Eliana Osborn

I am going to have amazing posture. My neck will look so skinny just from the way I hold my head.

It is hard to find any real numbers about how many people do "direct sales" or how much money they make. The web is full of either big promises or pissed-off former sellers. What I do know, from bazillions of friends and family, is that making much more than pocket money means selling like a real job. Yes, it might be more flexible, but there’s no magic formula.

My Life on the Road (or MLR) is not what I expected...the idea of not waiting for experience to come to you permeates the book.

Sometimes the nicest kids turn into whole new people when they come over to your house.

We take weekend turns. He does vacations and summers. Literally. He takes them away. It is great.

Standardized tests are taking over the world. I can say this because it is true. Like a creeping vine that seems attractive and charming at first, tests appear to be reasonable for the data and direction they can provide.

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.

I’m not there yet. But I need to be honest—I’m closer to 40 than any other multiple of five.

You know how someone can give you a compliment that you know isn’t true? Like, they tell you a dress looks good when you are absolutely certain that is not the case? But if they keep saying it looks good, you start to think “Yeah... this looks good.”

When I’m staring at the wall trying to keep my cool when my 6-year-old is hysterical about the tiny bump on his finger, I attempt to channel some of the good parts.