Yesterday, March 8th, was International Women’s Day.  Are you aware of the history of this significant day?  To quote from their website,

…International Women’s Day has been observed since in the early 1900’s, a time of great expansion and turbulence in the industrialized world that saw booming population growth and the rise of radical ideologies.

1908
Great unrest and critical debate was occurring amongst [Read more]

If you blog about women’s issues or kids’ issues or model horse issues or anorexic issues or … (you gets the ideas I hopes?)… you’re a gentle innocent if you don’t pounce upon (and blog about) this latest horrendous attempt at sexualizing our single-digit girls:

Strutz, the fashion model whorses!

Good Lord, abysmal, icky and rather disgusting doesn’t BEGIN to describe this!!

I first heard about this from [Read more]

Joshua Clanton wrote a rather insightful post over at DailyBlogTips, entitled "Become a Blogging Wizard - 6 Lessons from Harry Potter".  It inspired me to comment and also reminded me of the following profound poem that I first read back in 1986…22 years ago.

Life is a four letter word……..
I think you spell it L-O-V-E

It’s really as simple as that……

No, I don’t really think that I can totally describe love
but I do know some things about it.

[Read more]

STOP RIGHT THERE!

Whew, glad I caught you.  I’m going to say a word and you’re going to tell me what you immediately think of next.  Ready?  Okay, here we go!

(tick….tock…..tick…..tock…..)

Ooops, I forgot - you’re reading this, you cannot hear my voice.  Sorry!  Chalk it up to not enough morning coffee today.  :)  Here’s the word:

Pushups.

What are you thinking? [Read more]

When is enough….enough?

I experienced a truly glorious 55 minutes last Friday afternoon (bordering on delusional, as you’ll see).  I was sitting in on my kids’ beginners karate and told another adult,

I can’t promise it, but I *think* my Saturdays will finally free up.

What nirvana!   What bliss!  Actually having time for oneself….what an  extraordinary concept!  This blog, btw, had just been launched previous day.

7 minutes after that statement, [Read more]

Picture the following. The sun was shining, the birdies were mooing, the cows were tweeting

(alright, that’s literary license - it was 4am so it was pitch black, my 15 parakeets that reside next to my computer were fast asleep, and ‘dere ain’t no cows anywheres except in my refrigerator, but hey - it’s a great lead-in!)

and I awakened to the lovely note from my child:

MOM! Please get me up at 4am so I can finish my homework!

“Certainly, dear,” was my mental response, “I simply adore having babbling kids during 4am when I generally get my best work done.” [Read more]

You know, I’ve heard of the phrase "hitting rock bottom" - it’s supposed to be that defining moment in your life when your eyes flash open and your very being is suffused with a desire to change your current agonizing misery (or at least run away to the sea in Nebraska where nobody knows your name).

‘course, that’s just too simple for me!  No indeed, hitting rock bottom still assumes you have the ability to vault yourself skywards (or at least, climb whimperingly) from of the pit of doom into which you dug yourself.    Sounds tough enough as it is, but what if you add being completely flattened by the Freight Train of Blogging Frustration into the mix - not only do you have to reinvent yourself, but you first have to piece together the variously-strewn parts of your formerly-sturdy blogging confidence and personal character as well.

[Read more]