What does it say when "Peter Peter pumpkin eater" is the only thing that comes to mind when I think about pumpkin poetry? I mean please, can a nursery rhyme be any more offensive than that one? Pumpkin shell indeed. Luckily, there are other pumpkin rhymes and I'm hoping one of them will get stuck in my head soon and rid me of Peter and his patriarchal ways.

Since I’ve spent the past week watching the stock market plummet and looking for a place for me and the boyfriend to move into, I have money on the brain. And it occurred to me that just because we were all worried the banks might fail (what do you think?), that didn’t mean people were going to stop going out, dating, or meeting strangers for coffee—it just meant that there was a greater need for things to do that wouldn’t cost as much money.

The Dow is down, the S&P is tanking and we're all tightening our budgets to cope, right? Well yeah, except when it comes to entertainment. A recent poll by Movietickets.com via Pop Watch Blog asked people "how the economy had changed their movie going habits," 31 percent said it had done so "noticeably," 33 percent said, "drastically," and 36 percent said, "No change."

I wrote at BlogHer a couple of weeks ago about how parents can deal with the issue of teens and tweens who are desiring expensive, designer clothes. A healthy, common-sense discussion ensued, with many parents chiming in with their hopes of teaching their kids about contentment, frugality and reasonable expectations.

In every presidential election year, some swing states stay the same, but new ones seem to crop up, depending on how the whole electoral map plays out. Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida are always reliably in the mix. This year there are others, including New Mexico, Nevada and very possibly Virginia.

The other day I was talking to a friend in South Florida, and I mentioned that I honestly think that the fact that I don't smoke pot effects my dating life in Los Angeles. Not that no one smokes pot in South Florida (LOL), but no one in South Florida ever cared if *I* did. In L.A., in the entertainment industry, people seem to care.

There is a difference between feeling depressed, and being clinically depressed. We all feel depressed from time to time. But, how do we know when our feelings of anxiety or sadness, has crossed into something more serious? That's what Depression Screening is all about, and October is Depression Screening Month. Maybe it's you, or someone you know...But, awareness is the first step in recovery.

What's happening this week in the world of fashion?  We have fashion from Lipstick Jungle and Project Runway, tips for recession-proofing your closet, and Tim Gunn's Top 10 Fashion Must-Haves. Plus, a mystery...who is 365?

If one of the names you answer to is "mom," chances are good that you live a decent portion of your life feeling overwhelmed. As if the responsibility of caring for another person's (or people's) every need isn't enough, you most likely also have a house to maintain, bills to pay, perhaps a job to go to or a business to run, a blog (or two or three) to keep up, a partner to cheer on, organizations to volunteer for, classes, activities or meetings to attend or to shlep kids to, and the list goes on and on and on.

Twenty-six drivers from different forms of racing all over North America will showcase their skills in front of NASCAR team owners and executives at the sixth annual Drive for Diversity Testing & Evaluation Combine presented by Sunoco.

I love CNN's Campbell Brown. I think she is smart, agressive, not afraid to ask probing questions and I have followed her career for years. But I became even more enthralled with her when last night she basically tore a new one in the American public butt about racism.

I'm still on the mailing list for Democrats Abroad, and even though I don't live overseas anymore, I do think it's interesting to follow what they're up to. Just because you're out of the US doesn't mean you have to miss the election - and folks like Dems Abroad and their counterpart, Republicans Abroad, do a great job of keeping voters up to date on what they need to do to take part in the great experiment we call democracy.