I live in what some would term a hoity-toity area.

Lots of very prim and proper yoga-practicin’ ladies with perfect hair and Bugaboo strollers.  They tend to have roughly the same type of hair style, roughly the same clothes, and roughly the same manerisms.  I don’t think most of them actually come from here, but there’s more of them than me.

Erm, it’s safe to say that I don’t really fit in all that well.  I’m a little too opinionated, a little too heavy, and I’ve never been the cookie-cutter type.

The other day I took my kids to the park nearest our house, and it was surprisingly empty.

Oh sure, there was one other mom (or maybe nanny, because she sure was chipper with that little boy) with a boy a bit younger than my daughter, but that was about it other than some people playing on the basketball courts on the other side.

So when my daughter wanted to climb UP the slide instead of going on top of the play equipment in the traditional manner, I let her.  I figured that since there was no one else on the play structure other than her, it wasn’t a big deal.  If there had been other children on the structure, I probably wouldn’t have allowed it.

Anyhoo, up she went on the slippery slide, with my hand hovering protectively over her back, but not touching it because I want her to do it by herself, if possible.  When she reached the top, she slid back down with a happy screech.

The other little boy saw my daughter do this, and asked his mom/nanny if he could go up the slide as well.

“Oh no, honey,” she said in a voice loud enough for me to hear and dripping with something akin to condescension.  “There are RULES about climbing up the slide.  We don’t do things like that.” And she primly took him to an entirely different section of the playground.

I looked around to see where the rules prohibiting slide climbing were posted.

There weren’t any.

I don’t really think of myself as a rebel.  But apparently I am.

Sigh.

You may have already heard about the Alicia Silverstone video where she chews some food for her young son Bear and feeds it to him via her mouth as a bird would to their young.

Wow.

Talk about dedicated parenting.

All you lazy moms out there who selfishly watch as your kids chew their own food, you’ve been shown up something good!

42% you take only a half hour to 45 minutes to get out the door, and an impressive 21% take only 15-30. 15% of you were split evenly between less than 15 and 45-60. I’m going to count myself in that last cohort due to the fact that I have a toddler. She’s a convenient excuse for almost anything.

A friend and I were recently at a party, and we briefly discussed allowing our same-aged sons to walk to a nearby park (she lives in the neighborhood).  We went back and forth for a bit, but eventually decided against it.  Then we started talking about how it seems in our memories that we had a lot more freedom way back when than kids do now.  Is that pretty much a given? Or are we just old and our memories are faulty?

Let me tell you about how I hate computer viruses.  I had a doozy hit me on Monday evening sometime, and it was one of those where you couldn’t even start your browser to look for how the hell to get rid of it.  I had two different antivirus programs running that didn’t catch the rootkit (which equals really bad) and it allowed eighty billion other trojans and other things into my computer.  Man, did I have a headache for two days.  But, all fixed now!

I read this article about a teacher at a California middle school who allegedly was in an “adult movie,” and was found out by some students, and placed on leave.

Now, I try to think of myself who is enlightened about the adult entertainment industry.  I mean, it’s there.  Boy, is is ever there.  And I don’t have anything against adult entertainment workers, and indeed I am of the thought that prostitution should be legalized.

However.

As much as I hate to admit it, if I found out that this person was teaching my son, I don’t think I would react so magnanimously.  I wouldn’t be calling for her resignation or anything, but I always think of what would happen if many years down the road my son were to see his former teacher in a certain type of film and what the psychological ramifications of that would be.

Maybe they wouldn’t be much of anything, but I just wouldn’t want to go there.

But then we get into the whole thing of private time outside of one’s occupation, and nobody wants to go back to the days when teachers couldn’t marry because that meant (gasp!) they would be having relations with their husband and ohmygod the world would explode.  And of course, that didn’t happen.

I know it is unfair of me to think that the teacher probably shouldn’t have allegedly starred in that type of film, but I honestly can’t help it.

Let me know if I’m alone in my prudishness.

And let’s not even get into the fact that it was some students who tipped off administration about the teacher’s film exploits.

A high school in Cincinnati, Ohio is basically bribing their students with gift cards to attend school and do so on time.

You know what?  Bribery works.

Any parent will tell you that.  At least, any honest parent.

The thing is, research shows that when you repeat a certain behavior so many times, it actually becomes a habit, rather than something you are forced to do.

Since the school is facing high truancy rates, extremely (almost criminally so)  high dropout rates, and a high poverty rate among their student population, they have my blessing.

My last poll was about a school’s decision to ban Uggs because students were storing contraband in them, and 38% thought it was a pretty good idea.  33% thought it wasn’t, and 28% felt that there must have been something better to ban.

Today I’m all about bullets in laptops.

Well, at least when it comes to this video of a North Carolina father reacting to his daughter’s Facebook rant about her life.

A 14 pound baby boy was recently delivered naturally and without an epidural in Iowa.

Ouch.

My own baby-chute cringes in sympathy.

Did I really just call it a baby-chute? Impressive what the lack of sleep can do for your vocabulary.

And I didn’t even give birth naturally, but had two C-sections.  Aaaaand, even if I hadn’t had the C-sections, both of my children were roughly half the weight of young Asher.

A good friend of mine had to deliver her second child without an epidural because her labor progressed more quickly than she realized, and she admitted that it was indeed the worst pain imaginable.  That was with a nine pound baby.  Add five more and you’ve got to have some major endorphin rush happening just to stay conscious.

A list of the first baby names of 2012 by state recently came out, and there are definitely a few humdingers.

Apparently there was a trend of a lot of names beginning with the letter K and the letter A. Even though I didn’t give birth in 2012, I’m OK with not being on trend.

A few that leapt out at me:

Kentucky: Kay’lyn

I thought that the whole apostrophe within a name thing was so very over.  I was so very wrong.

New Mexico: Daytona Jaymes

There are, to me, two things wrong with this name.

South Dakota: Kalylah

I have no idea where they came up with this one, or how to pronounce it.  Awkwardly, I guess.

Wyoming: Khloe

The Kardashian influence has gone much too far.

Ohio: Anya

A Project Runway fan, it seems.

Arkansas: Wesley Ren

Ditto Princess Bride.

Nevada: Envy Essence-Faye

I could deal with this if it was rearranged.  Maybe.

And you know, I’m good with that. I think that even though the concept of Lego is universal, not every girl wants to build police cars and assault vehicles and whatnot.

But this?

This seems just a bit too genderized for me. I don’t have a problem with having things like the tree house or the pet house, but why oh why does everything have to have pink and purple? Could they have not launched the new sets with regular colors?

This is an old advertisement from the 70′s (I think) in which the girl, admittedly a bit tomboy-ish looking, is holding a creation built out of standard Lego bricks.

What happened between then and now?

I had my own Lego sets in the 70′s, and granted, it was a “house” set with a kitchen and living room, but I loved it. It wasn’t pink or purple or glittery, and yet it was one of my favorite toys.

Imagine that!

Has retailers crying into their beers and parents doing a happy dance.

I have tried never to buy into the whole “must have” toy thing, although I know a lot of people do because of peer pressure and the like.  If the popular toy happens to coincide with the interests of my child, then great.  But if it doesn’t, I will feel not even a tiny pang of regret.

And is it just me, or am I the only one surprised to read in that article that layaway is back?

Maybe I come from a place of privilege when I say that I’m not a big fan of layaway.

If we can’t afford something, we don’t buy it.  We have had more than one Christmas when we told our son that Mommy and Daddy simply did not have the money to buy him oodles of things.  That he gets a lot from his extended family and we see no need to put ourselves in debt for some toys.  Did he get something? Yes, but one year it was pretty thin.

Again, maybe I know not of what I speak.

Anybody want to set me straight?