Whenever someone starts a conversation by saying, “I had the most incredible dream last night,” I want to stick forks in their eyes. I used to be quasi-polite about it and I would listen with eyes wide, as if to indicate interest, but a film of utter disinterest clouded my gaze with every ridiculously minute detail.  Dreams mean NOTHING, people! Or if they mean anything, we still haven’t figured out what.

I have four children, as I’ve told you many times, and many a morning was devoted to the wandering dream recollections of one or more of them. “I was in school and Mr. Miller called on me to answer a question about dinosaurs, and then I wasn’t in school anymore and then I realized I forgot my lunch, no wait, somebody stole my lunch and I was crying so hard and then we all lined up and they forgot me on the playground and I wasn’t wearing my uniform skirt-only my pajamas– and then I woke up!”

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A couple of Fridays ago I wrote about those moments right before I fall asleep that scare me and bring up the loneliness of being newly-divorced. The responses were many and broke down into four categories.

1.  Get a dog (or cat or something else with a pulse that didn’t back-sass.)
2.   Smoke pot, take herbs, listen to white noise.
3.   Avoid pills at all costs, particularly Ambien.
4.   Stop your whining and go to sleep already!

It’s #4 that particularly interested me because most of the people who thought I was a big fat baby were married women (and some men) who no longer sleep with their spouses. Most of my friends and acquaintances follow my blogs, which is usually great, but occasionally humiliating (I think they’ve organized a phone tree to make sure I don’t kill myself between the hours of 10pm and 2pm because of that last blog. Just kidding again, you guys!) In the ensuing couple of weeks since that post on sleeping single they have been coming up to me and phoning and emailing me about their own experiences.   MORE ›

If you follow my blogs, you know that I’m newly single after 24 years of marriage and four kids. I write about it now because Sleep is the theme this month and my sleep has definitely been affected. For one thing, I have become a bit phobic about going to sleep. I love going to bed, but I’m afraid to go to sleep.

As a wife and mother, I expressed much of my love for my family by making beds for them that were irresistibly soft and silken, not too warm/not too cold, with the top sheet untucked at the bottom so that their feet wouldn’t be forced to point down when they lay on their backs, double pillows of down with the loosest stuffing so that they stayed punched down in the middle after you got them just right and, my secret ingredient—sheepskin pelts on top of the mattress and under the contour sheet. MORE ›

This morning the news shows replayed what seems to be Elin Woods’ frantic call to 911 seeking paramedics to help her mother. Did you hear it? This poor girl is half-hysterical that her mother is collapsed in agony and when the operator asks if her mother is breathing, Elin helplessly responds with something like, “I don’t know; I had to come here to the phone!” She then seems to rush back to check her mother’s respiration.

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There is no question in my mind that Michaela and her husband (old what’s-his- name) just flew through the three security posts at the White House dinner for the Indian president because she was a confident and attractive blonde with a smile as big as Christie Brinkley’s. If the Salahi’s were just two beige-y people who looked a little intimidated by their first White House visit, they most certainly would have had their names checked against the guest list, even if the invitations were tattooed on their foreheads. MORE ›

Christmas comes “early” this year, meaning, according to my mother, that Thanksgiving is “late” and there are not quite four weeks separating the two most elaborate and stressful American holidays. “Bring it!” I say, because the anticipation is killing me.

It started when Halloween and the end of Daylight Savings Time were crammed into the same night. I may have gotten an extra hour to sleep the next morning, but I awoke to the screeching news that I only had 55 more shopping days till Christmas. As someone who occasionally relied on the “rhythm method” for birth control, I’ve got four kids to illustrate that I can lose track of at least thirty days without blinking. MORE ›

Let’s not get distracted by asking why in the world I would ever even think I might need personal protection—my delusions are my own business. I’m just saying that, via some odd cosmic coincidence, bodyguards have been on my mind.

U2 performed in Southern California on Sunday and I scored a pre-show party pass. It wasn’t an excruciatingly discriminating guest list to my eye, but I was thrilled to be in a big tent with places to sit and tray-served champagne. Just as I was fluffing up with self-importance for sharing oxygen with everyone from Frank Gehry to Paris Hilton, I was nearly knocked to the floor by what looked like an NFL reject who had traded helmet and pads for a navy blue blazer and an earpiece.

It wasn’t the first time I’ve been collateral damage to the rapid ingress or egress of a VIP, so I knew the duck, roll and quick turn required to survive the blow AND see the special person who is in need of protection from me.  She was stunning—taller than her bodyguards—and well, nobody. Well, I’m sure she’s somebody to her children and famous husband, but no one who I could conceive of as being in imminent danger of attack. MORE ›

David Letterman is this week’s Exhibit A in the ongoing case of Powerful Men v. Sexual Integrity, having climbed over Roman Polanski, who was last week’s winner.   Congratulations, David. And as I look over the year’s debris of the rich and powerful men (even if it was occasionally a wealth paid for taxpayer dollars, in the case of a couple of politicians) I’ve surmised one truth: These guys were losers in high school.

How do I know this? Well, just look at them. I don’t think there’s a football hero among them. These guys were the short guys, the dweeby guys, the bookworms who not only didn’t get the cheerleaders and homecoming queens, but who, when they show up at high school reunions were greeted with, “I didn’t even know you went to this school!” MORE ›

Why is there all this sentimentalism and taking of sides on the issue of whether film director Roman Polanski should serve his time?  As of last evening, Debra Winger and other members of the film community were uniting to save Polanski like he was a harpooned mother dolphin in Japanese waters, and on the other side, victims of priest abuse were demonstrating to show that, no matter how much time has passed, Polanski belongs in hell with his fellow child predators.

Let’s see if I have this right; Polanski, apparently with the ambitious acquiescence of the mother dreaming of stardom for her thirteen year-old daughter, gave champagne and some part of a Quaalude to the child and then had anal sex with her. Am I setting this little romance up properly? Oh yes, I believe there was a Jacuzzi involved.  I want to make sure I capture the poetry of it all. MORE ›