I’ve had my issues with La Martha, but she and Snoop fill me with unbridled joy ...

One of my oldest friends (white) had 2 kids with her Chinese husband — they all took his last name, her big fight was getting them registered as American citizens (this was in Taiwan, before HK changed over). Her kids have names that begin with A because all the cousins in that generation did, and she played with the…

My cousin is Matthew — never Matt. We’re a family of full name people.

Is this who these insane towel people are? We have a vacation rental, and there are groups who I swear, do nothing but towel laundry for their entire stay! The dig into the closets and FIND MORE TOWELS! And do they use the convenient and fabulous clothesline we provide (in an area that averages 9% humidity all…

Me any my high school BFF — we’re 15? — with her nephew in a baby carriage, the old-fashioned kind where the baby lies flat on his back. Tipped the whole carriage off the curb. Baby wound up in the canopy. What did we do? Dusted him off, jiggled him until he stopped crying, and NEVER TOLD ANYONE. (Until later when we…

The hardest decision there is. I lost a two year old brother to cancer (1972, treatment was brutal and ineffective) and my mother still recounts what a relief it was once the decision to stop treatment had been made. His last day or so was peaceful, and no one poked at him, and he wasn’t in pain. Which at that point…

Also Louisa May Alcott’s Little Men! A whole screed about baking powder being newfangled and suspect. Which has slightly influenced me over these many decades ...

Hang in there! I was OLD when I met Himself (45) and while we’re not smushy like that, he’s my guy and vice versa and years and years later we still would pretty much rather hang out with eachother than anyone else. But boy oh boy, I kissed a lot of frogs.

Look what happened to India when they poisoned all the vultures. Not pretty.

This whole story is so weird - he lived in the town i grew up in and NOBODY knows him. It’s a very clannish town of rich people, and if he was as wealthy as he said, someone should have known him — or his kids.

Mine comes back when I’m really stressed. I’ve never had a major outbreak like the one in grad school where my WHOLE MOUTH AND GUMS broke out (they gave me lidocaine gel to swish with), but I had an outbreak about 6 or 7 years ago, when my BFFs kids were babies. Doc said nothing they could do, it’d last 10-14 days.…

Hellooo health department!! That’s the phone call I’d be making.

And like herpes, it comes back! Coxsackies is my go-to stress disease and made finishing up my PhD so much fun. Mouth full of canker sores. Yippee.

As an Old, who lived in NYC in the mid-1980s, and who lost a lovely uncle and a college friend to AIDS, this breaks my heart a little.

I was a kid in the 60s/70s, and we almost always ate in the kitchen at five, which was before Dad got home. Then he and my mother would eat dinner after we went to bed. Once we were old enough to eat at the dining room table like civilized people — say 5-7 — we ate dinner with our parents a few times a week. But you…

As a fiction writer I love Zillow because I can find the houses my characters live in ... I hope she comes back up, one of my favorite sites!

I never had kids, so I’m the nuclear weapon of embarrassing — the Shameless Auntie. I live to mortify my nieces.

May probably LOVES U2 and has cozied up to (ugh) Bono at things like Davos. Which is why even though I’m that generation, he makes me nauseous now.

I like the “you okay buddy?” after they’re out of the way. But seriously! Who thought having those two little kids loose behind the plate was any kind of an idea?

Hmm. I’m in a small town out west, granted one that’s full of writers and painters and fishing/hunting guides. One reason I’ve stayed 15 years is *because* it’s a real community — we take care of one another, drink together, and sadly now that we’re all getting older, we’re burying one another. My stepmother (I kept…