I peeled the paper off the back of the faux mustache and stuck it above my daughter’s upper lip. Olivia would be Milton Hershey for the 3rd grade Living Museum.

 “Chocolate has changed my life” she’d said when she made the choice. It… Read full post »

I squeezed a drop of serum, the consistency of an egg white, onto my pinky, dabbing it into the pleats on my forehead. This better work, I thought, staring in the mirror.

Two tubes and a silver-lidded glass jar lined the sink: a peptide solution, vitamin E serum, and/… Read full post »

The lights in the room are dim, an illustrated cross-section of the brain floats on screen. "Parents of teenagers often act as surrogate frontal lobes," says the speaker, a bald man with wire-rimmed spectacles, pointing to the lateral portion behind the forehead and eye.

He explains that while the a… Read full post »

This essay originally appeared in Anderbo magazine (http://www.anderbo.com/anderbo1/afact-032.html magazine)

The music rumbled, my body pulsed to the beat of the bass. My kids, Luke and Sophia, 15 and 14, were somewhere in the crowd, much closer to the band than me.

I stood by the bar sipping… Read full post »

The first time I met my boyfriend Eric’s family my sweet potato casserole went on fire. It was Thanksgiving 2003. Eric, who I felt funny calling my boyfriend, since we were 36 and 40 at the time with 5 children between us, had invited me to his sister Julie’s house for… Read full post »

The day I was laid off from a six-figure corporate job, my car was stolen from the Mobile station on the Merritt Parkway. I was driving back from my morning meeting with my boss in New York City, where he told me that my position was eliminated. I'd pulled off the… Read full post »

Outside the courthouse, signed divorce papers in hand after a yearlong custody battle and proceedings that left me in financial ruins, Larry, my new ex-husband asked a stranger to take our photo. I was shocked, and though I hated him for what he had put me through, for some reason I… Read full post »

I stood in the driveway sipping scotch from a lime green plastic cup; my ex husband Larry’s family entering my yard by the carload. I greeted my former in-laws, who I had not seen in 8 years, with a forced smile; sweat drops the size of pearls on my forehead, the… Read full post »

I rang the doorbell of my ex-husband Larry’s house, a jar of gefilte fish in one hand, boxed coconut cake in the other. To date I’d been to the house on Thunder Lake only to drop off the kids. But today I was here with my husband Eric and two step-children,… Read full post »