l. Don't be the kind of person who buys a pregnant woman a belt. Think before you gift.

2. Non-negotiable: offer to accompany your friend to the biopsy and when asked to donate to her worthy cause, cough up.

3. If a friend goes passive-aggressive on you, work things out....

As I've gotten less shy and more curious -- two payoffs of getting older nobody mentions much -- the potential for new friends feels boundless. People I want to turn into friends seem to be everywhere. Go to a party, make a friend. New friendships, like new appliances, are a...

Friendship is tough. After the Ten Commandments, there are no official rules. Which is why you may need this list.

1. Every year make two new friends who are at least 10 years younger.
2. But also befriend oldsters. Wisdom, ya know?
3. Stifle the micromanagement. Sometimes a friend likes to pick her...

Who do I hate today? Some mornings I ask this question even before my husband and I have downed our coffee. Is it the woman enrolled in a writing workshop I teach, who emailed an ungirdled manuscript unimpeded by the Microsoft doodad that lets an author know she's repeated "really"...

Imagine my surprise when a friend told me that while Rosie O'Donnell made it clear in her blog that while she hadn't read my book, she declared--twice--that Little Pink Slips"seems kinda anti-gay 2 me."

I picked through the Crayola-colored rosie.com, read the entries and instantly felt wronged....