“What Turning Forty Means to Me I need to take my pants off as soon as I get home. I didn’t used to have to do that. But now I do.”

Thomas Jefferson-another gorgeous white boy who would not have been interested in me. This was my problem in a nutshell. To get some play in Charlottesville, you had to be either a Martha Jefferson or a Sally Hemings.

Lesson learned? When people say, “You really, really must” do something, it means you don’t really have to. No one ever says, “You really, really must deliver the baby during labor.” When it’s true, it doesn’t need to be said.

This week, penny collector Gene Sukie went to the bank and cashed in ten thousand pounds of pennies he had collected over 34 years, which were worth over fourteen thousand dollars. And, of course, I was in line behind him.

I don’t like a tremendous amount of conflict. I don’t think that fighting and passion are the same thing.

Nothing is creepier than a bunch of adults being very quiet.

You can’t control things by being nervous.

If you retain nothing else, always remember the most important Rule of Beauty. “Who cares?”

A Clinical Study. Taking some time to read each night really taught me how to feign narcolepsy when my husband asked me what my “plan” was for taking down the Christmas tree.

You’ve got to experience failure to understand that you can survive it.

I want to thank my parents for somehow raising me to have confidence that is disproportionate with my looks and abilities.

My work is my work. I take my work seriously but I don’t take myself too seriously.

I feel like there is a lot of inherent humor in the stress and insanity surrounding that process.

To say I’m an overrated troll, when you have never even seen me guard a bridge, is patently unfair.

I was first in my class at Johns Hopkins, so?” Make statements, with your actions and your voice.

When a coworker shows me cute pictures of her dog, I struggle to respond correctly, like an autistic person who has been taught to recognize human emotions from flash cards. In short, I am the worst.

There are no mistakes only opportunities.

T stands for being nice. T stands for manners. T stands for being polite.