Serendipity is defined as the unexpected phenomenon of finding something delightful or valuable when you least expect it.

I love serendipity, especially when the something delightful or valuable is a someone. I met my husband 14 years ago in this magically haphazard way. And shortly after that, another key...

You know those unsightly skin tags that start sprouting in your armpit like mushrooms once you turn 40? If it hasn't happened to you it's happened to your parents; don't ask to see them. After personally testing every known method for getting rid of these, I was all set to...

To celebrate my one-year anniversary writing for The Huffington Post, here is a gift for you at the end of our shortest month: my shortest column.

Guarantee: getting through it will take no more than three minutes, four if you cry at videos that feature inspiring kids, guitar music...

Take this tip from my vault of tragic personal experience: If you're a boy who's just been surrounded by other boys on the playground and asked to name your favorite superhero, never say it's a toss-up between Batgirl and Doris Day.

There will be repercussions.

Name-calling, like a...

In early November 2005, our son James received his first formal invitation, to Sunday afternoon tea at our friend Richard's house.

As he'd only been alive for five weeks, this presented our boy with unique social challenges. He didn't know how to wear shoes, for instance. Was restricted to...

"It's not FAIR!"

Ah, the scorpion sting of injustice. Alas, no parent can protect his child for very long. The first pangs can be felt as early as infancy. If you doubt this, you've never seen a woman try to breastfeed twins at Target. Stumbling on this brutal tableau...

Did you know September was Grandparents Month? Neither did I. And now it's over, so if you have kids in the house and parents who are breathing, you blew it big time.

God will smite you, as he does nonobservant Jews and sex fetish bloggers. Unless you do something...

A question for today's modern parent: What would it take, how desperate would you have to be, to consider prostituting yourself for the sake of your family?

Before I had children, I'd have said never. But children change things, as Lifetime TV makes crystal clear in their probing, popular new...

Sunday is Father's Day, which this year happens to fall (delightfully) on my fourth wedding anniversary. Which got me thinking:

You know how you can watch a movie, then forget everything about it except for one scene that somehow sticks in your head for decades after? There's a special archive...

Every young girl should have a fairy godmother. Mine does. Her name is Miss Coco Peru.

Just how does one go about locating a fairy godmother? It's best if they appear at your daughter's crib when she's quite young, wag a finger and say, "I wanna be her fairy...

There's a world
where I can go
and tell my secrets to
In my room
In my room...

The haunting Beach Boys classic springs to mind because that's where I find myself as I'm writing this: in my childhood bedroom.

The same...

I never thought when I started building my kids a treehouse that it would turn into a competition. A competition inside my mind -- the worst kind. What follows is the sad story of how two hot daddies got under my bark.

hot daddy /hät 'da-dē/ adjective + noun: the...

Not too long ago, our little clan took a road trip from Los Angeles to Portland, Ore. Road trips are one of those mysterious things families feel compelled to do but no one knows why, like camping in the Mojave Desert or supporting the career of Miley Cyrus. I predict...

It's 8:30. Baths are done, the kids' teeth have been brushed for the mandated seven seconds, and it's time for bed. Which for my 6-year-old, still means a story.

Only my son is tired of the old standbys. We've exhausted Hans Christian Anderson, and I'm avoiding Pinocchio. James is...

I'm six. My mom and I are in the front seat of her very smart 1962 Chevrolet station wagon when she turns to me and asks:

"Have you thought about what you might like to be when you grow up?"

Well, I have been thinking about it. Last night...

Our son was three years old when Prop 8 passed, too young to understand what was going on but just the right age to articulate his thoughts about those yellow "Yes on 8" signs he saw everywhere. They were, he announced, "the color of pee-pee."

On some level, he...