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The 10 Best Laptop Bags For The Constantly-In-Motion

July 18, 2018

I need a new laptop bag. I've been carrying my Lo & Sons Seville (pictured above) to and fro across the country for at least 26,000 years (at present count), and it is indeed a great travel bag - two of my good friends have bought one as well, and both are fans - but it's time for a new one, and I've decided that a tote no longer makes sense for my particular needs.

Totes are great. They are sleek-looking and functional, and if I worked in an office and carried my computer back and forth every day I think I'd be fine with one, but my computer bag must be lugged through airports and stashed in teeny-tiny underseat compartments, and when I tend to have one arm occupied by a four-year-old and the other one occupied by two cartoon-covered backpacks (that, of course, both children swore up and down they would carry themselves, mmmmhmmmmm), assorted Einstein's bagel bags, and one VERY IMPORTANT pink bunny that MUST NOT BE DROPPED, having a tote bag strap constantly falling off of my shoulder (causing the tote and the laptop within to bang onto floors and walls and strollers and make me want to cry)...

It's not ideal.

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Eat

Gonna Just Call This “Jordan Pasta”

July 17, 2018

I've been posting recipes to the Internet for nearly ten years. And the fact that I have never posted the one recipe I make more than any other - I literally make it once a week at minimum - is...weird, to say the least. But what happens is that every time I make it and think, "Oh, I should take some shots and post about this!" I figure come on, suuuurely I already have, and so then I just go ahead and eat it.

Except last night I did a quick search on my site while I was stirring the sauce, and: nope. I've never posted it. (Why it took me this many years to "do a quick search while stirring the sauce" is a question I cannot answer for you.)

This recipe is technically named for my son, but ok, I'll tell you the truth: I named it after my son because he loves it, yeah yeah, but mostly because I love it, and now whenever I make it I get to seem like an amazing parent who is making her son's favorite meal for dinner while actually eating...my favorite meal. (Very selfless over here.)

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MY PRODUCTS
BUY THE BOOKS
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CARRYING ON
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RAMSHACKLE GLAM
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THE BIG FAT ACTIVITY BOOK FOR PREGNANT PEOPLE
My Looks

Current Obsession: Clip-On Aviator Sunglasses

July 16, 2018

You should own these, I think. 

I have a thing for sunglasses. We know this. I also have a thing for glasses-glasses - I even went on a full-on mission to track down the glasses Ali Wong wears in her HBO special (it took ages. It was totally worth it).

The problem is that sometimes my thing for sunglasses and my thing for glasses are at odds, because from time to time I am both in the sun, and also in the mood to see. I've thought about picking up a pair of transitional lenses - you know, the ones that turn into sunglasses when you're outdoors? - but another thing I am is very picky, and I've never found a pair that I loved both as sunglasses and as glasses. They feel like separate style categories to me.

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DIARY

Just, Yes.

July 13, 2018

My friend Tia did this braid. You can tell, because it's good.

I have always loved entertaining. More than that, I love being a hostess: making my house look pretty, thinking up cute serving ideas, refilling drinks before glasses are empty. Telling my guests to sit down, have fun, don't you dare touch those dishes, I've got it. I know it might sound odd, but I love it; I really do. It makes me feel good to create a space where where they can feel good. And since we've moved here, summertime has basically been all-entertaining, all the time, because, you know: pool. Which is great, right?! Parties! BBQs! All the festive things!!

Except I can't right now.

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DIARY

The Kind Of Parent You’ve Got To Be Sometimes

July 12, 2018

I took the kids to Rockin' Jump after camp yesterday. Rockin' Jump, for those of you who aren't parents or don't live in the suburbs, is a massive trampoline park populated by oh god, so many small people, the vast majority of whom are physically launching themselves through the air at at any given moment. For safety's sake, there are also lots of uniformed attendants who will yell at them (and you) if they do anything wrong, and the list of "things you can do wrong in the trampoline park" includes "everything that children want to do a trampoline park."

I know. It sounds super fun.

Except my kids (obviously) love it, and so when they said they wanted to go, I was sort of surprised that camp hadn't tired them out...but I thought, what the hell. Because it's summer, and in the summer you can do things like take spur-of-the-moment trips to trampoline parks, and also because I have a little secret about Rockin' Jump:

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Glam Camp
My Looks

Niyama Sol: “Endless” Leggings

July 9, 2018

God I hate my feet. No matter how much I coddle them and coat them in layer after layer of Vaseline and foot acid and Saran Wrap and whatever else on the planet I can find to make them less hideous than they naturally choose to be, they are the Titanic.

I can initiate all the emergency procedures I like, but these puppies are going DOWN.

Yoga is basically saving my life lately, but there is one sad side effect involved: I spend a lot of time every week staring at my feet, and worrying that other people are staring at them, too (and being grievously offended by them, thereby disrupting their own namaste and such). So I've majorly upped my Vaseline/foot acid/Saran Wrap game...but have also decided that really, the best solution is to just hide the damn things.

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DIARY

Five Things

July 6, 2018

Before we begin - on a lighter note - the leggings pictured here are Niyama Sol's "endless" leggings, and they're going to get their own post because if you are a yoga person or a leggings person or just a person, you need these.

Now.

A couple of weeks ago, after I published this post, I got a message from a reader telling me about her dad. Her dad, she wrote, had developed this interesting habit: He'd come up with five things that were virtually guaranteed to make him feel really, really good, and committed himself to doing at least one of those things each and every day of his life. (One of them is eating ice cream, so if it hits midnight and he hasn't done any of the other things that day, he will get himself out to a Thrifty and get a cone in his hand STAT, which makes him sort of a hero.)

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My Looks

The Most Perfectest Ballet Flats On the Planet

July 4, 2018

Yesterday I wrote about the ballet flats that Francesca convinced me to buy (whereupon she FAILED ME by telling me to buy a size too small...and then, annoyingly, reversed said fail by reminding me that I know how to stretch out leather shoes in a pinch, thereby simply expediting what happens to ballet flats anyway, which is why you should, in fact, buy them a touch too small).

And now I'm going to tell you about the shoes themselves, because they're phenomenal.

Before we begin: I am not a ballet flat person. I feel like ballet flat people are sylphlike and graceful and Audrey Hepburn-ish, and I am none of those things. Whenever I try on ballet flats, I feel like I'm playing dress-up, and not in a good way; in a 37-year-old-wearing-my-daughter's-clothing kind of way.

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