I wish they had been an option when I was in high school and too sick to attend school. Instead I got 10 hours a week of tutoring, was restricted to 5 classes and couldn't take any sciences.

Portland is wonderful! I have family up there and used to go every summer. There are a ton of great restaurants in the city, so definitely do some research and make a list of places you might want to hit. Asmara (Eritrean) is delicious. The Bar of Chocolate Cafe has ridiculous desserts. Marcy’s is also great, but be…

I have this shirt, and it is one of my favorites.

As someone who lost a sibling to tuberous sclerosis, this makes me mad on a whole other level.

Oh no! I’m sorry about that. We mailed ours just before Thanksgiving in NY, there was no worry about humidity here.

Make your own sundae bar.

They really are. I work with the small ones, they’re hilarious.

My husband’s 5 year old godson was our ringbearer, and as far as I know, there were no problems.

I told my husband about this thread, and his response was that platitudes are what people say when they don’t know what to say. I sort of agree, except so many people use that same stupid platitudes that they think they are what to say. They can be infuriating, but we live in a society where death is something to “get…

Thirteen years later, when people find out my brother died, they say they’re sorry. Why? You didn’t know him, you didn’t do anything to hurt me. I get that it’s a gut reaction, to express sympathy for a loss, but it’s unhelpful.

In my experience, platitudes are for the people saying them, not the person they’re being said to. They help the speaker deal with their own hurt in a way that doesn’t hurt them more. My brother died at 21 years old, from a congenital illness. I wanted to walk around punching all the people who told me that “He’s in a…

There was a surprising lack of drama among our exes when my husband and I got married. The only ex either of are still in contact with is my husband’s high school girlfriend. They stopped speaking for years after they split, but she started dating a friend of our about 3 years ago. He was a groomsman and she was his…

Or take the Staten Island Ferry or the Water Taxi from Wall St. to Red Hook. The Statue of Liberty is far easier to photograph when you aren’t standing next to it.

My husband is the only person I’ve been with that I can tease about this. He’s amused by it.

I have so many fond memories of the few days we spent in Galway seven years ago. Have fun!

Does all of this mean I shouldn’t tease my husband about the fact that I’ve slept with more women than he has?

Our wedding was a very traditional, egalitarian, Jewish wedding. Seriously. We did things that all Jews do, we did things that only a small portion of Jews do, and we took some of the things that only Jewish men do and had me do them too. In some cases, there are reasons behind the traditions that are beautiful, or…

The woman I call mom is not biologically related to me. She is my husband’s mother, and the best mother-in-law I could ever imagine. She’s the woman who makes me soup when I’m sick, who came to my graduation and wedding, who hugged me when my beloved grandmother died three months after our wedding. At our wedding, mom…

My middle name is Elizabeth. I don’t remember there being a lot of us when I was a kid. I was one of the many, many, many girls in the 80s named Rachel though.

It was one of two things my MIL requested. That and root beer floats at the congregation celebration the day before at our synagogue.