Myths that need clarification: "Everyone in California lives on a white, sandy beach." False. The only people who live on California beaches are vacationers from Arizona, Utah, and Nevada who own condos.

Some emotions don't make a lot of noise. It's hard to hear pride. Caring is real faint - like a heartbeat. And pure love - why, some days it's so quiet, you don't even know it's there.

I have paid as much as $300 a night to throw up into a sink shaped like a seashell.

My idea of housework is to sweep the room with a glance.

My kids always perceived the bathroom as a place where you wait it out until all the groceries are unloaded from the car.

The family. We are a strange little band of characters trudging through life sharing diseases and toothpaste, coveting one another's desserts, hiding shampoo, borrowing money, locking each other out of our rooms. . . and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together.

Babies on television never spit up on the Ultrasuede.