Quotes from Donna Ball

My wife once said that if men had to worry about who was going to clean up the mess, there'd be a lot less violence in the world.

The rules of marriage were simple and easy to follow: faithfulness, patience, compromise. But there were no rules to divorce, or if there were, he had not yet discovered them.

Motherhood is a choice you make everyday, to put someone else's happiness and well-being ahead of your own, to teach the hard lessons, to do the right thing even when you're not sure what the right thing is...and to forgive yourself, over and over again, for doing everything wrong.

Half the time your kids end up hating you for at least 5 of their teenage years[.] And don't ever expect anything so mundane as a thank you

You're not born with a walk like that. You have to earn it.

She was the quintessential twenty-first-century woman: She could build a high-rise in a Chanel suit and Jimmy Choos, give lessons in multitasking, and freeze the heart of the coldest competitor with a single unblinking gaze over the rim of her ebony-framed reading glasses. But that persona was like a bodysuit that she pulled on at eight in the morning and peeled out of at five in the afternoon.

Mothers have to pretend to be perfect[.] If we didn't, anarchy would rule the world. But most of the time we're just doing the best we can and trying to get better at it everyday

none of them were happy.

smelled like it was laced with white wine and a hot sandwich that they called grilled cheese, but which was really three kinds of exotic French cheeses melted onto a buttery brioche with caramelized onions and apples. It wasn't something