25 Gifts My Kid Won’t be Getting for Christmas This Year (Or Ever)

Kids can be a little crazy. And Christmastime brings out the craziest of their tendencies. They think sky's the limit when it comes to their Christmas list. They're sure Santa has deep pockets.  Well, I had to put a stop to that. Pronto. I mean I don't mind them asking for some fantasy items, but when their …

MIA at Summer Sleepaway Camp

So we sent Crazy to sleep-away camp a little over a week ago, and we've been without communication ever since. The kids weren't allowed to bring their cell phones, which I wholeheartedly endorsed and which enticed me to send him in the first place, but I figured during the two-weeks' time he was away he'd …

Push Presents Are Stupid

Even the name is stupid. I don’t like saying the words, and I shouldn’t have to because they shouldn’t even exist. Every time I write those words, I want to put quotation marks around them to indicate I don’t agree with this contrived term, but I’m being forced against my will to acknowledge it. I’m …

Raising Teens is Hard

But apparently not as hard as being a teen. As my kids have gotten older and more independent, I expected life to get a bit easier. It turns out, though, all the things my kids so zealously wanted to attempt as toddlers and mastered as grader schoolers have now become too difficult for them to perform. It's a …

Word to Your Motha: Fugacious

What I really like about this word is that it sounds obscene. The nice thing is it's not. You can sprinkle it liberally into all your conversations and scandalize people without ever having uttered an unsavory term. Like this: "That's a God damn fugacious lie, and you know it!" Doesn't that go perfectly together? It …

End Game

Day five with our house guest I arranged to meet a friend at her town pool, which is even nicer than my town pool, which is pretty nice. Her pool practically qualifies as a mini water park with two water slides, a lazy river and a grand total of four swimming pools. The grounds also include numerous …

I Hate Playdates

I even hate the word playdate. I don’t think any dates should be involved in playing. Kids should just play. Preferably outside or at somebody else’s house. What ever happened to being locked out of your house by your mother and forced to play with your only sibling on the rusty swing set out back? …

The Day My Computer Died

This weekend my computer died. Or, more accurately, the computer used by my husband and kids died. I have my own, which I do not allow anyone to touch for reasons that will become clear. We weren’t completely certain as to the cause of death, but most likely it had something to do with the …