So right now I am at the Colony laundromat doing a gigantic tubload of laundry due to a shortage of laundromats near our house. Since our washing machine blew out a gasket we have to tough it out. The character building thing about it is that it sure makes you appreciate the appliances in your house that make work easier. You have to lug the the laundry to the car, load it in, drive to the mat, get a cart, take it out, sort it, make change for dollars, put it in the washers...wait, take it out and then transport it to a dryer where you have to wait again all while listening to telemundo blaring on tv. I can certainly understand why families come here since it can be a several hour affair. I even made some rookie mistakes since I haven't been to a laundromat since I dont' know when. After taking 3 loads out of the washer, I transported them to what I thought was a row of dryers, but were actually a different model of washer. Upon realization of this, I had to take the laundry out of the three washers again and roll them over to the actual dryers. A guy that looked like Peter Cetera from Chicago was staring at me as I was taking hubby's undies out of the dryer.
Besides escorting hubby from bathroom to bathroom in the mall on Saturday, this had to be the highlight of my weekend. The funny part is that I had to rummage through the trash for some used dryer sheets since I didn't remember to bring them from home. I probably looked like a really sad case. When all was said and done, a full six loads was done and lugged back home. I can say after all that rigamarole, that I will sure appreciate our new washer when it comes in on Saturday.

CNN came out with a hard hitting editorial on nice guys not getting dates. The story begins with Dean a nice guy who couldn't get dates. He mentionedthat his shy personality and thoughtfulness was a red flag for girls...so they passed him over for the so called 'bad boys'. He said he was clueless for most of his 20's in the area of dating since girls just wanted to be friends with him.
So in rebuttal to this sad state of affairs, the article throws in some quotes from dating coaches that aim to get men out of the nice guy rut. One coach goes so far as to say "Stop wasting money on expensive dates and don't cater to her needs first". The author of 'The Game' (the male version of 'The Rules') stated that he fell into the nice guy category once, and as a result the girl he wanted to date asked him to help paint her walls. The outcome? You guessed it...she had him paint while she went on a date with another guy. Yikes. Another man, said the nice guy routine landed him in divorce court.
Other reports of studying male attractiveness to females cited the bad boy persona as being more preferable for college age women. OK, I'll stop here as anyone would get to what I think the point of the article is....and.....shocker!!! girls in college want to date freely, with few strings attached. Who better to fit that bill than a bad boy. These girls don't want to settle down yet, so the wild adventurous type will fulfill all the fantasies a 20something girl has. In essence a bad boy is what a bad girl in her 20's wants. Now the funny thing about this is that Dean is mentioned again at the end of the article as having been successfully nice-since he is now married. And the end quote is 'sometimes all it takes is for a girl to give a nice guy a chance'. Ug, talk about a contradicting article. The thing is that once a girl grows a brain about her relationships and asks the hard hitting questions like, 'why does my guy treat me so badly?' and 'why doesn't he want to settle down?' Well then she will go for the nice guy and marry him, and by then it is simply a matter of supply and demand. The terrible thing is that the girls that are still in bad boy mentality by the time they wake up and grow up say, 'why can't I find a nice guy?' I'm just lucky that I wasn't blinded by bad boy stupidity, and found someone that didn't disregard my needs or pass on going out to a nice place for a date in order to uphold a 'mysterious' persona. All I can say about this article is that 5% of it is true and the rest is laughable. I wish a hearty 'good luck' to all those bad boys trying to get a long term relationship out of their girls.

Oh boy Time did it again. They opened up a can of worms with their article against spanking kids. They claim that kids that are spanked more frequently at age 3 exhibit more agressive tendencies at age 5. This study was done at Tulane university with a pool of 2,500 kids. Now, as I have not received the full amount of data (personality of the child, gender, other genetic factors) I cannot go along blindly with the results. The funny thing is, that after this study was published online, over 6,000 people commented. The overwhelming response was against the findings in favor of spanking kids as a last resort and very infrequently. Even those kids (now adults) who were spanked said that it was by all means acceptible. Now my stance on this is the same as most of the responders-spanking is fine as long as it is done as the last resort and not done often. Hubby disagrees with spanking and is in favor of time out, but I will concede this decision until Brennon gets older, and if it works, then so be it. But if that extra measure of discipline is needed for him, then we can go back to the negotiating table. I guess I have become jaded as I have dealt with more than 200 kids over my lifetime and seen what wimpy parenting does. It turns kids bad, superbad . I'd prefer to err on the side of firm discipline when nothing else will get my child in line. Not that I'm saying our discipline won't work, I just want that little ace up the sleeve. Anyway, the findings were interesting-but not all that groundbreaking. We will see what discipline little B. receives when he gets older-however I assure him this-we will be firm but always loving.

I am still reading from the same author, and she wrote about 10 things she will miss when she dies. Obviously this is a self awareness exercise aimed at enhancing one's day to day living--but hey what would it hurt to try myself? So here goes..
Hubby's laugh
Brennon's smile
My mom's help
Dessert
That one awesome song on the radio
A beautiful spring day
Wagging puppy tails
Vacations
A good compliment
A long massage
A good hair day

Like the author, I listed 11 and could keep on going. It keeps one mindful of living moment to moment and enjoying what one has right now. Sound advice...thanks Geneen.

So the baby is still sick with a nasty cough and congestion with a slight ear infection. And for the record, he did cough in my face once or twice. Daddy gets to be Mr. Mom today, so Mommy is going to be viewing the action on our new and improved home camera system :)

There is always a baby/parent dilemma when your child is sick and you have to work. Should I take him in to the sitter? Is it that bad? Will he get enough rest? Should I only do a half day and check on him or should I just stay and take him to the doc? and on it goes... I think erring on the safe side is always best and if it turns out he wasn't all that sick, then he gets some extra parent time that day. The balance of child rearing is never clear cut or in a manual or anything so I just use my intuition most of the time. Hopefully, I am in tune enough to use it well.

In other news, I am currently reading a book by an author who has come up in the world (she was on Oprah) and I'll admit she does make some sense to me. It is a nonfiction book about women taking care of themselves and respecting their God given bodies (hear, hear!) Culturally girls and women are given some pretty unrealistic expectations from the media and so in an effort to conform, they feel as if they have failed on several fronts (having a thin figure, staying fashionable, looking effortlessly beautiful). I happen to agree with her philosophy on this, especially since she writes it so well. I was talking to Brian about this and he would agree that this is primarily a female issue--one that males would have a hard time understanding. Since females are so complex, we are prone to tie emotions into this mix and send ourselves reeling when our expectations aren't met. The fact of the matter is that we are unique in our own right, we have contributions to our career, family and friendships that really have no bearing on how flawless our physical self is. Now I know it is pie in the sky to think that 'oh looks don't matter'! Well the news according to this book is that they don't. Life is too short to be lived in the pursuit of getting gorgeous, or achingly thin or supremely happy. Just accept and care about who you are right now and live life as if you were looking back on it as a wise old woman-doing and caring about things that truly matter in your life. Now that is good stuff.