HEATHER HAVRILESKY is the author of How to Be a Person in the World and the memoir Disaster Preparedness. She writes the "Ask Polly" column for New York magazine, and has written for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, and NPR's All Things Considered, among others. She was Salon's TV critic for seven years. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and a loud assortment of dependents, most of them nondeductible.