Sometimes I wonder how I ever managed to communicate all those years before my kids came along to edit my conversations. There was no one around to keep the record straight and bail me out of the perpetual state of chaos and confusion they were convinced I lived in. "Last Monday, when I went shopping —" "That wasn't Monday, that was Sunday." "Okay, so it was Sunday. Anyway, I bought six Twinkies-- " "No you didn't. You only bought five." “I distinctly remember buying six Twinkies." "That was two weeks ago on Tuesday—" "Okay, stop. I don't really care what day it was. Who ate my Twinkie?" If they truly cared about the state of my mind, they would have realized that my mind was in fairly decent shape before they started messing with it. At least I knew where my Twinkies were. It became a major undertaking for me to carry on a conversation with a friend over coffee, without having one or more of the kids run into...

When I first admitted to my family at large that there was more to the hours I spent at the typewriter than a desire to improve my typing skills, my kids stood in awe of me. “A writer? Really? Like books ‘n stuff?” (I knew if I kept trying, I’d eventually earn their respect.) But over the years, that glow of admiration waned. They were no longer so quick to tell their friends that I’m a writer, and the only time they asked for my autograph was when they needed a detention slip signed. I suspected that they were starting to take me for granted, but that wasn’t the worse part of my fall from fame. They started thinking that anything I could do, they could do better. “If you don’t watch out,” my oldest daughter told me one day, “I’ll write a book about what a rotten mother you are. It might even get published before your book does.” I decided she should enroll in Tact 101 the next year in school. Then my son brought his autobiography home from school and asked me where he should submit if...