(From my "Instructions Not Included" blog.)

Ever run across something that just absolutely cracks you up? For no other reason than the absurdity of it all?

Well, I found Perpetual Kid, (www.perpetualkid.com) a website that offers all kinds of "kid stuff," for grownups.

The Dirt Cologne was my favorite.

The description of this cologne reads as follows:
Invoke memories of endless summer days playing outside in the dirt and mud. This cologne was created to smell exactly like the dirt from fields surrounding a Pennsylvania family farm.
Demeter creates scents that are drawn from memories to transport a person back to a special place or time.
Everyone has a personal library of meaningful smells. The memories they trigger are somehow more intense than those we dredge up by conscious effort. It's as if smell provides a shortcut to our deepest memories and brings them back complete with the emotions and sensations we felt at the time.

But wait! That's not all! You can smell like Crayons or glue or even marijuana should you desire. While I LOVE the smell of a new box of Crayons, I really don't love it enough to spray that scent on my body. If I want to be transported back to a more innocent age, I'll open a box of Crayons, or a bottle of glue and breathe deeply.

If I want to smell dirt, I'll sniff my kid or open the back door and breathe it all in.

Who buys this stuff? Who actually shells out the bucks so they can smell like DIRT?

Consider me officially boggled.

(From my "Instructions Not Included" blog)

I love grocery shopping, I really do, believe it or not. I love cruising the aisles and picking out items for my fridge and pantry. I like taking my time, reading labels, perusing sales, filling my cart.

But I don't like it so much with the kids and the husband in tow.

It typically ends up with three kids in tow by about the middle of the shopping trip. Some of you moms know what I mean. The husband often reverts to child-like behavior right along with the girls and starts tossing all kinds of extra stuff into the shopping cart hoping I wouldn't notice.

And picking on each other. Oh. My. Do those three ever pick. "Mom! he/she/it is looking at me!" "Mom! Tell him/her/it to stop!" "Mom! I want (fill in the blank) Can I have (fill in the blank)? If you really loved me you'd let me have (fill in the blank.)

I say no until my voice is hoarse and my head throbs and they never manage to get a clue.

I usually try to lose them by running around the end of the aisle and hiding behind the stack of soda or green beans. But they always find me. No matter how well I think I'm hiding, they find me. I think they've managed to attach some kind of tracking system to my body because they ALWAYS seem to know where I am. Always.

But Sunday I got a reprieve. I got to go shopping alone. Blissfully alone. No one but my delighted self pushing that cart up and down the aisles. I compared labels and shopped for bargains without interruption or whining. I stood in the check-out line and not once did I have to remind a child five times to keep their mitts off the candy. I loaded the bags into my cart without tripping over a kid or telling the youngest, for the 200th time, to get out of the rack below the cart.

And the best thing? I walked out of the store with everything on my list and not a single, solitary extra item sneaking into the cart without my permission.

A long, long time ago, way back when I was still in college, I lived from paycheck to paycheck. I barely scraped by and often paid for a tank of gas with pennies and nickels. Sad, eh? I could buy a whole chicken for $3 and feed myself for three or four days. Imagine how absolutely sick and tired I was of chicken by the time I'd picked those bones clean? Ahhh...those were the days of Ramen noodles and clothes I wore until they walked on their own because the laundromat and laundry soap was EXPENSIVE.

Thank goodness I didn't have kids to feed, too.

I make a bit more now and added a husband's paycheck to the mix. But what I find boggling is that we STILL seem to be living paycheck to paycheck. How does this happen? How do you bring home more but still, somehow, feel like you're pinching pennies? Sure, the mortgage is more than the rent I paid on the falling apart, leaky, three-decades old trailer I lived in and I am shopping for four rather than just one now, but how can I still feel like I'm living paycheck to paycheck?

It just doesn't make sense. And when I start thinking about all the single moms (and dads) out there supporting their kids and household on one paycheck I wonder how the heck they manage every month, and I wonder if I could do it. Could I go back to making poverty level wages and get by, like I did years ago?

I imagine with some effort we could, but it definitely wouldn't be easy. And it wouldn't be much fun, either.

Okay, I’m going to say it.

I feel sorry for Britney Spears. I really do. Being the center of attention, whether it’s bad or good, can’t be easy. It’s hard enough being a mom without adding paparazzi, the public eye and constant judging by others. I imagine it makes people do crazy things they might not do if they lived a more normal life. But who knows, maybe she’d be just as messed up if she had never been in the spotlight.

No, I don’t think she should get her kids back, not yet, she messed up too many times, but I can only begin to imagine what she’s feeling now. How devastating to be told by a judge, and by the world in general, that you are a sucky mom. A bad mom. A mom so bad you’re a danger to your own kids. A mom so terrible that K-fed gets them instead. That says A LOT.

Britney, get your crap together. Straighten up, get the help you need and start being a mom. Because while I feel bad for you now, I certainly won’t if you don’t take this chance to be the mom your sons need you to be. You’re only 25, you have plenty of time to decide to take control of your life. It’s not just about you you you now. There are two other little lives at stake here.

Those adorable boys of yours? They will grow up fast, faster than you can imagine. Do you want them to be raised by a drug-using, alcohol-abusing, crotch-flashing, head-shaving, law-breaking, washed-up mom who hangs out with all the wrong people? I didn’t think so. But that’s what you are. But you can fix this. You can do it but YOU have to do it, no one else can do it for you.

Maybe this will be the wake-up call you desperately need because apparently, you’ve not listened to anyone else in your life when they told you how badly you were screwing up.

Those boys deserve to have a mom whose number one goal is taking care of THEM and you should be the one doing it.

From my Instructions Not Included parenting blog.

At 15 Gabby is incredibly conscious about her body, her looks, her skin, her weight, her clothes. As most girls her age are, she is very aware of what other people think when they see her and she spends quite a bit of time worrying about it. She doesn't walk out of the house without doing her hair and putting on the make-up. She rolls her eyes when I, or her father, tell her that she is beautiful without the make-up, convinced we're only saying that because we have to, we're the parents.

But I, like many parents of girls, wonder if the obsession with beauty at such a seemingly young age, is really fueled by the media and the fashion industry. Are all those ads for make-up, skin potions and lotions, hair products, weight loss pills and clothing feeding an unnatural desire to be perfect all the time?

The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty, www.campaignforrealbeauty.ca thinks so, and I would have to agree.

Dove previously released the commercial "Evolution," which features the transformation of a model from beginning to end. It's a pretty eye-opening film. If you haven't seen it, you can find it on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYhCn0jf46U

Now the Dove campaign has released another film, this time featuring a young girl and clips of images she'll likely see as she grows up. It, like it's predecessor, is an eye-opener. Especially if you're at all concerned about what your daughter may be seeing and how it could be affecting her future image of herself.

Watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaH4y6ZjSfE