Eliana Osborn

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.

A haircut is a whole lot cheaper than therapy or tattoos or a round-the-world plane ticket.

1. Write a damn letter.

How do you love someone who continually does things to hurt himself? I’ve been holding a phone with my stoned, sobbing brother on the other end for nearly 20 years. I keep picking up the pieces, keep having my heart break, because he’s my brother.

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.

Help.

If you kill a tortoise, even on accident, you probably shouldn’t have children.

After this, I’m not going to be able to complain about Meghan Trainor and having to teach my son that "All About That Bass" is talking about girls with big booties.

Really, you should thank me. I’m just protecting your future self.

After years in apartments that should have been condemned, even these sad restroom facilities were vast improvements. And so we stayed, the husband and I, vaguely embarrassed when guests stayed over and commented on the bordello vibe of the bathroom.

Then we had a kid. No working bathtub suddenly seemed like a big deal. And the functional bathroom spaces weren’t places you’d want to hang out. There’s a lot of bathroom time once you’ve got tiny humans. (You’ve been warned.)