I’m a huge proponent of date nights (as you all know) because it is far too easy to get caught up in your daily lives that are full of work and routine and activities and kids and stuff. A reader of mine sent me the link to The National Marriage Project and their report called The Date Night Opportunity.

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I saw the photo of a poster about the “Totally Overhyped New Year’s Party” shared on Facebook a number of times this week and it made me smirk. A lot of people (not friends of mine)(and probably just people in the movies) subscribe to that particular idea of a great! New Year’s Eve. It’s possible that people who aren’t in the movies think that is an amazing-sounding night, but they’re probably 21, with no kids in tow.

As for us? We make a bunch of appetizers, rent a good movie or two, and are in bed by ten, maybe eleven. Just like every other night (bedtime hour, not the appetizers and movie stuff). The last time I stayed up until midnight for the countdown to the new year was when the year changed from 1999 to 2000 and everyone thought the world d shut down. (Yes, I am old.) That was a few years before I even had kids, but I have never been a night owl. Going to sleep after midnight ruins me.

My kids are too young to stay up until midnight right now, so we watch the East cost feed and declare 9:00 the new midnight.

What do you do for New Year’s Eve?

I have always eschewed Halloween, for the sole purpose that I suck at thinking of costume ideas. I am a pretty creative being but when given the task of deciding on a costume I flail and I flounder and I just give up.

Usually.

While planning for a writing/blogging conference this fall I made plans with a friend to do a team costume. I procured a black wig and, oh. Wigs are FUN. It turned out that my friend couldn’t make the costume party so I wracked my brain to see what other costume would work with my wig.

Wonder Woman.

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It’s Thanksgiving up in Canada and that means there will be a big family dinner. Siblings and cousins and (DUN DUN DUN) in-laws. (My side of the family lives far away, so they rarely come for holidays.)

We get along well with my in-laws. We don’t see them much during our every day lives but when we get together for major holidays we have great visits. I love that my husband and his siblings get along so well and that us spouses do, too. The (eight) cousins from our three families are all close in age and have a whole lot of fun together.

There is dinner and dessert and playing and a whole lot of awesome.

(There have been glitches, yes, but nothing insurmountable.)

How about you? Do you get along with your in-laws?

I’m sure that you heard about this yesterday, but in case you didn’t, here’s what went around the Interwebs. Pat Robertson, you know who he is, took a call from a viewer who asked what advice a man should give to a friend who began seeing another woman after his wife started suffering from the incurable neurological disorder.

Pat’s response?

“I know it sounds cruel, but if he’s going to do something, he should divorce her and start all over again, but make sure she has custodial care and somebody looking after her,” Robertson said.

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The California Milk Processor Board (they of the “Got Milk” campaign) have come out with a new campaign. There is research that points to calcium reducing the effects of PMS and so the Board ran with it.

They even created a tongue-in-cheek website: EverythingIDoIsWrong.com

Yes. Yes, they did.

You know what? Good for them.

I have seen a lot of uproar over this. “That is so wrong!” “How dare they?!?” “*eyeroll*”

Ladies. Let’s be honest here. PMS is a reality for a lot of us. Do I get a little bit peeved when my husband pins my emotional breakdown on the calendar in order to explain it? Yes. Because he NAILED IT. (Pun intended.) I also have the “pleasure” of enduring (prescription painkiller fighting) cramps to boot. I know PMS.

Hormones are a crazy beast. They mess with us when we have our cycle, they mess with us after we give birth, they mess with us ALL OF THE DAMN TIME.

It is completely PC to mock and ridicule men. How many sitcoms have you watched where the Dad is portrayed as a bumbling idiot? Commercials do the same. For the most part, men are show to be idiots, incapable of parenting or renovating or cooking or, heck, changing the toilet paper. It may or may not be applicable to the man in your life but regardless, we can crack jokes and make snide comments and everybody laughs.

I laughed at the above ad campaign for one reason: It’s funny because it’s true.

It may not be true for you (like the majority of men jokes aren’t true for me - my husband cleans/cooks/everything more than a lot of men) but there is a day or two every twenty-eight to thirty-five days (I’ve never been regular)(TMI) where my usual “people pleaser” personality morphs into something more akin to “Don’t make me cut you.”

It is completely out of my control and quite hilarious (the next week). If I can’t laugh at it I’d totally cry and, well, I usually do a lot of crying while in the throes of PMS.

Are you offended by the ad? Or did you laugh at it? (Maybe don’t answer this if you’re PMS-ing)(Just saying.)

Emma Waverman wrote a post asking, “Would you stick around after an affair?” I’ve asked the question here before, and I think it’s a good one to think about. I know some people who have stuck together after an affair and worked through it, and I know yet others who have walked away and I can’t say that I blame them. Having kids makes it a little more complicated, at least for me, but I’m hoping I never have to make that decision.

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I read a post by Lisa Belkin over at The Motherlode in the New York Times titled The Marrying Kind. In it, she discusses an article that came out in Time magazine last week: Who Needs Marriage? Lisa highlighted a couple of points that seemed interesting and I thought I’d share them here.

• “Forty percent of those polled, for instance, described marriage as being “obsolete.””

• “Half or more of the respondents in the Pew poll say that marital status is irrelevant to achieving respect, happiness, career goals, financial security or a fulfilling sex life.”

• 
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Last week was a bit of a rough week for my husband and I, both individually and together. I came down with some mystery stomach bug that made me feel like I was nauseous to the point of barfing, but not quite there, so I just felt and looked miserable and subsisted on a piece of toast for each “meal”. On day two of this lovely virus, my husband left for a long-anticipated hunting trip, which meant that I got to balance school drop-off/pick-up for our sons and child care drop-off/pick up for our daughter while I tried to clock some office ours and NOT lose my lunch.

He came back empty-handed from his excursion and upon arriving home fell victim to the same nausea that I had just recovered from. He’s on staff at our church and we had our annual family camp on the weekend, so he couldn’t rest much either as he had planning and organizing to do.

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Back in the days when I was single and trying to be an Independent Woman I had a friend teach me how to change my oil. I did it! I never did it again because paying someone else to do my dirty work was far more rewarding than my sense of accomplishment. I can, however, change headlights and windshield wipers and hang photos in a ridiculously straight angle. I can also build IKEA furniture like a mofo, but my husband tells me that is assembling, not building.

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