Redux: A Penis Shaped Like a Musical Instrument

We haven’t had a post in our occasional ‘Thank God It’s Penis Friday‘ series in quite awhile, so here’s one that we first published in 2013. Warning: images in links may be unsuitable for some. (Oh who am I kidding? Images in links may be unsuitable for most).  By the time dermatologist Sanjeev Vaishampayan met […]

The Hidden Risks of Snot Sucking

Three weeks ago I came down with the flu. I was sicker than I have been in years. For a full five days, I could only manage to quiver on the couch and binge watch old seasons of Scandal. One episode would end and the next would automatically begin until Netflix asked incredulously, “Are you […]

The Last Word

Erik wonders if the nonsense words that populate the best children’s books are a good idea when your kid is already tasked with learning two languages. “Someday he’ll learn the words “muggle,” “orc,” “Ewok,” Klingon,” “melange,” and “thoughtful lawmaker,” none of which are real,” he writes, prompting many assurances in the comments that “melange” is […]

Leading the Bedtime Rebellion

Yesterday at 8:23am, my husband texted me a link. No note, just a string of random letters and slashes and dots. I clicked and landed on a research article titled “Why don’t you go to bed on time?” The manuscript begins like this: “Most people do not get enough sleep on work days despite sleep’s […]

Tenuous Memories of Driving on Ice

When I was five or six years old, my mom’s boyfriend took us ice fishing. He drove his Jeep to the edge of one of Minnesota’s ten thousand lakes and then he kept going, down the boat ramp and out onto the glittering expanse of white. He stopped next to a small ice shanty, and […]

DIY Dog Doctor

Donut the dog has always been a bit of a lemon. “She hates kids. She hates other dogs. She hates physical activity,” says Julia Gilden. Gilden adopted the 80-pound Bearded Collie seven years ago. All the things people love about dogs? Donut didn’t really have many of those attributes. But she was sweet and goofy […]

Powerless: A Puerto Rico Update

A couple of months ago, I wrote about a woman in Puerto Rico who posted a picture of her chicken soup in a Facebook group for lovers of a kitchen gadget called the Instant Pot. We’ve heard a lot of news about the devastation and sluggish pace of recovery in Puerto Rico, but I wanted […]