I’m Gretchen, married to Ben, mother of four. I live in Newport Beach, CA. I had three kids after the age of 40: Sam, born 2001; Matt, born 2003; and Julia (Boolie), born 2005. I’m always busy and frequently tired.

(In case you’re wondering, since we’ve been asked this to our faces: The kids were conceived without medical assistance, although I had three miscarriages before we got it right. We got it SO right that Boolie was an “accident”. We call her our Brilliant Mistake.)

I bitch about aging a lot, so I guess it’s incumbent upon me to disclose that I was born in October 1960. You do the math. Despite my Orange County address, I am steadfastly resisting cosmetic surgery, Botox and even hair dye. I want to raise Boolie with better values than that, if such a thing is possible in this zip code.

We call our family the Ohana, which is fairly unoriginal and derivative, but it was Sam’s choice of appellation and it stuck. (This is also how Julia became a Boolie.)

I should also mention that I grew up and was an undergrad on the East Coast and officially hate California for the record despite having moved here in 1984, much against my better judgment. (My dad had been transferred here, and my parents wanted to be near their first grandchild.) I have been trying like hell to get away ever since, but I keep having kids and also had the questionable judgment to marry a former member of the Beverly Hills High School varsity water polo team after agreeing to allow him to knock me up repeatedly.

Rounding out the cast of characters are my twentysomething daughter Erika and her husband Joel, who don’t live with us, and two Basenji dogs, Rudy and Dollie, who do.

I like to write, and I like to complain. If I’m guilty of a certain amount of Mommy Blog Syndrome, so be it. My kids are by far the largest element of my life. They’re certainly the most time-consuming.

I also talk about poop, pee and penis a lot, so: bonus!