My Shallow World Don't read this if you consider yourself to be a deep, brooding, intellectual. I am as shallow as they get, and I have shallow children. My 11-year-old daughter gives her friends make-overs when they come to visit. I love my plastic surgery. On Back to School Night, I judge my children's teachers by the kind of shoes they wear. –M
Cycles  The key to a happy, long-lasting marriage is knowing that it's common for the relationship to go through many "up" and "down" cycles. Once you realize that, you can feel free to stay married. You can sense it when a "down" cycle is coming on and take measures to avoid it, or, if you're like me, you'll already be in the middle of an intense argument over bottom fish before you "get" it. –M
Breasts Well, we've all got them, but I didn't want mine. –M
Friendship We're intimate creatures. It takes women approximately two and a half minutes upon meeting each other for the first time to discuss all the problems of the female body and recommend a good gynecologist. It's all about how we support each other and how men fit into our world. –C&M
Hazards of a Typical Housewife I have a friend who was knocked unconscious by a frozen pot roast. This and other scary stories from the cul-de-sac. –C&M
What Are We Teaching Our Children? When my daughter was barely five, she was playing house with a neighbor child. I cringed when she said, "Let's play that I got a divorce because my husband was really stupid." Ooops. –M
The Prom When I turned forty I got together with five of my closest friends from high school. We rented a limo, dressed circa 1965: white lipstick, big hair and tiaras, and celebrated our collective birthday. Each one of us was responsible for creating a surprise place to go. So, we handed the limo driver our envelope with the secret destination written inside and he took us out for a wild and poignant night. –M
Decorating Remember the Country Kitchen? How about ivy wallpaper, cherub candle holders and gargoyles? In the suburbs, we call it the decorating virus. One neighbor gets a dried flower wreath and suddenly everyone has wreath variations. It's so much fun to decorate! Straight men don't get it. They can't figure out why there are so many pillows on the bed. –C&M
The Telephone I have a friend who can fit the whole end of the phone in her mouth. But that's not the story. There's call-waiting etiquette, wrong numbers, and I have a great *69 story. –M
The Disaster It was the morning of the Northridge earthquake, I was clinging to my seven-year-old daughter when I heard my husband giving strange commands to someone in our front yard. –M

 

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