We had a dog who peed on the floor the last few months of his life, and I told my kiddo we weren't going to yell at him because I didn't want anyone yelling at me when I got old and peed on the floor. Getting a pet means making a commitment to take care of them.

I have a 10 year old who is starting adolescent mood swings, school starting is definitely a Hooray this Shit. (I love her dearly, but a break from each other would be helpful for both of us.)

Have you read The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery? It made me cry and now I don't eat octopus anymore. (And yes, it is hypocritical of me given that I do eat other animals, but I don't feel the need for absolute ideological consistency.)

N K Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy is really, really good.

Just like Adidas and Puma! Dunno what it is about feuding German brothers founding international conglomerates…

Your mom had my father-in-law as a patient?

Two things that go back almost as far as writing (and probably farther if we knew about it): complaining about the young folks today, and complaining about how people nowadays are doing language wrong.

Ohio has a tax-free weekend for school supplies. I bought the kiddo's stuff earlier this week though, because if there's anything I hate more than school supplies shopping, it's doing it when the store is super crowded.

The exes. But I've never tried their recipes, so possibly both. Due to the convoluted marital histories of my extended family, I have an uncle who has grown very adept at photoshopping people out of family photos…

I love the ones that come from ethnic ladies' groups or churches serving particular immigrant communities. Those simple recipes contain such a wealth of information about the history of the immigrant experience in America from the women's side.

My cousin did a similar thing 20+ years ago, and that would definitely be the one I'd save. It has all our extended family's signature recipes, plus Grandma's recipes that she learned as the dirt-poor oldest child of Slovak immigrants. A true family treasure, even if it does include recipes from a few exes we'd…

The Jeni's cookbooks are the best out of any "celebrity" cookbooks I've tried. Everything is exactly proportioned for the home cook and everything turns out exactly as described.

Anyone who likes Indian food needs a copy of 660 Curries. Unlike a lot of cookbooks covering similar ground, most of the ingredients are readily available in American supermarkets.

I got the home cook version as an anniversary gift, and the only two recipes I use regularly are the mac and cheese, and the pressure cooker risotto. Unlike the other recipes, those two somehow manage to be significantly less work than the traditional version. Probably not worth $100, though. (Don't tell my spouse)

My daughter was Kiki for Halloween when she was that age. One of the most adorable costumes ever.

I was recently at the Smithsonian Museum of American History and someone ahead of us at the First Ladies' dresses exhibit was STILL complaining about that dress. The neckline was higher than most of the 19th c. dresses, but bare arms, how scandalous! In the 21st century!

They were also educated people who knew about the existence of other religions and that people of other religions were living in the United States. Thomas Jefferson owned a Quran. George Washington wrote to a synagogue. If they meant freedom of religion to only apply to Christians, they would have specified that.

Yep, totally true for me. I still am not super keen on other people's kids, though my daughter does have some pretty awesome friends. Another somewhat controversial opinion: Toddlers are more fun than babies. Babies just lie there and scream a lot. Cuteness is the only thing they have going for them. Toddlers…

Yeah, he definitely knows he's an asshole. I find him funny in small doses, but I wouldn't want to sit down and marathon his TV shows or books.

A great line from one of my favorite movies.