Winona Dimeo-Ediger

When you’re helping people zip up dresses and watching their reactions to certain items of clothing, you start noticing patterns. Here are four of the phrases I hear most often in the dressing room, and how I wish — oh, how I wish! — I could respond.

12. Was someone just like, “I have a great idea: let’s shave part of a goat and then kind of ball up the hair and glue a pin on the back and call it a goat hair brooch”?

A New York Times editorial about women’s proclivity for apologizing for things that aren’t their fault has been making the rounds on social media this week. For many of us, the article hit home in a pretty profound way, especially the scene where the author, Sloane Crosley, described saying “sorry” multiple times for a restaurant messing up her order, something over which she had absolutely no control and in fact should have been receiving apologies for.

Basically, if you took a map of the world and put red pushpins wherever something terrible was happening, you’d find a millennial directly in the center, snapchatting.

...canning stuff is the best. It makes you feel like a badass pioneer woman preparing for the Oregon Trail except in this scenario you’re making orange basil marmalade for brunches rather than sustenance and you have unlimited access to a shower.

Me: Alright, hit me with some suggestions.

Holiday Gift Guide: Drum roll, please! How about… a tie?!?

Sarah Von Bargen believes yes is more fun than no.

1. Only eat salad and grilled chicken. Salad and grilled chicken, as a general rule, don’t ruin lives. Salad and grilled chicken are great... sometimes. Unless you’re going to amazing restaurants all the time and ordering nothing but salad and grilled chicken — then salad is definitely ruining your life.

I’d been so busy patting myself on the back for conquering my big fears, I failed to acknowledge that the types of things that scare me had shifted. A lot of the obvious stuff didn’t bother me anymore — but what about all the smaller, more personal things that still scared the living shit out of me?

For example, if you’re having gastrointenstinal distress, resist the urge to hashtag it with something generic like #diarrheacramps. Instead, include your first and last name and the date to make it your own: #LynnSmithDiarrheaCrampsFebruary2016.