After months of angst (mine) and wailing and gnashing of teeth (the kids'), I made the decision to sell our house and move to a neighboring town. I signed a contract with a high-powered realtor; seconds later, or so it seemed, all hell broke loose.

A horde of painters,...

If you're like me, you've already experienced some of the difficulties associated with aging: weird moles, sagging everything, the death of people you love. While I haven't taken any of these developments with good grace, I've been comforted by the fact that, any day now, I will wake up bathed...

I have a life coach. Among people I know, this is about as embarrassing as saying, "my nine-year-old isn't toilet trained" or "I have an STD," so you may be wondering why I am coming out with it.

The reason is, in the 10 years I have been working...

The destruction left in Hurricane Sandy's wake includes the loss of more than 100 lives and estimated damage upwards of $60 billion. But people affected by Sandy have also expressed gratitude for lessons learned after the storm. Here, Huff/Post50 blogger Deborah Gaines shares the 10 things...

Like most single mothers, I am self-sufficient. Independence is in my blood: I come from a long line of matriarchal Jewish women who sold chickens or worked in the fields while their husbands sat around and studied. Except I study, too. I write, I do research, and lately I've been...

There are four things everyone will tell you about divorce: 1) It's a descent into hell; 2) it's better than a bad marriage; 3) you need to put the kids first, and 4) it's less costly if you use a mediator.

But here are five things no one mentions:

"I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes, so live not in your yesterdays." --Carl Sandburg

I recently got custody of my father's remains. They'd been residing with my stepmother for the past 20 years, mostly on the mantelpiece, although occasionally buckled into the front seat of...

An article has been making the rounds on how to tell when people are drowning. According to Navy sea survival expert Mario Vittone, "Drowning is a deceptively quiet event. The waving, splashing and yelling that television prepares us to look for, is rarely seen in real life."

I'm not a (terribly) vindictive person, but some opportunities are too good to resist. Which is why I volunteered my ex-husband for the dunk tank at the school fair.

It started with an email addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Married Name. Five years after the divorce, the school continues to...

I was recently invited to a 50th reunion luncheon at a local university. The majority of attendees were retired elementary and high school teachers. Many were the first generation in their family to go to college; virtually all had what would be considered "average" lives. There were no heads of...

I've been following the travails of the law firm Dewey & LeBoeuf. For those whose minds have been elsewhere, D&L is teetering toward what promises to be the largest law firm bankruptcy on record. The firm and its former chairman, Steve Davis, are also said to be the...

I over-filled the boiler the other day, causing water to burst out of the release valve and flood the entire basement. It's going to cost a thousand bucks to clean everything out and replace the carpeting with something more idiot-proof, like tile.

For the first few days after it...

I've been married and divorced three times, which makes me one of those people the Wall Street Journal describes, delicately, as having "a complex marital biography." For most of my life, this has been a source of shame. But lately I've begun wondering if I'm really the...

I spent the past two weeks chanting slogans like "Republicans, out of my vagina!" So maybe I'm feeling a tiny bit sensitive about unsolicited opinions on what I do with my body.

With this in mind, allow me to say that it's none of your goddamned business if I dye...

There's something hilarious about the phrase "blended family." As though you can throw two sets of hostile people in the blender and serve them poolside with fruit kebabs and little paper umbrellas.

I'm something of a maven on this subject, having had two stepfathers, two stepmothers, three step siblings, and...

Dear young person,

When I was your age, I made a raft of decisions that older folks (and even some of my peers) thought were monumentally stupid. Here are just a few:

1. At 22, I married my college boyfriend.
2. At 24, I dropped out of graduate...

We've fed them, sheltered them, taught them to live independently. Then suddenly (if we're lucky) our kids are gone. Daily contact is replaced by occasional text messages and visits on major holidays. While we struggle to keep abreast of events in their lives, they rarely do the same for us....

A woman I know -- let's call her Joan -- recently took a leave of absence from work in order to focus on her son's college search. "His choice of school will determine the outcome for at least the first part of his adult life," she explains. "I want him...

When people ask if I plan to marry again, I see an image of a broken-down boxer -- blood from the cut above his eye mixing with the sweat streaming down his face -- with a microphone shoved under his nose. "So will you go back in the ring?" the...

I have made my New Year's resolution. It is to grow lighter: to put down, give away, or otherwise lose unnecessary weight.

My plan was to start small--say, cleaning out a closet or refusing a second slice of pizza. Instead, I crash-landed in the middle of a sack of...