Archive for March, 2010

While researching the nanny rearing cheaters story I ran across another crazy story I wanted to share.

This story on Time.com mentions a Web site that is similar to Match.com except that it is for MARRIED people to find matches for AFFAIRS!

The site is called AshleyMadison.com and it guarantees that you too can find someone with whom to have an affair. Their tag line is “Life is short, have an affair.”

The Toronto-based site, which was launched in 2001, has had its membership double over the past year to 4 million.

Time.com reports that:

“Critics call AshleyMadison a cruel sex site that profits from marital pain. “This is a business built on the back of broken hearts, ruined marriages and damaged families,” says Trish McDermott, a dating-industry consultant who helped found Match.com and Engage.com. “It’s in the business of rebranding infidelity,” she says, “making it not only monetizable, but adding a modicum of normalcy to it. AshleyMadison is making bad choices, broken …

Continue reading Married but looking for an affair? AshleyMadison.com has your match! »

The photography companies that take the school pictures have come up with the greatest marketing ploy ever to make you buy those photos. They send home the entire package, including plastic-coated key-ring photos, without you even ordering them.

No mother worth her salt is going to tell her child that he or she must return their own photo to school!

Or would she?

I told Walsh this morning that his spring photo wasn’t fantastic. I told him his hair needed to be cut and it was all in his eyes.

I didn’t say this to him, but he also has in the photo one big-boy front tooth next to a baby front tooth that looks a little crazy. His smile was forced and fake. Plus he was wearing a Halloween shirt in February.

I recognize that all of this is my own fault, except for the tooth and smile parts, because I didn’t pay attention to the spring photo date, but that doesn’t mean I have to pay $42 for five pages of bad photos. (I have plenty of beautiful photos of my son that we take at …

Continue reading Dare to send back your child’s school photo? »

Time Magazine recently wrote about a doctor in England who believes that boys who have nannies are more likely to cheat on their wives later.

Here is an excerpt explaining from Time.com:

“Mothers who outsource the care of their sons to other women may be inadvertently raising adulterers. Or so claims Dr. Dennis Friedman in a book that has kicked up a bit of a ruckus in Britain. A Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the doctor argues that men become womanizers because their mothers left them with nannies.”

“According to Friedman, having two women care for a baby boy may cause his little brain to internalize the idea that there are multiple females to meet his needs. “It introduces him to the concept of the other woman,” he said in London’s Daily Telegraph. He explicates the relationship in his book The Unsolicited Gift: Why We Do The Things We Do, which explores how a mother’s love for her offspring can determine how those children behave as adults.”

Friedman …

Continue reading Do nannies create boys that cheat later? »

Up to one-third of breast cancer cases in Western countries could be avoided if women ate less and exercised more, according to experts at the European breast cancer conference in Barcelona.

It’s a sensitive topic because it feels like scientists are basically saying women are causing their own breast cancer. Like sun exposure to melanoma and smoking to lung cancer, researchers are saying heavier women have a greater chance of getting breast cancer. (Up to 60 percent greater chance in fact!)

From The Associated Press’s story:

“…Michelle Holmes, a cancer expert at Harvard University, said people might wrongly think their chances of getting cancer are more dependent on their genes than their lifestyle.”

“The genes have been there for thousands of years, but if cancer rates are changing in a lifetime, that doesn’t have much to do with genes,” she told The Associated Press in a phone interview from Cambridge, Massachusetts.”

“Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women. In …

Continue reading Are we causing our own breast cancer? »

It seems the recession/depression has not affected the prom industry, where prices remain pretty doggone high.

I ran into a mom friend at the Publix on Monday who regaled me with stories of buying her daughter’s first prom dress. She’s a down-to-earth-mom with kids ranging from elementary to high school.  Her daughter is a sophomore I believe so she will have two more proms to go after this one.

They went to a very popular local store to look for dresses. The salesperson asked what the mom’s budget was and she replied about $150. The lady said our dresses begin at $300.

The mom was floored. She didn’t want to embarrass her daughter and wanted her to have a dress she wouldn’t be embarrassed to wear. So they looked and tried to keep the price as low as possible. She ended up with a dress off the clearance rack. Originally in the high $500, she bought the dress for $399. (The mom emailed me and wants you guys to know she did shop around and wasn’t lured in at the store. She said …

Continue reading Should a prom dress cost more than your wedding dress? »

I try to keep an eye for out things I think you guys might be interested in. I have two items for you today:

1. You can donate Girl Scout cookies to our troops overseas online. The Atlanta Girl Scouts Council has a goal to send 650,000 boxes of cookies to U.S. troops overseas. They have until the end of March to read this goal. The cookies are $3.50 a box and you can donate through this Web site. The girls are also sending letters to the troops with each box sold.
2. The Weather Channel is running a contest to win a free Disney Cruise! I entered last night. The deadline to enter is April 2. Apparently you can enter multiple times and in multiple ways – like through your phone (but not my phone because I still have my old one).

Continue reading Send Girl Scout cookies to our troops; Win free Disney Cruise from The Weather Channel »

My friend called me last week all bent out of shape because she got a note that some moms wanted to come into her child’s kindergarten class and teach the children about Passover and the Seder meal.

She is a Christian and doesn’t actually have a problem with her child learning about Jewish traditions because she feels the two religions are interconnected. However, she feels that it is setting a precedent where people of other religions could also come in and talk to the class about their holidays.

She says she feels young children, especially in kindergarten, first and second, are very impressionable and she doesn’t want them confused by facts about religions other than their own.

She would prefer them not to talk about religion at the public school at all, and she didn’t think they legally could.

I told her that I thought they could teach about traditions of different religion if they didn’t really talk about what they believed per se and also if they taught about many and …

Continue reading Should public schools teach lessons about religions? »

I’ve heard a lot of complaining about filling out the Census forms, and I can’t quite get a handle on why people wouldn’t want to turn in this information.

The Census form includes several explainers in the paperwork quoting a federal law and reassure people that their information will not be turned over to the IRS or any form of law enforcement. So I guess people are worried about being turned over the IRS or immigration or some other law enforcement agency.

I’m not sure how realistic that fear is if there is a federal law stating they can’t share that information with any other agency.

From the U.S. Census Web site:

Protecting your information

Federal law protects your information, and we have developed policies and statistical safeguards to help us follow the law and further ensure the confidentiality of your information. 1

“Your Information Is
CONFIDENTIAL
We never identify you individually.

1. Federal Law

Title 13 of the U.S. Code protects the confidentiality of all …

Continue reading Why NOT fill out your Census form? »

So it appears that Sandra Bullock has left, but Elin is back. It makes me wonder, when do you stay and when do you go?

People.com reported earlier this week that:

“Sandra Bullock and Jesse James are not living under the same roof right now. “

“The actress left the Southern California house she shares with James just days before a report of infidelity by her husband surfaced, a source tells PEOPLE.”

“Bullock, 45, left on Monday, the source says. Bullock, who won her first Oscar – a Best Actress award – for The Blind Side on March 7, also abruptly canceled a trip to Europe for the London premiere of the film.”

Meanwhile in Florida Elin and the kids have moved back in with Tiger.

From earlier this month on People.com:

“Although Elin Nordegren knows her husband has ongoing problems, she has agreed to return with him to their Isleworth home in Florida to help restart his life, a source tells PEOPLE. “

“ ‘I call them the divorced married couple,’ says the source. ‘Elin knows Tiger …

Continue reading Would you move back in with Tiger? Would you leave ‘Mr. Bullock’? »

Teach your children that medicine is not candy!

It’s National Poison Prevention Week, and I wanted to share some personal stories about how lucky Georgians are to have the Georgia Poison Center operated through Grady Health System. It is a free 24-hour hotline that anyone can call with questions about human or animal poisonings. They can diagnose and treat poisonings over the phone.  They also can tell you about drug interactions and if you are nursing, they can advise if medicines you are taking can transfer through your breast milk.

I have personally called the GPC, which is supervised by the Emory University School of Medicine Department of Pediatrics, on many occasions. I have found them to be a reliable, professional resource that literally saved my son’s life when he was little.

Here are examples of when I called the GPC during nine years of parenting three kids (Please don’t be mean to me for admitting these to you guys!!I am fully aware of my stupidity and no one could …

Continue reading Tips to prevent child poisonings! »