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You Are NOT Your Job!
This article is not about parenting or anything related to parenting, per se. I suppose I’m breaking the rules of the website but I had a thought I’ve been chewing around lately and wanted to record for posterity. And it is MY website so I’ll say what I want to say. LOL. This is my sad little version of creative freedom… The old trope goes: “Study hard, kids, so you don’t grow up to be a bus driver!” … (The other old trope goes: “Don’t live in a van down by the river!” Although living in a van is considered cool now.) Well, I worked at a bus yard five…
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Super Parent LIFE HACKS!
As an avid Redditor, one of my favorite threads on the site is r/lifehacks. Yes, most of the life hacks are kind of lame, but sifting through the thread is like shopping at the Goodwill. You’ve got to sort through a lot of crap to find the treasure, and it’s truly golden when you’ve found an excellent life hack that’s perfectly tailored to you. A hack that you can apply to increase your efficiency, save time and money, or simply up the whimsy level in your daily life. As parents, we can especially benefit from the use of life hacks, and this article from Bored Panda compiles some of the…
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Which Little Critter to Get for Your Child?…My Definitive Pet Rankings!
When I was a child, I wanted nothing more in the world than a dog. Before every big gift-worthy occasion or holiday, I ceaselessly begged my parents. Birthdays, Christmastime, good report cards, Thanksgiving, Memorial Day… you name it! I made highly sophisticated presentations complete with graphs and charts, outlining the case and expertly arguing my side like a junior attorney. And I never let up on the dream. In response and over time, my parents bought every form of “alternative” pet in an effort to appease me. I had fish, hamsters, a rabbit, a turtle, birds… Eventually, they buckled a little and allowed me to get a cat. Thus, Arthur…
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The SCIENCE Behind *Annoying* Baby Talk Singsong Voices!
At least once a night, after my daughter has gone to sleep, one of her talking toys comes to life on its own and pipes up with some stupid phrase from the bottom of the toy basket. It’s pretty creepy but I’ve grown accustomed to it, and I’m sure there’s a reasonable, non-ghost explanation as to what hairpin triggers these toys to go off. Last night, I heard her anthropomorphic picnic basket cut my peace and quiet to tell me “an ORANGE is orange!” Well no kidding. It wasn’t the stupidly obvious statement that bugged me, but the way that he (or she?) said it. In that singsong, saccharin fake…
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The Rent Is Too F*#%ing High! Housing Rights & Options
As a California native who could never quite convince herself to leave this great state, I’ve grown accustomed over the years to insane rental costs and the fine art of the Craigslist search for that apartment needle in the haystack. But in the past couple years, it’s gotten out of control. In fact, my current city of Sacramento had the largest rental rate increase in the nation for 2017 with an increase of 11% since 2016, prompting talks of rent control and other city-wide limits. People are flocking here from the Bay Area and driving up the cost of housing, but it’s not just a California/Silicon Valley problem. The recent housing…
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Toys, Toys, Toys! What do the Experts Say?
As Toys R Us is on the verge of closing all locations following Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and Geoffrey the Giraffe is served his generous severance package after more than fifty years of unwavering company loyalty, I’ve been thinking a lot about the topic of toys. On the one hand, I’m deeply grieved by the end of an era in which toys held their own special space in the retail realm. When toys were not just five aisles of cheap plastic crap in a big box store of sixty. An afterthought at Walmart or Target because your kid was being particularly well-behaved on the monthly stock-up trip. Or something you order…
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“Pull the Car Over, Ma!”…Sensible Drive Thru Options
WARNING! The fast food industry is a glaringly obvious sign of the fast approaching, American-led apocalypse. Its offerings are a direct cause of massively increased rates of high cholesterol, diabetes, heart disease, childhood obesity, irritable bowel syndrome, acne, restless leg syndrome and every other medical malady known to man. It’s a lazy person’s go-to choice in a country rapidly approaching widespread drooling Idiocracy. Its marketing targets and preys on poor people, who are surely incapable of thinking for themselves. Fast food restaurants infest our suburban landscapes. They are greasy pockmarks from sea to shining sea, and export the disease to all other parts of the world, destroying entire cultures and…