As we waited for a bus in the frosty weather, the woman next to me mentioned that she makes a lot of mistakes when texting in the cold.

I nodded knowingly. “It’s the early signs of typothermia.”

I am five feet, three inches tall and pleasingly plump. After I had a minor accident, my mother accompanied me to the emergency room.

The triage nurse asked for my height and weight, and I blurted out, "Five-foot-eight and 125 pounds."

While the nurse pondered this information, my mother leaned over to me. "Sweetheart," she gently chided, "this is not the Internet."

Since I am a busy mom of four, I rely on my children to help me out with everyday chores around the house. One morning I was running around trying to get the children and myself ready, when I suddenly realized it was trash pickup day. So I handed a bag of garbage to my sleepy seven-year-old son and told him to toss it in the trash bin on his way out the door.

Glancing out my window moments later, I saw him wearily boarding the bus. He was carrying his backpack, his lunchbox, and a big white bag of garbage.

Don’t ever pay a surprise visit to a child in college. You might be the one getting the surprise. I learned this the hard way when I swung by my son’s campus during a business trip.

Locating what I thought was his fraternity house, I rang the doorbell. "Yeah?" a voice called from inside.

"Does Dylan Houseman live here?"

"Yup," the voice answered. "Leave him on the front porch. We’ll bring him in later."