My favorite (aside from "Mother, May I Sleep With Danger?" just for the title alone) was Meredith Baxter-Birney in "A Woman Scorned: The Betty Broderick Story." (Which may have not actually aired first on Lifetime, but I definitely saw it on Lifetime as part of some kind of "The Woman in Every Lifetime Movie: The Meredith Baxter-Birney Story" marathon.) Friends and I still say "It's not what I wanted, so it's CRAP!!!!" when opening gifts, a la Meredith's... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mothershock at 4:14 PM on July 22, 2008

The Card Cheat: my daughter had that bed! We bought it for her when she was 5 (in 2004) and kept it until just this spring, when we moved from an apt to a house and the bed proved to be too much of a pain in the ass to deconstruct, transport, and reconstruct elsewhere. (We gave it away to someone else with little kids.) Both my kids had a blast with that slide.

There are a lot of slick new playgrounds around these days, but my kids' favorite slide is this 100+ year old... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mothershock at 7:01 PM on July 21, 2008

I like my friend Martha's Society for the Protection of Good Grammar better!

(Though this site's almost won me over with the last sidebar link to "Hidden" Pages. Don't be bashful, collection of "Wit and Wisdom"! Come out of hiding!)
posted to MetaFilter by mothershock at 4:43 AM on June 2, 2008

This is excellent. Thanks!
posted to MetaFilter by mothershock at 4:13 PM on May 22, 2008

Yeah, you know, we just got ours last night, and the first thing my kids did was bust it out and set up WiiFit profiles for themselves. I had to moderate the whole thing, because to an almost 9-year-old and a 5.5-year old, it seemed pretty harsh. My daughter was informed that she was normal, but it asked her to set a weight-loss goal, which became a "teachable moment" about what healthy feels like and the importance of eating and getting stronger, etc. etc. But the verdict on my son... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mothershock at 6:57 AM on May 22, 2008

... I'm with Mister_A, though. I wish it had a kid setting.
posted to MetaFilter by mothershock at 6:59 AM on May 22, 2008

Are kids these days really not used to being challenged at all, and are conditioned to give up if they get a negative response?

I don't think anyone's saying that. But I will say that it helps to know your kid in terms of dealing with this stuff. My super-sensitive, perfectionistic 9-year-old will take a negative response deeply personally; her best friend will shrug it off. (As for myself at 9, the "not good enough" response made me work... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mothershock at 10:15 AM on May 22, 2008

There's all sorts of unspoken rules as far as walking down the streets goes

My favorite walking-down-the-street-in-NY story is from when I used to live in Hoboken and work in the city and took the bus back and forth every day. I usually walked from Lincoln Center down 8th Avenue to Port Authority to catch the bus home, and I was fairly practiced at dodging dawdlers and slow-walkers in my sprint to the bus. But one day I was thwarted at every turn, it... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mothershock at 1:03 PM on May 20, 2008

I don't know... I hear/read this kind of argument, which seems to kind of be a fleshed out consensus of an anecdote, and yet (to put forth my own anecdata) just the other day, when my husband said something out loud about looking something up on Wikipedia for him, our almost 9-year-old told him, "You know, Dad, not everything on Wikipedia is true. You shouldn't just look there!" So maybe there's hope after all???

(She told us afterwards... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mothershock at 9:32 AM on May 14, 2008

Metafilter in the Ruins. (Blogging the apocalypse, from 2003.)
posted to MetaFilter by mothershock at 5:21 AM on April 2, 2008

The best part is the congratulatory letter from President Bush -- who is, as we all know, a stickler for proper usage.
posted to MetaFilter by mothershock at 6:25 PM on March 4, 2008

Or writes shrill Amazon "reviews."
posted to MetaFilter by mothershock at 5:17 AM on February 1, 2008

When you say "squirrel away a few months of cash," do you mean under the mattress? Or in a bank? Is it safe to keep large sums of money in the bank (as opposed to investing it)?
posted to MetaFilter by mothershock at 5:22 AM on January 22, 2008

Ours was supposed to come before Christmas but won't arrive until Jan. 15, according to the email I got the other day...
posted to MetaFilter by mothershock at 10:46 PM on December 24, 2007

I've never been at a party where someone's turned up with an uninvited dog*, but I have been nearly run off the sidewalk by one of these puppies.

(* Okay, full disclosure, my mother is one of those crazy purse-dog people and has been known to spring a dog out of her purse in supermarkets, department stores, places of worship... Bringing a dog to a party definitely sounds like something she would do.)
posted to MetaFilter by mothershock at 11:39 AM on December 13, 2007

A friend put together a fantastic (and wrenching) collection of writing on this subject: About What Was Lost, with essays by writers like Joyce Maynard and Susanna Sonnenberg, among others. One of the writers, Miranda Field, touches on mizuko kuyo in her piece.
posted to MetaFilter by mothershock at 1:54 PM on December 4, 2007

This is awesome. My 8-year-old is desperate for her own Macbook Pro, and has taken to creating her own out of paper (she colors one side grey with a white apple for the logo). Her keyboards have buttons that say "secrets," "[her brother's] secrets," and "you tube." She also has a couple of paper cell phones.
posted to MetaFilter by mothershock at 12:45 PM on November 19, 2007

This is excellent! My co-author and I included excerpts from these letters in a chapter for the forthcoming Daring Book For Girls.
posted to MetaFilter by mothershock at 10:53 AM on September 30, 2007

doggie-dog
Cute. Supposably things like that are a blessing in the skies. You might take it for granite. But don't make an affidavid out of it.

Reminds me of my favorite phrase ever, as spoken by an interviewee in some A&E "documentary" about the real-life Amityville killer guy -- a neighbor, trying to sum things up, said, "It's a bag of worms, no matter how you slice it."
posted to MetaFilter by mothershock at 6:43 PM on September 29, 2007

There's a fabulous book on the phenomenon that is Mrs. Beeton -- it's called The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs. Beeton. Definitely worth checking out.
posted to MetaFilter by mothershock at 7:48 AM on September 18, 2007

That is so strange -- a few months back there was a spate of very similar attacks in Philadelphia. I wonder if it's the same guy?
posted to MetaFilter by mothershock at 3:45 PM on September 11, 2007

We had a shih-tzu when I was growing up -- I practiced classical piano about 3 hours a day, and the entire time the dog would sit either right next to me on the bench, or at my feet. There was this one particular piece by Liszt that really got her going. Wherever she was -- sleeping next to me or snoozing under the piano -- she'd raise her little head and sing along. It was very cute, and it turned into a kind of party trick ("Play that tinkly kinda song that makes the dog howl!"), but... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mothershock at 7:38 AM on August 3, 2007

I just finished reading the fascinating and eminently more interesting saga of a man who walked (and sailed) around the world alone, logging a total of 250,000 miles traveled -- all while being completely blind. The book is A Sense of the World and "The Blind Traveler" is James Holman.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mothershock at 7:11 AM on July 30, 2007

yeah, but why were they asked? It's pretty odd for a parent to call and say "Is my son going to be drinking at the party?"

I don't know -- when my daughter was in kindergarten and had her first sleepover party, one of the parents asked if she could come over to make sure our house was gun, drug, and alcohol free before she allowed her daughter to come to the party....
posted to MetaFilter by mothershock at 7:44 AM on June 9, 2007

What's really interesting is that he made some of his comments the very week his daughter, Erika Schickel, was using the power of the "blogosphere" to showcase her first book. My company, MotherTalk, is hired by publishers (and occasionally authors) to create blog-based virtual book tours, and we did a 10-blog tour for Erika back in March, during which time her dad went off on bloggers. She wasn't surprised by her father's comments (which she responded to on the blog where they were... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mothershock at 1:31 PM on May 21, 2007

A similar tale: The Maiden Without Hands -- this version by the Brothers Grimm has many of the same elements as the Armless Maiden story.
posted to MetaFilter by mothershock at 9:21 AM on April 12, 2007

Tillie Olsen's granddaughter writes about growing up with Silences and about saying goodbye to Tillie at LiteraryMama.com. (Full disclosure: I'm one of the founding editors of the site but do not currently work there.)
posted to MetaFilter by mothershock at 11:49 AM on January 10, 2007

My son was electrocuted in February. He was three. He survived. (We are in the US.) It was a freak accident -- he washed his hands, did the quick 3-year-old drying method of wiping them in the vicinity of the towel, and then ran out to the living room to get one of his matchbox cars. Before I had a chance to come around the corner from the bathroom, he had reached under the couch to feel around for a car he thought had gone there, and come in contact with an extension cord that had one plug not... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mothershock at 6:52 AM on January 5, 2007

Maybe you shouldn't have called youself "mothershock," then, huh?

Yeah. It's from my book title of the same name from 2003. But don't think I didn't beat myself up plenty for that.
posted to MetaFilter by mothershock at 10:23 AM on January 5, 2007

Mayor Curley: "I know two people who have miscarried. They had the good taste to keep the experience private and not make a writer's profit off of a dead fetus."

I agree with everyone else who mentioned the importance of giving voice to isolating, world-shifting, private experience. I wrote about my experience with miscarriage in my first book -- ultimately writing that my experience "initiated me into the pure essence of parenting: the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mothershock at 12:49 PM on July 11, 2006

bad times can only be overcome by dwelling on them, meticulously documenting them and, most importantly, profiting from them. No matter how many other people have gone through it.

Do you really believe this is what motivates a writer to write? You think, for example, Joan Didion wrote "The Year of Magical Thinking," about coming to grips with the death of her spouse, because she thought it would be an easy buck?
posted to MetaFilter by mothershock at 3:25 PM on July 11, 2006

It seems to be in line with what Judy Tucker mentions in the linked article, in the bit about the interview with Total 180 magazine's embrace of the title "CHO" -- Chief Household Officer: "because 'when women leave the workforce, you feel like you've lost your identity,' and apparently having a fake honorific of one's own can ease the pain." I feel the same way about the ridiculous Salary.com bulletins that come out every year around mother's day touting how women who mother... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mothershock at 8:12 AM on July 10, 2006

if your kid says "I want to play with Joey" and all you have are scraps of paper with the mom's names listed on them, it might be useful to have one that says "Megan: Joey's mom."

I don't know... most people I know just put the numbers in their cell phones or write stuff down on paper, and the transaction seems to go fine.

To me, this is on the spectrum of this recent (as in last 10 years) trend of the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mothershock at 8:21 AM on July 10, 2006

The people who went after Hirshman used a number of ad hominem arguments, many of them absolutely ridiculous, and so I can cut her a little slack on her blowhardiness.

Well, but Hirshman is hardly blameless on that front -- on the LiteraryMama blog back in December (full disclosure: I am a co-founding editor of the site), our blogger wrote about Hirshman's original Prospect article and rather than respond to the issues the blogger raised, Hirshman... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mothershock at 8:34 AM on July 10, 2006

The Bee Blog has the scoop on Saryn Hooks' reentry.

Basically, she was given the word "hechsher," which the judges had as "hechscher," but which can be spelled either way, since it's a Hebrew transliteration.

Why, look -- Wikipedia already has it on their entry for "hechsher".

I agree -- Finola must be kicking herself about that "v"!... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mothershock at 10:37 AM on June 2, 2006

To clarify my post above, Saryn Hooks was given the word "hechsher." Which she spelled, correctly, as "hechsher." But the judges had it on their print-out as "hechscher." So they dinged her, but then another contestant, who had been out in an earlier round, looked it up using his laptop (which was loaded up with all the new words from the official bee dictionary) and realized that it should actually be spelled as "hechsher," the way she had spelled it. So... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mothershock at 10:51 AM on June 2, 2006

Yeah -- he also called her "the pride of Tokyo."

???
posted to MetaFilter by mothershock at 10:52 AM on June 2, 2006

And also discussed at Readerville and GalleyCat.
posted to MetaFilter by mothershock at 7:42 AM on April 24, 2006

Also recently in plagiarism news: Emily Davies, formerly of the Times of London, confessed in March to plagiarizing in a book proposal for her own memoir -- which had netted her a $900,000 advance. Some discussion here, here, and here.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mothershock at 8:38 AM on April 24, 2006

An update from Publisher's Lunch:

...Many of the passages cited have similar (and in a few cases identical) page numbers as well, indicating that the "unconscious . . . similarities" often occurred at similar points in the respective books.

An additional section asserts an extensive overview of "identical scenes, plot points, and characters" shared between the books in question claiming, among other things, that... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mothershock at 4:49 PM on April 25, 2006

A PDF from Publisher's Marketplace outlining all of the "similar passages" -- which I think at last count has risen to 45 in number.
posted to MetaFilter by mothershock at 9:29 AM on April 26, 2006

There are more songs, some games, and even a personality chart. But even the "Ask" page can't answer the burning question: why, god, why????
posted to MetaFilter by mothershock at 5:07 AM on April 17, 2006

But the song! And what is a bonito?
posted to MetaFilter by mothershock at 6:04 AM on April 17, 2006

Oft denk' ich, sie sind nur ausgegangen

Often I think that they have only stepped out -
and that soon they will reach home again!
The day is fair - O don't be afraid!
They are only taking a long walk.

Yes: they have only stepped out
and will now return home!
O don't be anxious - the day is fair!
They are only taking a walk to those hills.
... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mothershock at 10:50 AM on April 3, 2006

Thanks, everyone. I've been thinking about this work a lot, and about Ruckert's original texts, as we had a scare recently with my three-year-old son. He's fine, but it made me think about grief, and whether or not grief is made more poignant when it's a young child you are grieving.

Empath, the "lieder" in kindertotenlieder means song, so "kinder" (children) "toten" (dead) "lieder" (songs) is specifically songs on the death of... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mothershock at 11:59 AM on April 3, 2006

And jenovus, thanks for pointing out that SF story!
posted to MetaFilter by mothershock at 11:59 AM on April 3, 2006

Yes, you are right. And that Byatt poem is just haunting. Thanks for posting that.
posted to MetaFilter by mothershock at 4:15 PM on April 3, 2006

I think that's actually what's going on here. The 35-40 set are just wearing, doing and listening to the same things they always have...

Yeah. That's what puzzled me about this article and the claim that nobody in this "demographic" wants to "grow up." I kept waiting to read about how all these 35-40 year olds are living in their parents' basements, not getting jobs, unable to support themselves financially, not moving out and maybe... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by mothershock at 4:41 AM on March 29, 2006

My husband is an ophthalmologist. I so want to make that hymn his cell-phone ring tone!
posted to MetaFilter by mothershock at 5:58 PM on March 13, 2006

But Dr. Gould left her own 4-day-old child to return to the lab. Interesting.

I'm guessing she didn't leave them entirely alone. In a laboratory.

Leaving your kids with a caregiver (or -- imagine! -- your partner) is simply not the same as depriving rats of their mothers in a lab.
posted to MetaFilter by mothershock at 1:45 PM on March 4, 2006