I haven’t been doing as much personal blogging in the past year or so as I used to do. It’s a combination of factors. First, I seem to have gotten out of the habit of just narrating our daily lives. I tend to feel the need for what I write to have a bit more substance than the goings-ons of our days, which means I also tend to get a little paralyzed unless I feel like I’ve got an idea wrapped up from beginning to middle to end. I don’t do as much casual stream-of-consciousness writing as I used . . .

I'm unboxing my Minted cards and explaining the game-changing address feature that has won my business forever.  Wanna try it? Use this link for $25 off. . . .

Here are some of things I read this week that made me think. (These are just snippets – click on the title to read the whole thing). What the Oldest People in the World Eat (and Drink) Every Day from Alex at Bon Appetite “Calment’s obituary said she “used to eat more than two pounds of chocolate a week and treat her skin with olive oil, rode a bicycle until she was 100,” and had smoked nearly all her life, until her doctor made her cut that and her Sunday glass of Port at age 120. The . . .

The kids and I talk about seeing Sleeping Beauty and her Winter's Knight at Laguna Playhouse... . . .

Over the past couple of months I've been having Shortcake create yearly photo albums of our family. It's something I've been wanting to do for years . . . but the piles and piles of digital photos on various computers makes the task daunting. I take way too many photos and I'm terrible about deleting and organizing them, and going through to find the yearly highlights seemed overwhelming. Shortcake had a genius idea: most people already have a highlight reel on social media. This was certainly . . .

This post was sponsored by VSP Direct I love giving gifts, but I can also get a little stuck with trying to choose the right thing for each person in my family. I want my gifts to be thoughtful but also practical. I want it to be something that delights, but also something that will be used. And I also want it to be something that lets the receiver know I've given thought to who they are and what they need. I never would have thought of giving someone insurance, until I heard of VSP . . .

After nearly a decade of sitting in the therapist office as a marriage and family counselor, I'm pretty comfortable talking about sex. And I'm pretty comfortable talking to my kids about sex as well. But that doesn't necessarily mean that they are comfortable talking about it, too. We have frank and open conversations in our house about all things human sexuality, from puberty to consent. But the kids are still very squirmy about it . . . and often try to cut the conversation short. There is an . . .