There are benefits to being an “early adopter” of new technologies. If you’re a parent, the ability to navigate new technology makes it tougher for your teenagers to write you off as completely clueless. If you’re in the workplace, being able to talk the technological talk makes people born after 1985 decide that perhaps it’s not yet time to put you out to professional pasture. In addition to the parenting and professional perks, sometimes new technology is just plain fun. Virtual Reality apps will let you see how a new sofa would look in your own living room before you buy it at the store. And the iPhone’s “Animoji” technology lets you send friends a voice text message in the [...]

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Dear Mom, This letter is about 29 years overdue, but it took me this long to realize I needed to write it. It turns out you were right all along. It really is hard to ride in the passenger seat while your teenage kid is driving. And you weren’t overreacting to every little thing I did behind the wheel. You were just trying to make sure we both survived the whole terrifying ordeal. I get it now. Boy, do I get it. As you know, I’ve taken your place as the nervous mother in the passenger seat. The baby boy who I once swaddled and cooed at while he smiled up at me from his crib is now a gangly [...]

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In more than 20 years of writing this column, I’ve never recommended a movie. Trained movie critics do it better than I ever could. Plus, people have different taste in movies. What one person thinks is great art or entertainment, another person thinks is a snooze. But today I’m breaking my 20-year rule to tell you that the Mister Rogers documentary titled “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” is so wonderful that, if you don’t see it, I’ll feel sad for you that you missed it. It’s that good. I took our three kids to the movies to see it today. Even though they’ve seen reruns of the Mister Rogers Neighborhood show on PBS several times, I wasn’t sure they’d enjoy [...]

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My friend Shannon and I recently went shopping for swimsuits at a clearance sale. Swimsuit shopping is a team sport in which you need a partner willing to grab a different size for you when you’re in the dressing room, someone who will tell you the brutal truth when a swimsuit is not doing you any favors, and someone who will commiserate about the fact that trying on swimsuits is like the root canal of shopping. Shannon and I have enjoyed this level of brutal honesty for a decade now, so we waded into the treacherous waters of swimsuit shopping together. After we searched through racks and racks of suits and collected a handful of “maybe’s,” we had the following [...]

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Tom and I have a problem. Summer television is mostly reruns so lately we’ve been binge-watching episodes of Fixer Upper, Property Brothers and Love It or List It on HGTV. We love these shows, but the producers should really begin each episode with a warning: “The following program contains images of renovations you will want in your home and that will look easier and less expensive than they actually are. Such renovations may be more than your skill level or bank account can withstand. Watch at your own risk.” If we’d been warned, maybe we would have gone out for a walk instead of getting caught up in a dizzying whirlwind of home improvement possibilities. Last week, we found ourselves [...]

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This will sound weird, but lately I find myself fantasizing about learning to knit. Even though I’m not a “crafty” person, I can’t get this image out of my head – me sitting serenely on the sofa, yarn in hand, needles at the ready, just knitting. I even looked up “learn to knit” on YouTube and watched a video about it, wondering if it’s something I could learn on my own. But in the back of my mind, I can hear this baffled voice questioning the would-be knitter: “What’s up with this sudden desire to knit? Don’t you have enough to do already?” The answer to that internal question is “Yes. In fact, I have way too much to do [...]

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American culture likes people who are “outdoorsy.” Society sees it as a healthy, wholesome way to live. Outdoorsy people are generally considered to be adventurous, energetic, and down-to-Earth. Some people boast about their outdoor hobbies on dating profiles, or they post photos of their adventures in the wild on Facebook. But what about those of us who don’t want to hike or bike or ride the rapids? Does that make us bad people? Have you ever noticed that no one ever brags about being “indoorsy”? In fact, indoorsy isn’t even a word. (The spell checker on my computer is losing its electronic mind every time I dare to type it.) The closest word to “indoorsy” is probably “homebody” or “hermit” [...]

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In our laundry room, we have a small bin for “lost socks.” The irony here is that the socks in the bin aren’t lost at all. We know exactly where they are. It’s their twins that are missing, wandering around out there in the domestic black hole where I assume all lost things go, if for no other reason than to torture us. But I keep those single socks, sometimes for up to a year, because of this universal truth: “Sometimes things turn up.” Does it always happen? No. I waited for years for the key to our grandfather clock to show up before finally caving in and buying a replacement key online. But every now and then, the domestic [...]

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When our three kids were babies and toddlers and I stayed home with them full-time, I often felt guilty about doing one thing instead of the other. When I was pushing them on the swings in the backyard, I felt guilty about how long it had been since I’d mopped our sticky kitchen floors. When I was mopping floors, I felt bad about the kids being parked in front of the television, (which, by the way, was the only way to keep toddlers off a wet floor). Even as a stay-at-home mom, I felt like I was failing in my quest to balance work and life. There was never enough of my time to go around. Today, after 10 years [...]

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Last night we watched the finale of a sitcom, The Middle, that we’ve followed for nearly 10 years now. Tom was on a business trip, so it was just me and the three kids parked on the sofa. One of the boys left during the first few minutes of the show because he was magnetically drawn to the Xbox in the other room. The other boy seemed only halfway present, as he occasionally glanced from his phone to the TV screen while wearing headphones and listening to music. As the show’s big finale unfolded, two characters – who’ve been in love with each other all season but weren’t sure that the other person felt the same way – finally got [...]

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