Mommy with a Penis

Days 2 & 3: Rockefeller Center and NYFD It seems my days leading up to Christmas were a delicate balance between enjoying the very adult New York I remembered while searching desperately for the kid-friendly New York that would keep my children from throwing themselves in front of subway trains. Now, I'm not saying there isn't anything for little ones to do in the Big Apple, but when I typed children's activities NYC  (or some similar prompt) in the Google search box it seemed as if the same ten things kept popping up, most of which were seasonal, and I was in the wrong season.  The tree at the Americana in Glendale, CA with 15,000 twinkling lights, 10,000 ornaments and a superimposed Kringle Sebastian and Maxwell may have bah humbugged the Christmas tree at the Metropolitan Museum ( refer to last entry ), but it was a new day, the sky had cleared and I was determined to impress my kids with the Christmas tree of all Christmas trees. That's right, ...

News stories involving small children in peril always seem to make our insides go kerfloppy . Baby Jessica trapped in a well drew our collective attention for days. The international fight over Elian Gonzales tugged at our heart strings. And the high courts of Malawi finally allowing Madonna to adopt little Mercy sparked all kinds of controversy. So, of course we spent a day last week following the peculiar tale of the Jiffy Pop looking, homemade, hot air balloon perilously floating thousands of feet above the environs of Fort Collins, Colorado, carrying, quite possibly but not certainly, the precious cargo of six-year-old Falcon Heene . On a completely almost-unrelated topic, I recently found out that decades ago Michael Jackson was a student at my son's school. In commemoration of his vast success the school's auditorium was named after him. After his various encounters with male youth and then subsequent court appearances, his name was removed from the building. Now that...

Dear Madonna, It seems oddly appropriate that I start a letter to you on Easter Sunday. I have been thinking a lot about you lately, and I know first hand the pain you are going through. You want to hole up in a cave. You want to hold your children close. You are ready to strike at the first idiot who crosses your path. You feel as if your heart has been ripped out and served on an ornate platter. You want the world to shut up, because your torment is not for others' blithe entertainment. You feel no matter how long you lick, your wounds will never heal. You will bitch slap the next person who tries to create logic out of an illogical situation, and personally if anyone espouses, "it was meant to be" or "it's God's will" you have my permission to scratch their snatch out. I know this because my husband, Michael, and I have suffered through eight failed adoptions. Three birth mothers who changed their minds, an incompetent social worker, a fucking Mountai...