Beth Riley

Sharon O'Donnell

My family: married 20 years to Kevin, sons Billy, almost 17, David, 14, and Jason, 7

My work: I'm a freelance writer and author of House of Testosterone -- One Mom's Survival in a Household of Males, a humor book published in hard cover last year by a small press and in paperback (with some additions) by Houghton Mifflin in May 2008.

What keeps me awake at night: My sons' futures, tragedies in the news or in lives of friends/family, making to-do lists in my head.

If I could be totally wild, I would: Tell my family I'll be gone for two weeks and then just take off somewhere by myself.

The nickname I wish I had: Ms. Organized

My theme song: House of the Rising Sun by the Animals only the title would be changed to House of Testosterone and the lyrics would change a bit:  /There is a house just down the street/they call the house of testosterone/And it's been the ruin of many a woman/and God, I know I'm one/

If I had a vanity plate on my car, it would say: 4guys&dog

Whose diary would you most like to read?  My oldest two sons' if they had one (which they don't, let me make clear).  They surely don't give me any information about their lives in their one to three word responses to my questions.

I’d like to learn to: Play the guitar or piano, to speak another language, or to roller skate.  But I'd settle for just learning how to parallel park the SUV.

Always... have a purpose in your life whether you are 15 or 95.

Never... be caught without your make-up on when you run into an old boyfriend.

Exclusive Web Content:

I’m thinking about: Whether I should buy a clothes steamer so I don't always have mountains of laundry waiting to be ironed.  But I don't want to buy one and find it doesn't work well, by which time I surely would have already lost my receipt.  Any suggestions?

Words I live by: "When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before."  -Jacob August Riis

My favorite body part: Is this a trick question?  Okay, my eyes, I guess, but that does not include my eyelids, which, once you are over 40, do some really weird things.