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We have been looking for a summer job for the past several weeks, my son and I. Yes, I said “We,” even though I have a full-time career.  But at the in-between age of 14 ½, my son requires some help. Of course, he would debate this point. My son believes that if he fills out an application, hands it to the manager and the manager says he will call, the job will soon be his. 

What is MTV teaching these kids?

As a mother, I am still at the stage where I believe what I say and do can make a real difference. So one day, I tell my son we are going to work on his resume. Again, there’s that “we.”  Then I take my son to make copies of his resume.  As I tell him about my first “real” job, as a 14-year old office lackey at my eye doctor’s office, it hits me that my son can’t even get a file-and-make-copies-job as he puts his document in the Xerox machine and out comes a blank piece of paper.

It’s not Music Television that’s

It’s a Saturday night and my family has decided to go out for dinner. As we get out of the car, my boyfriend hands me the keys and asks if I could put them in my purse, along with his sunglasses. My son asks if I could stash his MP3 player and his earbuds.  My nephew wants to know if I have room to hold the book he’s been reading in the backseat. Suddenly, my purse is bulging and I’ve become my family’s suburban pack-mule.

If women were meant to haul stuff, God would have given us pouches.

Of course, it didn’t start out this way.  In the beginning, man carried the boulders and fire and skinned animals.  Then suddenly the tribe goes off to hunt (or play poker or golf or whatever) and you’re left holding down the cave and finding a place for everything they drag in.

And once you have chi

Nearly two years after I began post-divorce dating, I understood this new world well enough to realize just how clueless I was. Right out of the box the first man I met turned out to be married. Another man had posted an online photo that was so outdated when I went to meet him for our date – looking for a tall, slim man with curly brown hair and a nice smile – I literally didn’t recognize the half-centurion who called out my name. Gone was the slim and the hair, and his smile was obscured by the smoke curling out from his cigarette. I even met a man who nearly knocked over our cocktails with his laptop to impress me with dozens of photos of women he had dated previously.  (I actually was pretty impressed.)

After so many false starts, I learned to be more discerning. I could spot a “player” within three lines of an IM; I could mark a stalker after the first post-date text; I even learned the red flags of an already-committed man. But I was still completely unprepared when, several months into my first real relationship as a divorcee, it looked as if I might actually have sex again before I died. It had been years since I had b

While a divorce is one very final-sounding word, it is not just one moment in time. The decision to divorce often involves years of contemplation, counseling, trial separations, and sometimes abuse, adultery, abandonment and heartache. It all adds up to a divorce journey, one that has ups and downs that frequently take the form of trial separations and reunions.  While the path appears to end in a day in court, sometimes “divorce” and “post-divorce” lasts for years – particularly when children are involved.   

The reason I point this out is that if you are a friend to someone going through considering divorce, you may be in a difficult situation. You are the shoulder your friend cries on month after month. You may offer her a room wh

One of the reasons I wrote Back on Top was due to my own foibles as I began dating after divorce. I quickly realized I was completely clueless about 21st century dating rules. It had been 15 years since I was single and looking. And to be honest, after my divorce, I didn’t know what I was looking for – or if I was really interested in looking at all.

But that’s no excuse for any of us to go out there with our eyes wide shut.

What's Love Got To Do With It?
Eight years divorced and I’m still sending my ex Valentine’s Day Cards.

I have always loved the greeting card aisle … I pick up the ones with indie-art designs or intriguing words and fonts, and I admit I'm attracted to those with a little bling. 

I like reading the sentiments inside, deciding if that’s how I would say it, or tossing it aside as too mushy or not clever enough. In fact, back when I was in college, I wanted to be a greeting card writer for Hallmark. I even wrote the company and sent some samples. (Big surprise, I never heard back.) 

If part of growing up is recognizing your limitations, then I have more recognition than Kim Kardashian’s most famous asset.  Among the things I’ve learned about myself over the years is this: If smartphones had been invented when I was a new mother I would have missed the best moments of my son’s childhood. (For those of you born in the new millennium, there were no iPhones, Blackberries, YouTube, texting, Facebook or Twitter when I was a new mom in 1995.) You could not be bombarded with messages from your 200 best friends and followers every moment of every day.

And for that I am eternally grateful.

Because for me, smartphones are the new cigarettes: they are

More than one-third of Americans made a New Year’s resolution to lose weight this year.* Sometimes this makes me sad. Shouldn’t we be reaching for loftier goals like world peace? If we put our collective yearning together, couldn’t we find a cure for poverty, an end to domestic violence?

But framed another way (as my friend Andrea suggested), this resolution is really about transforming the way we see ourselves; to believe that we are worthy enough to care for ourselves by eating right, exercising, and finding balance. **

So, taking this suggestion to heart, perhaps this age-old New Year’s resolution is not about losing body weight; it’s about dropping the weight of the world ... shedding the burden of taking care of everyone else before we take care of ourselves.

It’s my favorite because by the end of the year, I’m usually a little stressed and the holidays

make me a little crazier.  I’m trying to make sure that the “yours-mine-and-ours” time with

our son, his grandparents, his cousins, his father, my boyfriend’s family and me all

I cannot find the original author of this hilarious story – the earliest posting I’ve seen was on HDTalking, a community for Harley Davidson riders – and of course I cannot vouch for its authenticity. But I can tell you that #1 and #15 made me laugh so hard I had tears streaming down my face!

It took almost two years for this delightful tale to make it into my inbox, and of the one hundred “joke” emails my mother insists on sending me, I can no longer ask her to cease and desist because this one made all the others worth it. It put me in such a good mood that I wanted to share it on ShareWIK, because none of us will be able to step into a Target again without stifling a gig