Luca came for a home visit last weekend. He flew in from boarding school and spent Mother's Day weekend with Franny and me.

He arrived in time for Franny's school performance. Prince and his wife Sarah were there and I remembered what it was like two years ago,… Read full post »

I used to hate my mother.

I hated her because she didn't give birth to me, so I didn't felt that she was truly my mother.

I hated her because she gave birth to my sister, who could rightfully claim her as her mother. The two of them were… Read full post »

In real life, I have a job that requires showing my face, instead of hiding behind a damsel-in-distress gravatar. It also requires a bit of marketing, so I recently decided to build a web site to promote my business. To go along with my new web site, I needed new pictures,… Read full post »

I was rich when I gave birth to both my children. Twice I arrived home from the hospital, infant in tow, welcomed by baby nurses and doulas and full-time nannies.

In case you were not the mommy dilettante that I was, you may not know what some of these… Read full post »

When Hilary Rosen uttered The Remark and the politics-fueled Mommy Wars absurdity ensued, I got mired in a comment thread on a popular blog site. The blogger was of the opinion that Rosen was biased against SAHMs and wrote a post calling for the end… Read full post »

Note: This piece was fueled by exasperation and inspired by two excellent blogs posts -- by Grace Hwang Lynch and Pamela Kripke -- that urge those who "got privilege" to name it.

I used to have Ann Romney's life. The first time around I married into a… Read full post »

My daughter Franny, who turns ten this month, has just started working as a Mother's Helper one afternoon a week after school. She works for a SAHM who needs a couple hours of sanity. She folds laundry and sweeps. She plays with two-year-old Juniper, pushing her on the swing, dressing doll… Read full post »

Last Sunday, while watching the Oscars, my 8-year-old stepson Kevin turned to my husband and asked if he had ever gone to the Academy Awards with Grandpa Frank.

"No, Sweetie" said Atticus. "Grandpa Frank didn't like going himself. But the studio made him go the year one of his movies was… Read full post »

The main thing I noticed during the Parent Workshop at Luca's boarding school last weekend was how respectable the parents appeared. For instance, Julia from Seattle, with her chic bob and hand-knit poncho, you just would not have expected her to utter with a resigned shrug, "Dylan held a knife to… Read full post »

One afternoon several years ago my normally happy-camper daughter had a meltdown of epic proportions at preschool. One minute she was fine, and the next minute she was possessed by the devil. Shrieking till she was red in the face at an unholy decible level. Shaking, flailing,… Read full post »

I first "met" her when my boyfriend showed me a copy of Oui Magazine. She was a virtually unknown pin-up girl and she graced the cover, her first ever. My boyfriend had picked up the magazine because the brown-haired, olive-skinned teenager on the front reminded him of me.

Earlier this week Huffington Post announced what had been rumored for days: that Heidi Klum and Seal, the celeb couple touted as having perhaps the storybookiest marriage of them all, are splitting.

When I scanned the "Heidi Klum and Seal" trending results on Twitter, I was struck by the… Read full post »

I belong to a group of mom bloggers and it is not uncommon for one of us to Facebook the rest of us and ask for "nice comments" on a post to offset the vitriol being vomited upon the comment section by trolls.

Not sure what trolls are? They're those shadowy… Read full post »

I swore I wouldn't give my daughter Franny a cell phone until she was thirteen. And whenever my nine-year-old asked, as she had been doing more frequently, "Mom, when can I have a cell phone?" this is what I told her.

There were a few reasons why I thought 13 was the magic… Read full post »

My birthmother, Suzanne, came to visit last weekend and she and my daughter Franny made a gingerbread house.

From scratch.

They stood at the kitchen island, rolling out dough, cutting out walls, a roof, and a door. They used a hammer to smash Life Savers into slivers that they then turned… Read full post »

I live in an eccentric neighborhood in a big city, a pocket of Craftsman, Victorian and Mediterranean homes in various stages of restoration. Two centuries ago, the city's titans hired famed architects to build their mansions, until various forces caused them to move north and west.

A craftsm/… Read full post »

 For those of you who don't know her, L in the Southeast is an Open Salon blogger who writes about politics and social issues, among other topics. She describes herself as "born and raised in suburban Chicago to a multicultural family of hard-working working class people. I was given every tool… Read full post »

When he is not inhabiting a courtroom in his job as a public defender, Neil McDevitt is  inhabiting Open Salon, on his personal blog, NeilPaul. Neil is kind of like the BMOC of Open Salon. He is a prolific blogger--so prolific, in fact, that I sometimes wonder if this "public/… Read full post »

Below is the last installment of a three-part series about my visit to my son's therapeutic boarding school, which previously appeared on Good Men Project. To read Part I, click here. To read Part II, click here.

After breakfast, Luca wanted to watch Planet of the Apes on TV, so we… Read full post »

 The following is the latest installment of my regular series, "My Son's Walkabout," that appears on Good Men Project. To read the first part of this story, click here.

"I'm not too skinny. I like the way I look now. I was fat before."

Luca and I were standing in front of a ramsha… Read full post »

Below is the next installment of "My Son's Walkabout,"the column I write for Good Men Project, and which appeared there yesterday.

Considering their trespasses -- substance abuse, school refusal, chronic havoc-wreaking -- the boys were an exceedingly polite bunch. Luca introduced me to… Read full post »

Recently I attended a lovely Ladies Who Blog luncheon with other mommy bloggers whose ambitions ran the gamut from "I'm just doing this so I don't go crazy being a full-time mom" to "my agent is packaging me for a web series." The idea behind the gathering was to pry us away/… Read full post »

This piece originally ran on Good Men Project earlier this week. It is part of my series there, My Son's Walkabout.

This week I will travel to a wide-open, western state to visit my 14-year-old son at a boarding school attended by other wealthy kids with behavior problems. I am immensely… Read full post »