Thank you, and thanks again - we read the entire book. It is brilliant. She was truly brilliant. It was such a moving experience to read it together. To tell you the truth when it was done I wanted to just start it again from the beginning the next night, but he wouldn't go for it.

My first impression reading that the girls decided to take a photo was that it was a protective move because it gave them possession of proof of what type of thing was going on in that house.

Update on my last comment. Downloaded the book. Convinced my son to let me read him the first page. We read the first chapter. He said to stop after that but agreed to read more another day. He said that Barbara Park is really good at making sad things funny and happy. Which is actually exactly like what my…

Thank you so much for posting this comment. My sons were big fans of Junie B Jones. On February 1st, my younger son was diagnosed with cancer. At first it seemed that he would be fine after going through about 6 months of treatment. During that time, a lot of his treatment was outpatient. When the Junie B…

right. i'm 39 so for me jennifer/jen was the name that always needed the last name or initial added. i shouldn't have assumed you had that experience! sorry.

well, my name doesn't fall into either category. it's a plain old name, but somehow my mom named all of us plain old names that nobody else happened to be choosing at those moments. usually the people i meet who have my name are significantly older than i am. it's only now that i have a "peer" with my same name,…

Rebel = anything to do with race or the civil war wouldn't even make it to 100th thing on my list if you forced me to do free association about the word rebel for hours on end. This conversation is actually the first time I've heard the word rebel used this way I think! (Since it seems like such an obvious leap to…

Personally I would find it preferable to have a somewhat unusual name than to have a name where I'd have to always be identified by last name or initial since there are so many other people with the same name. To each her own, of course

Yes, this. I feel like I need to say something in this conversation and add to the "confused/shocked/outraged by apa5012's insanity" pile but I'm almost speechless.

Sockpuppet, I am not talking about selfies and I don't know the band you're talking about. I'm talking about telling people about my son's illness, treatment, relapse, death, and my mourning process. My community has rallied around me. People have shared photos of my son and we remember him, together, through the…

This is so very different from my experience and from the experience of those I know (in their 30's-60's but especially those hovering around the 40yo stage). i am post college and my life does not include lots of public events. Facebook currently has a huge place in my life and for me it's a great and very important…

I feel like everyone I know who is just slightly older than I am is named Lisa. I have many Lisa's. I feel bad because a lot of Lisa's are very important to my life, I love them, and yet I have to identify which lisa I'm talking about all the time.

A lot of times when people are going through very difficult times, hearing everyone say over and over "is there anything I can do?" or "let me know what I can do?" just puts more work onto the person suffering. I'm in agony. I can't think about what you could be doing. I'm a wreck, I can't figure out how others…

I just turned 39 *and* due to a life crisis I recently had to leave gradschool after only 2 semesters. So I am very excited to read this magic rule!!!

Everyone objecting to this article is generalizing it way past what it is actually saying. Even though it has helpful bold headlines. If that's tl;dr for you, the point is that by bringing it up *right away* or asking where someone is "from" when you're really asking their ethnic background, it does tend to put an…

Of course parents influence kids, in many ways including what they're willing to buy. But kids also ask/beg for what they want, and tailor what they have to suit their needs. A little girl wearing a hulk costume with a tutu over it would be a prime example of that. I'm not too familiar with all the heroes but a kid…

i am pretty surprised if barbara walters wasn't vaxed against chicken pox.

That was my first reaction but at this point they are saying that the neck wounds were self-inflicted in front of Marina Krim, after she'd already come into the bathroom and found the three of them there. It's easier on the soul to believe it was an intruder or something, but alas...

the sketchers? i got them, not to lose weight but to have less heel pain. and they worked fantastic for that. i don't think they're working my core or anything though!

I don't really understand why it would make one reconsider the term feminist. Just reconsider the people who are running around hating on freaking BABIES. If feminism has any stand on this, it's that lots of women make babies and if a woman makes a baby and wants to post a picture of him/her, good for her, dammit. …