This post was sponsored by LOLA. And should not be read by men. Sorry, Dad. No matter how earth-hippie-mother-nature you want to get about the ole’ moon cycle, the fact remains. Periods are just The Worst. Messy and inconvenient and uncomfortable and potentially embarrassing. And I, for one, am sick of them. I mean, it’s been going on since I was a teen and here I am, nearly 30 years later, and still dealing with this ish. I had my babies in a span of 4 years, so the extra years of bleeding . . .

My friend Paul and I have known each other for a long time. In addition to both being writers, we are also political junkies. Paul and I sit on different sides of the ideoligical aisle. Paul is a Republican, I lean towards Democratic Socialism. Despite this, we manage to have deep and robust conversations about politics . . . while staying civil. We decided to do a weekly video series leading up to the election this year. This is our second episode. We’re talking about the Iowa caucus, the . . .

Over the past three weeks, I’ve been getting hundreds of racist comments every day. They berate me for having adopted black children, they take pictures of my kids and create racist memes, and they say awful things about my boys. If you follow me on twitter, you’ve probably seen some if it. Many people have asked me how this also started, so I wanted to provide the backstory. A timeline of the hate, if you will. It started with a video I took Christmas morning of my girls opening their American . . .

I love using a photo of my kids in their classroom Valentines. Class Valentines are sort of the kid-version of Christmas cards. I think it makes a nice keepsake for our own scrapbooks but I also like putting a face with their name. In previous years I’ve done some simple home-made photo valentines using a photo and a lollipop. This year, however, between our home remodel and other assort chaos, I just don’t have the time. So I turned to Minted. Minted is an amazing company because they support . . .