A Mama's Rant

A breast cancer journey : The Sky Begins at Your Feet by Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg

As I wrote at my other blog, This Mama Cooks!, cancer affects everyone. In honor of breast cancer month, I’m hosting Caryn Mirriam-Goldburg’s blog tour of her wonderful book The Sky Begins at Your Feet: A Memoir on Cancer, Community, and Coming Home to the Body over at This Mama Cooks!

Check out the interview here.

September 23 is Family Game Name

Well if National Eat Together Week wasn’t enough, Hasbro challenges American families to pause from hectic schedules and take part in an evening of board game play to reconnect and reenergize relationships during National Family Game Night.

This year it’s on Wednesday, September 23 and part of Turn Off Week, a grassroots effort that encourages families to switch off electronic distractions and engage in other forms of entertainment, such as playing games, that promote conversation and interaction.

With the recession and families trying to keep to a budget, National Family Game Night provides an opportunity to share an affordable night in. Buying a new game costs significantly less than many other entertainment options, such as dining out or attending a sporting event. (Just this weekend I spent almost $50 taking the kids to go see Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs in 3D. The three of us went an shared 2 drinks and a popcorn and took advantage of the free refills, too.)

Board games can be played again and again providing hours of entertainment. Also, when you purchase select Hasbro Family Game Night games, you can earn Bonus Box Tops for your child's school.

Good stuff! So are you planning to participate in either National Eat Together Week or National Family Game Night?

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Disclosure: Hasbro via their PR firm send me several games after I filled out a survey at the Mom Central cocktail party during the BlogHer 2009 conference.

They did not ask me to blog about National Family Game Night. I’m posting about it since I’ve been a Hasbro game fan since childhood and think a national night of playing games as a family is a terrific idea.

Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey coming to Denver September 30 to October 11

Yay, the circus is coming to town! Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey is presenting ZING ZANG ZOOM at the Denver Coliseum September 30 to October 11.

My family goes just about every year that Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey come to Colorado. It’s become sort of a tradition, along with my husband wearing a silly clown mask, the kids getting high on cotton candy, and me making sure that I bring tissues and antihistamines. (What is it about circus horses that may my nose run? I have no problem at the National Stock Show. Weird.)

A special offer for Denver area families!

Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey wants to make going to the circus an affordable treat for all families. They’re working with Mom Central and moms like me to get the word out that you can purchase a 4‐pack of tickets for only $44 for weekday shows, or receive $4 off weekend tickets by logging onto www.ticketmaster.com and entering the coupon code: MOM.

(Get 4 tickets for $44 Monday‐Friday matinee, or $4 off weekend tickets by entering the code MOM in the MC promotion code box on Ticketmaster. Minimum purchase of 4 tickets required; additional tickets above 4 can be purchased at $11 each. Not valid on VIP Gold, VIP, and Circus Celebrity seats or combinable with other offers. Service charges and handling fees will apply.)

Denver Show Dates

• Wednesday September 30: 7:30pm
• Thursday October 1: 7:30pm
• Friday October 2: 7:30pm
• Saturday October 3: 11:30am, 3:30pm, 7:30pm
• Sunday October 4: 11:30am, 3:30pm, 7:30pm
• Wednesday October 7: 7:30pm
• Thursday October 8: 11:00am, 7:30pm
• Friday October 9: 7:30pm
• Saturday October 10: 11:30am, 3:30pm, 7:30pm
• Sunday October 11: 11:30am, 3:30pm, 7:30pm

Southern mother culture on the rocks: You can't drink all day if you don't start in the morning

Welcome to Celia Riverbark’s WOW blog tour* for her latest book, You Can't Drink All Day If You Don't Start in the Morning.

How to turn your desire to be a smart ass into a writing career

After a couple of years of college, Celia went to work for her hometown paper then to the Wilmington, NC Morning Star. After a stint as a copy editor, Celia started writing a weekly humor column.

Then having met and married a cute guy in sports, Celia found herself happily knocked up at age 40, and quit newspapering to stay home with her baby girl. Soon after, she started using Sophie's two-hour naps to write a humor column from the mommy front lines for the Sun News in Myrtle Beach, SC.

In 2000, Coastal Carolina Press published a collection of Celia's columns called Bless Your Heart, Tramp: And Other Southern Endearments . Her second book, We're Just Like You, Only Prettier: Confessions of a Tarnished Southern Belle was the winner of the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance Nonfiction Book of the Year and was a finalist for the James Thurber Prize for American Humor.

Her third book, Stop Dressing Your Six-Year-Old Like a Skank: A Slightly Tarnished Southern Belle's Words of Wisdom was named best title of 2006 by Entertainment Weekly magazine and landed her a gig on Good Morning America. Belle Weather: Mostly Sunny with a Chance of Scattered Hissy Fits , published in 2006, was a Thurber Prize semi-finalist for humor, and one of three finalists for the SIBA Nonfiction Book of the Year.

On the way to becoming the Susan Lucci of humor book writers, hopefully her latest work, You Can't Drink All Day If You Don't Start in the Morning, which includes riotously funny essays and a bunch of Southern-style recipes that are slap-yo-mama-fine, will get her a few more of those coveted awards. Assuming that David Sedaris, Rick Bragg and Jon Stewart didn’t publish anything this year that is.

The birthday conundrum

You’ve got to check out my sidebar. JuiceBoxJungle has a brand new widget that lets you, among other things, send an ecard to a friend right from this blog (click around and check it out). They also have a cool new sponsor, Paper Culture, a modern, eco-friendly premium stationary company that will actually address, message and mail your cards for free. AND, Paper Culture is offering 30% off to my readers for a limited time (promo code SAVE30NOW). They've asked - and sponsored - me to talk about the most memorable kid event I've ever been to. Oh boy. Here goes:

Kids parties are funny things. As moms, we complain about the extravagant parties other parent throw for their children, even their teeny babies. We kvetch on the expense, the logistical nightmares, and the spoiled kids. Yet, what do we do but feed the beast. Not only do we throw our own fancy parties, but it seems to me we don’t want our kids going to parties that aren’t a lesson in excess either. Let me explain.

Over the years, we’ve thrown some fairly expensive parties for my son. Nathan had a pizza party at a nice restaurant for both parents and kids followed by going to watch a college basketball game. The party included University of Colorado Buffalo themed invites and cake made by yours truly, lots of pizza, beer for the adults, nice goody bags and snacks at the game. Another year, we had a party for most of Nathan’s classmates and their siblings at a local indoor bouncy castle place. Of course, there was the inevitable party at Chuck E Cheese, too, complete with pizza, cool goodie bags, extra game coins, and a golf cake, which I also made.

All these parties were well attended since parents were more than happy to let us treat their children to such fun activities.

Just another pretty nature flick - DisneyNature: Earth

Walt Disney Company’s new motion picture division, DisneyNature, released its first film, Disney Nature Earth, on Blu-ray™ Hi-Def and DVD earlier this month.  Earth tells the stories of animals survival from pole to pole.

Narrated by James Earl Jones, Earth was good, but not spectacular. It features a lot of gorgeous eye candy and familiar Disney story telling, but I somehow felt I’d seen all of this before. (UPDATE: Thanks to one of my readers, I now realize that 60 percent of  Earth was taken from the Planet Earth & The Blue Planet Seas of Life series.)

Yes, the stories of the various animal families was endearing, dramatic and at times heart breaking, but it’s typical Disney circle of life fluff that seems terribly old fashioned. Sure, Disney is used to anthropomorphizing animals in its cartoons, much to our amusement. But it doesn’t work so well in its documentaries because people need to realize that animals, while they deserve our care and respect, are not pets, but wild animals that will attack when threatened. I’ve seen many stupid people try to pet elk, buffalo and bears at national parks and I partially blame the “oh look at the cute wild animals” nature shows for this.

I guess they figure making animals seem human will make us feel more sympathy for them. Yet, ignoring scientific fact really ticks me off, like when the movie called the male polar bear the “father bear” when the only fatherly act he performed was mating with the polar bear mother to conceive a couple of cubs. Considering that the male polar bear was starving, if he was anywhere near his offspring, he probably would have tried to eat the defenseless cubs.

The ecological lessons seemed like an afterthought, too. Instead, I would have appreciated some facts and less fluff throughout the movie. Frankly, maybe it’s because the bar was set so high by Planet Earth & The Blue Planet Seas of Life that Earth seems to miss its mark.

Like the mating display of birds of paradise featured in the movie, Earth sure dances pretty, but doesn’t grab my attention enough to stick around.