Historian here, yo. I haven’t studied history at the beginner’s level, i.e. high school or undergrad, for many many years (I do not mean that as an insult, merely to point out that once you’ve studied something for decades, you start to take a baseline level of knowledge for granted and forget that not everybody has…

We have had joint checking since four days after our wedding. Neither of us has the bandwidth or the inclination to faff about with separate accounts. It has never caused a single headache, but we also view all money that comes into the household as both of ours. My husband takes this principle so far that he even…

I hate all the socks I’ve gotten at Target. They get holes in no time. I should check to see if Hanna Andersson makes grown-up sized socks, because they make the only socks that my kids don’t destroy immediately.

Man, that takes me back. I remember when I first moved to DC in 1996, well before the gentrification. Lived on 15th Street, near Rhode Island Avenue, and I can’t even remember where I bought things like socks and underwear. Filene’s Basement?

We live in a house that was built by my husband’s pediatrician and her husband in 1950. Like everybody else in the entire universe at that time, they both smoked. Nobody has smoked in this house since the 1980s, but sometimes it still smells like Don Draper is hanging out in our master bath.

I would have, if I hadn’t already taken a sip from the can! “Here, Henry, take my used soda.” No. I ran over to the mess kitchen and got them to bring more.

Quelle surprise, right?

Eh. You live in DC long enough and you hear/experience a lot of stuff like this. I once got an “I am very disappointed in you” look from Henry Kissinger when I took the last Diet Coke at a smallish meeting we both attended. I had not pegged Dr. Kissinger as a Diet Coke fan and you bet your ass that during future…

A friend of mine’s husband is a federal employee who hangs art in buildings like the Capitol and the Supreme Court. He once told me that they have to rotate art in and out of Scalia’s office regularly, because Scalia smokes and if they leave a painting in there for too long it damages the artwork.

I buy Sorels for my kids, but two (maybe three?) winters ago I splashed out on a pair of Le Chameau men’s Vierzon boots, and I can safely say that I love them almost as much as I love my children. We live in northeast fucking Ohio, where winter lasts from November to May, and those bad boys keep my feet warm and dry…

My husband, technically, got 4 weeks’ leave when our twins were born. (Two for paternity leave; two to help out because his close family member - me - was recovering from surgery.) In actuality, he ended up being home for nearly two months, as the kids were born in November, his leave did not run concurrently with…

My career is pretty niche, but people at my organization are totally able to go part-time, and often do. You just take on fewer projects. I’m not sure what the implications are for health insurance; possibly you have to kick in more $$ per month. You definitely make less money. Nobody thinks less of anybody who is…