It's happened to the best of us: You get home (or, if you work at home like me, emerge from your office bleary-eyed in the afternoon) and are delighted to pick up the phone and hear from a pal who's wondering if she can stop by for a little bit. You're thrilled and tell her to come on over, and she says she'll see you in ten. Then you hang up the phone... and panic.

I have a not-quite-12-year-old daughter, and as anyone who's ever known a not-quite-12-year-old girl or been a not-quite-12-year-old girl knows, that means I have endless drama. I love my daughter to pieces, truly. She's a remarkable creature who is by turns insightful and childish, compassionate and passionate. And she is also Filled With The Drama: Everything is Very Tragic and Very Important and Life Or Death. All the time.

For the first time in my life, with the start of 2010, I actually made a resolution to make fitness a priority. I realize I'm a little late to the party, but what can I say? I'm a late bloomer. And really, really lazy. Nonetheless, with the support and ridicule of four like-minded friends, I'm now firmly ensconced in a challenge to lose ten pounds in ten weeks. (Shameless plug: If you care to follow our journey, all five of us are blogging it over at Five Full Plates.)

One of the things I traditionally do at the start of a new year is clean out the inside of my car. It's just as glamorous as it sounds, particularly because I gave birth to a couple of trash factories a few years back. Sometimes the things I find on this annual excursion are best left undisclosed.

It's such a cliched scenario that it makes me cringe a little to even bring it up, but it happens even to the best of us from time to time -- we find ourselves with a scant ten minutes to get dinner on the table for the family, and panic is setting in. Modern family life tends to run at a frenetic pace. On any given day my modest family is navigating through both adults' full-time employment, two sets of homework, after-school activities, and doctors' appointments, and I would be lying if I told you dinner was always on the table without a fuss.