Teresa Strasser from Creators Syndicate

Time Magazine and Feeling Like a Total Boob for 05/19/2012

Sat, 19 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Now that the dust has settled on the world's most discussed photo of a woman nursing in the history of time — and Time — let me stop and assess my own feelings.

OK, here goes.

I don't care whether you nurse or for how long. I don't care if you co-sleep, wear your baby in a sling, feed your baby chicken nuggets or home school your kids until they are antisocial little f ...

Updated: Sat May 19, 2012

Some Unusual but Excellent Mom Advice for 05/12/2012

Sat, 12 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Finally, I'm going to say some nice stuff about my mom. When a blogger friend was doing a round up of "best advice our moms ever gave us," I realized that my mom had some gems.

Now, I share them with you.

Maybe her bon mots were a bit unorthodox, but I can't argue with her wisdom. And now, on this Mother's Day week, I offer some of her pearls to you to either judge or im ...

Updated: Sat May 12, 2012

Tanorexic Pales Next to Most Affectionate for 05/05/2012

Sat, 05 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

The thing about the now infamous over-tanned mom accused of taking her toddler to a tanning salon is that she really hogs the bad-mom spotlight. I would call it "limelight," but in her case, it's more of an orange.

She got lots of ink this week, and even Snooki weighed in on the parenting skills of Patricia Krentcil, the 44-year-old from Nutley, N.J., who appeared in court wit ...

Updated: Sat May 05, 2012

It's Not Pee Sea To Say This for 04/28/2012

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

The last place you want to find yourself is slumped down in the underpants section at Target clutching the last packet of Spider-Man big boy pants, head in hands, purse soaked in pee.

Among other things, you feel like the living embodiment of a haggard toddler-mom cliche, saying or thinking such timeworn gems as, "After everything I do for you, this is how you act?" or "I ...

Updated: Sat Apr 28, 2012

Growing a Do-Over for 04/21/2012

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

I'd like to go to my senior prom again, but not be blackout drunk with a 26-year-old date.

For a brief period during which I hosted a basic cable decorating show, I was kind of famous. I wish I could be famous again, without having to emotionally implode from the cognitive dissonance of thinking I was a nobody while the world was thinking I was somebody. If I had it to do over again, I w ...

Updated: Sat Apr 21, 2012

Mommy See, Mommy Do Tell Me Everything for 04/14/2012

Sat, 14 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

If Alicia Silverstone wants to "pre-masticate" solid foods for her baby boy, I want to know about it. January Jones eating her own placenta? Let me have it. Not her placenta, but the story about it. I will ingest that raw, cooked or ground and desiccated in capsule form.

Moms, I'm in your business, I'm in your diaper bag, and I'm scanning your bookshelf.

Where you got yo ...

Updated: Sat Apr 14, 2012

Insert Freakishly Small Hand Gesture Here for 04/07/2012

Sat, 07 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

It had never come to my attention before a certain freckle-faced, scrawny, corduroy-pants-wearing bully named Robin brought it to my attention: I have freakishly small hands. I have hands like a carny.

I blame the bullies I knew before Robin for being off their game and letting the small hands slide. A bully's whole raison d'etre is to notice any slightly unusual feature that could be ex ...

Updated: Sat Apr 07, 2012

Chewable Xanax and the Shoe Debacle for 03/31/2012

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

I had to look inside myself, which was kind of like looking into my high school locker: moldy half-eaten sandwich, a few loose Skittles, heaps of notebooks, broken pencils and burrito-stained gym clothes obscuring the few things of value. Sure, there's a book of Sylvia Plath poems and a bus pass, but good luck finding them while avoiding that moldy bologna.

When I looked inside myself, ...

Updated: Sat Mar 31, 2012

Preschools: Funky vs. Fancy for 03/24/2012

Sat, 24 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

I went to a preschool called Wind in the Willows. That's right, a school with a hippie name in the heart of San Francisco. Shocking.

Wind in the Willows was around the corner from us, and I believe that was my mother's sole consideration in choosing it. I have mildly pleasant memories of cutting with dull scissors and putting my puffy coat in a cubby and maybe sampling the Elmer's glue a ...

Updated: Sat Mar 24, 2012

Sometimes "Mommy and Me" Things Can Be Really Weird for 03/17/2012

Sat, 17 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

As a mom looking for compelling new activities to entice a toddler, you might kiss a few frogs, but hopefully they will just be at the zoo's reptile center.

I try stuff. You never know what your kid might go for. And that's how I came to visit the private home of a woman offering a bread-baking class for kids. I made a reservation for the class online, paid via PayPal and received an ema ...

Updated: Sat Mar 17, 2012

Not Judging Other Moms, Even When They Seem To Have Devil Kids for 03/10/2012

Sat, 10 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0800

I try not to judge.

But that's usually something people say before they start judging.

Still, I think it's almost impossible to fully assess someone's parenting abilities from a single snapshot — only that's often what we get. Example: A father at the local YMCA is getting his two kids dressed after a swim lesson. The daughter, maybe 4, is wailing like a wounded dog as Dad b ...

Updated: Sat Mar 10, 2012

On Jeremy Lin, Motherhood and Not Being a Natural for 03/03/2012

Sat, 03 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0800

It wasn't that I failed to bond with my child, which was my biggest fear, but that I was so bonded.

The depth of this bond terrified me because, while biology had given me a strong drive to love and protect my son, my past had given me no idea how that would look. "We just aren't naturals," my mom would say, lumping me in with her, the least maternal person I have ever met.

...

Updated: Sat Mar 03, 2012

How To Dodge Parental Boredom and Catch a Few Foreign Films for 02/25/2012

Sat, 25 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

I was in seventh grade when my dad took me to see a Turkish movie exploring the lives of five prisoners given a week's home leave in the aftermath of a coup d'‚tat.

Why did he take me to see the movie "Yol"? To teach me a valuable lesson about suffering, to open my eyes to a world beyond my own? No and no. My dad wanted to see the movie. And if I wanted to hang out with my dad, ...

Updated: Sat Feb 25, 2012

Oops: My Child Is Not Confident and Neither Am I for 02/18/2012

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

I got some bad news about my toddler this week. It turns out, at least according to his day care provider, he is not "confident."

This is, of course, a disaster.

When this was brought to my attention, I did the obvious and measured thing and immediately decided that his lack of confidence is totally a reflection on my poor parenting and my even worse DNA, and that it is ...

Updated: Sat Feb 18, 2012

An Insomniac Begs You to Shut Up About Your Sleep for 02/11/2012

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

I've always had an irrational and bitter resentment toward good sleepers. You know who you are. You probably don't mean to brag, but you guys always do. You always do.

"I could sleep ANYWHERE," you say, casually. And, "I'm a mess without my 10 hours of sleep." And you don't confine your annoying somnolence to nighttime. "I need a disco nap," you'll say, tuck ...

Updated: Sat Feb 11, 2012

Have a Kid, Drop Your Life. It Happens for 02/04/2012

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

You fall in love. Then you fall off the map for about six months. You can't call your friends back because you have to spend four hours eating toast and sipping coffee while wearing his big, soft T-shirt and staring into his eyes every Sunday morning.

This is the natural order of things, and it probably will happen to most of us a few times in our lives.

Every other interest in yo ...

Updated: Sat Feb 04, 2012

Holding On to Your Non-Mom Friends for 01/28/2012

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

At the House of Pies, the waitresses are old and the fish is probably not young. It's the type of diner where one might see, as I did last week, a transgender homeless man in a full admiral's uniform eating key lime pie.

The House of Pies is where my happy place rents.

Every couple of weeks, I sit in the corner booth with my friend Gina, my last remaining non-mom friend. She's all ...

Updated: Sat Jan 28, 2012

The Not So Girlie Show for 01/21/2012

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

I have the penmanship of a prepubescent juvenile delinquent incarcerated for setting his family on fire.

This may be one of the reasons thank-you notes terrify me. Nothing, from the handwriting to the stationery to the salutation to the content, will be right. You will wonder why a psychotic boy is thanking you for the lovely ... thing you can't decipher.

When it comes to the ceda ...

Updated: Sat Jan 21, 2012

Oh, No. Kick Me if I Become a Mall Mom, but Not Too Hard for 01/14/2012

Sat, 14 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

I've been eating more than my share of Wetzel's Pretzels lately — and that space-age cheese that comes along with them, that creamy, tangy neon orange gelatinous delight that lives under foil, and probably lives forever.

I'm the mother of a toddler, so this much is true: I spend my fair share of time in malls, temperature-controlled, mom-seducing meccas.

At my new favorite ...

Updated: Sat Jan 14, 2012

Why I Wish the Term 'Mommy Blogger' Had Never Been Born for 01/07/2012

Sat, 07 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Back when I was single, and a columnist, I was regularly referred to as a "singles columnist."

That seems fair enough, looking back. Yet, I resented it so thoroughly that the phrase made me queasy. Singles columnist. No matter what I wrote about — my family, my car, my group of spinster girlfriends, my crappy apartment, my transsexual neighbor, my pets, rashes, p ...

Updated: Sat Jan 07, 2012