Eliana Osborn

The most important things my mother taught me included work from Neil Diamond, Billy Joel, Wham! and Whitney Houston.

Sick of hearing about your friend's perfect pregnancy?Give one of these amazing gifts at the baby shower and you shouldn’t have to worry about this anymore.

In Anchorage, Alaska, there are 5 hours, 27 minutes of daylight on December 21. The good news: The numbers only go up for the next six months. The bad news: December 22 has merely seconds more light.

Kirk Cameron in all his Growing Pains glory was the ideal crush. Unthreatening, goofy, good kid with very reasonable weekly conflicts. And a good smile. Always been a sucker for that.

1. Borrow a child.

I always have a small piece of my brain on mom mode, no matter what else is happening. I have no problem with this, since that is how humanity has survived.

A new, exciting trend is to have food pantries for college students. I talked to an AmeriCorps volunteer running one of these centers and she was matter-of-fact about the need — and how little is being done. Today’s college students may be young and single, living la vida loca. But more and more are what we call ‘nontraditional’: slightly older, employed full-time (or close to it), supporting a family, a veteran, etc.

Hunger for nontraditional students doesn’t mean surviving on ramen: It means they are not the only person in the household who's in need.

Size, like age and salary and whatever else, is just a number. Pretending numbers don’t measure things isn’t helpful. I’m 38 years old: That isn’t good or bad, but it IS different from being 18 or 50.

In this film, we got to walk backstage with the young Broadway actress currently playing Annie. She explained the rules for taking on the role: Once a girl started her period, she couldn’t be Annie.

Your partner will make you want to throw up at some point. Pure, unadulterated disgust.