Even then... You have to brown the meat for 5-10, add the seasonings and water, cook for another 5-10 minutes. Then blister the soft taco shells or put the hard shells in the toaster oven. Find the cheese, sour cream, salsa. Yes, it can be done for 30, but sometimes not. Especially if the littlest kids want to help.

Yes. Everyone ignores clean up time. And not just the dishes and pans. Frequently the floors have to be vacuumed or mopped. Then there’s the shopping. That takes time. You have to plan better, otherwise you’re tossing out food. It takes me longer to find the ingredients, wash and clean the meat and vegetables, and…

After the first time I came back from visiting Japan, my boss asked me what I thought. I tried, in my articulate way, to really tell him how it was. The only sentence he initially let me speak was, “It’s really foreign.” This was about 20 years ago and we stayed in towns like Nara and it was not westernized at all.…

In my family it’s become bad luck if you don’t kiss it. We’re all sick of the stupid Blarney Stone but when we get married, or have another kid, or bring a friend along, we have to take them there. Even if they don’t want to go. It’s become a sickness.

At this point, you couldn’t pay me to watch this show. Well, depends on how much you’d pay me. As it is very unlikely that someone will, most of us won’t be watching.

I cannot abide the pacifier police. Beckham was right to tell them to STFU. My oldest had a pacifier until the age of five. The way people gnashed their teeth and wrung their hands over this “behavior” was baffling. The crap people say to a kid with a pacifier is more harmful than anything a pacifier could do. He…

A simple truth, so often overlooked.

I disagree. Many of these people help me make and serve meals at the local shelter. Many of them have advanced degrees and have wide and varied interests. They’re good to their families and pets. They’re good people. That’s why it’s baffling. Actually, your response probably comes from the same place as their…

Your response is another reason why I find this so weird. I found out that a seemingly rational coworker feels the same way about Democrats that you feel about Republicans. She thinks Dems are insincere and self-loathing. I was appalled by that. That anyone would think who I vote for or the party I signed up for to…

How did we get so far apart? I listen to Trump and see a joke of a human being. My mom listens to him and hears “savior”. wtf? How can this be? My mom and I like and dislike the same people around us. We like the same shoes. We like the same movies. We don’t even try. It embarasses us once in a while. I have this same…

If I knew them, maybe then it would be listenable? Had to cut it off too.

Yeah, I loved living on my own and being single too. Then when I married, I loved living with him and taking on a new set of crazy friends and relatives. I think who you marry is really important but I think when you marry is important too. (I know I wouldn’t have given him a second look if I met him three years…

I was wondering about that too. Second marriages have more issues than the first and ones afterword. It skews the data. So was he looking at all marriages or just first ones?

Fifteen years ago, we won $25K in a raffle. Even after giving nearly half of it to the state and feds, it was life-alteringly wonderful. We paid off so many debts, we were able to actually retain some of our paychecks afterword. That, and we went out to a really nice dinner in San Francisco. A big chunk of change…

Or Australian dollars?

My sister used to feed leftover scrambled eggs to her chickens. She felt like she was promoting cannibalism, but the chickens didn’t seem to know—so if a tree falls in the woods and no one hears it does it make a sound or cannibalism? Sorry. I am really off today.

I’m wary when a corporation tells me what or who I should find to be aspirational, but Duke and Ocean are beyond insulting.

Just be sure to follow up with your chia seeds. Then, and only then, do you have a shot at living forever.

There have been rumors about Cosby’s infidelities for decades, as well as talk about why his wife continued to stay. There has not been talk about rape until lately. Maybe for real insiders but not for people on the outside. She’s obviously built a fabric of lies so she can sleep at night and continue to live the life…

Okay. This is a knee-jerk reaction, but—stop telling me what to do! Will this get me promoted or more money? Probably not. Playing the game frequently gets you farther than sounding like the adult in the room. Somehow, I feel made wrong by this. I stopped reading a certain woman’s magazine when I was 22 because it…