We had, what was hopefully, our last snow of the season. I’m going to be optimistic and simply say: IT WAS THE LAST SNOW OF THE SEASON. Amen.

I know a lot of you in snowy areas are sick of us Southerners complaining about the snow we got this year. But let me tell you: This is one of the BIG reasons why I live in the South. I love the idea of many other areas, the Pacific Northwest specifically, but my winters must be mild or I become a crazy person. And this winter, with our extreme colds and our 8 inches of snow? Has made me KRAZEE. In ALL CAPS. And extra exclamation points!!!!!

I just hate being cold. I hate not being able to go outside. Even in the summer when it’s 100+ and 99% humidity, I can go outside. I have to be armed with water and sunscreen – but I’m okay with that. And there are fountains and pools, things to do outdoors that make the heat more bearable. Winter? NOTHING MAKES IT MORE BEARABLE. Except for more clothes. Which also irritates me because then you have to disrobe when you finally get where you’re going.

The piles of scarves and gloves alone are killing me.

So I’m optimistic. That was our last snow. We are on the home stretch with Bradford Pears and high pollen counts right around the corner.

And if I’m wrong? Send medication and therapy.

Listen, let me give you a simplified introduction to statistics: One to One relations that are purely causal, especially in medical studies, are nearly impossible. Do you know who buys a lot of processed foods? Poor people. So, how do you know that the processed foods are the only link to lower IQs. YOU DON’T. There are so many factors that determine a child’s IQ, you can’t connect any one thing. SO WHY FREAK PARENTS OUT WITH THAT HEADLINE? And the other one? The early solid foods = obesity one? Imagine this scenario: A child is born with a strong reaction to hunger. They scream a lot when they’re hungry. The average parent introduces solid food a little early just to STOP THE SCREAMING. Do you see what happens? It’s the strong reaction to hunger that leads to BOTH things, the early introduction to solids AND the obesity.

When I Googled the phrase “leads to obesity” – I got SEVEN headline results to freak us parents out:

Basically, if we don’t want our kids to be obese? We have to do the following things:

1. Introduce solids LATE in childhood
2. Make sure they sleep well
3. Don’t let them watch TV
4. Don’t feed them High Fructose Corn Syrup
5. Make sure they eat breakfast
6. Don’t let them work a stressful jog

Journalists seem to LOVE the headlines that make us parents the MOST INSANE. If you watch the news someday you’ll see it there too. They’ll tease a headline that tells us what quick fix is going to make sure our children grow up to be happy, healthy, well-balanced adults. Coming up next…Could the lunches you pack your child cause them to murder innocent people in 10 years?.

GIVE ME A BREAK.

It just makes me so angry. There are not perfect formulas for parenting. Try to feed them healthy foods, make sure they get exercise, read a little, and don’t watch TV too much. Teach them about kindness and respect. Love them with all of your heart when you aren’t wishing you really could ship them off to boarding school. Parenting is NOT an exact science. We do the best we can with the tools we have. Sometimes our kids turn out okay, but most adults have some issue they’re dealing with. None of us are perfect. Is that our parent’s fault? Maybe we can find a connection, but let’s face it. WE ARE ADULTS. We can’t blame all of our problems on one thing our parents did. Too many other factors and also? WE ARE ADULTS. We can’t blame our issues on our parents all of our lives. SO, why do we assume any problems our children have as adults are our fault?

BECAUSE THESE HEADLINES MAKE US CRAZY.

I know there is NOTHING we can do about it. These headlines grab us and make us read the articles because we will do ANYTHING to try to keep our children from obesity, or professional failure. But these articles never really tell us anything we don’t already know on some level. But we read them anyway. We can’t stop ourselves. I guess the only thing we can do is teach the budding journalists in our homes that INFLAMMATORY HEADLINES MAKE MOMMIES AND DADDIES INSANE. Maybe if they group up to write those articles they’ll bed their publication to lead with a less annoying headline. Like:

It Seems That One Of The Multiple Factors Affecting An Adult’s Well-Being Could Possibly Be Indirectly Linked To One Of The Hundreds Of Decisions You Make As A Parent.

I know. There is no way in hell any publication would run that headline, is there? We’re just going to have to live with these headlines, aren’t they? Read the article and filter out the useful information and throw away the stupid absolutes they throw at us. ::SIGH::

Well, at least I feel better putting my complaints out there too. And maybe I can come up with my own inflammatory headline:

People In Charge Of Creating And Publishing Inflammatory Headlines That Make Parents Pull Their Hair Out Are Prone To Obesity, Heart Disease, Cancer, Malaria, Ebola, West Nile, and Ugly Hair.

For a brief, terrifying few minutes this morning, I thought my coffee maker was broken. I kept pressing “brew” and nothing was happening. I did it repeatedly, getting more and more anxious with each failed attempt. (What?) Finally, I decided to push it and walk away. Give it time to just decide to work. Which it eventually did. As I pondered that brief trip into the Coffee-Free Hell Dimension, I contemplated the other possible nightmare scenarios. (Of the non-serious variety, of course.)

Hell Dimension Scenarios

• Every time I pop open a can of Diet Coke and take a sip? It tastes like real Coke.
• Firefox stops giving me that squiggly red line under my mis-spelled words.
• No matter how often I brush my teeth, I still can’t get rid of my morning breath.
• My favorite jeans never make it out of the laundry room.
• That hangnail keeps coming back, seconds after I cut it off.
• All of my socks have holes in them.
• Chick-fil-A stops making chicken biscuits.
• All of the good pens in my house are replace with generic ballpoint Bics.
• Clogs get outlawed and I have to start wearing shoes with actual backs on them.
• No. Feed. Reader.
• Perpetual dog farts. Which, if you have a Boston Terrier? Then you can totally relate to how nightmarish that could be.

What are some of your nightmare scenarios? Excluding the obvious tragedies, of course.

In case you missed it on flickr yesterday, I uploaded pictures of a black widow my husband found inside some box on the outside of the house. Every time I think about it, I want to throw up a little bit. I am not a big fan of spiders. MrZ likes to scoop them up and put them outside if they creep into our home. I squoosh them flat with the nearest foot. Of course, he squooshed the black widow, but not until after considering for one brief moment if there was anyplace “safe” to put it away from our house. Then his sanity returned (Me: “You do not get bad karma for killing something that might have killed you!”) and he smooshed the thing dead. DEAD. DEAD. And I ran away from home because even the thought of a dead black widow somewhere near where I sleep scared the crap out of me. I am now living on the streets because I’d rather face druggies and criminals than spiders. Amen.

*shudder*

In less arachnophobic news…my son woke up at 4am this morning! For good! (It should not need to be clarified that I’m talking about my newborn son and not my teenage son who sleeps until 2pm on the days I let him.) 4am is about the earliest I’ll allow a child to wake me up for the day without grounding them for eternity. So, he’s lucky. He can go to his prom this weekend after all. But – if he tries to make it any earlier tomorrow? It’s off.

I’ve actually been staying up a lot later now that AndyZ is here. Maybe it’s because my “ME” time seems more rare and I like to cram in a bit after NikkiZ is asleep. Or maybe my sleep cycle is changing and I’m turning into one of those crazy “Night People” I’ve heard so much about my entire life. Even during my beer-drinking college days, I was a morning person. I have always preferred early mornings to late nights. But maybe three kids will change that in a person. Especially when one of those kids likes to steal my mornings from me by demanding things like being fed and diaper changes and general care. Jeez. So demanding, that kid.

Good thing he’s kinda cute.

(For the record? I always throw them away. I don’t spend enough money on clothing to try to wrestle with poop stains.)

All of that said, there is something that still triggers my gag reflex every time I see it on TV. It’s that damn PedEgg. Have you seen it? It’s the weird pedicure scraper thing that collects the dead skin inside itself. That’s the part that makes me want to hurl. Seeing several woman dump a full egg of dead skin flakes out onto some fabric. Every time I see the commercial I have to change the channel. That’s a lot of dead skin flakes that are not mine, so I really don’t want to look at them.

I also would like to not look at other people’s nasty feet. Now, my feet aren’t perfect, but they’re mine so they don’t gross me out. The nasty feet they use in the “BEFORE” pictures on that commercial? Oh. My. God. I think the Parents Television Council should quit bitching about sex, violence, and nudity on television and start getting the PedEgg commercials banned FOREVER. That is some disturbing stuff right there. I’d take an entire season of Dexter over one more airing of that 30-second bit of nastiness.

Now I have to find time to wrap and ship a chunk of them so that they’ll get to my family in time for Christmas. I also have to finish the 80+ Christmas cards I have left to address and mail and also take LilZ and his friends to see I am Legend. I think my family would really like it if I did some laundry this weekend and I think my sinuses would appreciate it if I would vacuum this damn house. The dog fur is now so heave in the carpet that I have forgotten what the orginal color was. There’s also maternity clothes to sort through (I finally made MrZ get the container down from the attic. I missed the ability to breathe in my pants) and a pile of clothes in the bedroom to take to charity. Then there needs to be a trip to the recycling center and a trip to get groceries.

I did damn good! Only two things didn’t get accomplished as planned and I have an excuse for one of them: The Goodwill center near my house has no drop bins that I can drop my bags of stuff in after hours. I tried, but to no avail. So – I am quite proud of myself. We even added a few bonus items like a trip to see the Galaxy of Lights and visit to Mimi and Grandpa’s. I’m actually quite proud of myself. It’s always nice when you pass your expectations for the weekend. It never happens around here.

BUT – (there’s always a but) – it seems I may be getting this cold that is going around the blogosphere. I don’t know anyone in my real world that has it, but I’ve been reading about several of you dealing with the never-ending symptoms and pain and agony and…YOU GAVE IT TO ME. I tossed and turned all night last night with sniffles and sneezes and headaches. I got up this morning and took some of that nasty Airborne crap and drank some OJ. I’m also going to make some small animal sacrifices (namely a beagle/lab mix that chewed up my address list last night) to the gods of wellness and possibly make a deal with the devil. I CAN NOT GET SICK. We are going to Louisiana this weekend and then, next week, will be my first Christmas with both my kids EVER. The last two LilZ spent with his Dad (for various reasons) so this one is MINE. ALL MINE. I can NOT be sick.

I’m just going to keep saying that nineteen million times and hopefully that alone will ward off the evil cold demons. Keep your fingers crossed.

I don’t know where to begin breaking down Mr. McClelland’s article and the way it angers me. But, we’ll start with this paragraph which might have upset me the most:

Like Oprah, Bingham deserves praise for luring insecure, overweight novices off their couches and into running shoes. He’s also terrific for business. In the last 15 years, the Chicago Marathon field has increased tenfold, to 45,000. But with this change in the running culture, the average finishing time for men has dropped from 3:32 to 4:15 — not far from the Oprah Line, or my own performance. Last month’s Chicago Marathon had to be shut down mid-race, because undertrained five- and six-hour marathoners couldn’t handle that much time in the 85-degree heat.

First of all – if you don’t know who Bingham is – take a quick moment to go here. Damn. The site’s down. Save it for later. Essentially he mainstreamed the marathon by making everyone believe that if he could do it? Then they could. He sells t-shirts on his site that say things like “Who Cares If I’m Slow.” (Which, for the record, is a depressing thing to see mobs of people passing you wearing.)

So, essentially this author is first saying that the droves of novices that Bingham brought to the sport is a bad thing. But he’s also saying that the disaster at the Chicago Marathon is the fault of the novices? Pardon me for saying so, but when I read the reports about that marathon being cut, there were just as many seasoned runners in those first-aid tents as there were novices. And I know one of those runners who did not want to quit. (For the record, she finally became a marathoner here. Go tell her congrats.) And I hate the contempt in the voice of this author for those people. For MY people. I finished my marathon in an embarrassingly slow time. I mean, Oprah would have run laps around me. But does that mean that my participation lessens the integrity of the sport?

He ends the article with this:

If the marathon is populist enough for everyone to pin on a number, it’s also populist enough for everyone to kick ass. If you’re running the New York City Marathon this weekend, remember, it’s a race. True, no matter how hard you push, you’re not going to win a gold medal. But maybe a kid in high school will, someday. If the pack can drag the best runners back, we can push them forward, too.

You know what? Who is this guy to try to act like that just because my time is slow doesn’t mean I’m kicking ass? Anyone who crosses that finish line is kicking ass. This guy wants to blame the lack of a US marathon hero on the masses of us novice/walkers on the course. And that makes no sense. Yes, the average has gone down. But that’s mathematically expected when more novices jump in. I can’t imagine the woman in the front of the pack in Nashville saw me in the back of the pack and thought, “You know? That curly-haired girl is going slow. I’m going to slow down too.”

The idea that anyone in our increasingly unhealthy culture can actually point negatively to the newfound popularity of marathon running makes me laugh. And I love that he’s passive aggresive about his insulting with such wonderful statements as:

I just didn’t get it. After my knee injury, I’d returned to the 5K. I pushed myself into the pain zone, puked after races, and fought my way back down to 20 minutes — a far more satisfying feat than a four-hour marathon. I was doing all I could do, with what I still had. Yet here was a man whose legs would carry him 26 miles, and he was content to stop for walking breaks.

Mr. McClelland, I apologize that those of us out there who take walking breaks are such a bother to you and your bum knee. It is unfortunate you blame us “Penguins” (It’s a Bingham term) for the low average like it’s a black mark on your precious marathon. I’m sorry if this newfound love for running by couch potatoes over the country takes away the pride you feel in that 26.2 miles. But you know what? I just have to say one thing to you: Screw You. It is not anymore your race than it is mine. I am proud of you for finishing at whatever time you can finish. I look at the first person who crosses that finish like with admiration and respect. Actually? I am in awe of anyone that finishes faster than Oprah because I knew from the day I started training that her goal was too lofty for me. In other words? Before today I would have seen you cross that finish line at your best time and thought, “Man. He’s fast. I wish I could be fast like him.”

But you know what? No longer. I’ll be proud of the person before you and the person after you. But of you? I’m not going to waste my admiration on someone who thinks people like me are not kicking enough ass. I’ll save it for the person who comes in dead last. Do you know how hard it is NOT to give up when they’re closing the course behind you? I’ve been the last one in a race before and had the cops picking up the cones behind me as I slowly crept towards the finish line. It was my first half-marathon and I poorly paced myself and ended up in a lot of pain. And also in last place. It hurts. It made me embarrassed and ashamed and worried that jackasses like you were rolling their eyes at me as I hobbled down the road.

But you know what? Luckily the people on my race weren’t like you. Many kept at the finish line until the last person crossed, cheering us all on. Many ran backwards when they were finished to encourage those of us still on the course. They patted us on the back and commiserated in our agony. They didn’t look down on me for walking a small bit. They let me in their club of finishers. They told me to be proud. And I was. And I’m sure as hell not letting you take that away from me. Or from Oprah. She ran her marathon in 4 hours and 29 minutes. Scoff at my time all you want, but don’t knock hers. That chick is fast.

• I have an addiction to office supplies and can’t walk in and out of Staples without buying new pens.
• I go through at least 6 calendars a year, re-writing all 50+ birthdays each time.
• I’m convinced McDonald’s serves the best Diet Coke.
• I don’t clean my baseboards.
• I let my dogs clean up spills for me.

The list goes on and on. Blogging is fantastic in that it gives us weirdos a community, a network of other unusual people we can consult for support. And even though I know this happens, I am still always surprised to find a kindred spirit who also re-read Christopher Pike books as an adult. Or some such odd behavior.

So, of course, I felt moved when I read the entry that Alice wrote recently. It spoke to my soul, moved me to stand up and say, “Ok. Me too.”

I joke often about how I don’t take left turns. But seriously? I don’t take left turns. Well, if there are only a few other cars out, or if it’s an intersection with a left turn arrow, (no “Yield on Green” sign though) I’ll do it. But if there is even the slightest chance that I could be faced with the decision to turn based on the speed of the oncoming traffic – I won’t do it. I know routes all over town that either avoid left turns completely, or limit them to the “safe” ones that I can make without fearing for my life.

I also avoid the interstate and major highways when there is anymore than “No Traffic” on the road. Since I leave for work close to 6am, I’ll take the highway in. But – I will NOT take it home. I take another route that is slower, has gobs more traffic lights, and goes about 5 miles out of the way. BUT I DON’T CARE. I refuse to drive through major cities on road trips, and I only use the one entrance into the Target Shopping Center with the green arrow. MrZ thinks riding in the car with me is the closest thing he can come to Hell without actually being on fire. And he would actually rather be on fire. If I had a dollar for every time he exclaimed, “OHMYGOD!” at me choosing a round-about route somewhere instead of the straight line path – I’d be rich enough to hire a driver.

I do all of this to avoid what Alice is speaking of. The anxiety and panic that overwhelms me when I’m in an unfavorable driving situation, is terrifying. I have vivid (very vivid) nightmares about dying in car crashes am convinced that everyone on the road is an idiot who is destined to kill me and my family with their 5-lane cross-highway left turns.

So, Alice. Thanks for making me feel not so freaky. And let me know if the hypnosis works.

The Leaky Cauldron has given you a letter to write (or write your own – of course) to the editors there to express your irritation. I’m going to do it, and I’m posting it here in case you want to as well. Send the following to letters@nytimes.com. I’m actually sending it from every email address I own – just to make sure my irritation is heard.

To whom it may concern:

I am writing to express my disappointment that your publication printed an early review and details of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. This goes against the express wishes of the author and anyone that calls themselves a true Harry Potter fan.

It is hard enough for a Harry Potter fan to avoid spoilers on the Internet and news stations now that the book appears to have leaked; now we have to avoid trusted outlets as well. You’ve not only disappointed millions of children around the world with your actions, you have disappointed the millions of adults who look to the New York Times to be a bastion of good taste and standards. When the New York Times succumbs to such tabloid tactics, who won’t?

Many ask why we care – why fans aren’t all so rabid to get the book that we’ll sop up any illegal download or purchase. There’s one simple answer: We respect the author. We thought that a newspaper like yours, where so many of your reporters become authors themselves, would understand and respect that. We’re so saddened that we were wrong. We feel let down by you and your editorial board.

Sincerely,

Your name here
Harry Potter Fan, and member of Jo’s Army

I also have today off since I was supposed be going to NYC this week for BlogHer business and really wanted to take advantage of the only part of Spring Break I’d be here for. Unfortunately – the trip has been canceled due to an overbooking of the hotel. Fortunately – I don’t have to leave my family again. Of course, LilZ is spending the last half of the week in Georgia still, but that’s good for him, and just sucky for me. The last several days have just been awesome for me as a Mom. I’ve had some great Fun Time and some Silly Time and then a whole lot of Krazee Time thrown in for good measure. I just can’t believe how damn lucky I am, sometimes.

And then my period comes. And I’m reminded (a) I’m not pregnant (not that we’re actively trying, but it’s always depressing because we’re always hoping for a miracle) and (b) my uterus hates me.

So – my last vacation day will be spent trying to ignore my severe cramps with toxic levels of ibuprofen as well as running to Target for Milk, oatmeal, and tampons.