Winona Dimeo-Ediger

You don’t have to compromise on music or air conditioning temperature or snack break times. It’s just you, your car, and the open road. Ah, freedom!

Sarah Von Bargen believes yes is more fun than no.

For example, if you’re having gastrointenstinal distress, resist the urge to hashtag it with something generic like #diarrheacramps. Instead, include your first and last name and the date to make it your own: #LynnSmithDiarrheaCrampsFebruary2016.

1. Only eat salad and grilled chicken. Salad and grilled chicken, as a general rule, don’t ruin lives. Salad and grilled chicken are great... sometimes. Unless you’re going to amazing restaurants all the time and ordering nothing but salad and grilled chicken — then salad is definitely ruining your life.

If you’re at an amazing restaurant, eat the amazing food there! Enjoy it! Don’t limit yourself to one bite of expensive entree because you frantically forced down a pound of undressed salad before the bread basket showed up. Eat salad for its own sake. Eat it because you want to eat it, not because you’re trying NOT to eat something else.

When you’re helping people zip up dresses and watching their reactions to certain items of clothing, you start noticing patterns. Here are four of the phrases I hear most often in the dressing room, and how I wish — oh, how I wish! — I could respond.

When you’re shopping for shoes for a fancy event, it’s easy to assume that a super high heel is required for a shoe to feel dressed up enough, but that’s not necessarily the case. I’m happy to report that “sensible shoes” and “cute shoes” are not mutually exclusive terms.

Here are a few tips for managing a major style transition without going bankrupt/insane.

Dear bikini manufacturers: Not all short, curvy women want to channel their inner Marilyn Monroe.

"These days, I don’t shop at the mall very often, but every once in a while when I find myself at a mall — any — I’m overcome by a wave of nostalgia for my salad days (although perhaps “Sbarro calzone days” would be a more fitting expression here). In many ways, I grew up in these chain stores and pretzel kiosks. And sometimes I feel compelled to write melodramatic poetry about it."