Mean Girls

I’ll be hosting Elise Rome, a former PBK Mom, later this week. Other than that brief stop, this is my last blog. Thank you for your support and taking the time to read our blog. I’ve taught middle and high …

Juggling

I always thought I was good at juggling. I figured motherhood would be a snap because I’m such a whiz at multi-tasking. As you can imagine, my eyes were opened when I had an infant who couldn’t be put aside …

Classic Movies

We had a couple of rainy days here, which gave Princess Galen time to watch her new Barbie movies and gave me the opportunity to pull out The Wizard of Oz. I bought her the book and DVD for Christmas. …

Irish Dancing

For the last month or more, Princess Galen has asked me every day if she could take Irish dancing. I’m not 100% sure where this interest came from, but I think it was from an episode of Angelina Ballerina.

When You Don’t Cook

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. I thought this was a good topic to tackle, considering this is a day dedicated to feasting. Until I became a mom, I never realized how much cooking is involved in motherhood. Not only am I expected …

School Choice

We have a cool thing in Houston called school choice. That means if you live in the Houston Independent School District, you have a choice as to which school your child attends. It’s fabulous to have options, but it’s also …

What Happened to Halloween?

When did Halloween become such a big holiday? It must have happened sometime after I graduated from college and sometime before Princess Galen was born. A couple years ago I realized nearby neighborhoods were just as decked out for Halloween as Christmas.

Cemeteries pop up in yards, pirates dangle by nooses from trees, and zombies stand by driveways. It’s a lot to explain to a little kid. I don’t even know where to begin.

The year before my daughter was born I made the mistake of going to a Halloween party. I wore a twirly dress and fairy wings. My husband put on his cowboy hat and boots. We looked like we’d made an effort. The rest of the people at the party looked like they had been hired by a haunted house. I felt so lame. I also felt overdressed. The women wore nothing short of clothing appropriate for a prostitute.

When did Halloween become about wearing sexy clothes? And why have kids’ characters been sexualized? I think that creeps me out the most.

Cheer Bear from the Care Bears

Even Sesame Street isn’t immune.

Big Bird

Where did we go wrong? When did Halloween become more about sex and less about games

and cute kids’ costumes?

It’s a New Baby Cousin!

Once when Princess Galen was 2, I babysat a friend’s sweet 6-month old daughter. It was 3 of the worst hours of my life. The baby was darling. Princess Galen was a jealous monster. At one point, I was on …

Birthday Party Season

You know how you go through phases in life? There’s the everyone is graduating phase, the everyone is getting married phase, then the everyone is having kids phase. I know my grandparents have gone through a funeral phase, and my …

Please Take a Stand

Me, again, with another one of those activist blogs. I was actually going to blog about slutty Halloween costumes for girls. I’ll write that one later this month. I know you’ll want to weigh in on that topic.

But this topic couldn’t wait, because there’s a company that needs a little push to do the right thing.

In my opinion, there are 3 crimes that don’t get enough attention and whose perpetrators are not punished sufficiently.

1. Child abuse and/or neglect
2. Elder abuse/neglect
3. Animal abuse/neglect

Children, the elderly, and animals are the weakest, most vulnerable members of our society. They need our protection and our stewardship the most.

Here’s the scenario. The CEO of a company called Centerplate, which is a sports catering company, walks into an elevator with a miniature Doberman pinscher. He doesn’t know the camera has an elevator. He doesn’t know that his 52 seconds of interaction with the dog is filmed. He doesn’t know the video catches him repeatedly kicking the dog, yanking her leash, and dangling her off the ground.

The video is out there. I haven’t watched it because I don’t want to see this sick guy do something like that to a defenseless dog.

So what’s happened to this guy? Has he been fired? Has he said he was sorry? No. He’s still employed by Centerplate, he’s made excuses and lied about his behavior, and the company gave him a slap on the wrist.

That’s not good enough for me. I signed this petition, emailed Centerplate, am tweeting them, and am passing the link to a third party article about the abuse and the petition on to you.

We have to stand against abuse. All abuse. Our society is defined by the way we treat its weakest members.

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