SubscribeAuthor: Mollie Hemingway
Does My Daughter Really Have A Deathly Nut Allergy? I’m Skeptical
In the time since my daughter was diagnosed as being deathly allergic to walnuts, pecans and filberts, and highly allergic to many other tree nuts, she has eaten hazelnut pudding, drunk a bowl of almond milk, slurped down some pesto-coated spaghetti, downed an almond-laden piece of baklava and eaten walnut bread. And she hasn’t died. More »
Why I Can’t Get Behind Mother’s Day
This weekend I spent a lot of time with my daughters walking around town. Every single store, it seemed, had a sign out explaining why its wares were perfect for Mother’s Day. Ugh. Mother’s Day. So not my favorite holiday.
I never really cared much one way or the other. My own mother wasn’t terribly interested in the holiday. I distinctly remember the first year I grew to loathe Mother’s Day. I was at church and one of the families had… More »
My Family Is Completely Sabotaging My Yard Sale Prep
I’m trying to get our family ready for a yard sale this weekend. We have a basement full of stuff that I can’t wait to get rid of. I’m in the perfect mood for getting rid of stuff. Sometimes I do that thing where I’m overcome with emotional attachment. But not this time. I am getting rid of clothing from 20 years ago and from last year. I’m chucking trinkets I won’t use or display given to me by family… More »
Feminist Site Tries To Slut-Shame Pro-Life Woman
Well this is sad. You would think that if the week-long, 24-hours-a-day outrage over Rush Limbaugh‘s comments against Sandra Fluke taught us anything, it would be that dismissing a political opponent as a slut is outside the bounds of acceptable rhetoric. But that’s precisely what feminist site Jezebel has done with a young woman who has the gall — like half of all women — to be pro-life. More »
Top Democratic Strategist Mom-Shames Ann Romney
Imagine if Rush Limbaugh said women’s opinions on the economy are worthless if they’re stay-at-home moms. Imagine if he said that women who raise children to adulthood “never worked a day” in their lives.
I’m sure we’d all be flipping out and calling for boycotts and what not. If being mean to a law student who wants birth control provided to her at no cost is a no-no, certainly going after mothers is bad, right?
These sentiments weren’t offered by some… More »
Teen’s Subversive Art Censored By Public School
Pilgrim High School officials ordered a portion of a painting by 17-year-old artist Liz Bierendy to be painted over. The work, which was supposed to show the progression of someone into adulthood, was just way too controversial. School officials said “the depiction of a young man’s development from boyhood through adulthood as displayed may not represent the life experiences of many of the students at Pilgrim High School.” The assistant principal “asked her to look at other ways to show… More »
I Had To Fire My Nanny After Finding Out About Her Trouble With The Law
My friend Yvette is about as calm as can be. Her life got really complex a few months ago, however. After several years living abroad and moving around the world, her husband’s work in dangerous countries came to an end — rather rapidly. They had to leave their base country quickly and move back, with their two children, to the States.
Now, they own a home in Washington, D.C., but they had to give the renters time to leave. So they… More »
Fertility Shaming: ‘It’s A Vagina, Not A Clown Car’
In one of the cultures I’m in, large families are considered awesome. You’re not looked down on for being childless or having a smaller family – indeed, my folks only had three children – but large families are considered cool. But in the other culture I’m in – living in Washington, D.C. and enjoying various cultural offerings here – large families are mocked or derided. You only have 11 children if you’re retarded. More »
No, Pro-Life Women Aren’t ‘Men With Breasts’
A few weeks ago, in the midst of the outrage over Rush Limbaugh calling Sandra Fluke a slut, I noted how the media seemed shockingly disinterested in attacks on conservative women. The media like to pretend that all women think the same and the same way that they think is uniformly liberal on all issues.
As a libertarian, I’ve seen the folly of such generalizations. I have conservative and liberal and libertarian friends who are female. We all have lady parts, this is true, but that doesn’t mean we share an identical brain. No one expects men to think the same way about every issue out there but that unfair expectation is put on women all the time. More »
I Pay Someone To Keep Me On A Cleaning Schedule
I work full time from home and have young children, also at home. So I’ve been relying on a part-time nanny to survive. Things are stressful and I am usually working into the wee hours and up again early. But the part-time nanny is having a baby and leaving us. And I’m not hiring anyone to replace her.
Rather than hire another nanny, I decided to try something else: pay someone to clean the house every week. It’s only been a… More »
Politically Correct School Principal Ruins St. Patrick’s Day
Since St. Patrick’s Day falls on a Saturday this year, schools around the United States celebrated our strangest and most awesome ethnic holiday (or does that honor go to Cinco de Mayo?) today.
Every school in the country except for Wilbraham, Massachusetts’ Soule Road School, which renamed St. Patrick’s Day “O’Green Day” in a “heavy-handed attempt to instill political correctness among the impressionable 4th and 5th graders.” More »
Obsessive Compulsive Parents Rejoice! New Onesie Monitors Your Baby’s ‘State Of Being’
One of the things that blew my mind about having my second child was that it was an ongoing series of revelations about how I had overreacted to various health threats with the first child. This is natural I suppose, as when you’re most unfamiliar with child rearing, each slight fever or mysterious rash seems like an existential threat. There were times when I was so worried I would have done most anything to figure out exactly what was going… More »
What About The War On Conservative Women?
This week I was reading an article about women’s rights over at the Daily Beast that got me thinking. As a journalist, I pay attention to accuracy and it started off all wrong, perpetuating the myth that no women defended religious liberty in testimony before Congress last month. In fact, two women did. Dr. Allison Dabbs Garrett, the senior vice-president for academic affairs at Oklahoma Christian University, defended religious liberty. So did Dr. Laura Champion, medical director of Calvin College… More »
Teacher Fired For Making Math Interesting
I was one of those girls who actually loved math, even going on to major in economics in college. Math came sort of naturally to me, and I actually preferred studying it without the benefit of “word problems.” But word problems are important means to help students learn how to apply math to real-world situations. They help students decipher important data to solve problems.
But why write up word problems about trains departing from different cities at different times when you… More »
I’m Fine With My Child Not Going To College
I live in Washington, D.C., where everyone is flipping out non-stop over things said by former Sen. Rick Santorum. This past weekend he said “President Obama once said he wants everybody in America to go to college. What a snob.”
And you could hear every reporter – already inflamed with passionate hatred of Santorum – gasp and sputter. They just couldn’t believe he said that. Now, I know people who love and loathe Santorum, and that’s fine, but I don’t quite get what’s so bothersome – apart from the partisan rhetoric and name-calling – about the substance of what Santorum said.
The fact is that not everybody in America should go to college. More »
How To Hide Your Newborn From Your Lesbian Lover
On Monday night, Sonia Hernandez told the police that she found a baby when she was looking for a bag of cat food at the USA MiniMart and Gas Station. As you do. Here’s what she told the media that night:
“I thought she was cat food, that’s why I was looking into the bag. And then she was a baby. I just picked up the baby and kissed the baby, and I hold her in my heart and I am going to keep it.”
Turns out that wasn’t quite how things went down. More »
Bethenny Frankel: I Had a Miscarriage
At the end of an interview to promote Bravo’s “Bethenny Ever After,” reality television star Bethenny Frankel choked up as she told viewers about a recent miscarriage. It’s not shown in the television show but when Savannah Guthrie asked about whether she’d like to have more children, she told of the personal tragedy:
“You know, I’m 41. It’s a very personal question that I do get asked a lot. We were pregnant with a second baby and at eight weeks I… More »
Does Whitney Houston Deserve To Be Mourned The Same Way As Fallen Marines?
When Whitney Houston died, I felt the loss acutely. I called my sister and we reminisced about all the times we belted out her tunes to the car radio. It got to the point where my husband informed me that if he heard me play “The Greatest Love of All” one more time he was going to plug his ears with an ice pick.
That said, I can’t help but wonder if this mother of a Marine killed in Afghanistan, who is complaining that we shouldn’t bestow upon Whitney Houston with the same posthumous honors as her son doesn’t have a point. More »
LeBron James: Hate The Player, Not His Mother
There are a host of reasons why basketball fans might have it out for LeBron James. His contract nearly exceeds the GDP of several sub-Saharan African nations, and yet he just can’t seem to win a championship. And then there’s the small matter of that hideous ESPN special where he kept everyone on pins and needles for the sake of his own ego, only to announce to his rabid fans in Cleveland that he was packing up stakes and moving… More »
Whitney Houston Dies At Age 48
Queen of Pop Whitney Houston, the most awarded female artist, died on Saturday at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. Before a struggle with drugs ravaged her voice and body, contributed to her tumultuous marriage to singer Bobby Brown and made her known for erratic behavior, she was one of the world’s best selling artists. She was known for her poise and beauty.
Her vocal performances seemed as effortless as they were powerful. She even saw success in movies such as “The Bodyguard”… More »
