The First Ever Religiously Sensitive Thanksgiving Spanikopita

As I said earlier this week, Thanksgiving is the best holiday of the year. No cards, no expectations, permission to stuff our faces, and the only gifts we give is ourself. At least if you can tear yourself away from the game for four seconds. Nate.

We split our time among various and sundry family members (read: my parents are divorced and my children are very popular around holiday time) and this year, was "Dad's Year" for Thanksgiving. He outdid himself with a seriously perfect meal on Thursday, the kind of meal to make all other meals weep copious tears while beating themselves in the head with the 800-pound New York Times Cookbook.

Think: A Candied Spicy Walnut and Pear Salad, Turkey with Homemade Mole Sauce (hello!) two kinds of sweet potatoes for even the non sweet potato-likers (ahem), perfectly crunchy green beans that demanded second helpings, and Nate's insanely awesome Cornbread-Chorizo-Chipotle Stuffing that puts to shame all other Cornbread-Chorizo-Chipotle Stuffings. Yes, even yours.

Oh, and then an upside down Tarte Tatin. Because we had so much room left.

A note to the unmarried and uncoupled lady friends among us: Surround yourself with men who cook well. The end.

So as not to subject us to two turkeys in a row, at my mom's house the previous night, we created a more rustic dinner, including the first ever Religiously Sensitive Thanksgiving Spanikopita.

Start with pastry dough and a gingerbread man cutter from the 70's.

Add a dreidel.

Aw look, they heart each other.

Sage snacks on carrots she grew herself from seeds.

Just like the book!

Thalia works hard to set the table, excited to eat off the good dishes for the first time.

Place cards! She wrote herself!

While Sage rolls on the floor...

to the tune of Dancing Queen.

Done! Complete with the initials S and T, to encourage the girls to actually try it. 

Thalia did. Kind of. And a new Thanksgiving tradition is born.

Did you create any new traditions this year?

The darker side of Black Friday

This week, my mailbox has been inundated with emails - Black Friday sales! Cyber Monday sales! Save 50% Get free shipping! Shop online!

It's awesome, all of it. 

Okay, most of it.

I love sales as much as the next gal. (My favorite top-stitched black trench came from the $5 bin at a vintage store in Pittsfield Mass. Whee!) But something else is creeping me out this week: Emails about sales that start at midnight Thanksgiving. Friday at 3AM. Sales that end before most people have even finished their first cup of coffee and put away the gravy boats Friday morning.

They're not targeted to college kids or guys waiting on line at the Apple store for phones at midnight. They're targeted to families.  So what those messages are essentially saying is, leave your kids at midnight (or worse, God, take your kids with you), because $10 sweaters are calling!

What those messages are saying is that we have totally lost our shit, America.

I totally get the importance of saving money. I get that for some families, racing to the mall at 3AM knowing you could be trampled by a Black Friday stampede or worse, may be the difference between gifts and no gifts. What I don't get are the retailers putting families in the position to have to make this choice. I'm talking to you Old Navy. I'm talking to you JC Penney and Kohl's and Children's Place and Toys R Us.

It stinks.

Friday is Friday, but tomorrow is Thanksgiving. It's the best damn holiday of the year. We get to be with the people we love and hang out in jeans and eat a ton of stuffing and the only gift we give is ourselves. In my heart of hearts, I wish we could keep it that way.

Doing good during a week of giving thanks

Last year was a tough one for us. Really tough. 2009 was The Year that Every Job Opportunity Imploded.

(Seriously, I think that's on the Chinese astrology charts sandwiched between the Year of the Rat and the Year of the Guy Holding Up His Middle Finger at You While He Quietly Cleans Out Your Bank Account.)

I have never in my life experienced a year quite like that--freelance accounts would pull jobs the night before the start date. Three month bookings turned into 2-day bookings. Small companies asked if they could put off paying me for oh, say six months? And then right in the middle of it all, our car would get a flat. Or our cats would require six zillion dollars worth of antibiotics.

Any one of those situations might have been manageable, but together, back-to-back, for a straight year? It was, frankly, not fun at all.

We made a whole lot of sacrifices, rethought priorities, relied on the kindness of family (and really cute hand-me-downs), and we muddled through it. We even somehow managed to get Nate through culinary school, courtesy delayed student loan payments.

The one thing I most regret cutting back on last year was charity. And fancy cheeses. But mostly charity.

Not that we didn't give a few dollars here and there, or support a friend's walkathon, pull some resources together for Haiti, or donate toys to Goodwill. But I wasn't quite sending copious monthly checks throughout the year. Turns out--surprise!--I wasn't the only one. Charities have been hit hard in the last couple of years, with giving down in 20009 for the first time in 12 years.

As we come up on the end of 2010, I feel incredibly blessed to be in a position where I can start to think about these things again. So when I learned about GiveBack.org, I was like, hey! Over here! I'm your gal!

I don't write about charity stuff here a lot because when I do, I get six hundred million emails from charities asking me to write about them too and I can't pick between them and I feel guilty and...yeah. That'.

But this is a good one. Because it benefits all charities.

Basically you create your own "foundation" - just add your pet non-profits in, and then they'll give you a $5 donation to start. You can add money in there each month to save up for a big donation, or you can earn more money by shopping at more than 400 stores which will donate from about 2 to 15% of your purchase price right into your foundation.

New Wii from Target? 4% to your charities. Big splurgey gift for the kids at FAO Schwartz? 2% to your charities.  Sending the mother-in-law a bouquet from 1-800-FLOWERS  on Thanksgiving? 10% to your charties.

Here's a dandy video to show you just how GiveBack works. 

Oh and this is not a sponsored post you cynical so-and-so's (although they did kindly make a charitable donation on my behalf).  I just think it's wildly cool and inventive and it makes it easy for me to get back to the giving that makes me feel whole

My own dot-orgs that are near and dear to my heart right now: The White Ribbon Alliance For Safe Motherhood(you can read here about how I discovered them, while also discovering that supermodels do not get my sense of humor), Feeding America, the Nature Conservancy, and I'm working on getting our school PTA in there.

I'm so happy to be writing about this, the very week that we're all spending a lot of time thinking about what we're thankful for.

I also love hearing about what causes other people feel deeply about. What are yours?

Retouching childhood

My 8th grade school photo day was easily the worst of all school photo days in the history of the world ever. The day before, I had ventured to my mother's hair salon asking to change my hair from the long, well-brushed, one-length style of my childhood for "wisps" - that new style of bangs that the pretty girls wore, all tendril-y and wispy and touchable. It looked fabulous on blonde cheerleaders.

It did not look fabulous on me.

But the hair stylist did not consider my frizzy, product-free, wisp-unfriendly hair. She just started cutting.

My forehead was now marred with these laughable half-bangs, faint bits of hair that jutted out in uneven directions like an ugly wet bird newborn emu, then finally curling into the center of my forehead from either side to form a perfect circle in the center. I had a circle of bangs on my forehead. This, coupled with a "natural blowdry" (she used a diffuser, people!) coerced my already poofy hair into a state of frizz never before seen within the confines of Westchester County. I could just imagine the finger/light socket jokes in homeroom the next day.

 Like this. Only frizzier. And with ribbon barrettes.

My father walked in our front door for our weekly visit that night, I took one look at him, and burst into tears.

It all made for quite the awesome 8th grade photo the next morning: Me with my puffy eyes made worse by the fat stripe of sparkly teal Maybelline eyeliner, a half-hearted closed-mouth smile, and of course those horrible, horrible wisps that never were.

Would I have changed it? Would you?

Today, according to the New York Times, parents are now retouching their children's school photos. Eliminating scars or scratches, brightening teeth, taming frizz. You can even add a tie. Take out braces. Heck, one parent removed a congenital strawberry mark from her child's face.

What better way to say I love you just the way you are, honey!

I always thought school photos served to chronicle your life. Your real life, not your fantasy life. Not who you wish you could be, but who you actually are: braces, puffy eyes, freckles, bike accident scars, frizzy hair and all. That's the reality of childhood. It is imperfect.

Funny enough, when I look back at that horrible school photo of mine in my mother's photo albums, what I see now is more than the worst hair ever. (Although it is hard to miss.)

What I see is a transition from sweet young 7th grader to made-up 8th grader. I see the dawn of wisdom and self-awareness. I see the beginning of me.

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Edited to add: Ha! So many of you asking me to post the photo! The truth is I don't have it here to post (that you know of). Maybe I'll have a change of heart sometime. But for what it's worth, my dad read this and said, "I remember that day. And you're telling the truth."

You say you want an evolution

This week, Thalia damn near bowled me over when she looked up at me through those gorgeous lashes of hers over a bowl of pasta and asked, "Mommy? How was the first baby born?"

The uh...the what?

"How did the first baby get born?"

What makes you ask that honey?

"I was just thinking about babies being born and wondered how the first one got born."

Did I mention Thalia is five?

Now after silently patting myself on the back for raising a supergenius critical-thinking kindergartener who would have the capacity to even ask a question like that (she gets it from Nate, trust me) I turned to the trusty internets. Because as amazing as her question was, my answer was damn near intelligible. Something about amoebas growing legs and walking out of the ocean and getting taller over thousands of years and inventing the wheel. I might have mentioned the Darwin Awards. And Woolly Mammoths.

"Hold on..." I said. Then I pulled out my laptop and clicked over to some dandy PBS videos about evolution.

Thalia sat there in awe, mouth agape, watching breathlessly as she learned about things like natural selection and the difference between relatives and ancestors; then asked me to replay the requisite animated sequence of the monkey morphing into a a man-like monkey about four times.

It was like watching someone's brain explode. 

I liked it.

Then I realized, I got off easy. I didn't have to talk to her about how babies get made. I'd imagine my answer would also be something about amoebas with legs. Which really, isn't so far off from the truth.

What are the hard questions your kids have asked?

Making 30 minutes last forever

This post is part of Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 series on doing more with less.

When I think of what I don't have in life, sure, there are some wish-list items that stand out. Say, a second bathroom. A washer-dryer that I don't share with 35 neighbors. A parking garage that is actually in our own neighborhood, let alone our own block.

(Oh the joys of city living!)

Mostly I don't spend a lot of time thinking about what I have less of and I feel, especially this time of year, grateful for what I do have. 

But the one thing I really truly find I scrape by on, is time.

Working parents simply don't have the luxury (or challenge?) of countless free hours with the family. We skip pediatrician appointments in favor of parent-teacher conferences instead. We give up school pick-ups. If we make it home in time to catch the kids slurping down the last of the mac n cheese, it's a win of epic proportions.

So the one thing I value--really value--is my time with them. Especially those dark, sweet nighttime moments during which I crouch down next to the girls' beds, stroke their hair, pull the quilts up to their chins, and together we catch up on the day.

Generally we read. Sometimes I make up stories. But always, we talk.

About their days. About my day. About who was nice in school and which friend they played with and what they learned and how many goals they scored. "Mommy, can we do questions?" they ask.  And so I begin.

What was one thing that made you smile today? What was one thing that made you laugh today? What one person did something nice for you today? What is one thing you learned today that you didn't know yesterday?

And then, as the tradition goes, I always end with, What do you want to dream about tonight?

Without fail, Thalia requests something with princesses and purple unicorns named Kelsey and magic butterflies and rainbows. Sage is more interested in princes with swords and friendly monsters named Pukebok who play tricks on people.

And then I kiss their foreheads, tell them I love them so so much (two so's are so so important), and send them to sleep.

Once in a while, if the stars align, they do actually sleep at that point.

The thing is, when you have less time, you have no choice but to do the most with it that you can. My hope is not that my kids will remember how many after-school hours I missed, but how many butterfly kisses I gave. How many princess rescues I described. How many questions I let them answer. How many rainbow dreams I helped bring to life. How many chapters I read doing the silly voices.

How many times I said I love you, so so much.

THE CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED. Congrats to Fer of My Whole Life... who's the winner! I'm so glad it's someone who really really wanted it. Thanks so much for sharing your stories with me. I learned lots of great ideas myself for dong more when you have less time.

The giveaway was brought to you by th enew Windows Phone 7. Less MIA, More PTA. (Which I think means that moms all are in the PTA? Or something? No idea.) Learn about Windows Phone online and see it in person at a local T-Mobile store.

How to be an amazing Grandma: A lesson in 2 emails

Hi Grandma and Papa,

I'm feeling a little bit better. I'm doing nothing. I'm cuddling with mommy.

I watched a movie called Ponyo. It was about a girl named Ponyo and she was a fish and she was a girl. And I watched a movie and I don't remember its name (The Neverending Story) and I couldn't watch the whole thing because Sage didn't like it.

I went to the Yankee Fair a little time and I got a really good treat. It was fun there. I said something that is really funny: Good thing I did nothing at the Yankee Fair. That's just a little joke.

We made Mommy a funny face. We putted too much makeup on her. It was really funny. Mommy put makeup on me and Sage and we looked pretty. Even though Mom looked a little funny. She had too much eyeshadow on her. And it made her pretty funny.

I'm having a good time at school. Even though on Saturdays and Sundays I don't go to school. Some people say they won't like school, some people say they don't like school, and some people say they do.

I love you. I hope I see you soon.

Thalia

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Hi Thalia,

We just finished eating dinner. Grandma thought she was a turtle. She only ate green vegetables and a little rice. She ate spinach and lettuce and red peppers and corn and sweet potatoes. Papa ate some meat. He thought he was a bear! Then we listened to a DVD by Willie Nelson, Grandma's favorite singer. Did you know that your mom asked Willie Nelson to autograph a picture of himself for her? We will show it to you the next time you are here. Papa even asked Grandma to dance when they heard a special song. They were dancing all around the house. It was so funny. Sometimes Grandma was the leader. Sometimes Papa was.

We wish you had taken a picture of your mom in her makeup. Maybe next Halloween you can put make up on her to go trick or treating. Then all of the people will say, "Thalia and Sage, you should open a beauty salon."

We are so glad that you like school. Grandma and Papa liked school so much that we both became teachers.  We are the kids who always liked school. Once Grandma got in trouble because she was talking when the teacher said, "Shhhh. No talking, children." She had to stand outside in the hallway. She was so embarrassed that she started to cry. The first word Grandma learned to read was THE. She found the word in one of Momsie's books and felt so grown up, because she could read the word all by herself. Papa's mom and dad read to him every night, just like your mom does. His favorite books were The Wind in the Willows and Winnie the Pooh. Reading is so much fun because now we can send each other emails and tell each other what we are doing.

When you feel better Papa will take you on a ride in the wheelbarrow filled with straw and Grandma will teach you how to use the sewing machine. Maybe we can make a special present for your mom since she is such a good sport for letting you put make up on her.

We are glad you are teaching Sage some important lessons like how to draw noses on people's faces and how to be very kind to animals. She is so lucky to have a sister like you. And we are jumping for joy to have a granddaughter like you.

We hope you have very pleasant dreams tonight. We will call you tomorrow to see how you are feeling.

XXXXOOOOO Hugs and kisses,
Grandma and Papa

The Top 10 All Time Best Bloggers in the History of the World

Once again, I am presented with a conflict.

I am so beyond overjoyed (overjoyed!) at making this year's Babble's Top 50 Mom Blogs List. To find that writers I respect have seen fit to include me on a list of the best-written mom blogs of all things, along with people I worship from afar (and sometimes a-near) is so humbling and gratifying and freaky and great. And, other better adjectives I might have in my grasp, should I be number 1 or number 2, and not number 8.

(Seriously, I bet Lisa Belkin never calls things "freaky and great.")

But as with last year, when I end up on a list, I feel a little uncomfortable too. Because while those 50 bloggers are indeed all fantastic bloggers, that doesn't mean that other bloggers aren't fantastic too. Magnificent even.

As I said in this blogher interview,  I can't judge success based on how many lists I get on; if I did I'd have to look at all the lists I'm not on and jump out a window. This is a very list-happy world we live in!

Still, everyone deserves to be on a list. It makes your mom happy and looks good on LinkedIn.

So here is a new one:

Mom-101's 470 Top 10 All Time Best Bloggers in the History of the World. 

This is, I think, the coolest top 10 list of all time. Because the trick is, there can actually be 470 bloggers on it. Why did no one ever think of this before? So simple! So great!

I was inspired by Yvonne of Joy Unexpected, who is indeed one of the Top 10 All Time Best Bloggers in the History of the World and deserves this badge first and foremost. But there is room for more! Anyone else who wants to put this badge on your blog (or give it to a friend who deserves it) should just go right ahead, and feel good about it too. As long as you're not number 471. In which case...no soup for you. Need to be quicker around these parts, Missy.

Here's the code (if I didn't mess it up).

<a href="http://www.mom-101.com/2010/11/top-10-all-time-best-bloggers-in.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g240/lizcoolmompicks/cmp2010/top10bloggerbadge.jpg"></a>

 In all seriousness, who are the bloggers you love who deserve to be on some top 10 lists? Let's give them some love.

Damn you, Blane! You did it to me again.

Last night, I clicked the wrong channel by accident and came face to face with the opening scene of Pretty In Pink on the Style Network. For me, that's one of the top five movies I simply have to stop and watch no matter what else is going on.

Not just because Ducky and I shared the same hair style.

Not just because Andrew McCarthy and I were going to get married some day.

(And still might. Just saying.)

Those brat packers, they were the same age as me (or at least they played them in the movies). When Molly Ringwald was a geeky freshman in vintage clothes, I was a geeky freshman in vintage clothes. When she was heartbroken and feeling outcast for loving the wrong guy, I was heartbroken and feeling outcast for loving the wrong guy.

And that was the brilliance of John Hughes: He had the amazing ability to know the minds of every single teenager on the planet.

So within seconds of hearing OMD last night, my stomach knotted up, my palms got moist, and I was a hormonal, angsty, high school senior again--pissed that my boyfriend asked to bring another girl to the prom with us (she didn't have a date, boo-hoo), hating my mother, loving my friends like they were family, filling journals with bad poetry, making up songs to the tune of Forever Young, and vaguely worried that life doesn't get any better than this.

Me and Hally circa 1986, living the asymmetrical-haired dream.

What are your movies that bring you back and make you feel 17 again? And please don't say Harold and Kumar.

On ideas. And words. And taking them when they're not yours.

Today's daily twitstorm is brought to you by Cook's Source, the magazine that republished a blogger's content without compensation or permission and then showed no apology or remorse for it.

The managing editor's excuse:

"the web is considered "public domain" and you should be happy we just didn't "lift" your whole article and put someone else's name on it!"

So. That settles that then.

Let's forget any legal arguments for now. Let's forget the very reasonable suggestion that that editor should hand back her J-school degree wrapped in a big red bow--along with those inappropriate use of quotation marks--and be forced to edit classified ads in the PennySavers for the rest of her career.

Let's just talk about the emotional implications of it all.

Here's the thing about we writerly types. (We writerly types? Us writerly types? I guess I'm not writerly enough to include myself in that "we." Or uh, that "us".)

Our ideas and our words: They're all we got.

That's it. Ideas and words.

We don't construct buildings, we don't memorize tax tables, we don't fly airplanes, we don't hit grand slam home runs, we don't play doctors on TV.

We generate ideas and put together words in ways that engage our audience and connect us with our communities. It's profoundly personal, whether you're writing about apple tarts or your baby's first steps.

When someone takes those things from us, deliberately and without apology, they take more than our livelihood and our craft. They take something of our soul.

Sadly, I'm used to it. I am in advertising, after all. (No soulless jokes please!) I've stumbled upon portfolios containing my own work, by creatives who had nothing to do with it. I've seen my name taken off of award-winning ads because I had left the agency sometime between the airing of the commercial and the entering of the show. I have seen creative directors create entire careers on huge campaigns they couldn't have come up with if Bin Laden himself dangled them over a flaming pit of poisonous, creative director-eating asps and insisted on it. Not that I could come up with good ideas under those conditions either, but you get my point.

Here, however, when someone steals my words and ideas, it feels 100 times worse. Because my words and ideas here are not contracted for and paid by someone else. They are not signed off by a marketer. They are mine. And that is profoundly, deeply personal.

When you steal them, it is invasive. It is assaulting. It's horrible and it's wrong.

It's writers' rape.

A for-profit magazine or website or TV sports network or cable TV show (thanks Deb!) should know better.

But you know what? We should know better too. 

This week we discovered (thanks, Google Alerts) a blogger who took the Cool Mom Picks logo, pasted it on her blog, and announced to her readers that she was inspired to start a new category called Cool Mom Picks. An idea right out of her own head! Completely with a ready made logo somehow found on the internet! It's as if Jesus himself loved her idea so damn much, he just guided her hand right to our website to download our masthead and take it for her very own.

Was this blogger simply naive? I'd like to think so. I just don't know.

I know there was a time I thought I could search some images and what I found was mine to take. On my bucket list: Going back to all my old post, and providing link attribution for photos that aren't mine, if I can still find them. It seems like the right thing to do.

I can be better. We can all be better. At giving credit and acknowledging inspiration and simply supporting one another.

You know, I still kind of miss the days that a link and some credit was worth more than a paid post. It still is, to me.

Because that says, This person has smart ideas. This person writes good words.

Really, isn't that what we all want to hear?

And yes, we also want to hear, "We liked your post so much would you mind if we put it in our magazine, give you a byline, and send you a check for it?"

That would be okay too.

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Edited to add: My reference to writer's rape has struck quite the negative chord with survivors of sexual violence, and I can't say I blame them. It was strong, provocative language, and I employed it based on my understanding of the traditional definition and other uses of the word. My intent here is never to hurt anyone, and certainly not to marginalize the survivors of real physical and emotional harm in any way. 

I appreciate those of you in comments who took the time to explain your point of view thoughtfully.

Doing my part on election day

As Julie Marsh wrote, it often takes courage for women to speak up about politics because we fear alienating our friends and family. I suppose that's true. I don't write about politics a lot here for various reasons. Although I think I've been clear which way I lean. (ahemleftcough)

It damn near broke my heart that I wasn't at the Rally to Restore Sanity this weekend, because ten years ago, there wouldn't have been a doubt in my mind that I'd have found a van or a train ticket, made my way down there, and camped out on my brother's floor brainstorming signs.

My favorite of the weekend: I may disagree with you but I don't think you're Hitler.

My second favorite: God hates Snuggies.
 
Today is election day and I'd imagine it's not going to go the way I'd make it go, if I were a supreme being and had the ability to knock sense into people who like the sound of that nice Sharon Angle in Nevada who doesn't believe in the silly old constitution, thinks that Latinos are Asians, and doesn't think she should have to tell voters about her policies. You can find out after you elect her! See, it's like a game? Isn't that fun?

I am coming to terms with the fact that this may be the decade of crazy.

So today I want to go out on a limb (with encouragement by Julie and Jon Stewart) to take on the crazy. Because the only crazy I like in this country is on Bravo every night around 9PM and involves Botox.

I have also been prey to the media narrative Congress has been totally ineffective! It's hard to avoid it actually. And because I may not be the only person out there who wants to be able to respond uh, no they haven't, here's an incomplete list of all the lame things our Democratic-run congress accomplished in just 21 months. With thanks to Rachel Maddow and Julie Pippert (another great Julie).

-Extending government health insurance for 4 million uninsured children
-Passing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act
-Passing landmark credit card reform legislation to protect consumers from sudden, undisclosed rate hikes among other things
-Passing health care reform that now gives 95% of our country health insurance and controls costs for the first time ever
-Passing the single largest tax cut ever: The Stimulus Bill 
-Passing the sweeping financial reform bill to curb Wall Street excesses while protecting average consumers so we never go through 2007-2009 again.
-Making the single largest investment in clean energy and education
-Giving power to the FDA to regulate tobacco including stronger labeling
-Passing of the Hate Crimes Bill
-Passing Veterans Health Care Budget and Reform Act of 2009, plus the Caregivers and Veterans Omnibus Health Services Act of 2010 to offer more services for women veterans and for veteran caregivers.
-The strongest bill to increase government transparency and ethics ever created by an administration to self-regulate, including a ban on lobbyist gifts.
-Ending taxpayer subsidies to private banks who earned interest on government-backed college loans, so more money can be put into the loans that we back in the first place.
-Passing the Edward M Kennedy Serve America Act tripling the size of our national service program
-Initiating Cash for Clunkers which restarted auto sales
-Bailing out the American auto industry (which worked, ahem)
-Passing the most significant consumer protection bill in history
-A total of 25 tax cuts

This, all while reducing America's inordinate deficit and taking us out of the recession.

[edited to add: another good resource to check out: WhatTheFuckHasObamaDoneSoFar.com, courtesy Laid off Dad, which is not limited to congressional measures that have passed into law]

Now these initiatives may not line up with your values, and in that case, I will try to respect that. But they certainly line up with mine.

I like how Rachel Maddow put it: Our congress spent their political capital to tackle major, challenging, longstanding problems and actually get get things done. The Democrats were "the party that took on political problems when they had a chance," even if it meant losing the midterm elections.

Policy over politics. Man, I wish we had more of that around here.

A funny thing happened on the way to the bathroom...

 This HILARIOUS post is brought to you by Quilted Northern Soft + Strong. Thanks Quilted Northern! More on that below.

Do not even try to give me dog training advice. Seriously. It's not worth it. Just watch my tale of woe. And laugh at my expense.

So here's something cool: If you tell me your own funny story around bathroom behavior--any kind of funny story at all--I'm going to draw one winner at random and these things will happen:

1. I'll post the funny story here with a link back to your blog
2. You will win a $50 Visa Gift Card to help make your bathroom a prettier place.
3. You will win a year's supply of Quilted Northern toilet paper, who is graciously sponsoring this contest and my blog and gets a big thumbs up for that. No one ever wants to sponsor this blog! What in God's name are they thinking? I don't know, but who am I to look a gift toilet paper in the mouth?

Oh, here's one other thing: If you don't need a year's supply of toilet paper (who knows - maybe you use these things) you could also donate your supply to a local women's shelter, your public school, or a place that really needs it. (One of the things I like about Quilted Northern is their commitment to increasing sustainability, and to corporate responsibility with support for orgs like Susan G Komen.)

You can also join the conversation on Facebook.com/QuiltedNorthern; on Twitter @QuiltedNorthern which is giving away more free stuff; or on You Tube (where they seriously need the help of some funny bloggers) to help make the taboo talkable.

So...?

Funny bathroom behavior story? Video (I used Animoto) or comment. You've got until midnight Weds November 3.

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Congrats to Bill of Daddy Is Tired!  Random.org likes you, and so do I.  The winning story:

My daughter was having sleep issues which included too many visits to the bathroom, and we had let her know in no uncertain terms that we were tired of it (because it was waking us up too). Anyway, after weeks of this, one night she woke us up by yelling her usual "I NEED TO TELL YOU SOMETHING!" over and over. We finally went downstairs and found her in the bathroom. "I'm out of toilet paper." "Why didn't you just say that," we asked. "Because I didn't want you to know I was in the bathroom." *sigh*