Your basic extended family today includes your ex-husband or -wife, your ex's new mate, your new mate, possibly your new mate's ex and any new mate that your new mate's ex has acquired.

In your standard-issue family, of which few remain, but on which our expectations are still based, there are parents and there are children. The way you know which are which, aside from certain size and age differences and despite any behavior similarities, is that the parents are the bossy ones.

For me, having it all - if one wants to define it at all - is the magical time when what you want and what you have match up.

Clothes have special power. I'll always remember the raspberry colored v-necked silk sweater I was wearing on my husband and my first date. If I hadn't been wearing that sweater that night, would any of it have happened?

Children are a house's enemy. They don't mean to be - they just can't help it. It's their enthusiasm, their energy, their naturally destructive tendencies.

There is something fantastic about getting divorced. Everyone should do it to experience the extraordinary sense of freedom after being in marriage jail.

writing is how I understand everything that happens. Writing is the only way I know to move on.