Eliana Osborn

I’m a sucker for an interesting woman, so Notorious RBG is obviously my sort of book.

After years in apartments that should have been condemned, even these sad restroom facilities were vast improvements. And so we stayed, the husband and I, vaguely embarrassed when guests stayed over and commented on the bordello vibe of the bathroom.

Then we had a kid. No working bathtub suddenly seemed like a big deal. And the functional bathroom spaces weren’t places you’d want to hang out. There’s a lot of bathroom time once you’ve got tiny humans. (You’ve been warned.)

Perfectly Karaoke Or Lip Sync A Song: You may think this is less important than the other items on the list. You are wrong.

Size, like age and salary and whatever else, is just a number. Pretending numbers don’t measure things isn’t helpful. I’m 38 years old: That isn’t good or bad, but it IS different from being 18 or 50.

If you kill a tortoise, even on accident, you probably shouldn’t have children.

I’m full of emotions: pride, awe, fear, nerves. The spelling bee first, then the piano recital. Two different kids, same mom. Same me, wanting to prevent my boys from pain and discomfort. Same me, biting my tongue and smiling broadly in support.

My main reason for doing reading testing, enduring a bus ride to a field trip about weapons engineering, and other thrills? Stalking.

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.

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.

You may have heard the term "bromance" and tried to wash your ears out with bleach (bad idea). Sadly, scientist types heard the word too.