Julie Pippert: Using My Words

My husband's day on Friday began at 2:15 a.m. when the alarm went off. This means my day also began at 2:15 a.m. when he hit snooze and rolled over. The alarm went off at 2:16 a.m. and started its oh-so-pleasant escalation in volume, necessitating domestic violence on my part. It was less painful for my husband to turn off the alarm and get up, so he did. Then he drove out to his construction site for a 4 a.m. concrete pour (and don't call it cement, trust me on that one). This is what it looks like at a construction site at 4 a.m. You are thinking, "Wow, that is hands-down the most exciting photo I've ever seen on a blog!" I know. I'm all about the excitement. That's why I am going to ratchet it up a few notches with this: Oooh aaaah. UPC pipe. Have I dispelled the myth of the rich, glamorous life of an architect yet? 4 a.m. concrete pours and UPC pipe. Allegedly this concrete pour was scheduled to accommodate the girls' birthday. (I doubt that's ...

Do homework and drinking go together? Wait, don't answer. And tell Miss Meredith V. to tune out. Normally you might not think so, but you have never tried to help my Masie, the seven year old, with homework. Let me go back a little and give some insight on my second oldest. I like to say Masie was born with just about everything wrong you can think of, but none of it life-threatening. She was underweight slightly, jaundiced, had 5 holes in her heart(ASD's and VSD's). Her nose was squashed. She had a high fever and so on. She was basically one of those babies that people see and say 'oh gee, they all look the same, don't they.' Like the Seinfeld episode- look at the beautiful baby! Isn't she gorgeous. No, Masie was not a cute one. Then ten days after May was born, she started to cry 12 hours a day, all day and did not stop. She threw up (not spit up) all the time, had to have breathing treatments, had RSV, 11 ear infections by 5 months, tubes twice, and a con...

Oh wouldn't Meredith Vieira love to get her graspy judgmental paws on this one: " I'm a Better Mother When Stoned ," by LJ Wilson (pseudonym) currently up at Babble (along with caveat that Babble doesn't endorse alcohol or illegal drug use while parenting). The only problem is I'm afraid I might end up nodding along with her as she rasps out a smug and self-righteous snarky comment that slams all parents who toke a dubie while parenting. Wilson writes I've been a weekend pot smoker since I was about eighteen. As a new mother, I continued the indulgence, but only when I was out and my son had a babysitter. I swore I'd never be stoned around my kid. And that plan worked for two and a half years, right up until one morning when my toddler waged a concerted campaign to fray each of my nerves. Wow. My first moment of disbelief was that it took two and a half years for her child to fray her nerves . That's some laid back well-behaved kid! Or some laid ...