George Bush is the greatest president in the history of presidents.
Mission was accomplished.
Toddlers never throw tantrums.
I live in a huge mansion with a cook, a maid, and a butler.
Junk food is good for you and helps you lose weight.
Pamela Anderson is an Oscar-winning actress.
Christian is as straight as a ruler.
The economy is strong.
And Dina Lohan has received a “Top Mom” of the year award.
I am in Bizarro World, aren’t I?
The very lengthily named and greatly in need of an acronym Los Angeles County Inter-Agency Council on Child Abuse and Neglect wants to tell you not to co-sleep. In fact, not only do they want to tell you not to co-sleep, they want to let you know that “…if you take the baby to bed with you and fall asleep, you are committing a potentially lethal act.”
Well, if that is so, then I am a wanted woman.
Co-sleeping was the only thing that helped my family maintain our tenuous grip on sanity. If we hadn’t co-slept, my husband and I would have been desperately re-thinking the entire pro-creating thing. Well, we did that quite a few times, but it would have definitely been more often.
In fact, I truly believe that it helped my son sleep better than he ever would have by himself in his crib. His crib was used, but not often. I had read this book by Dr. Sears prior to having the Munchkin, and it changed my entire outlook on parenting, including that of co-sleeping.
But anyhoo, back to some quasi-governmental agency trying to tell me what is best for my child. They quoted a study which stated “…that nearly half of 119 infants who died suddenly and unexpectedly during a four-year period in the St. Louis area did so while sleeping with someone else.”
Well, I’d like to know the number of infants who died while sleeping alone, which is left out of the equation.
I believe that there are indeed situations where co-sleeping would be unsafe, such as if one or both parents was taking a drug of any sort that produced drowsiness. And after drinking alcohol? Definitely not. A crowded bed with other siblings might also not be safe.
Unsafe situations aside, I happen to think it is a highly personal choice. I also happen to be pro co-sleeping. What about you?
There, I said it.
You know, this week started badly, is worsening rapidly, and at this rate I really don’t know if I’ll be able to face Friday without smelling salts. Tell me: Do they make overproof Earl Grey? I’ll have a double.
One doesn’t want to natter on about the Good Old Days before one was born (too much) because they were oppressive and hypocritical and full of ugly, synthetic garments and hostility towards the people who supply the toys for our Happy Meals and our mail order babies.
But.
One is reminded, one is, of the time Mister Walt Disney went to former Mousekateer Annette Funicello and asked her to keep her bellybutton covered during her upcoming beach movie, for the sake of the reputation of the Mickey Mouse Club. Well, she did and they gave her three sequels anyway and as far as we know she’s sitting on a beanbag full of cash, drinking whiskey sours her cabana boy mixed and emailing Perez Hilton corny jokes from the verandah of a swanky retirement villa in Santa Barbara. And good for her.
My, how things have changed. First Miley Cyrus, now this:
From Slate:
After reading of the Cyrus flap, I e-mailed my photo to Disney… How did the company square its position on the Liebowitz photo with its risqué billboard in China?…
Foster said he didn’t know which ad agency prepared the ad, how old the model was, or where the photo shoot took place. But he was sure it was the work of a Disney licensee: Shanghai Zhenxin Garments Co. Ltd… He assured me the billboard would be removed immediately…
It may be a small world, after all, but not everyone shares Burbank’s mores, and you can’t be too careful protecting your brand: You never know when a Chinese licensee, or an American glossy, will deviate from the Disney way.
So to speak.
My dear friends, you’ve no idea how brutal this world can be to an artistic soul. One by one, it eats them alive. Raymond Chandler. Dashiell Hammett. Dorothy Parker. Damon Runyan. Anita Loos. Ernest Hemingway.Mother Goose.
Yes, for is there any soul as fragile and artistic as that of a child’s storyteller? And yet as each tender Easy Reader, picture book, or pop-up manuscript is born, it is ruthlessly wrenched from its creator’s loving embrace and cast upon the heaving black waters of the heartless book market, there to sink or swim as its now-helpless progenitor can only clutch pearls or fedora and gape, wreathed in cigarette smoke and sheer terror (and then write about it on the Oprah forums). Oh! The Humanity!
Here, thanks to Kids in the Hall, perhaps the greatest sketch comedy troupe in history, is archival footage of one such writer’s brutal struggle through the long, dark, teddy bear’s picnic of the soul.
I was going to use their Teddy Bear’s Picnic skit, but that’s too dark even for me.
Oh, this will not end well.
Okay, fess up. Who hired the babysitter?
Now, regular readers will know several things about this blog. They’ll know about Listmania. They’ll know about the Friday Caption Contest. They’ll know, if they’ve got the right hormones, about the Celebrity Dad Face-Off.
And they will also know that if you’re looking for practical parenting advice, you go to Glinda. If you’re looking for attitude with or without a side of tentacles, you come to me.
But today Glinda has her hands full making fun of neurasthenic Desperate Housewives, so we must look elsewhere in the blogosphere for a good, stiff dose of sense. Where do we find it?
Ask Aunt Fattie! Seriously, this may be my second favorite advice column, right after Ask Sister Mary Martha (She had me at “Home Depot.” The only way to make Home Depot more awesome is to add nuns). The question o’ the day is, how to look for a job when you’re quite obviously pregnant, even if you’re not actually pregnant. A fraught question indeed. Let’s see what she’s got to say:
Dear Aunt Fatty,
I’m a college senior, about to enter the big wide job market, and I’m looking for some advice on how to handle my Ultra Super Special Body Shape.
You see, I look like I’m about 5-6 months pregnant, despite a complete and total lack of fetuses in my stomach…
Response:
Dear Imaginary Fetus,
Aunt Fattie’s first suggestion would be a T-shirt reading “No, I’m Not Pregnant.”
Her first serious suggestion would be “no empire waists.”
In truth, this is a poser. It is reprehensible but undeniable that firms and companies are reluctant to hire pregnant women because they don’t want to immediately pay for an extended leave of absence. Due to both social and legal restrictions, you can’t solve this with words — they can’t ask, and it’s awkward to answer unbidden. And so, you must solve it with clothes…
Finally, please remember: the “problem” in this case is not your belly, but widespread discriminatory hiring practices. Unfortunately, changing the latter is a huge project, and you shouldn’t have to go unemployed while it’s being undertaken. But even though Aunt Fattie’s advice involves hiding your belly, your belly is NOT the problem here.
And so it goes, with practical advice, witty phrasing, and motivational delivery, and with many amusing and several actually very useful suggestions in the comments. Did you know what happens to your ladyparts when you wear a spandex bodysquasher when you’re actually pregnant?
YOU. DON’T. WANT. TO. KNOW.
Note that the recommended outfits would not include this:
It was the worst experience that I could ever imagine going through as a mother,” said one West Hollywood mom… “Of course I broke down and started crying. I threw up. I had diarrhea. I locked myself in the closet and drank myself into oblivion. I felt like I failed my kid.”
I know that you are thinking to yourself, what the hell caused that type of reaction? Was her child mauled by a wild bear? Maimed in an entirely preventable accident? Or perhaps walking too close to a cliff and fell off, resulting in bodily injury? Did they have a disease which she blames herself for missing the symptoms?
No my friends, it was worse than that.
Much, much worse.
Her child just so happened to be wait-listed for kindergarten.
I know, I know.
Don’t worry.
I’ve got enough hankies for all of you.
In a nutshell, that is what an “eminent biologist/naturist” EO Wilson said at at the Aspen Environmental Forum.
Well, Mr. Wilson, we’re even worse when we have PMS.
Not one to be above some hyperbole, Mr. Wilson was trying to encourage his audience to think about how our current society, with its advances in technology and fear of children running around unsupervised, has made our children disconnected from nature. In theory, this leads to a society that will care less about nature than previous generations.
While I agree that we are moving toward more structure in our children’s lives via classes and playdates, I think the death of the appreciation of nature has been greatly overexaggerated.
I don’t have to force the Munchkin outside, he loves being outside. There is all this hand-wringing about how computers and video games are ruining our kids, but my son loves nothing more than playing in the mud. I wish I was kidding. Given the choice to watch Scooby Doo or go out and dig in his alloted spot in the planter, he will choose the digging every single time. He loves the beach and just today was complaining that we haven’t been in so long.
I happen to think that children have an innate connection with nature. I don’t know any mom who purposely keeps their kid cooped up in the house all day. In fact, it is exactly the opposite. It might be because of where I live, but I don’t that’s all of it.
While I understand that Mr. Wilson was trying to make a point, I really think he is selling us moms short.
Or, maybe he is simply trying to pull a classic mom ploy. Hands off the guilt trips, Mr. Wilson, they’re all ours!
At a certain point, you know, one has to conclude it no longer matters.
Carrying on from Glinda’s Teeny Poll: What causes art? In this case, it’s simple: a child’s desire for mutilation.
Do 13-year-olds really need to be saving their babysitting and paper route money for breast implants? Cheryl-Ann Webster wondered that herself, when her daughter told her that a friend was already socking away money for the boobflation job she felt would be an absolute necessity, sooner rather than later.
So Cheryl-Ann made a few synthetic boobs herself; she made The Beautiful Women Project.
To demonstrate that beautiful bodies come in all shapes and sizes, she wanted to surround young girls with sculptures of real women’s bodies…
The Beautiful Women Project is a touring art exhibition of life-sized torsos of real women aged 19-91.
Aims:
* To challenge socially-constructed images of beauty
* To raise awareness and open a dialogue about the link between self-worth and physical appearance
* To be a teaching and healing tool
In the artist’s words: “Our bodies tell our life story. They are portraits of our journeys and experiences. Knowing that our body is beautiful just as it exists, is a message more people need to see and hear.”
