Do you plan to leave a $20 bill in the mailbox or send gift cards to school for your child’s teachers? If so, you’re among the many Americans planning to say thank you with tips for service providers like mail carriers and teachers this holiday season.

Bankrate’s 2024 Tipping Culture Survey revealed more than 1 in 3 Americans say tipping ...Read more

Dear Anna,

Usually Mariah Carey season is my favorite, but this year I’m struggling. Everywhere I look, people are cozying up, planning cute holiday dates and posting about their jolly AF lives. Meanwhile, I’m single, spending my evenings scrolling through dating apps and wondering if I should just settle for someone mediocre so I’m not ...Read more

CHICAGO -- A new shelter for homeless single men has opened in Chicago's Rogers Park neighborhood, rejecting typical shelter hallmarks such as congregate living and a ban on residents remaining during the daytime.

Run by the nonprofit North Side Housing and Supportive Services, the shelter at 7464 N. Clark St. can house 70 men in double-...Read more

We have officially entered the "Hard to Buy For" season of life. I am reminded of this every time someone asks me what we'd like for Christmas. No one has said we are hard to buy for in so many words. It's more the looks -- the eye rolls, the raised eyebrows, the barely suppressed expressions of shock and horror.

"We like those little books of ...Read more

Q. My husband’s kids come back to our home with all sorts of stories about their mother and what they do at her house. I feel like I have no privacy. I have told the kids on multiple occasions that what goes on at our house is our business, and I don’t care what goes on at their mother’s home, but they continue to talk about it over there...Read more

For many, “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” is a must-watch seasonal classic.

For Ted Ray, the 1989 comedy about an extended family’s disastrous attempt to celebrate the holiday, is an all-consuming passion, if not a downright obsession.

His homage to Clark Griswold, the movie’s hapless hero, starts with more than 5,000 white ...Read more

Dear Kid Whisperer,

I’m a music teacher in a public middle school. A handful of students consistently lose their music. They are issued a folder and copies of the music at the beginning of the year, but so many can’t keep track of it. Though I know they should just make the copies on their own, our students aren’t allowed to use the copy ...Read more

BALTIMORE -- The melody was played on turquoise ukuleles, with children beating out the rhythm on miniature drums.

“I feel peace when my family is safe,” sang the youngsters and their mothers, who are refugees from Afghanistan. “I feel peace when my friendships are strong. I feel peace when my world is calm.”

It was a simple little ...Read more

Carolyn Dickens, 76, was sitting at her dining room table, struggling to catch her breath as her physician looked on with concern.

“What’s going on with your breathing?” asked Peter Gliatto, director of Mount Sinai’s Visiting Doctors Program.

“I don’t know,” she answered, so softly it was hard to hear. “Going from here to the ...Read more

Since I am in the holiday spirit (and, having just consumed a mug of hot toddy, a glass of eggnog and a nip of cheer, the holiday spirits are in me), I have decided to follow in that great tradition of boring everyone silly by writing a Christmas letter.

That is why I am pleased as punch (which I also drank) to present the following chronicle ...Read more

No one quite knew what to do with Casidy Ludwig when she walked into court this summer for her first appearance as one of Colorado’s newly minted licensed legal paraprofessionals.

She pulled the judge and opposing counsel aside for a primer: She’d be representing her client in a limited capacity, making objections and argument, but not ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — My first meeting with Aescape, the AI-powered massage robot, was benign enough — if a bit eerie. As if HAL had gotten a job in the Valley. I stepped into the austere spa room at Pause, a wellness center in Studio City, and a sturdy massage table commanded the space. It was deep-sea blue and plush, glowing from LED lights that ...Read more

When Jessica Bazzarre Byerly was 8 years old, her parents piled her and her two younger sisters into the family station wagon and set out for a Christmas tree farm in Havana, Illinois (population 2,827), where Byerly’s dad used to go as a kid.

“My parents both thought that cutting down your own Christmas tree was something they wanted their...Read more

CHICAGO — As the boat zipped down the Chicago River on a nippy November morning, Sammie Clark stood up and pointed at a creature swimming in the water, its brown fur slick and its head bobbing just above the surface. It kept close to the edge, a sheet metal wall where the riverbank used to be.

“That’s either a muskrat or a beaver,” she ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — "Code Green" has the trappings of a modern escape room.

We enter what we are told is a hidden bunker-turned-research lab. It's dark, but there are clearly challenges that surround us: patterns in the walls, a cork board filled with notes and images connected by string and, before us on what appears to be a concrete table, a ...Read more

When Jessica Bazzarre Byerly was 8 years old, her parents piled her and her two younger sisters into the family station wagon and set out for a Christmas tree farm in Havana, Illinois (population 2,827), where Byerly’s dad used to go as a kid.

“My parents both thought that cutting down your own Christmas tree was something they wanted their...Read more

Dear Anna,

My partner and I broke up in late April but we had a situationship over the summer. I’m a sophomore in college and I’m excited to get back out there. There’s one problem, I have no clue what I’m doing. I’ve only recently started to learn about sexual guilt and shame because I never focused too much on it while in my ...Read more

As we head into December, we start to glance to the future, to the award-winning flowers for 2025. This is always a terrific choice for your garden dollar, whether you are looking toward the landscape, porch, patio or deck. One such award winner is Supertunia Mini Vista Yellow, Proven Winners 2025 Annual of the Year.

The Mini Vista petunias ...Read more

The cost of infant care varies drastically across the U.S. – from about $8,000 a year in some states to as high as $25,000 in others.

According to Bankrate’s Cost of Infant Care Study, parents pay an average of $14,070 a year to put one infant child in full-time daycare. And overall child care costs are $11,582 on average per year, ...Read more