• Try a new recipe that you may not be experienced enough to pull off • Clean out the garage • Plant perennials • Finally order slipcovers for the wing chairs that have been bothering you for 5 years • Buy a new dog bed • Follow a weight-training regimen • Visit old friends • Or you could write a […]

•Legos •Dead batteries •Mateless socks •T-shirts that belong to kids who I did not give birth to •Dog hair •Remote controls •Bowls that are a little chipped but still usable •Did I mention dead batteries? •Swatches of fabric that I love but have never found a piece of furniture for •Charging devices (phone, Nintendo DS, camera, iPod, you name it) […]

So on Saturday I finally saw Julie & Julia, which I loved. Of course! I have never seen a Nora Ephron movie that I didn’t love. I’ve also never seen a Meryl Streep movie that I did not love (that is, if you don’t include Mamma Mia, which was disturbing on so many levels that it temporarily made me want […]

As I have noted on this blog before, I get a lot of dumb e-mails during the course of the week. A number of them, alas, are from PR people. Now, I have nothing against PR people; Real Simple has a crackerjack PR department and if it weren’t for the smart women running it, I probably couldn’t get out of […]

For those of you who read my editor’s letter in the September issue and want to know more about my dream bag, here it is: I realize I should have just put this picture on the page, but here’s why I didn’t: The bag was expensive; it is probably no longer available; I was not organized enough in the moment […]

Yesterday my husband and I took Eldest and Middle to the U.S. Open, which we do every year. It’s a real late-summer highlight for me: The weather is usually great, it’s a short trip from our house, everybody in my family loves tennis and some of us are actually good at it. The Flushing Meadows grounds are set up in […]

I’ve just spent the last two weeks on vacation, which means I’ve had a lot of time to ponder life’s big issues: –am I a good mother? –just how important are good grades in the grand scheme of things? –why is my family so messy? –is the choice that I have made—to just let my family be messy, instead of […]

I have been spontaneously bursting into tears for the last two weeks and I’ve had just about enough of it. That is how long our dear cat (and, really, sort of first child) George has been in decline, after nearly 18 years of excellent health and extreme flexibility in the face of all sorts of headaches (starting with 3 children and a dog) that we brought to his life.

Last week I was sitting in the office of Real Simple‘s executive editor, Sarah Humphreys, and I borrowed a pen. Of course it was a wonderful pen, and better than any pen in my office. Why? Because other people’s pens are always better than yours. As Sarah knows, there are actually a number of things that are better when they […]

Every spring for the last three years, a robin has laid a nest in a rhododendron right next to our front porch. It is also right next to the driveway, so every time we get in and out of the car, the robin leaves her nest in a little panic and flies to a nearby dogwood. But she always comes […]