Thanks to all of you out there who reached out to me in various wonderful ways after I wrote my last post. I very much appreciate the comments, the shares of my post, the texts, the phone calls, the Facebook messages, and everything else. I have spent the last two days alternating between anger and exhaustion over the whole thing, yet I am still able to tell myself that this is a First World Problem, and that it will eventually work itself out. I don’t have any news yet. In this case, no news isn’t good news; it’s just no news. I have sent additional information to Feedburner and am…
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Plagiarized.
No, *I* didn’t do it. Someone else did. I found out today that someone grabbed my old Blogspot url, activated the feed, and copied and pasted six of my old posts (words AND pictures) there under the name Diana Reneina. The sidebar is full of text link ads. I am beyond annoyed about this. At first I was kicking myself for deleting the Blogspot url, figuring I should have kept it. Truth be told, though, anyone could post any of my stuff on any site. I found out that my old feed from my old url was showing up in Google Reader for those people who never physically unsubscribed to…
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Pamela Druckerman’s “Bringing Up Bebe” Stirs The Pot On Parenting
There’s been another dust-up in the news this week, and this time the big story is how great the French are at parenting. I mentioned it briefly in yesterday’s vlog, and I really need to expand on it because parenting and its various styles is a topic for which I have endless passion. (If you have no idea what I’m talking about, click here to read the Wall Street Journal essay/excerpt by Pamela Druckerman, author of “Bringing Up Bebe: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting”.) First, let me give you the disclaimer: I am not ragging on the author OR the book, which I have not read.…
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It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas
I stand with so many other people around this time of year who are annoyed with the stores, malls, and restaurants that begin their Christmas decorating (and sales) way too early. In fact, this year I saw so much red and green before Halloween I had to look at a calendar to check the date more than once. I don’t enjoy the barrage of Christmas music, in elevators, on the radio, in stores, everywhere. It’s partly because I’m Jewish, I suppose. That’s not to say that I don’t enjoy a good Christmas tune–Mariah Carey’s recent take on “All I Want For Christmas Is You” is my modern favorite–it’s just that…
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Cute.
My dog Roxie is one-of-a-kind. At least I hope she is: she is positively adorable, but annoying as they come. There hasn’t been a dull moment since she became part of our family seven years ago. She has electrocuted herself. She has intentionally eaten disgusting things. She has been skunked. She has maimed stuffed animals. She has juggled a baby rabbit. She has tried to assert herself as the woman of the house: (She’s not a cuddler, unless your name is Jim.) She has stolen jawbreakers. She has stolen Dum-Dums. She has wolfed down entire loaves of bread. She has embarrassed me on our walks. She has killed…sort of. She…
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Pet Peeve #248, Mostly In Run-On Sentences.
If you were at a reception and you put some cheese and crackers on your plate and then you walked away from the table to go and talk to your friends and while you were talking to your friends you were eating and suddenly one of your crackers fell on the ground… Would you pick it up and dispose of it out of respect for the venue and the people who work there, as well as to show others around you that you not only are aware of what’s going on around you but also that you are a responsible resident of earth who cares about doing the right thing,…
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Restricted?
I have a little rant to share with you this evening, so please indulge me for just a few minutes of your time. This afternoon, Jim and I went to see “The Hangover: Part II” with my sister and my mom. The movie is rated R, and yet there were still two couples there who brought their small children. How small? One of them was four or five, and one of them was a baby, drinking a bottle. The “R” rating given by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) doesn’t prohibit children from attending a movie with an adult, though: the definition of the rating is R-Restricted Under 17…
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Should I Get A Dog For My Kids, Even Though I Don’t Want One?
No, not me: I already have a dog. See? A friend of mine, however, does not. She recently posed that question on Facebook. It happens to be a subject about which I am extremely passionate. The short answer? NO, you shouldn’t. The longer answer? Ugh, where shall I begin? This friend listed two main reasons for not wanting a dog: her child’s allergies (which can be overcome by getting a hypo-allergenic dog) and her knowing that she would be the one cleaning up the messes (which cannot be overcome for a while, if the kids are younger, and sometimes not at all). In my opinion, her second concern is the…
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D-I-S-R-E-S-P-E-C-T
I was chatting with Kate the other day, when she told me of a recent frustration of hers. She is the director of a program that trains a certain genre of professionals (which I won’t give away here for several reasons) who are highly degreed. As she was teaching one of the classes, she had to reprimand some of the class participants–again, degreed professionals–for texting and checking Facebook during class. The “professionals” she reprimanded were highly agitated, saying that they could do what they wanted to do. Is this what it’s come to, people? I understand the temptation of today’s technology; in fact, I will be writing about that topic…
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Another Hanukkah Tradition Lives On…
My dog is not stupid. In fact, the way her brain works, I wouldn’t be surprised if she has a whole other life that I don’t know about: maybe a doggie husband, a couple of puppies? I got an unexpected reminder of how smart she really is today, when she carried on her sixth annual Hanukkah tradition of locating the gelt* (chocolate coins**) I had hidden (from her), and eating them, but not before she took off the wrappers. (Do you know how difficult it is for a human to take those wrappers off sometimes???) Here’s the deal. I had the gelt in a Target bag (YES! Target sells gelt…