P.S. I forgot to say Happy Valentine’s Day. I hope you’re spending at least part of the day with people you love who love you back. I am – I’m with my kids.

It doesn’t take long for me these days to get a belly full of being taken advantage of, manipulated or used. I spent so many years offering my dignity up on a silver platter in exchange for the unattainable (the love and respect of someone who couldn’t love or respect himself) that if the situation even starts to look lopsided, I call,...

The other day, I mentioned IzzyMom’s Consumer Culture and Kids post reminded me that I struggle with a similar issue related to Christmas and it’s been on my mind again this year. The issue is the consumerization of Christmas. Each year, I get more and more pissed off with the social pressure to spend, spend, spend on Christmas presents. It feels like...

…but, Oldest Son called me at 1am. I answer, feigning sleep (I was right here, reading blogs, but he doesn’t need to know that.) Immediately, I hear him let out a string of expletives that would make even a sailor blush. No, not at me. At the girl with whom he spent the weekend (with whom he also shared a house for just over a year, up until March of this...

If Oldest Son (fyi: 20 yrs old) doesn’t start showing some true initiative about getting a job, I’m going to come un-F*CKING-done. He’s got such a negative self-concept and world view, and it’s making him such a freeloader. AAAARRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH! (Thank you – I really needed that!) Every time I ask him about what he’s doing...

Oldest Son is having some difficulty in making the adjustment to being back under Mama’s roof. In fact, more than some…try a whole truckload. It’s quite entertaining to me that he assumes because he’s now ‘of age’ that somehow gives him the right to make rules and, even more cheeky – ignore rules in my house. NOT. I know...

Before I say anything else, let me state clearly that I am a firm believer in the idea that once one reaches adulthood, one can no longer blame things (the state of one’s life, the quality of one’s life, how one “turned out” or damn near anything else) on one’s parents and one’s upbringing. That was then, this is now –...

Oldest Son turned 20 Saturday, the 1st. I called him as soon as I woke – it was 7:15am. He, of course, didn’t answer (no one but mom gets up that early on a Saturday!) so I sang him “Happy Birthday” and told him I loved him and to call me later when he woke. He called much later, dinner time, actually. He was lamenting how his birthday...

My darling daughter has the capacity to push me to the very limits of my sanity. And push, push, push was she last night. Talking back, overtly ignoring directions, throwing attitude like the most unruly of teens – at 8. She knows ‘the rules’. She knows what she can get away with and what will bring a visit from ‘Mommy-Dearest’. Now I...