My younger son loves being good. Of course, that doesn’t mean that he is good all the time. It’s just that he likes the idea of being good, he likes the way being good makes him feel, and he likes for other people to think of him as a good boy. Actually, the more I think about it, he’s not so...

It’s that time of year again, ladies and gentlemen…Turn-Off the TV Week is upon us. Shhhh…If you listen very carefully, you can hear the agonized groans of children from all across the land. And if you listen even more carefully, I believe you might just hear the barely suppressed sighs of...

I have a confession to make: For about five years when my boys were very little, I didn’t watch the news once, nor did I read beyond the headlines of a single newspaper. I was simply caught up in the day-to-day, slogging-it-out reality that is motherhood. And I just had to trust that the world at-large...

When I was in college on the eastern shore of Maryland, I had this weird old professor—he was probably about 35. Very, very, very old. And one year, he invited the entire political science department to his house for a backyard barbecue. Well, as a college student, I was always game for anything...

I don’t have dinner parties nearly as much as I’d like to. All too often, it’s nearly impossible to coordinate schedules with friends, and—by the end of the day—the thought of engaging in sparkling conversation on top of hours spent cooking and cleaning seems just a little overwhelming. But...

“Make 2009 about YOU!” That was the message in my inbox earlier this week. I will say that it got my attention, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I don’t really want 2009 to be all about ME. I mean, I’ve woken up to the wonder that is ME every day for, well, my entire...

On my birthday weekend, the family and I made a daytrip up to the mountains of North Carolina to go apple picking. Aside from the fact that I had turned (ack…ack…) 36, it was an absolutely glorious day. As we drove to aptly-named Sky Top Orchard, following signs up the steep, narrow, twisting and...