Thanks to my mother, not a single cardboard box has found its way back into society. We receive gifts in boxes from stores that went out of business twenty years ago.

After age twelve, birthdays should be as private as hernia surgery.

There is so much to teach, and the time goes so fast.

In two decades I've lost a total of 789 pounds. I should be hanging from a charm bracelet.

There's something wrong with a mother who washes out a measuring cup with soap and water after she's only measured water in it.

Making coffee has become the great compromise of the decade. It's the only thing "real" men do that doesn't seem to threaten their masculinity. To women, it's on the same domestic entry level as putting the spring back into the toilet-tissue holder or taking a chicken out of the freezer to thaw.

I have always felt that too much time was given before the birth, which is spent learning things like how to breathe in and out with your husband (I had my baby when they gave you a shot in the hip and you didn't wake up until the kid was ready to start school), and not enough time given to how to mother after the baby is born.