Families aren't easy to join. They're like an exclusive country club where membership makes impossible demands and the dues for an outsider are exorbitant.

Enter my first neighbor - a woman who spoke in complete, coherent sentences, who ate with a knife and fork and who only cried at weddings. I couldn't help myself. In a dramatic gesture, I bolted the door and threw my body across it to prevent her exit. She understood.

I didn't fight my way to the top of the food chain to be a vegetarian.

You become about as exciting as your food blender. The kids come in, look you in the eye, and ask if anybody's home.

I hated skiing or any other sport where there was an ambulance waiting at the bottom of the hill.

. . . but mostly, given another shot at life, I would seize every minute - look at it and really see it - live it - and never give it back.

The woman who says, 'My kids are all speaking to one another and they love us' is a psychopathic liar.