Picket Fence Post

Item #1: Ditching Goody Bags

A blogger on the web site Babble wants birthday party goody bags killed. Dead. Finished. Finito. They’re usually filled with cheap toys, too much candy and promote the gimmes, she said:

“When we’re handed these tokens of participation at the end of the soiree, I am filled with a mixture of angst and anxiety. I immediately start to try to scheme on how to get the colorfully decorated bag out of my daughters’ curious and greedy little hands. A task which I wish could be avoided altogether.”

I’d be all for eliminating goody bags — I didn’t need a goody bag when I was kid to enjoy a party — if all the other parents would agree to cease and desist. I wouldn’t want to go solo on something like this. Every year, I feel great pressure when it comes to putting together the birthday party goody bags. I always try to be very reasonable about what I put in them, but usually, a few days before a party, I start worrying that I’ve been too cheap and that my frugalness will hurt my kids socially. My guilt typically propels me to go to the store to pick up a large bag of processed sugar that’s been molded into Laffy Taffy or Nerds and stuff handfuls of the empty calories into the bags to make them look fuller, bad mother am I.

Item #2: Martha Stewart’s Snarky Kid

Martha Stewart’s kid is all grown up now, swears profusely, and has taken to mocking her mother. On TV. For a paycheck. No lie.

New York Magazine recently ran a long feature piece on the mother-daughter duo focusing on the fact that Alexis Stewart and her sidekick, Jennifer Koppelman Hutt, will be doing a TV show for the Fine Living Network consisting entirely of ridiculing old episodes of Martha Stewart Living, pop-up video style. Alexis and Jennifer, who have a satellite radio show called Whatever, with Alexis and Jennifer, will also be the hosts of the new program called Whatever, Martha, a show endorsed by mama herself.

To give the green light to this puppy, Martha must have skin that’s 10-feet thick.

Check out the promo for the new show here.

Item #3: Suburban Mom’s Political Fix

This has been the wildest presidential campaign I’ve ever seen. And when I’ve asked those who’ve witnessed more campaigns than I what they think, they agree. Without exception. This year, not only will history be made in one way or another on November 4, the election season has been unpredictable and exciting, no matter for which candidate you’re rooting.

So I’ve decided that, with all the media’s focus on the “mom” vote (as if there is one, monolithic “mom” vote, which, of course there isn’t), I decided that my Suburban Mom blog would take on politics (in a bipartisan fashion of course) and start a new, regular feature entitled, the Suburban Mom’s Political Fix. Check back on the Suburban Mom blog for the latest take on the election from your resident suburban mom with caffeine addiction issues.

Image credit: New York Magazine/Alexis Stewart/Getty Images. 

I had the pleasure last week of sitting next to Alice Domar, the keynote speaker at the MetroWest Chamber of Commerce’s Women’s Initiative dinner. (Note: One of the event sponsors was skirt! magazine, which is owned by the same company as P&K Magazine.) Domar, an internationally known expert on what’s called the mind-body connection, discussed the main themes of her new book, Be Happy Without Being Perfect, specifically on how and why women should let go of the illusion of perfection.

What struck me about Domar, wasn’t just that during dinner, she was a down-to-earth person who spoke with ease about how her tween-aged daughter was upset that Domar had to be out for the evening and about her exploits helping her daughter sell Girl Scout cookies outside a local grocery store. It was that what Domar said — both at the microphone and away from it – was real, didn’t seem rehearsed/polished (even though this is a person who toured with Oprah in 2004-2005 and regularly appears on national television) and indicated that she understands what it’s like to be a working parent circa 2008 during an “epidemic of stress” like the rest of us.

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