Last year I gave seventy-four phone hours to soliciting baked goods for the Bake-A-Rama. I was named Top Call Girl by the League.

I was a closet pacifier advocate. So were most of my friends. Unknown to our mothers, we owned thirty or forty of those little suckers that were placed strategically around the house so a cry could be silenced in less than thirty seconds. Even though bottles were boiled, rooms disinfected, and germs fought one on one, no one seemed to care where the pacifier had been.

I'm on a diet as my skin doesn't fit me anymore.

The art of never making a mistake is crucial to motherhood. To be effective and to gain the respect she needs to function, a mother must have her children believe she has never engaged in sex, never made a bad decision, never caused her own mother a moment's anxiety, and was never a child.

[On her father's death:] I didn't know his leaving would hurt so much.

Like religion, politics, and family planning, cereal is not a topic to be brought up in public. It's too controversial.

There is only one thing harder in this world than forgiving. It's to ask forgiveness armed only with, 'I'm sorry'.