ArcaMax

I'm failing at summer. One week in and I'm pretty sure I'm not going to make it to autumn with a passing grade.

This is my first summer in the terms that I knew it as a child. With my son completing his first year in elementary school, the seasons are once again dictated by the school calendar. Summer, those rogue months in which we break free ...Read more

"I came out of my apartment, and there he was -- trench coat wide-open, totally naked, so proud of himself."

This past week, one of my best friends came to visit, and along with her came a collection of stories from our time apart. We met while living in Los Angeles but grew up just 20 minutes apart on the other side of the country. It ...Read more

There is a story in my family that has been told and retold so many times that I'm no longer certain of the truth behind the tale. It sits in that amorphous place of being either 100 percent accurate or 92 percent false. And knowing all the players in the story, I couldn't even begin to guess the answer.

The story is about me, though I have ...Read more

"I'm so excited to finally get you on the phone. I've been dying to meet you," said a potential consulting client. "My son and I are obsessed with katydids."

I was named after the katydid, a long insect that looks like the love child of a grasshopper and a mantis. Most people aren't familiar with katydids, so anytime I meet someone who shares ...Read more

When my son was 2 1/2, we visited the zoo. I got distracted for just a moment, and when I looked up, my son was climbing over a wall and into the lion's den. One foot was hanging over the king of the jungle's water hole.

I ran to pull him back from his suicide mission as he wailed his discontent. The two teenagers who had been standing right ...Read more

They say to dress for the job you want, not the job you have. Apparently, I want to have the job of a stripper.

This past week, I have had the immense pleasure of being a panelist, moderator and mentor at the Atlanta Film Festival and ScreenCraft Writers Summit. My week began with a panel that I had pitched about entertainment development. We...Read more

Nothing makes you feel more like a parent than wearing wrinkled sweats, listlessly flipping through your phone and sipping on drive-thru Starbucks while sitting in your parked but idling seven-seat SUV waiting for the Target to open. That's where I was this morning.

The other parents, sitting in their own idling cars, would occasionally look ...Read more

When I was living in Australia, I heard about a girl who stepped on an old land mine while traveling through Indonesia. The blast threw her back, and to get better medical help, she was flown to Australia. Once she was patched up, she decided to continue her adventure by exploring northern Australia. Be sure to follow the road signs, she was ...Read more

The other night, I attended a branding session for my school district. Yes, branding. A letter went out, addressed to school district "customers" -- apparently not wanting to offend us by using outdated, totally unhip traditional names, e.g., parents and guardians, community members or moms and dads. Yikes. In this customer-directed letter, ...Read more

Children learn about love and the birds and the bees from a variety of places -- parents, guidance counselors, siblings. But I got my first lesson on love and sex from my pet rabbit, Surprise.

I had Surprise for about a year before I brought home a stuffed blue lion I'd just won at the fair. And it was love at first bunny sight. Surprise took ...Read more

When we had to put down our beloved rabbit at the end of last year, we wondered what to tell the children. Should we say he ran away to a bunny farm in the mountains where they learn to bunny yodel and knot sweaters from their own fur? Should we say he is eating carrots in the sky? Or should we say he went on a boozy bunny binge bender after ...Read more

"Someone got into something naughty last night," the front desk worker said.

"Not naughty," I replied. "Windy."

"Funny how no one else's unmentionables wound up in a tree," she said with a wink as she turned on her walkie-talkie and asked a fellow worker to come to my aid.

My husband and I just returned from a trip to the Caribbean. We went...Read more

Bicycles and I are not friends. We have a mutual understanding: If I don't get on one, one won't kill me. So when I moved across the country, I was shocked to find a bicycle in the moving truck along with my old dresser and beanbag chair. I demanded an explanation from my mom, who simply said, "One sunny day, you may wish you had one." How could...Read more