All kinds of crazy

Me:

Confession: We watch way too much TV. But now we partially justify it because with a DVR, you can skip the commercials. One of the other nice things about a DVR is that you can pause or rewind live TV, for those times that I need to run to the bathroom at an inconvenient time, or we are not thinking fast enough to catch all of the witty banter on Gilmore Girls.

A few days ago the alarm clock (set to AM news radio--you know, the "traffic and weather every ten minutes" people) went off at its usual 6:35 or whatever. And I was not quite ready to be awake, clearly, because my thought was: "Oh, I missed the end of that sentence. Where's the remote so I can rewind?"

My daughter:

Runs her hands through her hair (curly) at night, getting her fingers snagged, and then pulls the hair out, and wakes up crying and desperately futzing with her hands to try to unwrap the strands from her fingers.

The world at large:*

This particular mother does not install a car seat for her son in a cab when she takes one. Apparently, the New York City Taxi & Limousine Commission vehicles are exempt from the New York State law that requires car seats/child restraints for children under age 7. Whether or not drivers may or may not pass judgment on those caregivers who choose not to install them is mysteriously not cited in the article.

For some reason, it seems like the New York Observer, in its quest to be a hip and trendy paper, finds the kookiest mommies in the five boroughs and has them write stuff. A few months ago it was the pregnant woman who had pretty much decided not to breastfeed, although she readily admitted it was nutritionally superior (blah-blah; she Knows For A Fact that breastfed babies get sick too!), because she wanted to be able to share feeding responsibilities with her husband or someone else. She didn't want to feel tied down: to her baby, to pumping, to the expectations of other educated mommies. (Unclear if anyone had tipped her off that parenting is kind of a long-term commitment.) And she really missed wine and soft cheeses while she was pregnant and shouldn't have to be subjected to such torture any longer than was necessary!**

Now it's the lady who really can't be bothered to deal with silly safety contraptions. Hey, her mom used to take her unbelted in cabs all the time and she was fine! Why should her son be any different?

Seriously, where do they find these people?

*Apologies to Anita, who has seen my rantings on these pieces more than once!

** Good grief, I sound sanctimonious. Look, despite the fact that I am a card-carrying member of LLL, I have known enough people who can't nurse for a million reasons. I'm not saying it is the be-all and end-all of mothering. But it does make me sad when it doesn't work out. And makes me even more sad when a mother-to-be (all medical issues being equal) won't even try.