Hasta La Gadget!

Now that Winter Storm Juno has left New England, families everywhere begin the process of digging out. After a mild few months, winter has finally set in and the snow that’s fallen probably won’t leave for months. It’s enough to make a mom lose her mind.

The idea of moving to Boston with a toddler in tow was intimidating to me at first. I was a Western girl who was used to driving everywhere in places where every store had a large parking lot with plenty of space out front. Boston meant no more climbing in and out of the car for every errand; now we’d be taking the bus, riding the train and walking miles of sidewalks.

The first few months were better than I expected. Parks everywhere and sidewalks on every street made up for the tight spaces and lack of parking.

Then winter came.

A few years in, I can say confidently that being an urban working parent in winter is a challenge like none other. It’s begun and now there’s no turning back until Spring.

Of course, being an urban parent almost guarantees you’re a working parent. With rents and mortgage payments sky-high, hardly any family in high-priced areas can get by on just one salary anymore. If you’re lucky there are two of you and you can trade off the extra child-watching days.

What extra child-watching days, you ask? First, there’s the sick days, when your child can’t go to school or daycare. (Don’t forget the sick days you’ll have to take after you catch whatever they had.) Then there’s the snow days, when school is cancelled due to inclement weather. Don’t forget the Delayed Starts and Early Releases, too. There’s the holidays, winter is full of them, and just because the kids are off doesn’t mean your office is closed. If you’re a single parent, these days can eat up all of your leave before you get halfway through the year.

If you have young children, winter takes away your major modes of transportation. Sure, the rules are that everyone is supposed to shovel their sidewalks, but not everyone does. And if you usually pull out the stroller for a young child or a long distance trek, you won’t be able to push it down the narrowly-shoveled walkways.

During my first winter in Boston, I often found my son and I stranded at home. His stroller’s wheels couldn’t handle the snowy sidewalks and I wondered if maybe we should’ve bought something sturdier. One day, out on my own, I ran into another mother who was stranded with her stroller. Sure, she had a tricked out jogging stroller with wheels powerful enough to go over snow, but it was too wide for the thin path on the sidewalk. Her only option was to walk with her child in the narrow street that was even narrower thanks to the piles of snow accumulated from the plows. Together, we picked up the stroller and carried it over a half a mile until we got over the top of the hill on the busy street. There she could go into a safer side street where she was unlikely to run into any cars.

The cold and the snow means that for most of your family activities, you’re stuck with indoor options. No more carefree hours at the sunny park where no one charges admission. No more thoroughly worn out kids who fall asleep in minutes. Instead, everyone is stir crazy and there isn’t much to make it better. In the winter, you usually have to find your fun inside and there’s probably a ticket involved.

When your kids do play outside, there’s nothing simple about it. Boots, snow pants, coat, scarf, gloves and hat all have to go on and no one knows where anything is. If you’re lucky they’re outside for a while, but plenty of kids are back only 20 minutes later and all the gear now must be pulled off and set out to dry, taking up all the space in your bathroom. There will also be demands for hot chocolate.

Speaking of all that snow gear, it costs a pretty penny and odds are you’ll have to buy a new set every year. Plus you’ll need to replace all the lost items that go missing along the way.

If we’re lucky Spring will show up in April, but we may not see good weather until June. So I’m going to appreciate the little things I can find this winter like hot cocoa and footie pajamas. But I can’t wait until family togetherness isn’t quite so claustrophobic.

Jessica writes about Parenting, Divorce, and Life in Boston at Don’t Mind the Mess.

At the foundation of a great many DIY projects and crafty makeovers is one unifying medium: paint. It’s the fastest way to transform rooms, furniture, lamps, planters, and so much more. While the whole process is quite simple, it’s also surprisingly easy to muck up your paint project with a few silly mistakes. How many have you committed in prior paint jobs? Steer clear of these common pitfalls for a more polished and professional outcome the next time around.

Choosing Inferior Applicators
After spending big bucks on paint, you might be inclined to buy cheap brushes and rollers in effort to cut costs. However, in order to get professional results, you’ll need to start with good quality tools. Investing in applicators is well worth the extra expense.

Improper Preparation
When it comes to painting, you always want to start with a blank slate. Wash your walls and make sure all repair work is done prior to applying any paint. For paint to go on smoothly, your wall should be clean, dry, and free of any loose debris.

Related: How To Clean EVERYTHING

Skipping the Tape
Attention to detail is what separates good work from great work. For clean lines and professional-looking results, don’t skip the painter’s tape. Taping ensures that you’ll have the crisp edges you want. To prevent bleeding, make sure the tape is sealed tightly around baseboards, windows, and molding.

Leaving Surroundings Unprotected
Paint has a habit of ending up in places we never intended. Before even opening the can, make sure your work zone is protected. If you can, move out all the furniture take off all the wall plates. Then, cover the entire floor with a drop cloth. You’ll thank yourself for this 10-minute prep when you’re not scrubbing paint splatter off wood flooring later.

Related: The Only 7 Tools You Need to Paint Any Room

Painting Without Primer
Never ever skip the primer. This step preps the wall surface so paint sticks more easily, plus it ensures the true color of the paint shines through. These days, you can even buy a two-in-one paint and primer–doesn’t get much easier than that.

See the last three common painting mistakes at BobVila.com!

For more from BobVila.com:

10 Top Tips to Make Any Paint Job Go Faster
Experts Predict the Most Popular Remodeling Projects of 2015
Beyond Ikea: 10 Other Places to Get Affordable Furniture
Worth It: 8 Renovations That Pay You Back
7 Surprising Household Uses for Mayonnaise

Redditor Mike Lodriguss has a cat named Luna, and she’s 7 pounds of pure “insanity.”

In this clip, watch five excellent minutes worth of the mad kitty’s shenanigans. Then ask yourself this: What life would be like with a feline companion like this energetic ball of fur?

She’d wage war against your closet…

Your water bottle…

Your carpet/lint/air…

…and basically everything you own. Nothing is safe.

But OK, we concede: There’d certainly be perks too.

Like really, really great perks.

Would it be worth it? We’d say yes. No contest.

Think of your health like a savings account. Are you saving for a rainy day? There’s so much we can do right now to contribute to our future wellbeing and longevity. Ask yourself these questions to get on track for a long, happy, healthy life.

How healthy are you now?
Whatever your age or health, now is the time to get a thorough and accurate baseline. Schedule a full physical with your health care provider and ask about any concerns. Do a self check-up as well — how healthy to do you feel? Do an honest inventory of your habits, lifestyle, physical changes, weight and level of self-care.

Are you an optimist?
New research from the University of Illinois found a strong connection between outlook and heart health. The study found that optimists are twice as likely to be in ideal cardiovascular health as pessimists. Choosing to view the glass as half full can pay off now and in the future.

Are you having fun?
If not, what are you waiting for? Sure, there’s work, family obligations, bills and worries. But there’s also laughter, vacations, silliness, trashy novels, walks outside, whole days in your pajamas, relationships and time with friends. You just have to seek it out. Find ways to combat and release stress and live in the moment — it will do wonders for your physical and emotional wellbeing.

What are you doing today for your body?
While we can’t change our genetic risk factors, there are several things we can do right now to increase our odds of living and aging well. Are you getting enough exercise? The Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans from the Department of Health and Human Services recommend adults get at least 2.5 hours of moderate-intensity aerobic physical activity each week and do strengthening activities at least two days a week. Increasing your strength and balance can prevent falls and maintaining healthy bone density can prevent injury. How’s your memory? Research from Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center and Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center shows mentally stimulating activities like reading, card games, crossword puzzles and visiting museums may reduce Alzheimer’s risk. Are you getting enough sleep? According to research from the National Institute of Health, one third of American adults aren’t getting the recommended seven to eight hours of sleep.

Are you working toward something?
Having a purpose and a goal keeps us living, striving and moving. What’s yours? Reaching a professional milestone, giving back, climbing Mount Whitney, getting fit, going back to school, remodeling your house — whatever the goal, once you reach it, set another one.

The start of a new year makes it the perfect time to think about short and long term changes. Your future self will thank you for the contributions you make now to your health and wellbeing. It’s never too late to make changes to feel better today and increase your chances of living a longer, healthier and happier life.

What are you doing to age well? Share and comment.

Judi Sheppard Missett, who turned her love of jazz dance into a worldwide dance exercise phenomenon, founded the Jazzercise dance fitness program in 1969. The workout program, which offers a fusion of jazz dance, resistance training, Pilates, yoga, and cardio box movements, has positively affected millions of people worldwide. The international franchise business hosts a network of 7,800 instructors teaching more than 32,000 classes weekly in 32 countries. For more information, visit jazzercise.com.

Katherine, 25, grew up in a conservative Pennsylvania town and went to schools where the only sex education was abstinence-based. Her parents didn’t raise her with any strict views on sex before marriage, or with the sense that it was a bad thing. Instead, sex simply wasn’t discussed in her family — ever. Despite her upbringing, Katherine grew into a self-described progressive, extremely liberal and sex-positive woman.

A liberal, sex-positive woman who didn’t lose her virginity until she was 24 years old.

In high school, Katherine, who asked to be identified with a pseudonym, was shy and didn’t get much attention from boys. She had her first kiss during her freshman year of college and later had a few “intense make-out sessions,” some of which included oral sex, but generally felt herself lagging behind her peers sexually. Then last year, fueled by alcohol, Katherine kissed a close male friend. She wasn’t necessarily interested in him romantically, but they had good chemistry and spent the subsequent week talking about what it might mean for them to have sex. Katherine was open about her history, and he knew she was a virgin. She felt comfortable with him and thought, If not now, when?

“I got to the point where it felt like if I didn’t take this particular opportunity, it was like, ‘What am I waiting for?’” Katherine said.

“You get to a certain age and then it becomes this weird elephant in the room of, ‘Well, why haven’t you had sex yet?’” she continued. “‘What’s your hang-up?’”

The average age at which American women lose their virginity — which, for the purposes of this story, is defined as having vaginal intercourse — is 17. For many virgins, abstinence is a deliberate, ideological choice: Nearly 40 percent of teenage girls who have not had sex say that it goes against their religious or moral code, while others say it is because they don’t want to get pregnant or haven’t met the right person yet.

But many other women who stay virgins into their 20s and 30s don’t cite any specific reason for doing so. It’s simply how things shook out.

These “unintentional” virgins are part of a group that is often overlooked, even by sex researchers — they’re not necessarily kindred spirits with women who eschew premarital sex on strong religious or moral grounds, but they can’t quite relate to their sexually active peers.

Throughout most of Western history, virginity has been a prized virtue for women to protect, said Hanne Blank, a historian and author of Virgin: The Untouched History. It wasn’t until the early 20th century, when women began to leave their homes to take jobs in factories, that this idea began to slowly shift. And with the introduction of the birth control pill in 1960, broader cultural norms swung dramatically, Blank said. By the so-called “summer of love” in 1967, it was all but expected that American women without religious reservations would have sex in their teens or early 20s — an expectation she believes endures today.

“We may not still have this thing where if you’re not married by the time you’re 25, you’re a colossal failure and an old maid and all of that, but we definitely have a very similar cultural rhetoric where if [you’re a virgin it means] nobody has found you sexually desirable by that point and something is wrong with you,” she said.

Dawn, 25, who also asked to use a pseudonym, was a virgin until last summer. She is all too familiar with the feeling that her virginity made her an aberration of some kind — a “unicorn,” as she put it. In high school, she just wasn’t particularly interested in boys, and in college she was very focused on her classes.

“I was busy being awesome academically,” Dawn wrote in an email to HuffPost. “Not having sex yet at that point didn’t seem like it was such a big deal.”

But after college, perceptions began to shift. Friends assumed she’d had sex, and those she corrected readily offered often unwanted commentary.

“My girlfriends thought it was intentional and thought I was so sweet for waiting,” Dawn wrote. “My guy friends asked if I was religious and advised not sharing my virginal status with guys I was interested in, if at all, until they were already ‘hooked’ (whatever that means).” Some friends suggested she go out, get wasted and “get it over with” with a willing stranger.

The men she dated had varied, but equally strong, responses. Some were scared to have sex with her because they thought it would be too much responsibility, while others were “grossly curious” about what it would be like to “deflower” her. “They were not interested in having sex with me the person, but with a virgin,” Dawn said.

All of it made her feel very alone.

“Frankly, we’re damned if we do too soon or too many, and damned if we don’t soon enough or wait for the right person,” Dawn wrote. “I really feel like society needs to catch up and be more supportive of the many paths people end up on.”

Modern cultural representations of 20-something virgins are rare, and tend to follow a similar narrative. Shoshanna on HBO’s “Girls” keeps her virginity a secret for fear of scorn, and is at one point turned down by a prospective partner who tells her, “It’s just like virgins get attached. Or they bleed. You get attached when you bleed.” Late-in-life virginity can also be fetishized, as was recently the case on “The Bachelor.” A 27-year-old contestant openly worried about how her virginity would be perceived, only to be told by another contestant, “He will like it! Every guy likes it. Guys like taking your virginity.”

Other “unintentional” virgins find that their virginity becomes more important to them as they get older.

In high school, Jenna, 26, who identifies as Christian, made a decision to “save herself” for marriage, but in college that commitment began to fade. If she had found the right person then, it’s likely she would have had sex. But it just didn’t happen.

To date, Jenna has kissed a few people, but nothing more. She describes herself as in tune with her body and her desires. She began masturbating in college, and feels confident that when the time comes to have sex, she’ll be comfortable showing her partner what she enjoys and what turns her on — something she is not sure she could have done when she was younger. And after waiting so long, she is now fully recommitted to the idea of waiting until marriage.

“At this point, I definitely want the decision to be on my own terms,” she said.

For Nacole, 33, waiting until marriage isn’t necessary, but waiting for the right moment absolutely is. For years, she had crushes on boys who told her they thought of her as just a friend — a fact she attributes at least in part to being one of the few black girls growing up in a mostly white area. In high school she was open to having sex, but no one asked.

Men hit on Nacole as she got older, but she didn’t want her first time to be with just anybody. Then last fall, she started dating a man who pursued her diligently, sending her secret-admirer emails. He has become her “first honest-to-goodness boyfriend,” Nacole said, and she has been open with him from the start about the fact that she is a virgin. He, in turn, has frequently praised her for being “strong enough” to make it into her 30s without having sex. “I’ve had to remind him, ‘No, no, no, it’s not because of me,’” she laughed.

With each step they take together sexually, Nacole feels a mix of happiness — she’s glad she waited for him and that she feels mature enough to give herself fully to the experience — and goofy nerves.

“Every time something happens that goes to that next level physically, I lose it, freak out, then get all anxious and excited and laugh,” she said. “Thankfully, he thinks that’s really endearing.”

Nacole wants to sleep with her boyfriend, but at this point in her life, she feels no sense of urgency — for the most part.

“Wanting to do this ‘right’ and not make a mistake at the last yard line now feels important to me,” she said. “That’s probably 70 percent of me. Then there’s the 30 percent that is like, ‘This is not a big deal, you’re just one person in a world of a billion, no one cares. It’s fine, just do it and get it over with. Join the club.’”