent hours and hours on the phone with friends and family members who all generously helped […]
How To Get A Teenager To Clean Their Room (Or Not)
Ah, to be a 16 year old boy. My son dislikes cleaning his room, and in fact seems to prefer to live amidst a state of constant chaos. When I was young, I was really messy and my mother, who lived by the rule that “Cleanliness is next to godliness” used to do crazy, periodic […]
Makeup For Women 40+
For about 10 years I’ve been using Lauren Hutton’s makeup line. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of it, she doesn’t do a tremendous amount of marketing, but I heard about it somewhere (maybe More magazine, I’m not sure) several years ago and decided her theory of makeup made sense so I tried it […]