My brother rolled into D.C. from Boston on a chartered bus, arriving in the dark outside a Marriott.

I scanned the pack of fairly nondescript folks standing in front of the hotel, and there he was: Paul, smiling and waving. My kind brother, 11 years my senior. The brother...

There are just some things I'll never understand. Calculus is one. Pharmaceutical-industry pricing is another. And I'll never understand why I awoke in the night when I was 7 to find a human turd next to my head.

Math and medical money matters I may get to the bottom of...

I stared at the old man for way too long. I couldn't help it; he was so dear, sitting in his car smoking a pipe. Bald and wrinkly, he appeared a little weak, his back bending him toward the steering wheel while he waited for his lady, or someone. The...

I emerged from the vet clinic toting the big pet carrier. In it was my cat Habbib. At age 19, he had just been pronounced blind, likely from his lymphoma metastasizing. Habbib was supposed to die last fall when vets first diagnosed his cancer, but he didn't. He plugged on,...

It all started with namaste.

My husband is a lapsed Catholic. I am an atheist who occasionally bends agnostic. Struggling with what sweet ritual to do with our almost-three year old just before bed, we started saying namaste and bowing slightly, and she would return it, pronouncing it...

I love Xanax.

Is that wrong? I hope not. Because I have no plans to give it up. And don't you try to make me, either.

I would hardly say my usage is yet at the criminal level; when it's high stress around here (deadlines mounting; two year...

You might want to sit and think a minute before taking your kid to see gorillas and the like.

Look what happened when I recently took my 2.75-year old to the Great Ape House at the National Zoo in DC. After a few innocent moments watching a mom gorilla...

So you think you have it in you to take your little kid to Disney World? You might want to think again based on the lessons I learned earlier this month. Here they are, in no particular order.

Two year olds are too young for the Magic Kingdom. People...

My husband and I are in a race against time to shove all things Disney down our kid's throat.

This runs counter to the advice in the parenting books. Don't do that, they all say, in or near chapter 1. And our inner voices advise us to stop, too....

I used to go around secure in the notion that I was hearty farm stock.

You could put me out in the fields or on the plains and nothing would go wrong. Nothing! I wouldn't do any work out there or anything, but I wouldn't wilt or get sick,...

I used to think poop was hilarious. And vomit, too. And snot. And whatever else whatever else flows with force from the body and can be flung about by monkeys.

How could I help it? Body expulsions are the original humor. They look funny, they smell funny, they sound...

My kid is a tough little broad. She's only two, but we can already tell she will not be taking any crap from any age mates. In fact, she just ambled home from pre-preschool with one of those Ident-A-Kid cards bearing a mug shot so fierce that we're certain no...

Orange and purple. Both are strong, passionate colors. Both are derivative of red. Both are said to have no other words that rhyme with them.

But on Inauguration day, those colors couldn't have been more divergent.

If you had a purple ticket to see Barack Obama take the...