• Weekly dinners with neighbors became a support system for both families.
• My children gained trusted adults outside of school and family.
• What started as convenience slowly turned into a real community.

When I first suggested a “kids’ dinner” with our upstairs neighbor, I was mainly thinking about getting a night off.

Feeding my three kids (ages 4, 6, and 10) can feel endless — just when I think I’ve found a meal that works, one of them suddenly refuses to eat pasta, or rice, or chicken. Getting even one night off every other week sounded like a dream.

Thankfully, our upstairs neighbors had two kids who got along with mine, and the parents were just as eager for a break.

The logistics are simple

Every Tuesday night, one family hosts a kids’ dinner. We switch off weeks, and the parents simply walk the kids to the other family’s apartment door. Parents are welcome to stay, but are encouraged to take an hour for themselves.

We also made a key rule: no cleaning before dinner. This arrangement is supposed to make our lives easy, not harder.

I became a go-to adult for someone else’s child

A couple of months into these dinners, my 6-year-old neighbor walked in, took my hand, her eyes welling with tears, and pulled me aside. We sat on the blue couch in my office — a room that’s otherwise off-limits — and she told me about a fight she’d had with her mom. It was a big deal to her. And the fact that she wanted to tell me about it felt big to me, too.

Since that night, we’ve had more of these heart-to-hearts, and I’ve been surprised by how much they mean to me.

I’ve become a go-to adult in her life — a role I didn’t expect to play for someone else’s child, especially since living in Germany means I’m an ocean away from my nieces and nephews. When she gets especially mad with her parents, she threatens to run away. To me. It’s the best-case scenario for her parents, who know she’d be two flights downstairs with a trusted adult.

And my neighbors fill this same role for my three children. On Tuesdays, after my kids drop off their backpacks in our apartment, they run upstairs, bursting to tell Laura what happened that day on the playground or try to stump Michael with a riddle they just learned.

Without grandparents or aunts and uncles around, weekly dinners have provided my children another set of adults — outside teachers — who know to ask about ballet practice, speech therapy, and report cards.

The kids built something of their own

Around the table, the kids have built something of their own. They plan what toys to bring for each other, negotiate over seating, and sometimes show up with handwritten notes.

They sit at the table by themselves, so their conversations aren’t dominated by adults. The talk is about Pokémon cards or about whose birthday party is coming up this weekend.

After dinner, while I clean the kitchen, the five of them have free rein to play. Sometimes I find my 4-year-old daughter and my 3-year-old neighbor huddled in her room, “reading” side by side or listening to “Frozen” on her Tonie box. Other times, my ten-year-old reads to the younger kids or makes up games that everyone can play.

What started as a break became something more

Cooking for five kids instead of three has turned out to be surprisingly fun. Having two extra mouths to feed doesn’t require much more food, and with a party-like atmosphere, I think about what could be fun (like I did in my pre-children dinner party days).

But dinners are still relatively simple. Chicken nuggets and fries. A charcuterie board of sliced meats and cut-up veggies. Breakfast for dinner. If I’ve got a bit of extra time, we’ll make avocado sushi together.

When everyone is back in their own home, I get messages about how my children ate — whether my daughter, who tends to bulk up on preschool snacks and skip dinner almost entirely, touched anything, or whether my oldest son ate an entire pack of hot dogs on his own.

I was looking for a break from endless meal prep, but instead, my kids gained a second set of adults just two flights away.

One dinner at a time, it feels like we’re building a community.

• Mayor Zohran Mamdani released New York City-themed World Cup jerseys on Friday.
• The $50 jerseys were meant to be an affordable alternative to the pricey FIFA version.
• People are now reselling the jerseys online at far less affordable rates.

Missed your chance to snag one of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s affordable World Cup jerseys? You might now have to pay resellers a very unaffordable price.

The New York City-themed jerseys popped up on sites like eBay and Facebook Marketplace hours after they went on sale, going for at least $400. Some sellers are asking as much as $999. That’s a considerable upcharge from the $50 that residents paid for the same jerseys on Friday.

Mamdani unveiled the apparel earlier this week. In an Instagram post, he said they were “made by New Yorkers, for New Yorkers.” Only 1,500 jerseys were available for purchase, making them a hot ticket item among his supporters and ardent soccer fans. People stood in line for hours outside the City of New York’s official store to get their hands on one.

By comparison, official FIFA jerseys are noticeably pricier. The most expensive team gear costs $375, while the cheapest alternative costs $70.

Mamdani’s administration has broadly pushed for affordability initiatives. In May, the mayor outlined a plan to expand affordable housing. A month earlier, he and New York State Gov. Kathy Hochul proposed a new pied-à-terre tax targeting wealthy people who own a secondary property in the city but live elsewhere.

Mamdani has also sought to make events affordable for New Yorkers.

Last September, he launched a petition urging FIFA to ditch its dynamic pricing model and lower ticket prices for New Yorkers. He also criticized the decision to allow ticket reselling on FIFA’s official platform without a price cap.

Dynamic pricing — when businesses adjust ticket prices in real time based on factors such as demand and market conditions — has become a point of contention for ticket buyers expecting a fixed price. The resale market can also be volatile because vendors often upcharge tickets by hundreds of dollars.

Following negotiations with FIFA President Gianni Infantino, Mamdani secured 1,000 World Cup tickets for New Yorkers at $50 each in May.

“Last year we said we’d fight for cheaper tickets for New Yorkers, and today I’m proud to announce, just like Arsenal, we got it done,” Mamdani, a lifelong fan of the London soccer club, said in a video posted to X in May.

New York City and New Jersey are among the host cities for this year’s tournament. The first local match, held at MetLife Stadium, takes place on Saturday evening between Brazil and Morocco.

• Dario Amodei has warned that his latest AI model, Mythos, was so powerful it posed a serious threat.
• The Trump administration just ordered Anthropic to block foreign access to Mythos.
• Anthropic responded by shutting down the model altogether.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is famous for warning that his own products pose a threat.

In an essay published this month, Amodei cautioned that AI’s power “has become undeniable.” As an example, he pointed to Anthropic’s latest model, Mythos, which he said presents “very real risks” to cybersecurity, the financial sector, critical infrastructure, and national security.

He then called for a more robust government intervention to address the risks.

On Friday, his warnings appeared to backfire when the US government suddenly intervened.

Anthropic cut off access to its Mythos 5 and Fable 5 after it said the Trump administration ordered it to block foreign access to the models. The Pentagon’s chief information officer expressed support for the move in an X post, writing, “Some things are simply more important than revenue cycles, clickbait, and pre-IPO valuation.”

The surprise development sent the tech industry into a tizzy.

Gary Marcus, the AI researcher and notorious skeptic, called the Trump administration’s move “wildly overdramatic and also counterproductive.”

Yann LeCunn, who is considered one of the godfathers of AI, blamed Amodei: “Dario Amodei’s ridiculous fear mongering about Mythos/Fable (and AI in general) finally pays off,” he wrote on X. “One reaps what one sows.”

Amodei has long sought to position himself as the AI industry’s adult in the room. Once an integral researcher at OpenAI, he left the company to start Anthropic over concerns that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman prioritized releasing products over ensuring their safety.

He has since issued a stream of statements that the things he is building and releasing to the general public, alongside OpenAI, Google, Meta, Amazon, and others, could upend life as we know it — for good as well as bad.

Amodei once warned that AI would eliminate half of entry-level white-collar jobs and cause unemployment to soar to levels not seen since the COVID-19 pandemic, and before that, the Great Recession in 2008.

While Amodei has softened his tone on jobs in recent weeks as his company gears up to go public, he and his company have not held back on other safety concerns.

“The cyber risks that Mythos-class models present will not be the last that we must face,” he wrote in his June essay. “I believe that biological risks may soon follow, and that serious AI autonomy risks may not be far behind.”

He wrote that concerns by lawmakers were out of step with AI’s rapid progress.

Earlier this month, his company called for a temporary halt to the development of frontier AI models in a paper cautioning that the latest models are getting closer to improving themselves, which it said, “might increase the risks of humans losing control over AI systems.”

“We believe it would be good for the world to have the option to slow or temporarily pause frontier AI development to enable societal structures and alignment research to keep up with the advance of the technology,” Anthropic wrote.

That pause arrived on Friday, at least for Anthropic.

• My partner is 17 years older than me. I’ve been calculating how much time we have left together.
• Since my mom died at 69, I can’t stop worrying about what our future might look like.
• Despite my fears, we recently moved to Italy together.

On New Year’s Day, I sat crying alone on the sofa while my partner, Max, slept. I wished it were just the one too many glasses of cava I had the night before. But it was something worse: a sudden, panicky feeling that time had moved faster than I realized.

When we met in 2015, I was 29, and he was 46 — 17 years my senior. He looked so youthful that I assumed he was in his late 30s. If I’m honest, the age difference made me hesitate, but the connection between us was too strong to ignore. He made me feel seen and wanted in ways no one else had before, and after a few months of resisting, I gave in to my feelings.

After 11 years, I worry about things my friends don’t think about yet

In the early days, he used to say, “I wish I were 10 years younger so I could have ten more years with you.” It sounded so romantic to 29-year-old me, and 10 years seemed like an eternity. I wasn’t prepared for how quickly they would pass.

Over a decade later, Max still has the same energy and drive he had when I met him. Now 57, he’s not showing signs of slowing down anytime soon, despite a few health niggles. He regularly spins records as a DJ, indulging in his passion for music.

But while friends my age are raising children or focusing on their careers, I worry about things that feel like they belong to someone much older. Those thoughts have intensified since my mom died unexpectedly at 69.

Losing my mom made me start calculating our time together

I often find myself calculating how long we have left together, as he’s now just 12 years younger than my mother was when she died.

Will I still be with the same energetic man in another 10 years? Or will I spend my 50s or 60s as a caregiver? Would I even be able to handle that responsibility if it fell to me? I picture hospital visits, me pushing a wheelchair, and the man I’ve come to depend on becoming dependent on me.

Other times, I jump further ahead and picture what might come after. Will I end up alone at 50 or 60? Will I meet someone else, or build a new life on my own? I call these calculations “grief math.”

Awareness of time keeps me grounded in the present

When Max woke up, I didn’t say anything. How do you tell someone you’ve been contemplating their death? But when he asked what was wrong, I confessed. He wasn’t upset; instead, he told me I should always talk to him.

I still catch myself doing grief math from time to time. But when I do, something else happens: all the daily annoyances, like how he interrupts me when I’m talking, or lets the dishes pile up in the sink, just evaporate. I just want to hug him and hold onto the feeling forever. So I do.

We recently moved to his hometown in Italy to be near his aging parents, which felt like a deeper commitment to a future that scares me. But if my mother’s death taught me one thing, it’s that time is never guaranteed, and not always in the way grief maths assumes.

Max could live to 100. I could die first. We could have forty more years together. Obsessing over worst-case scenarios only guarantees I’ll have wasted the time we definitely have now.

• Last year, my husband and I traveled across the US, spending time in 29 states along the way.
• I fell in love with Michigan, Vermont, and South Dakota, and found plenty to do.
• Although I had a great time in places like West Virginia and Idaho, I think I saw the highlights.

Last year, my husband and I decided to make the most of working remote jobs by traveling across the US, staying in 29 different states along the way.

Although I don’t regret visiting any of the states we spent time in, there are some I’m excited to return to — and others I’m glad I saw once.

In my opinion, Michigan is seriously underrated.

Whenever we had a spare moment during our month in Michigan, we were outside.

We strolled through a tulip farm in Holland, had a picnic on the beach at Saugatuck Dunes State Park, and sipped pinot noir along a wine trail near Buchanan, stopping by different wineries along the route.

We spent most of our time near the shores of Lake Michigan, so we had access to all the things I could want on a beach vacation — fresh seafood, lively boardwalks with all kinds of quirky shops, and pristine sand.

However, in my experience, the prices seemed lower than what I’m used to in many of the “beach destinations” along the coasts.

I already have a list of places I want to explore the next time we’re in Michigan, such as Traverse City, Sleeping Bear Dunes, and Mackinac Island, one of the few places in the US where cars are banned.

South Dakota offers so much more than Mount Rushmore.

Seeing massive carvings of former presidents is impressive, but there’s so much more to South Dakota than Mount Rushmore.

For example, I loved spending time in Custer State Park, which I believe offers some of the best views in all of the Black Hills. During our visit, we saw coyotes, prairie dogs, bighorn sheep, mountain goats, and hundreds of bison (one even licked our car!)

Less than two hours away, we were treated to an entirely different landscape in Badlands National Park, which is dominated by buttes and towering rock spires.

There are also tiny museums and fascinating sites tucked away in small towns, making the drive across the state even more entertaining.

We stopped at the Mammoth Site in Hot Springs — an active excavation site where the remains of over 60 mammoths have been unearthed. I was amazed by the sheer scale of that many skeletons found in one place, and it was definitely worth the stop.

Vermont’s small towns are incredible.

I firmly believe that Vermont has some of the most picturesque small towns in the US. And although each one has its special charms, Stowe really stands out to me.

Between perusing the cute shops, riding the gondola to the top of Mt. Mansfield (Vermont’s highest peak), and grabbing a drink at the Von Trapp Brewery (started by Maria von Trapp’s son), I felt like I’d been sucked into a postcard.

I was also impressed by Vermont’s dairy game. In almost every town we visited, I saw a shop selling creative varieties of cheese.

My favorite usage of dairy, however, had to be at the Ben & Jerry’s Factory in Waterbury. The tour was fun, the ice cream was perfectly decadent, and I still chuckle about the hilariously poetic Flavor Graveyard, where retired varieties are memorialized.

On the other hand, West Virginia was beautiful, but I think we saw the highlights.

We spent several days driving around West Virginia, checking out different hiking trails and marveling at the abandoned mills hidden on backroads.

There were certain moments that took my breath away, like visiting Sandstone Falls and the stunning 3,000-foot bridge in New River Gorge National Park.

However, after getting our fill of nature, there didn’t seem to be a whole lot of other options to fit our interests. In general, the state is pretty rural, and a lot of the small towns seemed designed for locals, not tourists.

Although I think hikers, campers, and whitewater enthusiasts could enjoy a visit to the Mountain State, I’m content with what I saw on my trip.

Idaho surprised me, but I don’t feel the need to return anytime soon.

I didn’t know much about Idaho before we visited, but we saw some incredibly memorable spots during our trip.

Craters of the Moon National Monument — filled with black ancient lava fields and hill-like cinder cones — is unlike any other natural preserve I’ve been to in the continental US. Seeing it covered in snow only added to its otherworldly quality.

We also visited the Basque Block in Boise, which is a section of town that is preserved and dedicated to the Basque people who emigrated from Spain to Idaho in the late 1800s. As we strolled, we read signs that were posted and learned about the area and the culture.

Although I’m sure there are more beautiful places to see around Idaho, when I return to this region in the future, I’ll probably focus my time in Montana and Wyoming.

This story was originally published on February 11, 2026, and most recently updated on June 12, 2026.

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