As a result, sometimes stuff gets cold, or burnt. We usually eat at least an hour later than planned. We make conversational beelines toward politics and religion. At least one person gets drunk and picks a fight. By dessert, someone is usually in tears. The day is mostly a success
Naturally, I have to procrastinate first, but at least I’m procrastinating intelligently (or so I tell myself) by reviewing Anne Lamott’s sublime Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. Writerly types have been recommending this book to me for the past 15 years, but I was
I’ve been thinking a lot about the state of modern girlhood lately. My husband and I have 10 much-younger girl cousins between us, mostly in middle and high school, and I’m getting ready to buy Christmas gifts for many of them. I don’t have kids; instead of
Five years ago, I joined MetaFilter. MetaFilter began as—and primarily remains—an online space for members to share interesting links and comment on them. Period, end of sentence. But a few specialized subgroups have developed, including one of my favorite places on the entire internet: AskMetaFilter. The concept is
As a copy editor, your job is to enforce the rules of grammar, spelling, and style, and do so with enough conviction and authority that you don’t have to provide a remedial grammar lesson with every correction. You also have to keep track of the logic of the piece
When “Repress Yourself” was published in the New York Times magazine in February 2003, it had been 18 months since Sept. 11, and someone had finally dared to suggest we might want to stop thinking about it so much. I don’t mean to be flip; Sept. 11, 2001 was
Emily Yoffe, author of Slate’s thoroughly enjoyable “Dear Prudence,” summed it up nicely: “Judaism is a religion that focuses on justice in this world. It’s not so much focused on the rewards of the next life, but about how to live in this life. Maybe that’s why
My dad is an OB/GYN, and when I was growing up, this meant all my friends thought I must therefore have some secret insider knowledge about human coitus. While it’s true I knew the birds and the bees by age two, I didn’t lose my training wheels
Here are 10 things I learned—not necessarily directly—from planning my own wedding that don’t seem to get addressed much in the bridezillasphere. 1. If you really want cash, don’t register for gifts. Enlist your parents and siblings to help spread the word in a low-key way.
The ’90s for me were more Lollapalooza than Nickelodeon, so I’ve never actually seen Clarissa Explains It All, but whatever. That pop-culture nostalgia reminds me of another quintessential ’90s meme: “What would Jesus do?” The thing is, I had no idea: I was raised Jewish. Most of what I
OK, so my gay BFF in high school didn’t really fit the stereotype, except that he did always give excellent advice. But it wasn’t just the advice I valued, but the source. As a teenage girl—the most cutthroat species of information broker on the planet—I thought
My college graduation speaker really did begin—and end—his speech with “Today is the first day of the rest of your lives.” Did he also tell us to be ourselves and follow our dreams? It’s possible, I don’t remember. Our speaker was boring, and he was also
