It's not that I don't care about sick people, I do. I just have a real aversion to hypochondriacs. When someone who isn't sick starts listing their imaginary ailments I automatically tune out. My eyes glaze over like they do when someone starts talking about ...
Due to my tendency to boast, many of you (and all the clerks at Safeway) know that my cousin and her husband were invited to the Royal Wedding, and I wasn't. They are actual friends of William's, and unbelievably, I am not.
My cousin got a ...
I’m back from 10 days of me-time in California, and I’m shocked at how well my husband has done as Mr. Mom. Shocked! I don’t know what I expected – to see the house in a shambles, possibly even burned down? People fainting with relief ...
This is about the day I finally got to meet Czeslaw Milosz, the Nobel laureate who could tell me about my grandfather.
As you may know, my mother was a complete mystery to me. For a long time my sister and I didn't even know what country ...
Last week NPR was talking about parents that actually hire people to scare the crap out of their children. Apparently there’s an evil clown in Switzerland you can hire to stalk your child for the seven days leading up to their birthday – culminating in a terrifying pie-in-the-face surprise attack on their “big day.”
Dominic Deville the Evil Clown strikes when your child least expects it.
I know it’s not even remotely politically correct to see humor in this, but the part of me that’s fed up with pulling birthday party ideas out of my ass – does find it funny.
“The frightening fun can be stopped at any time, which is handy for parents who have second thoughts and don’t fancy the cost of child therapy!”
Hosting scary birthday parties would’ve been a good career choice for my parents – they were doing this type of thing long before this Deville guy became trendy. My sister’s birthday was near Halloween and since we were like The Addam’s Family without trying to be, we always had haunted slumber parties.
This week’s Monday Listicles topic is 10 things about your mom, or 10 things you wish you could delete. I’m combining them: 10 things I wish I could delete about my alcoholic mom. It’s weird, I know – but you know, some mother/daughter relationships are a little bit weird.
“The ill-tempered snapping turtle gets its name from its powerful jaws. They are very aggressive and should be considered extremely dangerous.” - Morning Journal News
I understand that I tend to get myself into situations that other moms don’t seem to get themselves into, and this is one of them: I just got abused by a giant snapping turtle. A big one. And I am shaking as I write this. Read the Rest »
I just finished reading The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson – an “engagingly irreverent book” that shows you how to spot a psychopath. You may be wondering why I read this book. It wasn’t because I was wondering if I’m a psychopath (although I do have some of the traits on the list). I just thought it would be neat to be able to spot a psychopath. Don’t you? For example, this afternoon I identified the manager of the supermarket as one, and it made me feel better because he has a total God-complex even though he has no idea where the rice cakes are. Read the Rest »
I’m back! After an entire week of being unplugged for Screen-Free Week, which as you may know scared the bejeepers out of me. This is the first time I have logged into my blog in a week and it seems like it’s been a year. My husband was out of town so it was just me and the kids unplugging. We had no Netflix, no videos in the car, no iPhone, no computer time, and I was sans my blog, Twitter, and Facebook. The hardest part for me was the two or three days leading up to us all unplugging – I had become so emotionally dependent on my online life that I backed out at the last minute. I told myself I would only have my kids do it. My blog needed me. Facebook needed me. And what about my Tweepies? Read the Rest »
Screen-Free Week is April 30 – May 6, 2012. It’s an annual event in which parents, children, teachers, and others across the country turn off screen media (TV, video games, computers, cell phones, texting, email, blogging, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) and celebrate the magic of being unplugged.
Sheepish Note: I would like to say thank you to everybody at Yeah Write for tolerating my “hat rack” win last week. I need to tell you that I’m feeling a little sheepish about getting so over-excited about it because my do-gooder 10-year-old is totally revolted with me. She thinks I get too excited about Yeah Write every week and that there is something wrong with me. She even gave me another lecture on “sharing” and “playing nice.” So I asked her to do a vlog about it for you here and this is how it went down.
Me: Let’s make a video of how you feel about my addiction to Yeah Write. Her: Why? Me: You could process your feelings about it. And more importantly, it would be so cute that people would forget I won something last week and they’d vote for me.
I don’t know why, but she left the room then. Read the Rest »
I’ve been having a running conversation with my 10-year-old about why I won’t let her read The Hunger Games. I told her I don’t want her to read it because it’s dark. It’s about teens killing other teens – and I just don’t think a 10-year-old child needs to read about that. I told her if she wants to read about hunger, go read Oliver Twist.
