Mommy with a Penis

At the insistence of my six-year-old daughter we took a much needed stroll around the neighborhood. And while engaged in a discussion about a magical, fuchsia and lavender-colored, flying horse named Princess Celestia (see earlier entry) , I spotted this. This made me wonder what would prompt someone to stencil this rather bothersome decree on their dumpster. Might there be a grizzly history attached to this dumpster?  Might it simply be a warning because of past grizzly events?  Or might it simply be a random tagging by a  conscientious  Crip? In 2001, about a year before Michael and I started the adoption process, "dumpster babies" were on the rise. Now, all fifty states have  enacted  their own version of the Safe Haven Law, which  allows parents to relinquish a newborn baby to any hospital (sometimes a police station or fire station depending on the state), within 72 hours of the child's birth without any threat of being prosec...

On many an occasion have I woken my daughter out of a dead sleep (to go to the bathroom or from a car seat nap) and after doing so she has uttered something quite unforeseen: "I'm afraid of spiders," or "Matisse is my best friend." But last night, I could not have imagined when rousing her from my bed to move her to her own room that I would hear her expound, "Princess Celestia!" Princess Celestia is a sparkling, pink unicorn from the My Little Pony series that Maxwell chose yesterday above all of the other toys at Target to be her present from Uncle Krik. Truth be told, this is no ordinary unicorn; she is really quite...well...celestial with multicolored ringlets, and wings that light up when you push the cheeky button on her rump. As it turns out, she is also a chatterbox, spouting ear-cringing inanities. Now, I would never expect a toy with the unwieldy moniker Princess Celestia to extol the virtues of world peace or recite Portia's soli...