Eliana Osborn

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.

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 proud of you right now, even with all the sadness. Proud of you for heading to rehab, leaving the kids, the man, the house — all of it — to get on top of things. Doing it instead of just thinking about it, talking about it even, hemming and hawing? That’s pretty badass.

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

After this, I’m not going to be able to complain about Meghan Trainor and having to teach my son that "All About That Bass" is talking about girls with big booties.

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 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.

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

Help.

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