Eliana Osborn

Your partner will make you want to throw up at some point. Pure, unadulterated disgust.

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.

I’m not a fan of repeating things over and over so that they lose their meaning. "Pledge: a solemn promise or agreement." It is that extra level, the solemnity, that makes me uncomfortable with casual usage.

We take weekend turns. He does vacations and summers. Literally. He takes them away. It is great.

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.

I’m not there yet. But I need to be honest—I’m closer to 40 than any other multiple of five.

84% of full professors in America are White. In case you were unsure, that does not match the overall makeup of the country or the student body.

If he were an a--hole to my kids, things would be easier. But he’s not. He’s good with them. He’s his best self. It makes me alternately happy and heartbroken.

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.

I’m not broken by this therapy failure. Jane wasn't the person to help me at this point of my life. Someone else WILL be.