Keeping up with the Liberians: A wince-worthy statement

"For most American women, of course, the idea of 16 weeks paid leave is a mere dream. The United States is one of a handful of countries with no guaranteed paid maternity leave policy, along with Swaziland, Papua New Guinea, Lesotho and Liberia, researchers found last year. "

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24206008/

Excuse me, I would like a refund please.

There has been a recent proliferation of dairy products designed to “aid digestion”.

I noticed that one of these products advertises a money-back guarantee.

I tried to imagine the conversation required to exchange enough information to communicate the products failure to perform, and the desire for one’s money back:

“Yes, Hello. I would like my money back for your cheese product. I ate it for a week, and it did not make me poop.”

“Okay, I am happy to help you. Let me understand. Our cheese did not make you defecate, and you would like your money back. Is that correct?”

“Yes. I ate your cheese. Then I didn’t poop. Because of this, I would like my money back, please.”

“Okay, great. We just need a little more information. For a refund to be processed, we require some form of proof of your failure to defecate. To ensure that we have enough information, we ask you to verify pressure of the contents in your colon. Please provide us with an address to which we can send our fecal pressure gauge, follow the simple instructions, and return the results to our lab. If the report reflects a manometric pressure of more than 3 pounds per cubic centimeter, your two dollars and forty nine cents will be refunded.

If you happen to have a bowel movement between now and the time you receive your verification kit, we ask to preserve the sample so that our technical staff can study the shape and markings of the fecal matter to estimate the velocity at which the contents of your bowels were extruded.

Our forensic experts will study the markings of your dung and compare them to a test sample. As with bullets fired from a gun, each fecal extrusion posesses markings unique to the individual who fired them. So please, do not attempt to send in matter not belonging to you. We seek first to prove that the matter was produced by your bowels. Next, we test the markings to reveal the colonic pressure estimated upon extrusion. If our forensics team finds the measurement to be above our required level, you will receive a voucher for a product of equal or lesser value.

“Yes, please send me the kit. It is imperative that I receive a refund for my two dollars an forty nine cents. You promised your product would make me poop, and your product did not, in fact, make me poop. Therefore, it is well within my rights to request a full refund. Thank you.”

“We look forward to hearing from you. Please do not hesitate to contact us with questions.”

“I appreciate your help. Thank you.”

A very special 5 days of Christmas

On the first day of Christmas a loved one gave to me:
a baby with plagiocephaly.

On the second day of Christmas, a loved one gave to me,
2 Pink eyes
and a baby with plagiocephaly.

On the third day of Christmas, a loved one gave to me:
3 nasty coughs,
2 pink eyes,
and a baby with plagiocephaly.

On the fourth day of Christmas a loved one gave to me:
4 runny noses
3 nasty coughs
2 pink eyes
and a baby with plagiocephaly.

On the fifth day of Christmas a loved one gave to me,
5 ounces of ham! (stuck in my husbands esophagus requiring a visit to the ER).
4 runny noses,
3 nasty coughs,
2 pink eyes
and a baby with plagiocephaly.

May your holiday season be free of helmets, esophagus's filled with ham, and general snotty congestion!

For Maggie

Dear Maggie,

There have been so many moments when I have stopped, made a mental note to remember a specific thing you said that was hysterically funny, or something you did that was just so.. well... MAGGIE. Here a few things I want to be sure to remember from age 3 years 2 months.

You live in Minnesota, and have always lived in Minnesota, but instead of using the local dialect and accent (straight out of the movie "Fargo" no matter how many locals insist we don't talk like that. WE DO), your accent more closely resembles a jewish grandmother from Long Island.

You even say "talk" like her. "Toowalk" You wanted to stick your hand in the flour jar ther other day because is was "sowaft".

Where you picked up this affectation is beyond me, but it is highly amusing.

You have an obsession with soap. This is preferable to other possibilities like poop and garbage, so I will count my blessings.

When you visit your grandmothers house or your aunts house, or any new place, I know that if I haven't seen you or heard you in five minutes that you are rooting around the bathtub looking for bars of soap. No matter if it's nothing but a sliver. You sniff them out the way a squirrel finds nuts and lovingly clutch them to your chest like little baby birds.

Yesterday your Grandma gave you 3 small hand soaps and you brought them to bed with you during your nap. I told you not to rub them in your eyes, and no sooner were the words out of my mouth, you raised one to your eye socket and smushed it around in circles to test my hypothesis that it would sting and make you cry. I take no small amount of pride in the way you stubbornly insist on deciding for yourself if someone is full of crap or not. And I was grateful that you kept your eye closed while smooshing the small purple fish-shaped soap around your eyelid, proving my theory wrong.

Boy, you really got me there.

You have taken an interest in playing the piano as well. You stand before the keyboard, raise your hands, pause, and shout "ONE! ONE! ONE TWO THREE!" before you begin pounding away. Because this is what Lindsay Buckingham does in the live version of "Go your own way" that your father tivo'd and watches with you over and over again so that you can dance and sing along.

This is good, because you no longer allow me to play music cd's for you when you play in your room. I am not sure why you decided that you no longer enjoy music. Perhaps it distracts you from other things you like to do in your room, such as pretending you want to play with your animals, shutting the door, undressing, putting on your own pull-up, re-dressing yourself, and crouching in a corner to poop. This is all to avoid defacating in the dreaded toilet. This kind of thing takes a great deal of concentration, and you can't be distracted by the soundtrack of "Diego Live".

I have kept you far from all varieties of princess toys and movies, and so far you are much more intrigued by things that are creepy-crawly. One of your favorite toys is a rubber lizard we got at Target for two dollars and fifty cents last spring. Your dolls sit in the basement gathering dust, but that lizard gets dragged from place to place.

Your favorite thing to say to me is this: "Ma-MEH! CAN I HAVE A SNACKANADRINKANWATCHMONSTERS?" You would watch "Monsters Inc." fourteen times a day if we let you. I must confess that I am tiring of being your snackanadrink fetcher. I may resort to getting you your own minifridge and raisin cupboard to keep in the TV room. I'll have to think about that one.

You spontaneously burst out with "I love you Mah-Ma" about twenty times a day. Often while grabbing my hand. Sometimes you tell me "I love you Da-Deh" just to be funny. You think it's positively HYSTERICAL. I hope you never stop doing that, however I know you probably will. I will miss it terribly.

You also love your baby brother, which truly makes my heart swell with pride and love and wonder. You wake up in the morning and immediately want to touch him. You stick your face right up next to his, and exclaim in this breezy, rushed, high pitched voice: "HiBEN! HiBEN!"

If he cries, you turn on the music on his baby rocker and sing for him. You love your baby brother. And it had nothing to do with your father or me prompting you or pressuring you (not that those kind of tactics work with you anyways). Your love for your baby brother came from your own heart, and that heart of yours is enormously sweet, and whipsmart, and adorably stubborn and independent, and I am so very proud of you.

There's is a lot more where that came from, but that's what I have time to write for now.

I love you hunnybun.

Love, Mommy

Thoughts on Home Depot

If I have to set foot in Home Depot one more time I think I shall stab myself in the eye with a carpenter's pencil.



I have accompanied my husband on approximately 435 trips to the black hole of our money in the last 12 months. Most of these invitations have been covert. As in: "Honey, do you want to grab a bite to eat?"And then we end of at Home Depot.
"Are you in the mood for a coffee?" (Once I am in the car, miles from home): "I just need to make a quick stop."



45 minutes later while husband peruses 45 different kinds of caulk, I find myself giving my 3 year old her 2nd timeout in the bath fixture aisle while silently cursing the entire big box concept. I also curse the hamster wheel of modern home improvement.

Keeping up with the Joneses stuff, like granite coutertops and stainless steel appliances that are trademarks of the new alterna-yuppie affluents. SO ALTERNATIVE. Not. We are all suckers. Suckers who drop a hundred bucks at Home depot every weekend. Those who are truly alternative drive by home depot with their middle fingers raised, and go home to their outdated kitchens and bathrooms without emptying their bank accounts and racking up credit card debt.



Note to self: implement moratorium on all home improvement projects until further notice. "Project never ending blackhole of a basement bathroom" has been in full patchy swing for over THREE YEARS NOW, and we still don't have a blasted everloving toilet on the lower level.

Staying / working at home is harder than going to work

In case you were wondering which was harder.

And also, I am mired in poo.

Maggie is old enough to go into her room, change into her own pull-up and re-dress herself so she can take a giant crap in her pants, but not capable of going poop in the toilet.

Also, my children have been re-named Madge and Bif by their aunts.

Madge, Bif, and giant piles of doodie. There are the things that compose the vast majority of my waking hours.

It's not as bad as it may sound.

It's a good thing they're cute.

And so we had pork...

Wednesday night I made a dinner of roast beef and roasted potatoes, and in doing so, I seared all the pads on the fingertips of my right hand on a white-hot handle of a frying pan.

After thawing out an entire pork tenderloin with my burned hand, I eventually went to bed with my hand in a bag of frozen chicken parts. Remind me to get a refrigerator with an ice machine. Please.

The next day Maggie flipped over face first, upside down, into the ladder on her bunk bed. I expected her to come up with broken teeth, but she just had a bump on her forehead.

Just in case any of you were questioning the importance of health insurance. We are poster children.

Last night, we ate pork.