SuburbanKamikaze

Wait.  Have it all?  I thought they said "do it all."     Read Full Story

R eally, I sometimes wonder where she came from. How did this family of malcontent wine drinkers, introvert math prodigies and grumpy investigative scribblers spawn the little crop of sunshine we call Pook-a-noodle or sometimes McGallon ? How many 14-year-olds will even let you call them Pook-a-noodle?   An editor called me a "ray of sunshine in the office" once, but the office was a newsroom so the Best Disposition award was pretty much just sitting there for the taking. Anyone who... Read Full Story

Y ou can hardly hear yourself drink in our house these days with all the clapping and spelling going on. Girl Kamikaze's newest burst of inspiration has taken her into the exclamation point-riddled world of the eighth-grade cheerleading squad. Go! Fight! Win!   She could not be any more excited. We could not be any more scheduled . But she is not the kind of girl who puts any stock in the concept of time as a finite resource .  Which brings us to the first habit of a highly effective... Read Full Story

Seventeen years and 3,000 gallons of milk later, a full-grown man has sprung up right before our eyes. I'm not going to lie to you, we did it for the money. Read Full Story

from our winter clearance sale: A Blizzard Runs Through It , Cold Play , The 5 Stages of Winter Read Full Story

W e are working our way through a list of class choices for her freshman year when the girl's anxiety begins to show. She begins high school in the fall, and as chair of the household Education and Paperwork Committee, it's my job to ensure that all 987 pieces of paper associated with registration and class selection are filled out, lost and then rediscovered in a pile of dust behind the couch at the last possible minute. As chair of the Stuff that Requires Tools Committee, it is Mr... Read Full Story

The Backstory: The author, who suffers from aspirations, is taken in by a New York family's description of how a piece of Williams-Sonoma cookware changed their lives.  *** W as it fear of commitment that kept me afraid of committing to the oddly-shaped Nordic pancakes known as ebelskivers? Or something stickier? If I was going to be completely honest with myself, I had to acknowledge that there was something about the oozy fruit filling and the dusting of powdered sugar that suggested... Read Full Story

B ut something told me this would be different. How could ebelskivers be wrong? Were we so different from any other family in Newburgh, N.Y.?  "Ebelskivers are now a weekend tradition in our home." - Newburgh, NY. ( Excerpted from "Nordic Ware," by Williams-Sonoma) What did the overpriced cookware catalog family have that we didn't? Other than a $39.95 nonstick pan designed with seven deep wells to ease the batter into the traditional ebelskiver shape? And possibly the accompanying set... Read Full Story

Yes, the dream babies are cute, but try posing teenagers in their sleep and then tell me I'm supposed to be impressed. Go ahead and look . You know you want to. But when you come back ask yourself this: Where do you think teenagers even come from? And who left wet towels all over the floor again? It's the same answer.      Teenage Daydreams:   Because anybody can  take a picture of a baby.    Read Full Story

There was something inspiring about the St-Germain French 77 cocktail, even before we knew anything at all about the gently ushered wild blossoms and the bicycle-mounting Alpine men. The Executive and I had just settled onto two bar stools overlooking the Chicago skyline, but it was clear from the very first sip that this was a cocktail that had more than a view going for it. Handsome, mysterious and with an accent we couldn't quite place, it aroused our tastebuds and our curiosity. This... Read Full Story