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"  Q: In the blog post Good Housekeeping published, you described your hunt for the perfect Fair Isle sweater to match Daughter&amp;#039;s kilt. Did you ever find it? What&amp;#039;s the latest?  A: The Fair Isle sweater perversely refuses to be found. I&amp;#039;m starting to think I hallucinated an entire sweater style, which sounds like just the sort of thing I would hallucinate. I fear this skirt is going to leave my house as unworn as when it arrived. It&amp;#039;s my own personal plaid fruitcake.   Q: Where do you go back-to-school shopping for Daughter? Any favorite bargain stores or sites for clothes?  A: I love Talbots Kids, because their stuff is classic and pretty, and doesn&amp;#039;t make her look as if she&amp;#039;s auditioning for the under-10 remake of Pretty Woman. It&amp;#039;s not cheap-cheap, but we&amp;#039;re not in the Spaghetti-O&amp;#039;s years anymore; I can usually get a season out of a shirt, so long as I don&amp;#039;t do something stupid like buy a white shirt.   Q: You&amp;#039;ve been blogging for over three years. What made you get started initially?   A: Truly? I didn&amp;#039;t have enough people who were seeing what an idiot I am on a regular basis. I get some weird satisfaction out of saying, &amp;quot;You cannot believe what I just did in the dried-fruit aisle.&amp;quot; I could either spend vast amounts of money with a competent therapist digging into why I have this photographic recall of my petty humiliations, or I could write them down for free and use the extra time finding just the right words to describe how I managed to fall up a flight of stairs and land on my own fencing foil.   Q: You&amp;#039;re the president and creator of the Hip Hugger (TheHipHugger.com), and we also hear you&amp;#039;re writing a book. How do you find time to blog?  A: Simple. If you don&amp;#039;t watch TV or read books and you make really shoddy meals, you have plenty of time to write. As soon as the rewrites on the book are done, I am going to train my eye muscles so that one can take in the new David Sedaris book while the other eye watches Season Three of Weeds. The meals, however, will remain subpar.   Q: Where do you typically write? Set the scene for us.   A: Our home office has enough room for two desks and a storage cabinet. Right now, there are three desks and two storage cabinets. It&amp;#039;s not completely unlike working in a freight elevator on moving day. Somewhere behind me, the air filter for the fish tank burbles along. The cat is in her usual position, which is having a not entirely wholesome relationship with the external hard-drive. The dog is under my feet, searching for the remnants of a pastry I ate in here yesterday. There&amp;#039;s a window over the computer I could open and experience actual weather and reality, but I rarely choose to, as I find reality distracting.   Q: Have you ever regretted a post?  A: I have a file entitled &amp;quot;Half-Finished Blogs,&amp;quot; blogs that I can&amp;#039;t seem to wrap up and put out there. I&amp;#039;ve noticed they are the ones I might regret, and nearly all of them have to do with Daughter. About eighteen months ago, I dialed back on blogging \u2014 from every other day to once a week \u2014 because otherwise Daughter was going to be the source of material too often. I am grimly certain there&amp;#039;s something in a post that will be used to tease her at some point. The only thing I can offer her when this happens is my sincere apology, an offer to take it down, and a promise not to sing in front of her friends.  Q: Do you find that blogging helps your writing?  A: Sure. Sometimes. No. Depends. Writing tends to lead to more writing, but the fact is that the blog and the book both need to be written. If I only have two hours, the book will usually get the attention, because it has the legal department to back it up. If I don&amp;#039;t write for the blog, I don&amp;#039;t get sued for breach of contract. But my editor found me because of the blog, which means my book owes its very existence to it.   Q: What&amp;#039;s your favorite book, or a favorite you&amp;#039;ve read recently?  A: Before starting my book? Geek Love by Katherine Dunn, Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert, Bonk by Mary Roach, and Bill Bryson&amp;#039;s In a Sunburned Country and A Short History of Nearly Everything. What I&amp;#039;ve read recently? The Nicole Richie oeuvre, as noted by In Touch magazine, read while walking to nowhere on a treadmill.   Q: What blogs and Websites do you visit every day? (besides Goodousekeeping.com, of course!)  A: And a fabulous Website it is, too. When I want nothing but quiet humming in my ears, I Google &amp;quot;preppy blogs.&amp;quot; There are women beyond measure out there fixated on pink and green and cute stationery. I find these blogs oddly soothing. The queen of the preppy blog is Melissa C. Morris, a great dame in her own right. Another favorite is The Sartorialist, to remind me that not everyone needs a haircut and for someone to burn their mom-shirts.   Q: At age nine, you were nominated for an Oscar for your role in Neil Simon&amp;#039;s The Goodbye Girl. Your daughter is almost nine now \u2014 has she ever expressed an interest in acting?  A: She has many interests, but acting isn&amp;#039;t one of them right now. This is good, because there are prime ministers with more downtime.  Q: Have you ever thought about getting back into acting?   A: I have learned that when I say &amp;quot;never,&amp;quot; even softly, the Universe grins malevolently and says, &amp;quot;Oh, it&amp;#039;s NEVER you say? Well, let me arrange for you to eat your words publicly, on toast.&amp;quot; So while I will never say never about returning to acting, it&amp;#039;s not because I&amp;#039;m coyly waiting for the right offer, but because I fear the boomerang effect of the word. I think I can safely say that acting holds no more charm for me than having braces put back on my teeth.  Q: How did you meet Consort?   A: He was a studio suit [executive], looking for writers for a show. He made me laugh and he interested me. Still does.   Q: What are some of your family&amp;#039;s favorite traditions, or outings?  A: We have a Game Night each week, which I think inoculates Daughter against ever thinking her parents were cool. Daughter and Consort have a Daddy and Daughter Weekend at the Snow every year, which I describe as Quinn Eats Ice Cream for Breakfast and Watches Romantic Comedies Weekend. Oh, and we have Thanksgiving as a picnic on the beach, followed by the traditional Black Friday activity of vacuuming out the car and scrubbing the dog&amp;#039;s feet.   Q: Outside of all things literary, what other outlets or hobbies do you have?  A: Until this book is done, my outlets and hobbies are a) writing, or b) fixating on how I should be writing. I volunteer with an animal-rescue group, which means I clean litter boxes in my spare time, but I&amp;#039;m really unclear on whether that qualifies as an outlet, a hobby, or just a sad fact.   Q: What tips do you have for bloggers just getting started?   A: How much are you getting paid to do this? Right, nothing. Therefore, you&amp;#039;re doing it for love. Make sure what you write moves you, pleases you, amuses you. Even after you have a group of people who like your work, continue to make sure that you&amp;#039;re writing what you believe to be true. People, women especially, spend entirely too much time saying the thing they feel they are supposed to say, gradually forgetting what it is they wanted to say. If it feels wrong afterward, guess what? The delete button is right there, next to your pinkie. Use the blog to exercise the muscle of being unapologetically yourself. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/entertainment/a16431/quinn-cummings-interview/>