Dear entertainment-news industry:

Please stop featuring the stars of MTV's “Teen Mom” show in the tabloids and on entertainment Web sites. Having a kid as a teen is already challenging enough. Featuring teen mothers on tabloids and making entertainment stars out of them will likely only serve to screw up their lives even more. These girls are not celebrities; stop treating them as such. Thank you. –MM

caregiving structure

Caregiving is hard. I find myself escaping to facebook and eOnline way too often. Hoping to remedy that in the New Year by instituting a schedule for the children — Lex in particular could use more structure at home, I feel (and less TV). I'd like to get my mom more involved in the local Senior Center despite the fact that the facility itself is decorated in the style of early Nurse Ratched.

Has anyone out there instituted a schedule in their home? What is it? How's it work?

'tis the day after Christmas

…and Mommy's TIRED, notwithstanding the fact I was in bed by 9:30 last night, after watching “Inception,” which I'm calling “SausageParty” because really, all those second-tier players and only one woman who wasn't a murderous dead wife or a flight attendant? Really??? Anyway, Monstro cooked the Christmas dinner of all Christmas dinners: mushroom strata, bleu-cheese-and-cauliflower tart, stuffing w/ pine nuts, pecans, mango, and sausage, and GOOSE. Christmas Goose. It was extraordinary. I think he was fueled by the fact that he'd unwrapped a FIRST EDITION hardcover Gravity's Rainbow that morning (thank you eBay). Lex opened his gifts with great abandon; BK opened about four and then decided he was done with the whole thing. He'll probably be unwrapping gifts through New Year's.

Today I've carried on the celebration by cleaning the kitchen (second load in the dishwasher now) and doing a little day-after-Xmas shopping online. Hope the dress fits 'cause I want to wear it on New Year's Eve!