SnarkyMoms

At certain intersections in my city, panhandlers stand with signs, begging for money or food.  I must say that I often regard them with cynicism, since there are many sources of free food and necessities in my area.  Plus I hear stories about how some of them rake in $300 a day by begging on profitable street corners. 

The other day I saw one that made me laugh out loud (if she’s really homeless, then I’m probably going straight to hell for this).  The woman was fat.  How desparate can she be for food when she’s rocking a larger pant size than fits my ample ass?  Maybe she ate all the other beggars clamoring for this apparently profitable corner. 

The person behind me actually gave her a dollar.  What were they thinking?  It’s amazing what some lame-ass sign with “God Bless You” written on it and an outstretched hand can get you.

I just found out that McDonald’s hot fudge sundaes have 330 calories in them.  And THAT’S assuming that you just have the regular amount of fudge.  I go for EXTRA fudge. 

I was under the impression that because the sundaes are made of frozen yogurt, that they were relatively low calorie.  I suppose that, compared to say, Dairy Queen, they might be.  But compared to what I want for my “I’ve got to lose the rest of this baby weight before the baby enters college” diet, it’s more than I thought.  Guess the “sundae a day” plan is out.

 Damn!

Dear Martha Stewart,

When you announced that your “Big Idea” contest, which offered to put into practice a vision suggested to you, included the production of a magazine for food allergy sufferers, people on restricted diets everywhere rejoiced.  Email lists for food allergies, parents of allergic and food intolerant children, and so on, bubbled over in excitement as they rallied for the cause.

Their efforts were successful.  The food allergy magazine won 57% of the votes! 

Except… you decided to change the rules.  You decided to offer up recipes in pre-existing magazines and to instead turn the second place magazine idea, into a reality.

The allergy community is ticked.

Now personally, I don’t give a flying fig about your magazines.  I’ve never watched your television show or bought one of your products, mostly because they don’t interest me.  Now I’ll be damn sure that I’ll NEVER patronize your business.

Why do I care so much?  Because as the parent of a food-allergic child, I know how difficult life can be for those who must view many foods as poison.  While the recipes in the magazine may not have helped me too much since my child’s allergies are unusual, more than anything I wanted the support and legitimacy that having a Martha Stewart-branded magazine would bring to our “disease”.  You probably have no idea how ignorant the general public is about food allergies, and how deadly that ignorance can be.

Why on earth did you even include the food allergy publication as one of your Big Idea Bake-Off candidates when you apparently had no intention of producing the magazine the creator suggested?  Oh wait, I bet I know… it sounded so noble there on paper, as if Martha Stewart really cared about food allergy sufferers.  You must have thought that there was no way that it would win.  Did you just totally freak out when you saw it blowing away your more “marketable,” money-making ideas?  I bet all the Martha Stewart Living bigwigs raced to some secret emergency meeting to figure out how to get out of this self-made mess.

The second place winner will receive the first place prize - actual production of her pets and pet craft magazine idea.  Pet crafts.  Let me say that again.  Pet. Crafts. What the hell?!  A magazine about how to knit a sweater for Fido beat out a magazine that could help a child eat safe food.  Yeah, that sounds about right.  We must keep our priorities straight.

Don’t get me wrong, I love pets, and I’ve been a pet owner much longer than I’ve been living the food allergy life.  But I’ve been on both sides and the food allergy issue is just a teensy bit more important than yet another magazine about pets.  The pet magazine will probably appeal to more people, but if those people were so passionate about it, why didn’t they vote more?  They might think it’s a good idea, but will they bother to buy it?  They couldn’t be bothered to CLICK on it, for Pete’s sake! 

I’m sure you think that your co-winner idea is just the ticket to get you out of this fiasco.  You’re wrong.  Those of us in the food allergy community will remember.  And there are a lot of us.

Sincerely,

The parent of a food allergic child

Link to the Martha Stewart blog:
http://blogs1.marthastewart.com/martha/2008/02/big-idea-bakeof.html

I love my husband, and I appreciate that he does housework when asked.  It would be nice if he took initiative and did stuff himself, because housework is not MY job that he needs to HELP me with, but that’s another post.  Today I’m writing about his obsession with ridding our cabinet of excess sippy cups.

Every time he empties the dishwasher, he complains about the “take and toss” sippy cups that seem to be breeding in our kitchen cabinets.  We’ve collected quite a few of them, mostly because the lids wear out but the cups themselves last forever.  Now we are using the take and toss straw cups as well, so we had to buy more of those, just for the lids, but of course they came with more damn cups.

Last night, when he bitched about it again, saying his usual “We need to throw some of these out!  I’m going to pitch some of these, this is ridiculous, you can’t even fit anything in here without everything crashing down…” and so on, I said, “Do it.” 

Silence.

“Do it myself?”

“Yes,” I replied.  “Just don’t throw out too many of them, and we need to be sure to keep some small-sized ones for the baby to use. ”

Silence.

“Why don’t you come over and do it?  I’m not sure…”

Ah.  Now I see.  He wants it done but doesn’t want to take the time to do it himself. 

Well, guess what?  I had a client’s work to finish, a floor to sweep, and a daughter that was sick and needed comforting throughout the night.  Plus, I was (and still am) beyond exhausted.

So I said, “No.  You want it done?  You do it.”

Naturally, it’s still not done.  But I better not hear any more complaints about it when he empties the dishwasher next!  It’s so easy to go through life complaining but not doing anything.  That kind of attitude pisses me off.  Feel free to complain, but if you don’t make an effort to fix the problem, then I’m not going to listen to you.   

I do not understand people who post to a yahoo group with a few hundred plus members on it and write simply “ROFL.”  I’d like to punch them in the head.  Sometimes “reply-to-all” is not the best option, you know? 

Before you post some stupid acronym in your attempt at being funny, stop for a minute and ask yourself, “Is this going to add to the conversation, or are 400 people going to roll their eyes and delete this message?” 

Say something that matters or at least makes me laugh or don’t waste my time.  The end.

I’ve just discovered the fun that is high definition television.  HDTV is the great equalizer.  I’ve always put famous people on a pedestal, and it’s quite interesting to see how “flawed” the beautiful people are.  I actually like that; I’m much more interested in people looking real than people looking plastic.  Airbrushed faces in magazines don’t do it for me at all. 

So I was watching American Idol, “Hollywood Week,” and I was just AMAZED by the amount of make-up on Ryan Seacrest’s face.  I’ve always thought that he was pretty cute and kind of quirky, but wow, not in emo-liner HD.  You should should never, ever be able to tell that a guy is wearing blush.  Doesn’t he have stylists and make-up artists and stuff?  Maybe actors need new HD specialists to do their make up.  Sheesh.

How is it that I just now noticed that Ty Pennington of Extreme Home Makeover is a hottie?  I have to admit that I did a little research on him.  How could I not?  A hot male celebrity should never go unresearched.  Lord Google makes it so easy to do. 

 Anyway, guess what?  He’s on record openly discussing his experiences with ADHD. 

After hearing that he had the disorder, I wasn’t really surprised. I mean, have you seen his show?  The guy is a bundle of frantic energy.  I admire it, really, he seems like he’s just going with it and having a lot of fun. 

That sounds like I’m minimizing the effects and importance of ADHD, which I’m totally not.  One of my children will likely be diagnosed with it in the future, and I know it makes life difficult on the “patient” and the people around him or her.  So I guess I’m even more impressed that Ty has 1) done damn good for himself and others despite having this challenge and 2) that he’s willing to discuss the problem publicly. 

Many people would try to cover it up… which makes him all the more hot.  Don’t you think?

Hottie rating 8

(Hottie ratings are on a scale of 1 to 10 - reserving the occasional 11 if we need to take it up a notch - and are based on overall personality and charisma, with a dash of physical appearance.  No Ken dolls need apply.  Hotties are real men with that special something.  Flaws are welcome.  Encouraged, even.  Apply to have your hottie featured here by commenting below.  Tori Sullivan is the entire hottie judge and jury.  Your mileage may vary.  All sales are final.  Some restrictions may apply.)

Testing.  Testing.  Is anybody out there?

It’s totally fitting that I’m starting a new blog here at www.snarkymoms.com today because I’m at this very moment trying to get off the antidepressants that I was given a year ago for post partum depression.  I feel quite snarky.  Perhaps being able to vent my  general irritability in this blog might keep my family out of the line of fire. 

Yea.  Right.

Anyway, welcome to my inner bitch.  Wallow in it. You know you want to!

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