Someone will always tell you what you want to hear.

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.

in the family I grew up in, being called boring was like being called an ax murderer.

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.

I'm planning to give up worrying. I want to, but I'm worried I won't be able to.

One quarter of what you buy will turn out to be mistakes.