ArcaMax

At 1 a.m. on a Sunday, I woke up to hear the new robot vacuum vacuuming. The next night I heard it whirring around again at 1 a.m., then Tuesday it was the same thing.

"What the heck is going on with that thing?" asked my husband as we heard the vacuum banging on our bedroom door to get in.

"Obviously, it wants to clean in here," I said, ...Read more

Every year around this time, I get inundated with emails telling me about the latest fall trends and what I should buy and what I should toss. Having been down this wardrobe rabbit hole before, I didn't want to make a fall fashion faux pas, such as I did last year, when one trendsetting site told me the "it" shoe was a pointed witchy boot that...Read more

"Hey honey, I just found out I can make a meatloaf in the slow cooker," I told my husband.

"No offense," said my husband, "but we don't even really like the meatloaf you make the regular way."

I frowned. I couldn't be mad at him because I knew it was true. I did not have the greatest meatloaf reputation. When it came to making a dish as ...Read more

It took me many years of schlepping bags of heavy groceries from the market to my house before I realized I was the only one in my neighborhood doing it. Most of the other suburban shoppers had already realized what Domino's Pizza learned years ago: If it can be delivered, deliver it.

Newly wise to the ways of grocery procurement, I ...Read more

"Hey honey, why is there a roll of toilet paper in my shoe?" my husband asked.

It was a perfectly reasonable question. People don't normally store rolls of toilet paper in their husband's shoes. But I had a DEFCON-5 toilet paper storage situation. Also, I'm not normal.

The trouble started when I ordered toilet paper online. I had hastily ...Read more

"Ow!" I said as I went to lift the pan off the stovetop.

"What's 'ow'?" asked my husband, glancing over from the kitchen counter where he was working.

"I hurt my hand yesterday," I said, massaging the area of my hand where my first and second finger met. "I think I sprained a knuckle."

He gave me that look.

"I don't think that's possible,"...Read more

No matter what I make for dinner, cleanup in our house is a pretty speedy affair because we have three dishwashers. First, there is the electronic one, which does a pretty good job, assuming you prewash the dishes before you run them through the dishwasher. Then there's dishwasher No. 2 -- my husband. He's generally responsible for the ...Read more

I'm a pretty loyal consumer. Once I find something that works for me, whether it's ketchup or toothpaste, I usually stick with it unless something truly horrible happens, like they change the formula and go all New Coke on me. At those times, I question my very existence and wonder if I can continue to live on a planet where someone will ...Read more

On a typical day, I will probably get about 30 spam emails. Most of them are for diet pills, a few are for magic cellulite cream (are you noticing a theme here?), and occasionally I get one from a Nigerian prince letting me know he has a million dollars for me if I just give him my bank account number to transfer the funds. Of course, I never ...Read more

The first thing I noticed when I got into the Uber was the smell of salami. I immediately thought about the salami sandwiches with mustard on white bread my mother used to make me for lunches as a child, and like one of Pavlov's dogs', my mouth started to water. I probably hadn't eaten a salami sandwich in 25 years, since my kids were little, ...Read more

I'll be the first to admit, I don't really know much about cars. So when my car started making a funny noise, I had no idea what it could be. I knew this noise wasn't its regular noise. The regular noise usually sounded like "vroom-vroom," but this new noise sounded a little like "cough-cough." Although I wasn't very car-savvy, I was a mom, ...Read more

"I think I'm turning into a werewolf," I told my dermatologist as I sat on the examining table in her office. There were posters on the wall and pamphlets for the treatment of wrinkles and fat, but nothing for werewolves.

"Why do you think that?" she said, peering at my pores. A thankless job if ever there was one.

"I'm starting to grow hair...Read more

"What's for dinner tonight?" my husband asked, inhaling deeply as he lifted the top off a simmering pot of tomato sauce.

I shooed him away.

"We're having spaghetti marinara," I said.

"Cool," he said. "But I thought we were eating gluten-free?"

"We are," I assured him.

"But pasta isn't gluten-free."

"It's not actually spaghetti. It's ...Read more