A full sixty-five percent of you claimed that you are only moderately addicted to the intenet, and only fifteen percent were completely honest and said they were totally addicted. Bravo to you, my friends, and maybe you should form a support group. Eleven percent of you lied through your teeth and said you could totally walk away at any time, and I don’t believe you.

I would say that I’m somewhat addicted, although much of my surfing I can mask as “research” for my job here, and then I feel totally justified in looking at all the celebrity baby photos. If my husband complains about the time I’m spending, I simply hiss, “It’s for the blog” and he immediately shuts up. It’s nice.

Anyhoo, it’s been a really long time since I last cut my hair thanks to the baby, and it is really long. Like, down past my bra line. But, I’m going to be 39 in a month or so (yes, I’m a Pisces and I’m very sensitive) and I have an infant and I’m wondering if I should cut it fairly short. If I cut it at about chin length, I would have more than enough hair to donate. Am I fooling myself about my long hair looking good on me still?*

*This picture is not up there to imply that I, in any way, look like Christie Brinkley.

When I was about seven months pregnant this summer, a bunch of the women in my family went shoe shopping at one of our favorite stores, Nordstrom Rack.  If you’ve never been to the Rack, you have spared yourselves a marathon day of searching for that perfect something, but you have also lost out on an always fun shopping trip. It is where all the local Nordie items that were deemed unworthy by the wealthy are deemed fit for us poor people to desperately paw through.

Anhyhoo, I couldn’t really do any clothes shopping, so of course I went directly to the shoes.  Oh, the shoes.  Racks and racks of shoes, some of them obviously deserving of a place on the clearance table, others not so much.   I almost always find a pair that I’m willing to buy, it just depends on the budget at the time if they will actually accompany me home.

As I was perusing the aisles, my eyes spied what looked to be very cute loafers.  I’m a sucker for loafers.  At places like this, you have to be very quick, because there is always some chick shadowing you and trying to invade your rightful personal space (and shoe picks) so I grabbed them and put them in my basket.  My M.O. is to collect all the promising looking shoes into my personal possession and away from the shifty-eyed bitch to the left of me, and then take a look at them all when my basket is full.

Well, when I got to this particular pair of loafers, I saw immediately that I loved them.  They were sort of spectator-ish and looked to be made of linen, which I thought was really interesting.  Then I looked at the label.  They were from Taryn Rose.  Oh my! And the price?  Only eighty bucks, which if you know anything about Taryn Rose shoes, that is an absolute steal. 

So I tried them on, and noticed that there was a very tiny black mark on the left heel. Aha, that explained the discounting.  I was willing to overlook the mark, it was toward the inside and I didn’t think anyone would be looking that closely at my feet as I was walking.  I mean, you never know, but I was willing to take the chance.  It wasn’t an egregious mark, and hey, I could always blame it on my kids and no one would think twice.

When I modeled them for my family, they loved the shoes, but a few of them had puckered brows as they looked down at my pregnant feet.  It seemed that my swollen-ish feet were stretching the linen on the top of the shoe in an ugly way.  An ugly way that meant the shoes weren’t worth buying.

But wait, the swollen feet were a temporary condition, I exclaimed.  I can still triumphantly purchase these lovely, comfortable shoes!

However, I was counseled against buying them since I couldn’t be absolutely sure if the stretching was a part of the shoe, or if it was my feet, or any other number of uncontrollable factors.  I wept, but they were right.  I didn’t want to spend eighty bucks just to have them sit in my closet forever.

So maybe I’m just in denial and I have fat feet, but I’d like to think that if only I hadn’t been pregnant when I tried those shoes on, I would in fact be wearing them right now.

What was your pair of shoes that got away?

Last week the question was posed about whether you (or anyone you know, wink, wink) served separate meals for picky child eaters. Only thirty five percent said that they were sticklers for having kids eat whatever was put in front of them, while a combined fifty one percent said either themselves or someone they knew made an exception for picky eaters.

As for myself, I admit that when the Munchkin was a toddler, I would not make him eat what we were eating, but now that he is older and his palate is maturing, I make sure to make meals that everyone can eat. I just felt that certain battles weren’t worth fighting, and he is always willing to taste something, and I feel that is about as much as I can expect. I don’t know any adults that regularly eat food they don’t like, so why would I expect that out of my child?

As for today, I’ve got a question about something that came up in conversation with my sister the other day. The Munchkin has a DSi, and was playing Professor Layton and the Curious Village. He was having trouble with one of the riddles, and when neither of us could figure it out, I went ahead and looked up the solution on the internet. My sister considers that to be tantamount to teaching him that cheating is OK. What do you think?

Last week, I wanted to know if you felt the attack on a child due to the color of his hair and skin should be prosecuted as a hate crime.  Twenty five percent of you felt that it should be, while fifty one percent said that the kids were just being stupd, not necessarily perpetrating a hate crime.  Usually, although it depends on state law, a person has to be in a protected class in order for a crime to be classified as a hate crime, and currently red-haired people aren’t in that category. 

A while ago, Teeny Manolo’s superfantastic class factotum asked a question in the comments of a post I wrote on children choosing vegetarianism.  It was so thought-provoking, I thought I would pass it along.

According to the results of last week’s poll, the majority of you are having Thanksgiving right at home. To that I say, good luck! I am fortunate enough that my sister is the hostess with the mostest and has all the major holidays and birthdays at her house. My contribution? Usually an appetizer or a salad. This year, probably neither, since I have the excuse of a newborn to hide behind.

Today’s poll revolves around pregnancy, but not mine. Even though I have to admit that during the Halloween party season, imbibing an alcoholic drink was tempting. Especially since I was feeling pretty cruddy for my entire last trimester. I didn’t do it, though.

It seems I’m all about the studies lately, and I’ve got a fairly disturbing one that inspired this post.  According to Girlguiding UK:

Girls as young as seven would like to change something about their appearance and half of 16 to 21-year-olds would consider surgery to achieve their perfect body, a study has revealed. 

 The research… shows that 95 per cent of 16 to 21-year-olds would change their bodies, with 33 per cent saying they wanted to be thinner and around a quarter of 16 to 21-year-olds said they would consider resorting to cosmetic surgery. 

 All right, who’s to blame?

I would like to blame it all on magazines and models and such, what with photoshopped pictures of bodies that simply do not exist in nature.

But, it seems to me that perhaps we should be looking more at mothers.  Now, I’m the last one to sit and point and blame moms for everything that is wrong with their child.  But I happen to think that a girl’s biggest influence is not some photo in a magazine, but her mother. 

And how many mothers look in the mirror and constantly bemoan their flaws?  They may not be meaning to pass on such phobias to their daughters, but I can’t help thinking that if young women hear nothing but negativity coming out of their mothers’ mouths, they will pick up on it and transfer that dissatisfaction onto themselves.

It’s funny because I definitely do not have a perfect figure by any stretch of the imagination, but I have no sense of self-loathing when I see my reflection in the mirror like so many women I know.  Even my very skinny friends will complain about their “big butts” or the fact that their waist isn’t perfect, even though they have perfectly lovely figures.

Perhaps it’s time we do look to ourselves on this one.

Who says that moms are all about “mom jeans” and sweats?

Certainly not the people who have submitted photos of their stylishly clad mothers at the aptly named “My Mom, The Style Icon” blog.

I don’t know that my mother would have been considerd a style icon, but she did have some pretty rad cat-eye glasses during the seventies.  Oh yeah, and she had a sort of bouffant hairstyle that went well with the glasses. 

I don’t have a huge impression of her clothing, but the sad part is, she has a lot of her old clothing still in her closets, and yes, she has closets plural, so all I would have to do is go over to her house and have a look-see.  She probably still fits into most of them still, damn her.

I do seem to remember a pair of white go-go boots.  I think I’m going to have to dig up some old albums!