I’m sorry if I sound judgmental when I say any man who would want four wives is crazy. Then I saw “Sister Wives” and changed my mind. Any woman who would want to be married to Kody Brown is crazy. Kody Brown is the dad/husband/star of the hit show “Sister Wives” and, as the Polygamist-In-Chief, has it made. When he gets bored he adds to his collection like a sheik adds harem girls, with each woman getting younger, blonder or more fertile. He rotates his wives like tires so none of them get too worn out. When he’s not smugly validating his womanizing, he’s behind the wheel of a car that looks …

Nancy Cameron, daughter of British Prime Minister David Cameron, did the unthinkable when she violated the United Kingdom’s child labor laws. Of course the 8-year-old didn’t have much choice. She was put to work by the staff of the Plough Inn after the young girl had been left behind by her parents after a Sunday lunch at the pub. A Downing Street spokesman said the couple were "distraught" when they “realised” Nancy wasn't with them. The family had eaten lunch with a larger group of people. When they left, the Prime Minister was in one car and his wife and children in another. Each parent …

This weekend, I was carrying a small book case up a flight of stairs when I realized it was too heavy to move any further. I was stuck mid-flight. I yelled for help, but my pleas of desperation were not heard over the hormone-infused wails of One Direction and the Game of Thrones DVR recording; my 11-year-old son was in the basement patching software and trying to resolve something called a “chunk error” (nothing to do with ice cream). There was no option but to give the furniture a big shove, and I lost my balance. No, I wasn’t crushed by a heap of imported laminate. I walked away with back …

Congressmen speak to us at a 10th-grade level. This was the subject of an article I stumbled on this week. I found this surprising since about 25 percent of Congressmen—maybe even more—are lawyers. Are they “dumbing down” for their audience (you and me)? Probably not. About 86 percent of Americans have earned a high school diploma, and more than half have college degrees. We are not so “stoo-ped” after all. It’s not that we’re dumb—we’re busy. In the last 15 years, the number of women in the workforce has increased by several percentage points; women in the workforce now out-number men. If …

Time Magazine’s cover of a woman breastfeeding her son was intended to bring awareness to attachment parenting. Instead it made the long-suffering magazine look desperate for attention, and some poor kid a lifelong subject of playground bullying. I mean, what is the cutoff for breastfeeding, little league? Most of my friends who breastfed didn’t have the cover subject’s fresh “après yoga” appearance. If the article was actually about parenting, why didn’t Time choose someone who looked more like an exhausted mom than a model? Let’s face it, being with a kid 24 hours a day is not relaxing. …

More than an average sized poodle-bomb hit the fan for both Romney and Obama when the “crate gate” scandal broke. The story hinges on a personal story Romney shared as an example of his ability to manage a crisis. In 1983, Romney strapped his dog Seamus’ crate to the roof of his car and headed off on vacation with his family. Seamus thanked the Romney family for taking him along by dumping the contents of his intestines all over the family vehicle. Romney did not comment on whether or not the windows were open. “Served him right” you say? Not so fast. 1983 was the same year Chrysler …

If there was a government plan to raise prices and shrink consumption, France could surely be the model. In France, everything seems small. In Paris, a croissant is larger than most hotel elevators. The living room of an affordable one-bedroom apartment is barely large enough to fit John Goodman, a baguette and a bottle of Merlot—or seven Girl Scouts, but never all of them at once. The people are smaller too. French people have evolved to digest butter, cheese, wine and chocolate mousse in a separate calorie-blasting stomach that Americans just don’t have. They know how to conserve resources …

The last person I would like to be this week is Democratic Strategist Hilary Rosen. I bet if she had a “way back” machine she would jump into it and put it in reverse. Candidate Mitt Romney’s wife Ann made some comments about women voters and their struggles, and in a failed effort to discredit stay-at-home mom Ann Romney (who raised five boys), she discredited herself with a PR gaffe. Rosen said, "His wife has actually never worked a day in her life. “Rosen then added, “She's never really dealt with the kinds of economic issues that a majority of women in this country are facing in terms of …

One of my first physicians was also the most memorable. His nurse would usher me into the exam room to take my vitals, and within a few minutes Dr. Comrie would come in for my exam, close the door, sit down and light a cigarette. He would perch over my chart like a wise owl as he took down my symptoms, his burning Pall Mall marking time with a growing length of tenuously dangling gray ash. He treated me for asthma and recommended my mother quit smoking in the house. She didn’t. My dad was also a terrible allergy sufferer and insisted the windows in the car, and in the house, were closed at …

Last week during the primary voting, I realized there was something missing. Women. OK, there were women on the ballot, but there were a heck of a lot more men. This got me wondering about who exactly was passing federal laws on my behalf. People like me? As it turns out, the decision-makers aren’t much like me at all. Despite the fact that we ladies constitute more than 50 percent of the U.S. population, we only comprise 17 percent of Congress. However, if you look at the facts, the country would be better off if women were in charge: Women have smarticle particles: More women hold degrees …

I thought twice when my husband called and invited me to go vote with him over lunch, but I reluctantly agreed. Seconds later, I was finishing up an IM chat with a co-worker when I saw our minivan pull up in the driveway—“brb” I typed, “I’m going to go vote.” I finished the sentence with an animated crying emoticon—normally this may be considered unprofessional, but it’s on our approved corporate “emo” list along with the hugs and rainbows. “Wishing you short lines,” my colleague wrote back. I hadn’t thought I might have to wait in line—that would have been a deal breaker.  Our polling place …

Ten days ago you probably never heard about Invisible Children. Today, thanks to their viral film, Kony 2012, young teens are embracing the cause and lured to the charity’s call to action like fifth-graders to a Slurpee machine.  For $30, aka “babysitting money” you can get a kit full of stuff to promote Invisible Children’s cause.  Their hook is to appeal to a sympathetic “market” by highlighting Kony’s decades-long predation and conscription of vulnerable Ugandan children into the despot’s disgusting servitude. The Kony story unfolds in a tribe of horrors where boys and girls are forced …

By the time you read this Super Tuesday would have come and gone—but what a relief to have it behind us.  People are weary, and this year choosing a candidate seems like one more thing to do; like laundry or driving carpool. There’s nothing to get excited about. Instead of promoting a plan or position, candidates are attacking each other like playground bullies whose vocabularies have outgrown their flood pants. The “attack” strategy is especially useful when one is trying to hide the fact that they have no plan at all (or longer pair of pants). Maybe that’s a good thing. In the last several …

My daughter and I were in Walmart when she looked up at me and said, “Mom, I gotta get out of here. I can’t take any more.” We left with a cart full of items, unclear if any of them were what we went for.   Yes. The Walmart effect: In exchange for rollback prices, a piece of your soul. While we didn’t see any shoppers clad in leopard leggings, fishnet shirts or any other “inappro-pro” apparel, we weren’t there as cell phone camera wielding shopperazzi. We found ourselves in a few cart jams—odd scrums of jumbled wire, Chinese merchandise and zombiefied coupon clippers—an odd predicament given …

After almost six years in my house, I decided it was time to clean my closet. The only problem is my version of cleaning usually includes some sort of remodeling.  In my head, the job was simple enough: I would reduce three walls of inaccessible hanging space to one well-organized wall by removing the rod from one, and installing it on the other. I even measured. As it turned out, the project was more archeology than architecture—the builder made a mess of the original job. Years ago, as the carpenter installed the rods, I walked into the room to tell him how I wanted the space configured. He…

This year’s Super Bowl was one of the best displays of athleticism I have ever seen. I’m talking about Madonna. At 53 she’s been entertaining people for over 25 years—over five times as long as the average NFL player’s career (you can Google that) and she’s still going strong.  Underneath her blond extensions and leather breastplate was a well-conditioned athlete. With the backlighting and dry ice effects, maybe you didn’t notice she easily scaled her movie-set bleachers in high heels and lacquer leggings.  I watched in amazement as she crouched down to the floor—bent her knees way beyond 90 …

After 100 years of sledding in Spring Rock Park, the Village of Western Springs has prominently displayed a no sledding sign in the parking lot. No more thrills on the hill. No more dangerous tree obstacles, no more collisions or contusions? No more fun. Is this the end of fun in a town known for being unknown? Sledding endures in town, and there is no need to create a new generation of degenerate, rule-breaking scofflaws.  We have a back-up hill. At 4 p.m. on Sunday my son talked me into driving him and all his buddies to that hill. It was close to sundown, and as a condition of driving, I …

Can someone please tell me what the big deal is with Tim Tebow and his bow? I can’t understand how a small and simple gesture or two can bring a man such intense celebrity and scrutiny—perhaps so much that his larger-than-life skills have been overshadowed by a belief system that fits in a helmet. The probability of finding humility in the NFL is about the same as finding one of Newt Gingrich’s contact lenses at Lollapaloozas: small; yet Tebow seems to have harnessed a force greater than his teammates’ egos.   Tebow is also known for his eye-black—it’s what we moms call “lack of sleep” and …

Every winter, moms buy their daughters boots that make Fred Flinstone look like Cinderella. The girls frequent our malls and towns in packs wearing this identical footwear whose soles are wide enough to tread a Peterbilt: a clique of eight seventh-grade girls could pull a semi-trailer 100 feet.  The mystery of the shearling boot is compelling. While they are considered a fashion statement, their proportion makes a girl look not so much like she’s wearing her mom’s shoes, but her father’s feet. When did “Hobbit” come into vogue?  I don’t get it. Wouldn’t wearing a sheep on each foot be lighter…

When my son leapt up to me in the kitchen and exclaimed “Mom, I need some of that plastic wrap—you know—the clear kind!” His enthusiasm straddled that blurry line between mania and genius. Whatever his motivation, I knew he wasn’t going to wrap a ham and cheese sandwich—with two kids in the house all day, I knew we were out of ham, cheese and bread.   “Which toilet are you covering?” I asked. He looked at me like I had two heads, “That’s not what I’m going to do,” he snickered at my obvious lack of creativity. “I’m going to stretch it across the bottom of Sissy’s door,” he gestured …