Oh, sweetie, I am so, so sorry. 56 is way too young.

It's so weird to me that this is still an issue. I kept my name when I got married. For our first kid, in the mid-80s, we flipped a coin to see whose name it would get. The next one got the other person's name. When we had a third, since the one with my husband's name was a boy and the one with my name was a girl,…

My ex-husband and I both met our current partners in bulletin-boardy situations. Ex met his now wife in a music-related CompuServe forum in the mid-90s. I guess they started IMing and emailing, and then he went to meet her in person a couple of states away for the sex, and then they were off and on for a few years…

I had so many pairs of panties with little holes in the front from repeated safety pin use. I had a couple of belts, too, but I think I used safety pins more. I eventually went to mostly tampons (once there was something besides those giant Tampax ones in the giant cardboard tubes), but yeah, hooray for adhesive…

Former Kansas (#11) resident here, had to seek out the data to confirm that it wasn't top 10. Missouri is #13. Full list here: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/…

My favorite restaurants here are Ox (close-in NE), Andina (close-in NW, easy walk from Powell's), and the Picnic House (downtown). If one of your play days is non-rainy, and especially if it's sunny, rent a bike and ride along the waterfront on both sides of the river between the Hawthorne and Steel Bridges for…

I've run lots of 5Ks and a good part of the fun is just being in a mass of other people having fun in their costumes, tutus, wearable lights, or whatever. Do some people just not want other people to have fun? I'm running my first half marathon this spring as part of a cancer research fundraising program, and I…

Those poll respondents are pretty representative of what I grew up with: sitting around the living room with my mom and grandma on Oscar night while they bitched about who should have won based on Gene Shalit's review or what they read in Photoplay (my mom might have seen one nominee at most). When I was in my early…

I don't think I was ever required to read it in school, but I did read it at some point between late grade school and my early 20s, because I thought it was required reading for life.

Happy birthday! I was born 3 weeks before you and I'm just getting to where I can think "Fuck yeah!" when l have to enter my age on a form. Sounds like a great birthday to me, and I envy you the ability to drink outside in February!

I wanted a name that would convey old (well, postmenopausal) + feisty. I hope it worked!

I had a super hard time getting into that book, but I stuck it out and didn't regret it. I also read it a second time with my partner (I read aloud to him at night; it's our thing) and liked it a lot better then.

1994:

Good info to know about my mom's signature scent! Before I was born she spent a good part of the 1950s in jazz clubs in LA as a (self-described) bar fly. This makes me think of all the good times she must have had :-)

You're adorable! I wish I had been there!

I would have answered, "Sorry, not car shopping right now." Seriously. I would never have figured that out. Not in the morning, anyway.

I heated up the chicken soup I made a couple of days ago and added some cotija. Cotija turns out to be a great cheese to add to soup. That was the extent of my cooking ambition today.

She might be (secretly?) afraid that you think she's too old for you. Remember cultural norms (at least in the US): man older, woman younger/younger woman more desirable. Or maybe she was sending out a feeler to see how you feel about her age. Or, she might have just been reflecting on how young she was when she…

Not all bike accidents involve being hit by a car. When he was 13, my son put his foot down while riding his bike a bit too fast. He went over the handlebars and landed on his arm and his head. Well, his arm and his helmet. He broke his arm. He did not break his head.

The little boy at 0:59! Roar!