Eliana Osborn

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.

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

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.

I cried every single day of my life until I was 18 years old. I did not know this was abnormal.

When I’m staring at the wall trying to keep my cool when my 6-year-old is hysterical about the tiny bump on his finger, I attempt to channel some of the good parts.

The most important things my mother taught me included work from Neil Diamond, Billy Joel, Wham! and Whitney Houston.

Ray Nagin. Yes, the former New Orleans mayor who now has a criminal record. Let me explain.

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.

It is hard to find any real numbers about how many people do "direct sales" or how much money they make. The web is full of either big promises or pissed-off former sellers. What I do know, from bazillions of friends and family, is that making much more than pocket money means selling like a real job. Yes, it might be more flexible, but there’s no magic formula.

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.