Jeannine Ouellette

I realized this weekend, with a sense of horror and shame, that I don’t know a damn thing about the world I live in, and I just can’t go on like this. So I did some searching around on the web, and I came across some advice from a soldier in Kandahar who says that … Read more

I’m 12 years old, scooted up to my dad’s octagonal dining table, the backs of my thighs sticking unpleasantly to the vinyl kitchen chair on a sweltering August day. Stepmom Debbie has prepared her specialty, Swedish sausage, a gray tube of meat-like substance that looks a lot like the photo my health teacher Ms. Nick … Read more

“Forget the stereotypes of sugar and spice. Girls are mean…,” begins Amazon.com’s plug for Rosalind Wiseman’s hot new book, Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends and Other Realities of Adolescence, just one of a whole spate of books and articles about surviving the terrors of girlhood. Terrors so fierce that … Read more

This week, as a backdrop to my birthday, winter ended, my two junker cars got towed away for good, my younger daughter learned to ride solo on her two-wheeler, and my neighbor Mike returned from wintering in Mexico. Needless to say, all this has made me eager to travel. I can’t believe it’s been 18 … Read more

Since entering into a hellish and utterly surreal divorce almost two years ago (for starters, think accusations of adultery and public humiliation, job threats, slashed tires, rumor-mongering, a bitter and protracted custody dispute, an order for protection when things got really scary, $40,000 in legal fees on a teaching salary of $30,000, and a small, … Read more