Brown Paper Packages Tied Up With String

Blue Diamond Wasabi & Soy Sauce Almonds

Note the big "BOLD" warning on the side of these almonds; it's no joke-- these nuts pack a spicy, delicious punch. Perhaps you love almonds so much you can eat a whole container of them in one sitting. Perhaps you are thinking that such extreme-tasting almonds will prevent those nutty binges. Well, you are wrong. Quite the opposite: they are so damn good you will eat the whole container and then rush back to the grocery store for more. Around $4.99.

Automoblox

A couple of years ago, my son received a set of three Mini-Automoblox for his third birthday. At the time, he was obsessed with cars and trucks (like 80% of boys that age), and the toy immediately became his favorite plaything. No wonder: Each Automoblox can be taken apart and then reassembled in various ways by mixing and matching parts from different vehicles. The combinations are endless, and because the wooden cars are precision engineered, all pieces fit together perfectly and each newly-created vehicle runs smoothly. Automoblox were designed by industrial designer Patrick Calello and took five years to perfect. $30 for a set of three different mini-vehicles.

California Baby Tea Tree & Lavender Shampoo & Bodywash

When my daughter was a baby, she had cradle cap, but unlike most kids, she didn't grow out of it. I tried rubbing baby oil into her scalp then sloughing off the oily, peeling, gross skin (per the suggestion of her pediatrician) but that didn't work, and it took three washings to get out the oiliness. Then there's my son, who has sensitive, pale, Irish skin prone to rashes. So I was definitely in the market for a product that was super-gentle and natural. I found it in California Baby's Tea Tree & Lavender Shampoo & Bodywash, which is tear free, allergy tested, and helps to remove cradle cap and flaky scalp. All ingredients are organic, sustainably grown, vegan, not tested on animals, with no animal ingredients, no irritating sulfates, gluten, soy, oat, dairy, or nuts. $12 for 8.5 oz.

Itsy, Bitsy, Teeny, Weeny Bikini

Summer is here once again, which is awesome. I'm a big fan of summertime. Here in our town of Mt. Pleasant, we are lucky to have the greatest municipal pool I've ever seen. It has a million features, including a 40-foot, tunneled, corkscrew water slide. All for less than $500 per family.

As you can imagine, we are at the pool as often as possible, which means running into the same families day after day. This can be great when the moms are interesting and the kids well-behaved. But when the kids are wild and the mom weird, well, it can be sucky.

There is this woman: We don't see her much during the school-year (thankfully we're in different school districts), but every time we're at the pool, we run into her and her brood. Because my children are close in age to two of hers (she has three kids and is pregnant with #4), we get to talking as moms do. She's perfectly nice, but let's just say that our politics and philosophies could not be more different, and for that reason she annoys me.

Mind you, it's not like we actually talk about politics or philosophy, but you can learn a lot about a person just by discussing kids and hobbies. I've written about this woman before: Once she made a crack about how she'd better start using sunscreen or else she'd "look 40" in no time (not realizing I was 41); another time, she offended me with the Pro-life bumper stickers on her mini-van.

Since our paths have started crossing again, I've been a bit wary of her. And sure enough, the other day Ms. Clueless did it again. We were sitting on the edge of the kiddie pool watching our kids and chatting. Her four-year-old daughter had on the cutest bathing suit: pink and green, flamingo-patterned, skirt bottom, short-sleeved top, matching headband. I complimented the mom on the suit, and she said, "Yeah, I think it's so cute but I couldn't get her to wear it at first. Then I was like, 'I paid $20 bucks for it, you're wearing it!' I don't know, I'm just not into bikinis for little girls." She crinkled up her nose. "There's no need to show that much skin when they're so young."

Not ten feet away, my three-year-old daughter was splashing around in her bikini. I wanted to smack the b*#ch.

Looking adorbs in her bikini

I happen to think bikinis on little girls are adorable. And they are also practical when you are trying to potty train your kid--getting a wet one-piece off an about-to-bust toddler is challenging, to say the least. My daughter has about five swimsuits, yet she almost always chooses the bikini, even though it's from last year and barely fits anymore.

I'm not about to argue with her about which swimsuit to wear. I mean, what is the BFD if your toddler wears a bikini? In Europe the little girls splash around topless, and no one cares. Why must Americans--especially those who are part of the religious right--be so uptight about this stuff?

They think they're protecting their kids but what they're really doing is giving them complexes. What's Ms. Clueless going to do when her precious little girl turns sixteen and starts rebelling against all the Puritanical dogma with micro-minis and piercings?

That I would like to see.

Brown Paper Packages Tied Up With String

Method Bathroom Cleaner

I've slowly been going green for, oh, decades now, but for the longest time, I wouldn't give up my Tilex bathroom cleaner. My loyalty goes back to college days when the bathroom was so disgusting that you wanted to blast the crap out of it with the most toxic stuff out there. But those days are gone, and the bathrooms in our house are only mildly gross (5-year-old boys often miss the bowl). So it was finally time to green my bathroom cleaning, and a coupon for a Method product sealed the deal. However, I still wasn't convinced a non-toxic product would actually get rid of the soap scum and mold that quickly grows in the crevices of our limestone shower. The first thing I noticed when using Method's Bathroom Cleaner was the delicious eucalyptus-mint scent--it made me want to lick the walls. And that's when I realized: my nostrils weren't burning! I wasn't light-headed! The plant-based, non-toxic formula dissolves soap scum just as well as Tilex (maybe even better because now I don't rush the job to get away from the noxious fumes). $5.49

Migoga Marble Run

My son purchased this building set a few months ago using Christmas money from Great-Grandma. We had been to his friend's house, where they had a different marble run game (cheaper and flimsier, as it turned out). My son loved it, so I did some research online. The reviews of that product were horrible; the Migoga marble runs were reviewed favorably, however, so we purchased a set at our local toy shop. The marble runs come in various sizes, and some even have a motorized marble elevator thingy, but we got the medium sized, low-tech set called Vortis. My son has had hours of fun with this toy (and so have I). I'm pretty sure it teaches advanced mathematical skills--there's a lot of spacial and geometric calculations going on when you build a marble run. You can build one of four models pictured on the box (instructions are not provided--yay!) or else just build free-form. Then you race marbles (real glass ones, not crappy plastic like in some other sets) and see who wins. Sets run from $35 upward.

Benefit Moon Beam or High Beam

Okay, so I'm cheating with this one, because I haven't actually used this product yet. But I'm seriously just about to order it. I am excited about this product because, after months of watching American Idol and wondering how the hell Jennifer Lopez's skin looks that glowy and dewy (yet still remarkably un-Botoxed) when she's almost 42, I read that she uses a facial highlighter--something like Benefit's Moon Beam. I don't know for sure which exact highlighter she uses, because celebs guard their beauty secrets like Fort Knox, but the reviews of this product are excellent. Obviously, J-lo has the resources to purchase products and procedures that mere mortals can only dream of one day having, yet some of her signature radiance surely comes from using a facial highlighter like this one. Moon Beam has an apricot tone, while Benefit's High Beam is pinker. $24.00

I Love You, Dad

Father's Day is coming up, and it's got me thinking about my dear ol' dad.

My dad is the greatest. Thanks to him (and my mom) I had a wonderful, stable, secure childhood. My dad was (and still is) reliable, consistent, and loving--when I was little, he was always telling me how much he adored me, that I was beautiful, that I was his "little dahling" (Boston accent).

He was exceedingly proud of my academic achievements, so in addition to feeling loved and beautiful, I also felt smart. He assured me I could be anything I wanted to be when I grew up; however, that didn't stop him from telling me what he thought I should be.

When I was seven or eight, I informed him that I wanted to be a nurse when I grew up (I'd just read an inspiring biography of Clara Barton).

"Oh, no, no, no, honey, you don't want to be a nurse. Being a nurse is such difficult, thankless work. Nurses empty out bedpans and bathe patients. If you want to go into the medical field, be a doctor, not a nurse."

I considered his advice...and decided I wanted to be a doctor instead (though that didn't last long).

Yes, my dad has always been reliable and consistent, yet he's also human and occasionally makes mistakes. One of my most vivid childhood memories was one of these mistakes.

I was around eight or nine. My dad had taken the day off work because he had some sort of important luncheon. Much alcohol was imbibed. Now, this was the 1970's when three-martini lunches were pretty common, but my dad didn't travel in those circles and was never a big drinker. But for some reason, he drank way more than he should've that day.

I was upstairs playing in my room when my dad got home (drunk driving--nice!). I must've been bored, because when he stumbled upstairs to change clothes, I said, "Hi, Daddy!" and followed him into my parents' room. I don't remember exactly what happened or what he said, but it went something like this: My dad slurs/yells at me to leave him alone, lurches by, falls onto the bed, and passes out.

I ran back to my room and cried--and have never forgotten it to this day. See, my dad hardly ever yelled at me (he saved it for my brothers); I only got it if I really, really deserved it. Which wasn't too often because I was a good kid. This event traumatized me because I hadn't done anything wrong, and besides, my dad looked weird--he was all disheveled and crazy-eyed. He scared me.

My dad in 1984, not long before boys started
messing up our relationship.

That was pretty much it for traumatic fatherly events during childhood. High school, however, was a completely different story. Once boys came into the picture, my dad became THE ENEMY. He was super-protective and strict, and I hated him for it.

One of his crazy rules was my weekend curfew: 11 p.m. if I was on a date, midnight if I was with friends. (Yet my brother, who was only one year older, had no curfew at all.) So, yeah, once or twice, I lied. I said I was out with friends when I was actually with my boyfriend. Of  course I did! It was a terrible, unfair rule that deserved to be broken.

Because I was a good girl by nature, I wasn't great at subterfuge--I didn't inform my friends of my plan to lie, so unfortunately, while I was out with my boyfriend, the friend I was supposed to be with called the house. As this was before cell phones, my dad had to wait until I got home at midnight to ream me out. I have blocked out most of the ugliness, but the one thing I do remember is him hissing: "You lied to us! Look at you! Look at your face...those lips have been kissed!" He said it like I truly disgusted him. By the sound of it, you would've thought he had found me naked in the back seat of a car. He made me feel so dirty.

I yelled back: "You made me lie! It's totally unfair that I have a curfew while Alan gets to stay out as late as he wants!"

"It's different with boys."

Arrggh! That was his favorite argument, and I deplored it. Whenever I argued that lots of my friends were allowed to stay out past 12 a.m. he'd end the discussion with, "Nothing good happens after midnight." It sucked, because when I was out with friends, it always felt like I was leaving just when things were getting good (and by good I mean bad).

But now I'm all grown-up, with kids of my own, and my dad and I are close once again.

And here's what I want to say to him: Although we had a few rough years when I wished you were more of a pushover, thank you, Dad, for always letting me know that you cared about me, worried about me, and were watching me. Because, although I hated every minute of it, your discipline led me to behave better than I would have otherwise.

To paraphrase Chris Rock: Thank you for keeping me off the pole.

Brown Paper Packages Tied Up With String (A Few of My Favorite Things)

Zoomorphs

I recently found this wonderful item in our local independent toy store, and since then I've bought a set as gifts for the last three kids' birthday parties we've gone to. Zoomorphs is a building system; the pieces snap together easily and securely. There's a set for every kid's interest: Dinomorphs, Petmorphs, Mythmorphs, Rainforestmorphs, Jumpermorphs, Nightmorphs, Insectmorphs, Safarimorphs, and Diggermorphs. Whew! You can put them together to make a recognizable animal or mix up the pieces and make crazy critters. All the sets are interchangeable, too. $15 to $10 per set.



Lumene Time Freeze Instant Cooling Eye Stick

I love this product. As the name says, it's a stick, but unlike most sticks, it glides on smoothly and gently. And the instant cooling sensation is awesome. After waking up and washing my face, applying this feels great and moisturizes the delicate skin under my eyes while reducing puffiness. It's also refreshing on hot summer afternoons. Contains "natural arctic heather and plant sterols extracted from arctic white peat"--okaaaay, ifs they say so. These ingredients are supposed to help reduce wrinkles and protect against further aging; I can't vouch for that--all I'm saying is it feels nice and soothing to put on. $21.00


Sam's Club Grilled Chicken & Four-Cheese Ravioli

This is a dinner that has it all: inexpensive, super-easy to throw together (just boil for five minutes and top with tomato sauce), healthy (especially if you add some veggies to the tomato sauce), delicious, and filling. Best of all, my kids--even my picky toddler--LOVES them. My 3-year-old can eat about six of these large raviolis. When you don't have a lot of time to prepare a homemade meal, these raviolis are perfect. They taste way better than anything available at the grocery store, and are cheaper than what you'll find at Whole Foods and Trader Joe's. Per serving: 270 cals, 9 g fat, 18 g protein, calcium 15%. $9.99 for a twin-pack; each pack has about 20 large raviolis.

Nothing a Little Trip to Provincetown Won't Fix

I took my kids to the dentist the other day, and when their checkups were done, the dentist let them pick out a toy ring as a treat. My son chose a grasshopper ring, while my daughter picked the pink gemstone one (surprise, suprise).

When we got home, I took my daughter's ring and playfully slipped it onto her finger. "There. Now we're married."

"Two girls would never get married," my son said knowingly.

"Umm...well...yeah, we'll talk about that another time," I lamely replied.

Should I read my kids
this book, perhaps?

It got me thinking: When is the right time to explain to one's kids that there are other ways a family can look besides the traditional One Mommy-One Daddy-Plus Kids model? My son is only five and barely understands the concept of marriage, so to explain all the possible variations would only confuse him at this point (I think).

Ideally, the conversation will occur naturally when he's a bit older--maybe he'll overhear something on the news about New York passing a Marriage Equality Act (soon, I hope!) and ask questions. Or maybe he'll make a new friend at school who just happens to have two mommies or two daddies (though it's unlikely in our traditional Westchester hamlet). Most likely however, it'll be one of our day trips into the city that will get my son scratching his head and wondering Hmmmm.

If we'd signed my son up for afternoon preschool instead of the morning session this past year, he would've learned pretty quickly that families come in many configurations:

One day last fall, I was looking through the preschool directory for a phone number to arrange a playdate for my son with a kid in the afternoon session. As I skimmed the list of names, I saw that three of the kids had the same hyphenated last name. Wow, triplets! I thought. But then I noticed that only two of these siblings had the same December 2006 birthday; the third was born in January '06, 11 months earlier. OMG, Irish triplets? The mom had one baby in January then got pregnant again immediately with twins? I shuddered at the thought, and couldn't wait to find out the deets at my son's playdate.

A few days later, I grilled the friend's mother about this unusual family. Turns out there's two moms! Which, though it makes way more sense than one poor mama birthing three babies in a single year, never even occurred to me (I'm ashamed to say). Everyone just seems so traditional and straight-laced around here (including me these days) that I never thought we'd actually have a same-sex couple living in our vicinity.

So that's good to know, because I'm all for diversity.

But my son doesn't know these kids and won't be going to school with them in the fall. Sure, I realize that he doesn't need to learn about "two mommies" or "two daddies" anytime soon, yet I'm also aware that it's best to teach kids about diversity early on.

And besides, all of my daughter's princess books aren't exactly helping the issue. The Disney Princesses are all poor/overworked/misunderstood at first, then WHAM!, they get fabulous new gowns & jewels, marry The Prince, and only then can they live happily ever after. There's just so much Boy + Girl = Happiness messaging (plus close-minded bullying) in the world that I worry my kids could end up ignorant and unintentionally hurtful if I don't say something sooner rather than later.

So then the question is this: How soon is too soon, and how late is too late?

Weiner the Wiener

I live in the state of New York, less than 35 miles from the Brooklyn/Queens district that Congressman Anthony Weiner represents.

You think you've been hearing a lot about Weiner's wiener? Ha, you have no idea.

This latest episode in philandering got me thinking about politicians and cheating. It sure seems like more of them do than don't, and I've been wondering why this is the case. Certainly men with normal jobs don't cheat this much, do they? Athletes and movie stars are known to be horndogs, so does that mean politicians see themselves more as rockstars than as the public servants they actually are? If that's true, well, it's just sad.

Not that I really care if some local congressman--or even presidential candidate--is unable to keep it in his pants. I'm not convinced it means he will be any less good at his job than the dude who doesn't father children out of wedlock (or tweet penis pics to porn stars, solicit young men in public bathrooms, grope interns, etc., etc., etc.). My husband, however, makes a good point that this sort of behavior suggests a lack of moral character that could, in fact, affect a politician's ability to make the best decisions for his constituents. Could be.

But I'm still not sure we should care about our politicians' philandering (provided it's not illegal). I look at these "episodes" as mainly their wives' problems, not the voting public's.

The only thing that does bother me is the fact that many of these men--especially those high up the chain of command--are role models for our kids. It makes me sad to think that, back in 1998, there was surely an ambitious Arkansas boy or two who idolized President Clinton and dreamed of following in his footsteps, only to have his hopes dashed by Lewinsky-gate. I happen to LOVE Bill Clinton and believe his good qualities outweigh the bad, yet I was let down by his behavior...which is nothing compared to how alienated and betrayed countless impressionable youths must've felt. It strikes me as a missed opportunity to inspire the future generation, which is a huge bummer.

With all of these men, it's not just one isolated incident, either. A single slip-up we could more easily forgive and forget; everyone makes mistakes, after all. But with these guys, it's chronic infidelity. What's behind it? Is it a sickness? Are they drunk on power and influence? Maybe that's the case with a President, but a Representative like Anthony Weiner? Puh-lease.

I used to think the problem was the American voters' habit of electing mainly men of privilege to office. Some of the worst offenders have been guys who were just plain used to getting what they wanted when they wanted it. Whether they were born into it, like JFK, or learned to expect it due to later stardom (Arnold), many of our elected officials have hugely inflated egos that need stroking.

I also used to think the answer was to elect a geek. Get someone in office who spent his formative years questioning the ways of the world; developing his mind through endless games of Stratego and Dungeons and Dragons; and grappling with existential issues alone on a Saturday night, and we'd be all set. Former losers don't have massive egos. They don't feel entitled to marry a great woman yet still get a hot piece of ass on the side. They have moral fortitude! They fight for the little guy! Geeks unite!

And then I saw this:

High school nerd, 1981

Hmmm...maybe geeks are so used to being beaten down and treated like crap that they get even drunker on the power of their office? Because they spent their young lives being laughed at by attractive women, to suddenly have hot chicks following them on Twitter must be utterly intoxicating. Weiner was sexting a whole bunch of women, a whole bunch of times. This behavior doesn't inherently make him a less-effective legislator; however, isn't being forced to resign as ineffective as it gets for an elected official? If (when?) it happens, it'll be a huge waste of a promising career.