Eliana Osborn

Kirk Cameron in all his Growing Pains glory was the ideal crush. Unthreatening, goofy, good kid with very reasonable weekly conflicts. And a good smile. Always been a sucker for that.

The other magical thing about living in 2015 is the Internet. You can get great training in all kinds of fields while sitting in your underwear at home.

I always have a small piece of my brain on mom mode, no matter what else is happening. I have no problem with this, since that is how humanity has survived.

There are some days of parenting that are magical, full of unicorns and four leaf clovers and lottery winnings. Those are the moments when I catch myself, just for a second, feeling content and happy and looking around trying to freeze things. Out of 7000 days, those maybe make up five a year.

They were horrible.

I’m not alone in being troubled by how people suddenly disappear in life, right? That’s essentially why the internet was created. You may have heard rumors about Al Gore inventing it for military purposes... Lies!

A new, exciting trend is to have food pantries for college students. I talked to an AmeriCorps volunteer running one of these centers and she was matter-of-fact about the need — and how little is being done. Today’s college students may be young and single, living la vida loca. But more and more are what we call ‘nontraditional’: slightly older, employed full-time (or close to it), supporting a family, a veteran, etc.

Hunger for nontraditional students doesn’t mean surviving on ramen: It means they are not the only person in the household who's in need.

Now that I’m a mother, I’m much more sympathetic to a woman who just couldn’t take it anymore. Not saying I’d leave my kids in a parking lot and hope for the best . . . just saying that I can understand the impulse.

Sometimes the nicest kids turn into whole new people when they come over to your house.

A haircut is a whole lot cheaper than therapy or tattoos or a round-the-world plane ticket.