By Hannah Black Once in a while, living so far away from my family, I have moments of that deep sadness that only a momma or poppa hug can really cure. Even at 28 years old and after five years of living in Bali there are times I want to jump on a plane and [...]

By Chris Erskine Los Angeles Times LOS ANGELES ~ The little boy with the Creamsicle hair is beginning the first grade. He’ll be in Room 15, the note from the teacher advises a few days in advance. “Please get a good night’s sleep the night before school starts and eat a healthy breakfast,” the letter [...]

By Chris Erskine Los Angeles Times LOS ANGELES ~ Several large IKEA bags rest outside the little girl’s bedroom door. She is leaving for college soon. By all estimates, she will barely sleep her freshman year, yet she seems to need $300 in bedding. So be it. I try to pick my battles. The other [...]

By Chris Erskine Los Angeles Times LOS ANGELES ~ Random thoughts, while waiting for my advanced-placement steroid tests to come in: * I don’t want to go to any movie that’s louder than my own kids. * Joe Torre is the best thing to happen to Los Angeles since the movie camera. * When someone [...]

By Chris Erskine Los Angeles Times LOS ANGELES ~ I’ve been giving it serious thought, and I’m pretty convinced spiders are taking over the world. Not that they wouldn’t do a better job. In the kitchen, there’s a web running from the skylight to the stove. It glistens in the morning light, which leads me [...]

By Chris Erskine Los Angeles Times LOS ANGELES ~ I was thinking the other day, while I was getting my toes done, that I need to get out of Los Angeles before it’s too late, before I start frequenting spas or doing picnics at the Hollywood Bowl on a regular basis. In about five years, [...]

By Chris Erskine Los Angeles Times LOS ANGELES ~ I try to keep moving, just so they don’t toe-tag me and send me off to the morgue. I run in the mornings and lift in the evenings, mostly beer and the on-sale Chardonnays. “Dad, you look great for 57,” one of the kids said the [...]

By Chris Erskine Los Angeles Times If you don’t like Orange County, you don’t like America. They are happy here, “Hi-how-are-ya” happy. I wasn’t welcomed with such passion at my own wedding, by my own bride (It was an arranged marriage. She arranged it; I pretty much just showed up). Yes, it’s good to be [...]

By Chris Erskine Los Angeles Times LOS ANGELES ~ Add taxes to the things I hate – Valentine’s Day, toll roads, pasta salad (not a pasta, not a salad). Now there’s taxes too. I’m a yankee-doodle cheapskate, from way back. I’m so tight, you could mint pennies between my fingers. You could press nickels between [...]

By Chris Erskine Los Angeles Times LOS ANGELES ~ By some accounts, it’s been a long summer. One week in, and Posh is ready to jump from a bridge (preferably one in Paris or San Francisco, where the shopping is decent and you can get a really good cup of coffee). The other morning, the [...]

By Chris Erskine Los Angeles Times LOS ANGELES ~ This is the quirkiness we will miss, one of the oddities that will leave life a little empty after our teenager jets off to college in August, miserable August, only two months away. The other morning, I walk into the kitchen to find Posh washing three [...]

By John Kelly The Washington Post For the past three months, I have been carrying around in my briefcase a prescription for new eyeglasses. Do I HAVE new glasses? No. Why? Because I’m too busy to get them. Because I haven’t gotten new glasses, and thus see the world as if looking through a scratched [...]