When I was 7 my family had a little ski boat that we'd take out on the Potomac River in Northern Virginia. Sometime's we'd beach the boat and do a night or two of camping, usually with other families. This one time we were camping; I was in the water with a group of friends near the shore and we were splashing and…

I'm a professor of literacy education. Your comment, while I'm sure strongly felt and well-intended, is not accurate on several levels. Whole language teaching methods do not exclude phonics instruction; rather, they included phonics instruction in the context of reading whole texts. Whole language teaching was a…

Also, he's divorced. So, that.

It's definitely worthwhile to read Dylan Farrow's open letter. To me, it reads like so many of the personal stories of abuse that I've heard from friends or read from jezebel commenters throughout the years. I don't know how anyone could read her letter and have any thought other than to hug her and to help her find…

And I want to time travel just a few months back to the two bff moms who brought their 6 children between ages 3 and 7 to 9:50 showing of Catching Fire. What.The.Fuck. I have a three year old myself and was totally fucking tormented through the entire movie. I nearly threw up after the Cinna scene because I was…

All Spoilers and Nothing But Spoilers Alert:

I'm a parent of a young child. I live in a biggish house and putting my kid to bed and going to the table in the back yard to drink a beer is probably further away than that couple's downstairs bar. But I think no to this one. NOT because "omg you're an alcoholic if you even consider for even a moment leaving your…

I get that some teens have dads who are real dicks about the fact that their daughters start to look an awful lot like the grown women they don't respect.

This is EXACTLY my story, too. From the Catholic to the reminding him every day no thank you, to the oral and the other kinds of fooling around to the not knowing it had actually happened. We were in a very strange angle - I was sitting on a toilet seat and he was on his knees on the floor — and I didn't know it was…

If you live in North Carolina get in a car or bus or van and get yourself to the Moral Monday protests! I'll be there!

I usually cook it in chicken stock and it ends up tasting pretty good. But there's an odd aftertaste that honestly I don't love. I make it with baked chicken and it's solidly replaced all kinds of "chicken and rice" dishes in our house. I've also made a really good "jambalaya" and a "red beans and rice" with quinoa…

Can I just say that sometimes asshole is in the eye of the beholder. For example: toddlers and preschoolers are too small for adult furniture, and that's why without a high chair or a booster seat, kids are likely to be all fidgety and tweaky sitting in a booth or a chair. The other day I was at a frozen yogurt place…

Unless they're giving away free formula in those bags. Then it's our right!

When I was 22 I had a liver transplant. I am 5'0" and at the time weighed in the 90lb range (I had been in a coma for 8 days and had lost a lot of weight.) I was on the waiting list for longer than I was supposed to live. My doctors turned away 3 healthy livers when I was supposed to die without one, because they were…

Yes! I read it once as if it was incoherent and then again as if it was poetry. The poetry version is so interesting and fun!

I've had three people I know die from gun "accidents": a friend from high school lost his little brother when him and a friend were exploring the guns in the attic and the one kid accidentally shot the other; the first boy I ever made out with died years later as an adult with two small children cleaning a shotgun in…

I'm starting to think that there's some evolutionary biological thing where young children don't actually need vegetables. My husband and I are healthy eaters; we eat largely vegetarian, and don't eat much of an American diet - no processed foods, etc. We do eat very very small good-quality desserts fairly often (like…

You know how you go to a crowded seat-yourself restaurant and you stand around waiting for people to act like they are taking their last bites and finishing up, and then you stand close to them stalking out your table? That's how I feel in North Carolina - except instead of waiting for a table to open up I'm just…

I'd like to read an article called "Lawyer and activist working to fight domestic violence allegedly brutally murdered by world-famous and previously abusive boyfriend"

I agree.