All of a sudden, I feel very old and very tired. Maybe when I get to California, the smog, brush fires, floods, and earthquakes will cheer me up.

Everyone I talked to was a recording-the bank, the elevator, your office, the school, a wrong number. You used to be able to call a wrong number and get a person.

Laughter rises out of tragedy when you need it the most, and rewards you for your courage.

If the nest is truly empty, who owns all this junk?

Do I have to use my own money?

Mothers are not the nameless, faceless stereotypes who appear once a year on a greeting card with their virtues set to prose, but women who have been dealt a hand for life and play each card one at a time the best way they know how. No mother is all good or all bad, all laughing or all serious, all loving or all angry. Ambivalence rushes through their veins.

Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.