My lovely birthday cake (it’s an ice cream cake!) courtesy darling Rama. I got two cakes, actually. The other, from my parents, was a strawberry shortcake. What a lucky gal. “I’m getting older every day,” Sidra said. “How do we stop this?” “We don’t,” I told her. “We just don’t let it stop us.”

I started keeping Good Things lists on Thanksgiving Day many years ago. After getting dressed for dinner and before going downstairs to join the party, I’d sit at my computer and type out all the good things I could think of. Everything that I was thankful for. The lists were long, rambly and sometimes ridiculous. […]

I was introduced to my pal Gregory a few years ago by a common friend. He had a web site, too, and I loved reading it. He wrote about working at a dotcom at the height of its success. He wrote about living on his own in a thriving metropolis. He wrote about art and […]

A girl with angelic blonde curls sat on the floor Indian-style, with a book resting open-faced on her lap. “Please read this, please read this, please read this,” she chanted, loudly, to her mom who was standing beside her, talking on the cell phone. The mom didn’t budge and the girl didn’t stop, not even […]

I shut down this weekend. I was like a household appliance that had been working so much so long that it overheated and shut itself off. So, I stayed home sick Monday and Tuesday. At first, I felt guilty for it, as if I had to be on my deathbed to warrant such a thing. […]

Sometimes, it’s the littlest things that lifts my spirits. Last night, it was a belly warmed with tomato basil soup, my iPod slipped into my left pocket, my hand slipped into my right and Sam Beam’s soothing crooning in my ears as I crossed the Ralphs parking lot to my car in the cold, dark […]

Heather of Dooce.com gives everything she’s got, which amounts to a lot of humor, intelligence, insight and, well, love. One of my favorite features of her site are the newsletters she writes to her baby, Leta. They break my heart in the best possible way every single time. Observe: “Today is a bit of a […]

I feel just as deflated and depressed as many of you do. But, I keep telling myself, now is not the time to lose hope. It breaks my heart to think that those who voted for the first time this year, those who spent countless days and nights canvassing neighborhoods and raising money, those who […]

Can you feel the hope and energy? I can. Last night, my roommate Rima and I beep-beep-beeped our way down Sunset Blvd. past a mob of people carrying “Fire President Bush” signs. We both felt weighed down by the stress and fear of another letdown, but had to constantly remind ourselves that our emotions could […]

Me as Chas Tenenbaum, from The Royal Tenenbaums. Rima was a demented prom queen, Henry was a Hasidic Jew and Rama was a kid dressed up as Superman. It took me 1 1/2 hours and half a can of hairspray to curl my hair last night, and I still looked more Shirley Temple than Ben […]