Did you know you're supposed to soap and scrub for as long as it takes to sing 'Happy Birthday' twice?

Wildfires can leave the land with burn scars that last for years.

I'm a snowflake. And so are you. Your children are snowflakes. And so are mine. And those who protest the loudest about not being snowflakes? I can see your six-fold ice crystals from here! Because every person, empirically, is unique.

'Man cave' seems retrograde, but 'she shed' seems progressive. Or maybe it's just a place for me to eat embarrassing amounts of chocolate in private.

If you're ever bcc'd, do not go near 'reply all.' 'Bcc' is 'blind carbon copy.' It means you're a fly on the wall, dude! If you hit reply all, it's beyond bad etiquette to out the person who gave you the superpower of invisibility. It's like screaming, 'I'm a spy!'

Twerking takes its place in a long line of dance moves deemed immoral, even apocalyptic. The waltz was called sinful because it demanded dangerously close contact between dance partners. In 1914, the tango earned a papal denunciation for being 'damaging to the soul.'

The option to freeze one's eggs is just about the most empowering choice a single woman who knows she wants to be a mother can make.

I know how much sleep I need, how much time on the elliptical I need, and how much chocolate that buys me.

I'm not actually perishing, but I do feel like I die a little every time someone uses 'literally' to mean 'really.'

If you grasp the bathroom door handle to exit without using a paper towel, you're right back where you started, with who-knows-whose germs on your hands.

My husband is a graduate of two Ivy League universities - with a degree in Classics! - and he sounds like a David Mamet character when I hear him on a business call.

Well-done eyelash extensions make you look beautiful and doe-eyed without a lick of makeup.

Women are blessed with lots and lots of extra ways to win or lose validation. If you're a woman, you'll be judged on your beauty and your wit and how often you smile. You'll be judged on how much hair you have in some places and not in others.

We all think Al Gore invented email so we could save time and save paper, to save trees. And that includes phone trees.

I am an approval junkie.

Sometimes art helps illuminate science.

Harassment doesn't just happen to 'social observers' and 'comedians' - women who express themselves publicly are reliably verbally attacked online and in person, not for their substance but for their form.

Here's a simple guideline: if five names or fewer are cc'd, just go nuts and hit 'reply all.' But if more than five folks appear in the cc line, pause. Give it a thought. Some people are promiscuous and cc dozens of people who don't need to know each other's business.

I don't mean to brag, but my water filter curates tap water, offering moi the finest combination of H, 2, and O available.

It was my husband who had to open all the baby shower gifts which were haunting me in their candy-colored gift wrap - thank you notes demanding to be written.

It's one thing to decry and defy political correctness in the name of efficiently achieving clarity or revealing an honest truth. But it's quite another thing entirely to support name-calling and nastiness.

They say there are no atheists in foxholes, and in the foxhole of my divorce, I found solace in walking to St. Patrick's Cathedral and lighting candles.

It's beyond TMI - oversharing is not just too much information; it's incessant sharing of non-information - breaking news about your gluten-free diet complete with duck face selfies.

I'm not proud that, in my time, I've tried to harness the power of prayer to fit into a pair of jeans.

I entered my egg-freezing adventure from a feeling of lack - a lack of fertility, of the right partner, of biological time. But this perceived lack actually produced abundance - of options, time, peace of mind, and microscopic chances of a child.

By the time I got to college in the '90s, virtually every young woman I knew was on the pill. It was like a rite of passage, along with Doc Martens and Take Back the Night rallies.

The custom of clasping hands is thought to date back thousands of years, as proof of not holding any weapons.

I'll never get complacent. I am my own toughest critic.

The fact that oversharing exists at all as a noteworthy notion is a relief, because I'm afraid that our younger generations could grow up having no idea what it even means to overshare.

Approval ratings matter for politicians, largely for good reason. A leader with plummeting approval ratings ought to take note of the needs and hopes of his people.

I've always wanted, notionally, to be a mother. And I was certain I would be, because everyone I know, gay or straight, married or single, rich or not so much, who truly wants to have a child figures out a way, some way, to have one - whether through adoption, fostering, surrogacy, fertility, accident, or persistence.

It's fitting that an insult largely aimed at youth has made children of those who use it. 'Snowflake' reminds us how much we need climate change... in politics.

I've spent my life being responsible, building a career, and waiting to find the right partner with whom to start a family.

On a meaningful day, everything you wear can have meaning. It becomes what I wore That Day, whether that day is a beginning or an end.

When I was a kid, we called every teacher, every parent - anyone over the age of 20, it seemed - 'Mr. or Mrs. so-and-so.'

A leader who cobbles together his self-esteem by attempting to silence or libel his critics and by amplifying his echo chamber is a dangerous one indeed.

Nothing ages you more immediately than being called 'Mrs.'

Just as kids need to learn to respect their elders, we are a society that increasingly respects our youth.

I think there's something very disingenuous about literally all people who say that they don't care about anyone's approval.

Any responsible essayist or memoir writer who's writing about herself is not just saying, 'Here's what happened,' and opening up her diary. There needs to be consideration of other people's feelings.

There's a bit of a reluctance on my part to promote myself as any kind of hero because the things I've had to overcome in my life are not the deepest, darkest things.

The desperate hunger our president has for approbation has led him to such lengths as claiming that God stopped the rain during his Inauguration. In fact, Mother Nature made sure it rained on Trump's hair the minute he started his speech.

Power is not nearly enough for Trump. Power he already possessed, starting with the money his father gave him, which grew into the money he never paid in taxes because he is 'smart.' No: Power and ambition pale in comparison to Trumpbeth's rapacious grab for applause.

Shaking hands is a pretty good way to get yourself sick, not necessarily with Ebola, but with a million other germs that can cause colds and flu.

I'm writing a book, and there's not even space for a desk in our home. So I spent my hard-earned book money and rented the small apartment downstairs from us.

Women all over this great land are creating spaces just for themselves, most often out of sheds in their backyards. They're fantasy cottages, bespoke bungalows, 'mama maisons,' if you will, for mothers and wives who need a sanctuary - a haven where they can do anything, or nothing.

As a mother, I don't want any girl twerking near my kid at a bat mitzvah.

In case you don't watch much TV or spend time with anyone under 40, 'Really?' is pop culture's pithiest way to deliver a withering put-down.

Adverbs, we know, are meant to modify a verb, an adjective, or another adverb. They help us understand things more clearly, more vividly, more... morely.

Scientists have discovered that, as we age, our brains act like computers with fuller and fuller hard drives. So when we're trying to recall a fact or a word or a name, it takes us longer, because - to put it scientifically - our brains hold a lot of 'stuff.'