ArcaMax

It's spring break and the kids are home from school, so I recently decided to drop the equivalent of a decent-sized car payment on a trip to the aquarium.

I'd signed them up for a camp for a couple of hours a day, but after that was canceled, we were left with only screen-based diversions.

"Why does it keep saying 'We'll be right back'?" my ...Read more

I wish there were influencers for the rest of us: We the imperfect. We the mediocre. We the normal.

That's what occurred to me lately as I watched famed influencer/actress/dieter Gwyneth Paltrow discuss what she eats (or, more accurately, doesn't eat) in a typical day.

In the video, she said she fasts until noon. Before then, she drinks ...Read more

Dear Sirs (one assumes),

What follows is my official application to be included in the billions of dollars in bailouts -- I'm sorry, "debt relief" -- planned for the Silicon Valley banks that failed after engaging in risky tech industry loans, dumb cryptocurrency investments and faulty assumptions about interest rate hikes.

I have read recent ...Read more

It's a cold March day in the Midwest, with fresh-fallen snow on the ground, and this is about the time every year when I consider grabbing the family and absconding to some southern climate, escaping like a thief in the night to any place you don't have to have to wear snowshoes on spring break.

Yes, the winter weather (and sometimes the fall ...Read more

Let me be clear: I enjoy being a parent.

I enjoy hugging my kids. I enjoy tucking them in at night. I enjoy when they eat something I've made and exclaim, "Mommy, this is so good!" I enjoy how their brains work. I enjoy watching them learn new things, gaining confidence. I enjoy the hilarious, silly and sweet things they say.

But I don't enjoy...Read more

It's fashionable these days among conservatives to look back on the early days of COVID with smug self-congratulations.

"See? We, those who said that masks were 'face diapers' and who screamed at grocery store workers over mask rules were correct. Those mask mandates did nothing. It was you, the government and liberals, who were wrong to shame ...Read more

Don Lemon, a moron, was right.

When Lemon got on his CNN show (I don't watch it. I don't know the name) and said that presidential candidate Nikki Haley, 51, was past "her prime," he was right.

He was right. There. I said it.

And when his co-host Poppy Harlow, recently nominated for the "Outstanding Work in Not Stabbing a Co-Host with Your ...Read more

We've just taken down the Christmas decorations, snow's falling outside my window and a fireplace roars before me.

In other words, it's time to start worrying about summer camp.

There are options -- oh, are there options -- and if I'm not online at 10 a.m. sharp when registration opens, my kids might be stuck going to a summer camp for those ...Read more

I had surgery on my knee recently, the second in a series of operations to correct a problem with my ACL, the problem being that I don't have one.

I first injured my knee years ago -- many, many years ago -- at a house party. For a reason that completely eludes me now, I was trying to stop a fight between two guys who I later learned had been ...Read more

You're a parent. You're busy. And, if you're anything like me, the last time you paid to see a movie in the theater, it was back when we thought COVID would be over by the time Pete Davidson had found another out-of-his-league woman to date.

But maybe you're ready to get out there again. Maybe you saw "Top Gun: Maverick" in the theater and ...Read more

Everyone's complaining about how expensive eggs have gotten lately, but I haven't been stressing.

I've always bought the extra-pricey eggs anyway, the ones with the drawings of flowers on them, the ones that promise the chickens who laid your eggs were raised on a bucolic farm in Iowa where each hen gets her own house, the chicks are taken ...Read more

I was at dinner a few weeks ago when the cold hand of approaching death smacked me in the face.

The blow came as I looked at a picture of my husband's friend, a guy I'd last seen 20 years ago.

"He looks so ... old," I thought.

Then, a horrifying addendum popped into my brain.

Do I look old, too?

I laughed nervously and glanced at a nearby ...Read more