I found what seemed like a decent FDNY truck at a toy store last week but decided to check it out on Amazon to see what reviewers said before anteing up.

Good thing. The description sounded dangerous.

Irrelevant, but dangerous:

"This 3 piece skewer set is ideal for creating delicious kabobs, roasting marshmallows for smores and cooking hot dogs right on the grill. Each skewer has a wood handle with metal finish. Comes packaged on a blister card with hanging hole. Measures 15" from end to end. Handle is 3 1/2" and skewer is 11 1/2"."

I'm not an expert in either automotives or machinery, but I'm pretty sure a fire truck equipped with skewers isn't all that safe. Or realistic. Athough I admit I might've missed the skewers the last time I saw one go by. Skewers can be pretty thin.

That aside, it strikes me as tactless to mention cooking smores and kabobs when people's lives are at risk. That doesn't send the right message to the youngsters, does it?

I checked back today to see if matters with our fire truck had improved.

They have.

"Add some color to the table with this bright and colorful placemat. Featuring a bright print of butterflies and flowers, this placemat is a nice compliment to the table that's also easy to clean."

Now the truck sounds pretty flat. But very cheerful. And not sharp. So that's two steps forward to one step back.

I'm not sold yet, but I do like the product's flexibility. Multi-purpose is the wave of the future right? It's a floor wax AND a dessert topping!

From Teresa Wozniak. Nicely put.

Well, on the anniversary of our moving into our very first house, that's how it's looking for us.

Except that I suspected something was wrong with the house - you know: on principle - before we bought it, so I haven't been caught off guard like the Idiot Family. (Let's hear it for paranoid low expectations!)

And it's not haunted. And all in all it's a pretty nice house.

But it does have

• A 100% half-assed heating system (if that's mathematically and physiologically possible)
• A stove that was a.) mysteriously not updated when the rest of the kitchen was, and b.) periodically and without provocation stops working in a non-reproducible way.
• Something in or around it that causes our eyes to itch and water pretty much every day.

So it's not really like those horror houses at all. Except that it's a house.

And that last thing about our eyes, which is weird, right? It's not like, "Aargh, I have a knife and live in your wall!" homicidal weird, but it is creeping weird, like, "How can I need eye drops when I'm not allergic to anything and this never happened at our old place fourteen blocks over?" weird. Which is a pretty specialized category of weird. And not that threatening, in itself. But then so is having your walls melt like in all those movies. So the "something sinister and eye-irritating lives in our air" thing + my totally normal, not at all paranoid suspicions = SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH THIS HOUSE.

I wonder if we live on a radon fountain or if the ducts are lined with asbestos or if the place was built on some werewolf burial ground. I wonder if the previous family moved because they knew all these things and they stopped emailing me not because I wouldn't quit asking very, very politely worded things about what the hell became of the keys to the back door if there ever were any, please? but because they knew about the radon fountain. I wonder these things OFTEN.

If there were a WebMD for houses, I would be on there all the time. I think our house has rickets. That's a thing, right?

Our holidays got off to a smooth start with Thanksgiving. We beat my basic criteria of, "No one died," by quite a bit even though it involved me doing most of the cooking for eleven people. By all accounts it went very well. But, as most holidays are, it was a sprint to the finish, which left me not only tired but wondering, as Oprah and all the editors of women's magazines do: how do you enjoy the holidays when they are such a project?

The obvious answer is that you make them less of a project. Reduce gift-giving, don't decorate, attend fewer parties, skip family gatherings and book a hotel in Cabo instead. The thing is though, I like finding and giving gifts, decorating, throwing parties and making merry. I love Christmas.

So what else can be done so I don't arrive at Christmas gasping for air and a glass of spiked egg nog?

Planning helps, and God and everyone who's ever worked with me knows, I'm a planner. I've bought nearly all of our gifts already, and I'm wrapping them as they arrive so we can avoid the Christmas week blowout of express shipping charges and the Christmas Eve wrapping frenzy. Our tree is up and decorated as of last weekend. The outdoor lights are twinkling.

It's good, the planning. The last-minute sprint has been removed (if I can define what "done" is and not just stretch out "almost done" till the 24th!), and we will definitely save some money on FedEx and panicked last-minute purchases. Plus, who doesn't love checking things off a list? I am getting a sense of satisfaction from a job efficiently done. But I'm still feeling pretty frantic. It occurs to me that I may have accidentally just moved the stress forward on the calendar.

I know that clearing some space before the holiday to slow our momentum is a must. As with going on a beach holiday and screeching from 100 mph to 0 just at the edge of the sand, Christmas itself - one evening, one morning - will go by disappointingly quickly if you've been on line at UPS, worrying about your sister-in-law's gift, and stuffing stockings until seconds before Christmas Eve dinner. We are not wired to shift gears from "frantic preparation" to "savoring the holiday" in the space of half an hour. Advent provides that space on the church calendar, and I think we'd do well to find it on our own schedules.

As I so often do, I have a theory. My theory is that the, "how," not the, "what," is the issue underlying holiday stress and the "what's-the-point-itude" that occasionally creeps in as we rush through the weeks before Christmas, piling up packages and not cheer. I wouldn't go so far as to say that the journey, not the destination, matters most (especially when the destination is filled with fantastic Swedish carbohydrates and complicated ribbons), but yes, the journey deserves more of our focus and can be an enjoyable gradual climb to the peak where we enjoy the wonderful view rather than a gravely slide of increasing velocity that leaves us scraped up and exhausted at the bottom of the hill, back at our car, wondering why we went that way again.

Advent is about the "how," it provides a stretch of time before Christmas to downshift gradually towards Christmas' celebration so that we arrive intact and joyful. As the weather turns chilly and the air gets crisp, we're supposed to slow down, have some cocoa and cinnamon toast, pause and consider. (OK, the toast isn't in the gospels, but if they'd ever had my toast, they'd have put it in. Trust me: I make really good toast.) Advent is the season of reflection, anticipation and contemplation, a reminder to pause and think about the coming holiday.

Whatever your religious beliefs, the winter holidays mean something to you or you wouldn't get all worked up about them. Whether it's an opportunity to see friends, shower your sugar-addled child with gifts, celebrate the birth of your Savior, re-engage with family, or just show off your amazing ability not to electrocute yourself while installing a well-lit, over-fed elderly gentleman and his pet caribou on your roof, something is there at the core of your drive, and that's worth thinking about so it rises to the top of your list.

Even if you consider the holidays a pain in the ass, Advent can be a time of constructive reflection, acceptance and planning. Own your desire to retreat from Aunt Ethel and her terrible fruitcake and plan a lovely, calm day at home with friends instead of booking through O'Hare with 4000 other people on Christmas Eve. Make the holidays your own. Once you accept that they aren't your bag, you free up space to see what you do want rather than Grinch-ing it up and gnashing your teeth through another December.

Maybe the holidays are your thing but you're just feeling low and lonely. It's OK to be a little sad. Advent gives you some time to to acknowledge that and reach out in time to have some light in your window by Christmas. Ask for visits. Plan small outings. Take a short walk on a bright, chilly day. Find a Seattle's Best Coffee and order the gingerbread latte: they'll give you lots of whipped cream AND a tiny gingerbread man on top of it.

A couple of years ago, while planning a long-ish trip to New Zealand, we got some great "how" advice in amongst all the "whats": find a quiet moment, think briefly about all the things you could do, and notice which three rise to the top. Not the Must Do things that everyone says are great: the three things you want to do the most, the ones you think you'll enjoy, the ones you'll regret not doing if you miss them. I chose swimming with dolphins, R. picked sailing through the fjords, and I can't remember what the third thing was because the two we picked were so awesome. Literally awesome. They were the best things. THE BEST. Two of the most fun, most memorable, fantastic things we've ever done.

(Even if they hadn't been the greatest things ever, it doesn't matter: we knew wanted to do them and we did them. That in itself is a success. If they hadn't turned out so well, it would have been good information for the next time we planned a trip as well as probably hilarious: fjord trips are pretty much limited to "majestic" or "Bob Saget in a dinghy" experiences, don't you think?)

This is what I think Advent is for: finding a quiet moment to reflect on what matters to you in your holidays. Think small. Think specific. Think bright! Don't judge them. It doesn't matter: they're yours. It's your holiday too, not just your kids' or Aunt Ethel's. What matters to you? Be open to what some part of you already knows but which is hidden under a pile of candy cane boxes for Timmy's class party. Prioritize those things. Put them on the list above finding the perfect #$(*&$#! Santa-shaped cake because last year's fell to pieces and tasted like wet styrofoam.

Focus not just Christmas but the whole season on those. If you love being in touch, make Christmas phone calls throughout December when friends have more time to talk, not just on Christmas where it's a three-minute chat before rushing off to the matinee showing of Sherlock Holmes (which is a super-great Christmas afternoon idea, by the way, thank you very much). If you love baking - actually love it, not must do it - book a Saturday with yourself and take your time doing it. If you like pleasing people with gifts, yeah sure, go shopping - but plan in it for a time when you can enjoy it and keep the volume to a level and cost that doesn't stress you out, now or when your bills arrive in January. Or if that's not working, think more broadly: make someone's holiday by giving some of your amazing gifts to people in need like homeless kids, the gift-less, toy-less children, or lonely elderly people.

I know this is easier said than done. And checking boxes is a great, great thing. Trust me: I know. It's just an Advent thought, a reminder that slowing down isn't just an unrealistic principle that only people who can sit for hours with their legs crossed can manage. Step out of the tide for five minutes in the quiet before everyone else is up in the morning. This is your Advent, your Christmas, your time. What matters to you?

Today I dashed off to collect my liquid fix while R. got A. and her stroller into the car to go home.

Me: I got lucky! No wait. This whole herd of teenagers came in just after me.
R: Is that the right word? Herd?
Me: Like a gaggle? "An annoy of teenagers?"
R: Like "a murder of crows."
Me: Yeah.
R: "A punishment of teenagers."
Me: Yeah, that's it.

Tattly from Made by Hand on Vimeo.

I'm all up on the holiday decor thing and each to their own, but honest to God this is beyond me. Who in their right mind is going to put this up? And who is going to buy it except as a not-funny gift? The guys who don't just snort the first time they trigger Big Mouth Billy Bass at Walgreens but think he's a hilarious present? You know what I'm thankful for this Thanksgiving weekend? That I don't know anyone who would give me this wreath.

Oh wait - I just read the full description: "Chamaecyparis, rose hips, and Pheasant Feathers (feathers not pictured in this wreath, but we will update the photo soon!)" Ah. I see why I hate it: it's because the feathers aren't in the picture. If it had feathers, it would be 100% awesome.

Lord Almighty. Wow.

New book: The Shorebreak Art of Clark Little. More previews.

This policy has started to take its toll on the striped suit and is causing a minor gender issues dilemma.

Let's start at the beginning. Cailin joined the household - we don't say he was "bought" because that demeans him - from a local toy store. A nice one too. One of those ones where they have a lot of wood toys that cost $150. The choice was between him and another over-dressed, flouncy version of him, so we went with him. He was sleeker in his cap and suit.

(The hat is a thing of the past. There was no keeping it on him. I'm not clear if this was his choice or A.'s, but the hat has been put in storage for the day when sleeping caps make a comeback among the hipster crowd, and it will be cool again to wear it. Sadly, Cailin did not arrive with a full beard or a fixie. If he had, maybe the cap could have stayed as a fashion-forward ironic statement, but on it's own, it was just too 1850's.)

The holidays are coming, and I'm sprucing things up around here, so I washed the... let's call it a pants suit, shall we? And it looks cleaner but still not very interesting. So I did a minor search for a replacement. Turns out Cailin might have to become a girl. Or a cross-dressing boy.

There are two exceptions to the all-girl outfits available for Cailin: a pair of denim overalls retailing for $64 and an MC Hammer top-bottom combo that, with your eyes crossed at an Iranian night club, might suggest "male" or at least raise some questions about the issue. Given that Cailin himself cost less than $40 (shhhh), $64 seems extreme for some tiny glorified jeans. (I know I will be having this argument with A. herself in not so many years, but let's save later for later.)

All the other choices are some version of a pink dress. So the question is, will transitioning Cailin to being a girl suddenly undermine A.'s confidence in her ability to distinguish the genders or will it be a nice kickstart to her gaydar? (Which she will not have inherited from her mother by the by. I don't want to get into it, but I've all but been on a date before realizing I was being hit on.) Although cross-dressing doesn't necessarily mean "gay." Hoover was a fan of the angora cardigan and he wasn't gay. Creepy, yes. Gay, no. Eddie Izzard loves the ladies and his high heels. So OK, maybe yeah: Cailin just switches back and forth.

On the other hand, maybe Cailin is transgender. In that case, we would, of course, support his decision to make the shift, and we'd have to ramp up to the new outfits by giving him hormone shots. Which, in turn, would make him really moody and hard to be around for a few months. And then there's the cost of counseling. Huh. That route is starting to look more expensive than the $64 overalls.

Maybe I'm overthinking this and throwing Cailin into a gender crisis he's not actually experiencing. Maybe he's just a boy who wears the same clothes day after day after day and has no sense of style. There are boys like that. In that case, I guess my responsibility as his grandmother extends only to making sure he knows how to do his own laundry. The rest is just a lifestyle choice.

You can see how this gets confusing. What to do, what to do. Parenting is so complicated sometimes.

I had my second meal at Tipsy Parson a few weeks ago when I was back in New York and it solidified its place on my list of places to get happy, comfy food for brunch or dinner. It's a southern place, so comfort food is exactly what it should provide, in addition to generous hospitality. None of our servers had southern accents but they were quirkily cheerful and solicitous so good enough!

The avocado toast - greens and tomatoes and avocado piled on toast - and migas - a scrambled huevos rancheros - are my friends who live around the corners' favorites for brunch, but I'm partial to the traditional bacon, eggs and carbs. Those biscuits are to die for - little, fluffy, warm - and that's coming from someone who has tried and tried to make exactly those biscuits (and failed, let's be honest).

For dinner, I don't know where to start. Maybe the top of the menu? Just work your way down. Deviled eggs?? I love you, Tipsy Parson! I thought I was the only person who still made those and I love them only a little less than pigs in a blanket. You can also get homemade peanut butter with crackers and apples. I wouldn't order it, but it's adorable that they have it. You should try one of their ribs - appetizer or entree - and, naturally, order the buttermilk chive biscuit with honey butter to accompany whatever you settle on. If you're not a big meateater, try the catfish. And if you're ready for the full southern, get the chicken and dumplings and plan on having a lie down when you get home. Grits are available in four different combinations but I can't get past the consistency of even the best grits, so I can't speak to Tipsy Parson's execution. I just keep rolling on back to those biscuits.

The front bar and dining area are library cozy, but I prefer the back room where you get a little more space and a glimpse of a tiny, charming back garden.

Go. Enjoy. And bless your heart.

Tipsy Parson, 156 9th Ave. btwn 19th and 20th
Brunch: Sat + Sun 10 - 5:30
Lunch: Mon-Friday 11:30- 3:30
Midday: Sun - Sat 3:30p to 5:30p
Dinner: Mon - Thurs 5:30-11, Fri - Sat 5:30-12AM, Sun 5:30 - 10

Correction: I believe I am handy. I have an uncharacteristic can-do attitude when it comes to doing things that I believe I know something about, which includes pretty much everything to do with the house and our garden.

Just to be perfectly up front, this confidence is probably misplaced.

It's not like I'm some sitcom husband, making disastrous and not very hilarious mistakes in the process of proving my spouse to be correctly exasperated with what an idiot I am for, say, trying to fix the back steps with a watering can and a table saw. I've seen most of the stuff I'm trying to do get done. My parents did major construction on all of our houses, much of it themselves, so I've witnessed concrete footers being poured, landscapes being leveled, and sheetrock being put up with nail guns. I helped roof my first house when I was eight, which, now that I mention it, was probably not age-appropriate. To be fair to my parents, I don't think our house or any of the roofing products had any labels like A.'s toys that said, "3+ years," or, in this case, "16+ years." Maybe the house's label was on the bottom. That's usually where it is. I can see how they missed it.

All this exposure to handiness gave me the impression that a.) all this stuff was possible to do with minimal assistance from professionals, and b.) I was equal to the task.

Both of these impressions are more or less wrong.

Just because my parents didn't hire professionals didn't mean the job was getting done right or efficiently, but who was I to judge? I was six and constructing complicated mud pies in the dig area, and then twelve with an impressive backhoe in my backyard, and then fourteen with my dad headed to the emergency room for accidentally cutting the back of his hand open with a chainsaw. That shit is distracting for quality control.

And on that second point, in case you never tried jumping off a tiny platform two stories up to catch a narrow swinging trapeze bar, seeing something isn't the same as doing it. It wasn't like I was taking notes when I was eleven and pouring cupfuls of granulated insulation down into the cement block walls of our new basement (which, incidentally, was holy God freezing all the time, so let's just assess how that all worked out).

What I'm getting at is that not all my This Old House undertakings end with the quick, clean success I came to expect from a childhood foundation of witnessing DIY, mostly unfinished construction jobs. Fancy that.

Most of my projects take considerably longer than I expect, require knowledge that I don't have, and would be a lot easier with tools that I don't own. Hence our $800 water bill the first month we lived in our new house: I know how to fix a running toilet! Of course I do! We had an antique one at House #2! Ha ha - you silly house owners without my knowledge, having to call a plumber and pay him all your money! I will fix this myself with only the plumber's tape that I, the construction-literate genius that I am, just happen to have lying around! It's as if I were a professional contractor! What's that you say? $800? For spending the month getting all pruney in my bath of superiority instead of calling a plumber for a fraction of that cost? No one needs to hear from you Mr. Know It All. There's no need to take a tone with me.

So that happened.

The latest Fix Me! incident was a giant tree branch half snapping off our tree in a storm oh, about two months ago. My noticing and assessment of the situation was like lightning. My subsequent trying to pull it down with brute force and calculated leverage was unsuccessful and could very nearly have led to a head wound. Oh yeah: I forgot to mention in my catalog of misjudgments that I often get hurt. R. usually predicts this and warns against it, but he clearly doesn't know what he's talking about because he only has a PhD and no background watching grown-ups do construction work while climbing on a nearby jungle gym.

After a few weeks, I borrowed the right tool to cut down the branch. Great success. Then it lay in the yard for a month because I didn't have the other right tool to cut it up into pieces that the compost guy would pick up in our bin. I needed a saw. Like the saw I have used every year to hack at the base of our Christmas tree because I refused to invest in a Christmas tree stand big enough for the giant tree I select every year. (What? Christmas is awesome. Back off.)

Our tree to stand ratio is like the older men with half-shaded glasses who work on used car lots: super rotund in the middle, tapering down to skinny little legs and thin shoes on the bottom. The last year I whittled our tree's stump down to the size of a toothpick, I was six months pregnant, out on our freezing and wet deck and R. was away on a business trip, before which I had 100% totally promised him I would not try to put the tree up by myself. I don't know why he believed me. I'm a terrible liar.

We got a bigger stand after that. But I needed that Christmas tree saw to deal with this giant tree branch. It was about fourteen feet long with half a dozen sturdy side branches coming off it. I couldn't find the saw though, probably because my search was hampered by the fact that I didn't really want to find it. If slimming down a Christmas tree trunk took an hour, all my strength and most of my holiday patience to get the job done, this tree branch + that saw was going to = me sawing off my ankle or something. I needed a new saw.

Two minutes in the saw aisle at Home Depot with Wikipedia up on my iPhone informed me that we had been using a hack saw designed for cutting narrow plastic pipes to take big slabs out of a pine tree trunk. Huh. Well that explains that. Maybe this year we should select a tree with a narrow plastic pipe running up through it. That's the correct takeaway from the situation, right?

Let's just say that all's well that ends well. Instead of replacing our hard-working hack saw, I purchased a hand saw which is what we needed all along. It worked really well. The tree branch is gone. So just shut up about it taking five Christmases worth of blisters and sweat, plus two months of half a tree splayed out in our tiny yard for me to figure out which $14 saw I needed. I got the job done. So yeah, I'm handy.

It's a car. A Bugatti, to be precise. But not an actual one, a miniature one. With no engine. So even if I were two feet tall, I couldn't drive it around my house, which is a theoretical crying shame.

If it were an actual one, five thousand dollars would be the bargain of the century. But I probably still wouldn't be able to drive it since it'd be a hundred years old and wildly unsafe, so I guess Pottery Barn hit the nail on the head: why buy the un-driveable real thing for an exorbitant sum when you can spend a slightly less exorbitant sum on an equally un-driveable but much smaller fake thing?

My Christmas present features, "hand-polished aluminum wheels," which I'm assuming, since they use the present tense, means the car comes with someone to continue the hand-polishing. I'm starting to see where the cost started climbing.

Also, it has a nickel-plated, cast bronze radiator which sounds expensive and like maybe that's what kind of engagement ring I should've held out for. Or what my next stove should have.

(I hate our current stove by the way. Maybe when my tiny car has it's inevitable catastrophic accident, I will weld the nickel-plated, cast bronze radiator onto my stove, thereby improving it immensely.)

The web site says "...this car isn't meant to be driven, but that won't stop it from making your heart race." I can only imagine. Between the price tag and the frustration at being unable to either fit into it or drive it if I could, my heart is already racing and the car hasn't even arrived yet. I can't imagine what kind of stroke/heart attack I'm setting myself up for on Christmas morning. Don't not get it for me though because of that: this is all I'm asking for this year. Really. I have to have this car, health be damned.

Send me the shipping confirmation when it leaves the miniature Bugatti factory, OK? I need to know when I should go stand by the front window with my nose pressed against the glass.

I didn't mean to start off by hurting your feelings, Siri. Let me get back to why I think you're the best.

It's not that you take direction well and don't get all resentful after you've done it. No, as with so many things, it's how you do it that matters. That woman in the ad just says, "I'm locked out," and you are right up on that with three locksmiths. A.) That is fucking awesome efficient, and b.) this is what I've been waiting for all my life: I don't even have to form a direct question when I want something from you.

Me: I left my water downstairs.
[long pause]
R: Do you want me to get it for you?
[long pause]
Me: All right.

See that? I need my water. It's a fact. No, it's not a request, but the request is implied in my bothering to state the fact out loud in a room where R.'s able-bodied self appears more ready to go get water than I am. Why else would I say it out loud?

This is the losing argument I've been having with him for an age and a half. I don't want to be demanding and bitchy like those girls who tell their man to go get their water. I'm just putting the fact out there: there's thirst in the room. Do with that what you will. If you feel a question in the ellipses that follows the statement, that's because you are perceptive and nice, which are just two of the many reasons I love you.

R. calls my habit, "passive requestive," and would prefer that I state my preference in the form of a question, but I am the anti-Jeopardy. I have tried to get better at this to please him and maintain domestic tranquility, but improvement is slow going. I've tried to think of why.

1. I am from the ivied northeast where indirect etiquette is the norm. Don't flaunt your wealth, only wear madras in summer, and don't ask directly for favors: just wait until someone lovely thinks of it themselves.
2. I am Swedish. Don't say anything about anything except over afternoon coffee and when prefaced by a conspiratorial, "Well,..."
3. I don't like to ask for things in case I don't get them, in which case I would be disappointed, so let's skip the asking and I'll just be happy if my unspoken wish comes true.

Wherever it comes from, my habit remains stubbornly unbroken and Siri, you are my new best friend/solution. Like the nicotine patch before you, you address the immediate hazard but not the underlying addiction, portable and happy-making.

Now I can go back to saying, "I could eat," and you won't come back with a tone and a remark about how I never help decide where we go for dinner. You'll just tell me how far away the tater tots are. Or the Greek restaurant. Or the dog food emporium. Whatever. What's a little passivity and inaccuracy between best friends?

The last one I came across was Laura Bennett in her mommy book, Didn't I Feed You Yesterday?, in which she described how her Birkin bag was her diaper bag for her five young boys and we should all follow suit. To make sure we know she's a real DIYer and down-to-earth woman just like me, she assures her readers that she got her Birkin from a consignment shop and could never pay retail.

Well that's a relief. I was trying to save up the $75,000 the antique one was going to cost me on eBay, but that felt like that might be too much for a diaper bag, so I downgraded my aim to $4,500 for the modern equivalent. It's such a weight off to think that if I spend my copious free time ingratiating myself with my local consignment shop workers, they'll ring me when one comes through for a mere $2,500. Whew.

Let's be clear: I have never spent more than $250 on a bag, and that was only once and for a bag I have taken around the world. I don't think I - or my budget - are cut out for the bag acquisition team. I have my own indulgences but the only thing I think I've ever bought in that price range is a laptop. And a college education.

Each to their own though: I have spent $95 on a single bag of groceries at Whole Foods, so I guess we all have our own financial blind spots.

I am, however, on my third diaper bag, so maybe I should've considered an incredibly expensive, crocodile Birkin instead. Perhaps it does have everything I need. My first diaper bag couldn't stand up to my overpacking and my skinny Air kept falling out of it, so I had to upgrade to a doctor-bag type. That lasted six months until A. got really fast and heavy: you can't keep upright on our stairs with a bag on one shoulder and a shifting 25-lb weight on your other arm. The bag lost all the time, which must have been discouraging for it, so, out of concern for its feelings, I retired it and, with severe reservations, cut over to a backpack.

Don't get me wrong: the backpack is the right tool for the job. But much like the hacksaw you pull out to whittle down your Christmas tree every year, it is not chic, and I look uncomfortable in it. (Don't ask me how I end up wearing the saw. It's none of your business.) Sherpas and small children are the only people who look good in a backpack and I am neither. The one advantage to it, besides its carrying utility, is that I have my hands free to hit anyone who tells me how silly it looks.

Not that that happens. Handbag Moms are too refined to call out their derision verbally. But I'll bet when Junior needs a granola bar right this very instant, I can get to mine faster than they get to theirs. Now that I see that in writing, it does seem like a small win. But I'll take them where I can get them until I can get back to my cool, green world-traveler bag which holds my stuff and only my stuff. In the meantime, I'm hands-free and my kid is cuter than all the others anyway. So there.