An open letter to the crack whore who marries Boy, from a grateful mother-in-law

by RachelW from Diary of a mad, mad housewife
Posted on July 16, 2007

July 16, 2033

Dear Madam:

Oh. I'm sorry - is "Madam" rude? A little too ... um, relevant? I wasn't sure exactly sure how to address you. Crack whore seemed a bit strong, really. A tad, um... harsh. Would CW be OK? I do apologize. Man and I just aren't too familiar with these kinds of things, and had never really envisioned becoming so, either, when our sweet little Boy was placed in our arms for the first time all those years ago. You know - it's the same for everyone really. You count the fingers, toes, and when they're OK, it jumps right to dreaming of him as a captain of industry, doctor, maybe even lawyer, all because of your many strenuous efforts to secure the best preschool and baseball camp in town. And read a lot of the good doctors Seuss and Brazelton.

Well, that's what we, in our innocence, thought, CW. Read more...

In Search of a Smile

by Liz at Mom-101
Posted on July 16, 2007

Sage's birth announcements have finally arrived, two months to the day after the actual birth that the cards are designed to announce. You know, since they are called birth announcements and all. Now who in our circle hasn't yet heard about my youngest daughter, I don't know, but here I am in any case, applying ugly 41 cent Liberty Bell stamps (it was that or Star Wars) to the top right corner of a hundred envelopes. Etiquette dictates that This is What You Do and who am I to argue with etiquette. Besides, I need one for the page of the baby book that says "attach announcement here."

Never mind that I don't have a baby book. Minor detail. Read more...

time

by bon at cribchronicles.com
Posted on July 13, 2007



the days at work slip faster than days at home did
my deepest resources
of patience

mines of
tunneling to
sustain self

and small one too

less taxed now, if
lonelier
for touch

but we are both
content
so far as i can tell
so far as he can
tell

my arms more
patient

greedy now when
he is in them

still time for
playing blocks
and touching
noses

and i exhale
relieved

i can forgive that
this skin fits

these work clothes
please me, yes.

but the wheel of
time spins by me

careening almost greasy

it has been four weeks already

i wonder will i come home tomorrow and find him grown into a rockstar overnight…?

Back in Business

My computer had the flu for a couple of days, apparently, but I think it's healed now (completely on it's own by the way--I had nothing to do with the recovery) and I'm back reading blogs and posting the best of what I find here!

Don't forget to send me links to posts you find that are particularly moving, funny, heartfelt, true, or any other brand of wonderful.

My Mother is Beautiful

by canape at Don't Take the Repeats
Posted July 10, 2007

I don't remember what my mother looked like before her mastectomy. I do remember what the
swimsuit that she wore to Destin the summer before her surgery looked like. It was green and blue. A floral print. It had white trim. I thought it was beautiful. I thought she was beautiful.

Our neighborhood had a pool. There was a big red barn that had been converted into a clubhouse, and they had added a pool and tennis courts. The pool had a bridge over it that you could hide under, hang on, and if no grownups were watching, you could jump off of it. We loved to go to that pool in the summer, and Momma would take us whenever she could. Read more...

The Street of Misfit Toys

by Her Bad Mother at Her Bad Mother
Posted July 9, 2007

There's an old man who spends a lot of time on our street. Across the street, actually, at house in which he does not live. He has a friend there, another elderly gentleman, the father of the fellow who actually owns the house. Last summer, they spent the entire summer, the two of them, on the verandah, old and gnarled and batshit crazy, singing loudly along to songs playing on their transistor AM radio, pausing in the choruses to drink coffee and beer and growl at each other like old, toothless pirates.

The second gentleman, the one who lives there, doesn't come out much anymore; he recently
spent some time in the hospital and now just sits at his window, looking out at the street,
watching the children and the squirrels and the birds. And his friend, the old man that comes to
visit.

The old man still comes every day. Read more...

RIP, Minty Bear

by Alice at finslippy
Posted on July 9, 2007

We have returned from Montauk, full of sandy, lobster-rolly memories, but missing a beloved member of our family: Minty Bear.

I bought Minty Bear--so named for her pastel-green hue—when I was five months pregnant. When I didn't yet understand that when you have a baby, the world dumps truckloads of stuffed animals over your head. When I couldn't have predicted that within months we would be cramming animals into industrial-sized plastic bags and hauling them to the Salvation Army, where they would join their bereft, plushy brethren.

Anyway, when Henry was an infant we kept Minty Bear in his crib, because it didn't have any pull-out eyes or pop-'em-off buttons or related chokeables. He liked it fine, but then again he was also smitten with the ceiling fan, and would spend hours chuckling at it. There you go again, ceiling fan. Whirling and whirling. Oh, ceiling fan, you are a minx. But as the months passed he developed a decided preference for Minty over the ten or so stuffed animals that we had room for. Sure, he had the occasional fling with Black Bear or Teensy the Elephant. There was that weird jag with Tup Tup, the hard-bodied, scratchy-furred Siamese Cat Steiff. But in the end, he always came back to Minty. Read more and see a picture of Minty Bear