Laura Zigman

What's the prime number for food shopping?

By which I mean:

What's the fewest number of stores you can possibly go to and get everything you need?

Most weeks, I go to at least three stores. Some weeks, it's five. If I throw in a specialty store (liquor, bakery,...

Myth: Women love Valentine's Day and men hate it.

Reality: Women hate Valentine's Day, too, but want men to shower them with stupid cards and cheap roses and ugly jewelry anyway!

The kids are out.

The house is quiet.

There's nothing to do.

And nowhere to hide.

The "expectation" of date night looms!

"Let's do it!"

"It's business time!"

Cue the horror movie soundtrack!

OR: Insist on always having the kids' sleepovers at your house!

Do you ever wonder about cheese?

Not cheese in the French sense of cheese:

A really expensive hunk of something smelly with a few plain crackers and slices of ripe pear on a plate of pretentiousness.

But cheese in the American sense:

Buffalo cheese wings and cheese...

You know when you waste ten minutes making a list of New Year's resolutions so you can be a better parent next year? Well, this is what happens when you realize:

1. Your child barely needs you anymore so you don't really need a list and

2. You're...

I don't drive a Prius. I know I should. But before I can even consider buying one, I need to share my feelings: Prii are too quiet! They sneak up on you in parking lots because you can't hear them and then you almost get run over!

(I hope...

For those of you keeping track at home, this is the second in a two-part series of "Annoying Math Conversations." The first was "Shopping Math is The New Free." The video is below but in a nutshell: shopping math means everything is free -- if you count what you saved...

You thought the run up to Christmas -- the Christmas "pre-glow" -- was the worst part of the holiday? Well, think again. Because for some of us, "Basking in the Christmas Afterglow" is no picnic, either ...

"Creative Accounting" isn't just for big banks and big business! Anyone can do it!

For regular people like us, it's called Shopping Math. When you use Shopping Math, everything you buy on sale is basically free, which means you can buy more. Especially when you use Special Credit Cards (that...

Experts always say that healthy relationships require good communication -- verbal communication. But if you're married or in any kind of coupled relationship, you know that this isn't always the case. Because non-verbal facial expressions are often the universal language of long-term love.

Ideal: Each person shares...

There was a piece recently in the New York Times about cancer. This, in and of itself, isn't unusual, since there are many pieces in the New York Times about cancer. What was unusual was what the piece suggested:

Cancer should be renamed. Some cancers aren't really cancer, even though they're still called cancer.

What?!

The minute I read the piece, I knew I had to make one of my circular confusing "Annoying Conversation" Xtranormal videos, because one of the types of "non-cancer" cancers the article focused on was the kind I was diagnosed with in 2006: DCIS -- Ductal Carcinoma in Situ. This is Stage 0 cancer, which I'd never heard of. The confusion started right away, the minute I got the call from one of the big hospitals in Boston:

"Don't let the word 'carcinoma' fool you," the radiologist said. "It's not cancer."

And so began an almost comical situation -- like a Larry David episode -- me telling my husband and my family and my friends that I didn't have cancer even though the name of my cancer had the word cancer in it; then going to see one of the top breast surgeons in Boston -- Dr. Margaret Duggan -- who, during my 2-hour consultation, kept using the word cancer as she told me I'd have to have a mastectomy (and should consider a double mastectomy). I blinked and raised my hand timidly about an hour into the appointment:

"You keep using the word cancer," I said. "But the radiologist said it wasn't cancer."

Dr. Duggan (who moonlights as a professor at The Harvard Medical School), took her glasses off and stared at me. "No. It's cancer."

And with that, the appointment continued.

Make no mistake: I never felt completely comfortable saying I had cancer since, while I did have a double mastectomy and the most ridiculously-hard-to-recover-from-reconstructive-surgery, I didn't have to have chemo or radiation. Compared to friends and strangers who'd had much worse breast cancer diagnoses, I was afraid that my Stage 0 would seem... unseemly and lame, by comparison.

What troubled me most about the piece -- besides the sheer absurdity and double-speak aspects of many of the points it was trying to make -- was the idea that because one group of medical experts thinks DCIS isn't cancer -- that "if" left alone it "may" not ever turn into anything -- that the only kind of true cancer is "invasive" cancer" -- and that a growing risk these days in cancer screenings is "over diagnosis" since some of the "cancers" found don't really need to be found -- will confuse the public even more than they already are.

I'm not a doctor, but from what I was told, and from all that I've read over the years, cancer is...

It starts with a simple question after school:

"Do you have homework?"

It ends with me wishing my car came equipped with a portable polygraph machine instead of 600 cup-holders.

Because whenever I ask my son anything -- even the (seemingly) simplest of questions --...

I'll cut to the chase:

I.

Adele.

Wait. Did I mention that I love Adele? Because in case I wasn't clear: I LOVE ADELE.

I usually like to think I'm special, but when it comes to my complete and utter love of Adele,...

Years ago, at some neighborhood gathering of married women (block party? birthday party? potluck?), one of the wives started bragging about her husband: he was helpful and considerate, a great cook and cleaner, and his fathering skills put her mothering skills to shame. We waited for the good stuff: character...

My husband tells me the dog is bored about ten times a week. And when he does, I always say the same thing:

The dog is a dog. Dogs don't get bored!

But thanks to the magic of Xtranormal software -- and some free time during the holidays -- I've...

The road to failure exists even before the possible journey into illness begins. This is because research shows that some women overestimate their risk of getting breast cancer, even after they've been told by doctors that statistics make them less at risk than they think. While it isn't clear what...

I. Failing to Understand That Cancer is a Failure (Bio-Cellular), Wrapped in a Mystery (What Did You Do to Get It?), Rolled Up in an Enigma (How Do You Survive It?)

Cancer is the only disease, besides AIDS (and morbid obesity), where everything is your fault...

I received an email yesterday morning from a good friend who informed me that Marcel Marceau, the famous mime, had died. I was shocked and saddened by his passing, because even though I never met Marcel Marceau, or saw him perform in person, I felt a deep connection to him...