group dinners are the worst. if you can, there is a great episode on Odd Mom Out on Bravo (on demand) about how awful they are. it’s hilarious. (http://www.bravotv.com/odd-mom-out/se…)

Same! I was like, “someone BETTER bring me a giant sushi platter after I push this baby out.” and all I wanted was carbs and greasy stuff immediately after. I had my sushi a few days later!

Even your relationship goes through a hard phase soon, odds are great that you’ll be fine in the long term. I never had a bad relationship with my folks, even as a teen who needed to experiment, and my sister had a tough time at that age and a great relationship now as an adult. Don’t be afraid!

heyyyy it will almost certainly be okay. I’m not a parent but I had a not-great childhood so I pay extra-special attention to my friends with good parental relationships. My best friend and her boyfriend both have really great family relationships. They have obviously fought and disagreed with their parents,…

Well, tough times are ahead, but the nice thing is that they’ll pass and at the end you’ll have two upstanding, competent young adults to be proud of! Also, I did slightly exaggerate, one of my college friends was that strange white whale of a kid who literally was (and is) a 40 year old in a teenager’s (now…

I guess the needle has moved quite a bit on the “stay at home mom” wheel, too, since I was a kid. Stay at home mothers weren’t fixtures around school and tireless advocates for their children the way they are now. Sure, they volunteered to chaperone the school field trips and did the Christmas baking, but there wasn’t…

You’re a terrible lawyer.

It’s a fucking diner not a place with linen.

I’m pretty sure that if Trump wins the nomination (or even the presidency *shivers*) we’ll all be exclusively drinking Brawndo 15 years from now.

I talk on the phone while pacing back and forth in my apt (something about being on the phone makes me walk back and forth across the apt, but I have no understanding of why).

That’s like the only time I will call someone, when I’m at home. I never have called or texted while driving in my car (if I’m late to work I give them a heads-up before I back out of my driveway). It just doesn’t feel right. Also damn hard to juggle a phone, a cigarette, and a car steering wheel at the same time.

Happy birthday!!

Those big brand companies that we’re more familiar with make their tampons with a bunch of synthetics—rayon and polyester—and might also contain chemicals and dyes.

This is totally off the cuff, but “Cracking Chiros” is going into my list of band names (that I’ll never use because I have no musical abilities).

Absolutely. And frankly, the “I’m very calm when I spank and never spank out of anger” strikes me as being almost worse. Like, a parent with a kid who’s pushing and pushing and pushing boundaries, until the parent snaps and swats them on their butt - I get that (ofc, a swat on the butt rather than losing it and…

Well clearly spanking made you averse to basic discussion and confrontation.

Contact the author at Hillary@jezebel.com.

YOU TAKE THAT BACK ABOUT JENNIFER GREY.

I’m actually really interested to read this. She is, of course, setting out to tell the story of a broken, but sensitive young man who just needs to be saved, but she is such a spectacularly terrible writer that there is no way she’s going to be able to pull this off without inadvertently proving that he is a…

I’m born and raised in CA and clearly, I’m geographically confused! And yes, for all the reasons you list, I want to work. When my kid is older and has her activities and friends, I want something to do. I also need adult interaction, I need to use my brain. I tend to be a homebody so if I didn’t work, I probably…