My friends are pretty evenly split between book owners and book renters (library users). Both groups love books and love reading, but one group invests money, time, and physical space on acquiring and housing books and one group invests their money, time, and physical space on other things. One group has stacked bookshelves, stacks of books, piles of books, mounds of books, and one group doesn’t. One group has to schlepp tens of (heavy) boxes of (heavy) books up and down stairs when they move, and one group doesn’t.

I’m in the first group, and I’m kind of getting tired of it.

When Nesko and I had a kid, and that kid started becoming mobile, we had to move all of our books to much higher shelves. We got rid of all our tall free-standing bookcases so Niko wouldn’t pull them down on himself. Then, about a year ago, it looked very seriously like we would be moving very soon, and to much smaller quarters. I proceeded by acquiring large numbers of boxes and putting things into those boxes, preparing to move. I packed up 14 large boxes of books (as well as three really big boxes of board games and 3 huge boxes of kitchen stuff). Then all those things stayed boxed up for months and months and we didn’t miss most of it. I did miss some things. I wanted to play a few of the board games we had packed away, I missed my extra mixing bowls and glass pyrex measuring cups, for instance. As part of spring cleaning we opened up our boxed up kitchen things and got rid of most of them. We unpacked our games and weeded through them, stripping some down for parts (tokens, money, dice, etc) and setting a few aside to give away. Those we’re keeping are on shelves in two categories: 1) Keep 2) play and see if we enjoy them, if not get rid of them.

Meanwhile our books are still packed up and I haven’t NEEDED to get into any of those books and we’ve permanently acquired very few new books. I’ve checked out and read almost 70 new-to-me books from the library this year, and after reading them I’ve returned them. There’s a very small handful of those books that I would have liked to keep forever. And more and more I like an apartment that isn’t cluttered with STUFF, especially as we have an apartment that’s crammed full of toys and kid books and games.

When I packed up the books, I noted what books where in what boxes. I have an entire inventory. (I did the same for the games and kitchen stuff.) I’d been meaning to type that list up and I finished doing so the other day. Every book that was packed away for storage is now entered in a spreadsheet. It was emotional. I thought of all those books and how much I love books, and how hard it was to find some of those books, and how other books were gifts from people who know me really well and love me. I have a bunch of books on Celtic history that Nesko brought back from a layover in England, from when his trip to Montenegro was cut short because of the bombing. I have a bunch of books I spent a long period of time tracking down and spent serious money on purchasing and shipping. I have books I’ve read and re-read time and time again, and I have books I’ve read once or twice only. And I started thinking of winnowing down our book holdings.

And I had a mini panic attack.

Seriously, I felt anxiety! There were surges of emotions! I felt like I was betraying my books! Isn’t that weird? I have synesthesia and apparently part of that is sometimes people who are synesthetes anthropomorphize inanimate objects and ascribe emotions to that. Books are inanimate! They don’t care what happens to them! But I felt like I was abandoning them, like they wouldn’t be loved if I got rid of them.

I also panicked because OMG what if I NEEEEEEEEED THESE BOOKS down the line? OMG what if all libraries and the internet cease to exist and I no longer have access to this information? Panic panic panic panic. But that’s silly, too.

I went through and I highlighted about half the books, marking them to be gotten rid of. I calmed down a bit. I might go through and mark more to get rid of. Of the books I’m keeping, a bunch are books I think Niko will like to read when he’s in middle school which isn’t that far off any more. I don’t want to get rid of books just to re-purchase them or whatever.

I remember, as a kid, always having something to read at home. My dad’s a book collector, not in a serious OMG HUNTING DOWN FIRST EDITIONS kind of way (although I think he would be if he had more disposable income) but in a bibliophile way. I grew up with shelves and stacks and mounds of books: books in the living room and in the bedroom and in the kitchen and on the couch and in the bathroom and on top of the tv. There were so many books there was always something new. History books, poetry, literature, fiction, memoir, science. That feels so normal to me. It’s honestly weird to have, right now, a single shelf only for our owned books. I feel almost naked!

And, weirdly, I feel defensive. Like I can’t prove I read books. No, really, I read a lot! I’ve read hundreds of books! Don’t judge me by the scanty offerings on my shelf! I’ve read everything Roger Zelazny has published, you just can’t tell because his books aren’t on display! I’m a Tolkein fan, an Ellen Kushner fan, A Cherie Priest fan, a Lois McMaster Bujold fan! I have a first edition hard cover of Scott Lynch’s “Lies Of Locke Lamora”! I LIKED HIM BEFORE HE WAS COOL OK. I have most of the run of “Blade Of The Immortal,” I have the Johannes Cabal books published in the USA! I’m cool! I’m a legit nerd/geek! REALLY I AM. I’M SO COOL YOU GUYS. LOOK AT THIS SNAPSHOT OF HOW COOL I AM, HOW WORTHY, HOW GREAT AND QUIRKY MY TASTE IS. JUDGE ME. JUDGE MEEEEEEEEE.

We will be moving again at some point.

I’m tired of hauling books around.

I’m tired of not having enough space, not having enough shelves, not having enough flat surfaces.

I’m becoming one of THOSE people, a book renter instead of a book owner.

From now on, I’m only going to keep books that are really and honestly meaningful, books that I love, books that resonate, books that I return to again and again.

Eventually, I think, I’m going to get a Reader or Tablet and start buying electronic versions of books I enjoy. But that’s out of my price range at the moment, and I do resent the DRM included on most traditionally published books.

If you live in Chicago, let me know if you’d be interested in a big book swap party at my place. We can all bring the books we don’t want/need any more and trade for other books, and anything left over I’ll donate to our community center to sell at a book fair fundraiser (or use in their classroom).

Having made the decision to get rid of books, to literally cut my book collection in half, I’m already feeling lighter. It was a struggle to get to this place, but it feels good. I still experience moments of BUT WAIT–! freakout but they’re coming less and less. Letting go is hard, but it’s something I can do.

Blog post copyright Brigid Keely Barjaktarevic. Originally posted at Words Words Words Art. If you enjoy this blog, check out my parenting blog at Now Showing!.

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While we were driving to the store yesterday, “strawberries” on our shopping list, I caught sight of a produce truck by the side of the road. Now, I live in Chicago which is a big city, very urban, yet it’s common to find little truck stands scattered alongside busy roads. The last time I stopped at a truck stand I bought 5 pounds of cherries for $5 and Nesko ate them all in one sitting which turned out to be a bad move on his part. Despite our rocky history with poor impulse control and truck stand fruit, I made Nesko pull over and he got out of the car and bought a flat (8 pints) of strawberries and a huge bag of green grapes for $5. Apparently $5 is the magic price or something? He shoved this massive flat of fruit into the trunk of the car and we went to the store. When it was time to load our groceries (all cloth bagged, tyvm) into the car, the whole trunk was fragrant with strawberries.

I find the smell kind of nauseating, actually.

Once home, I sorted through 5 pints of strawberries and now our freezer is stocked with diced, sliced, and chunked strawberries for later strawberry based shenanigans. I tossed about 20% of the strawberries as moldy or far too over ripe (like, turning to mush, couldn’t pick them up) which seems about on par with what we get from the grocery store AND what I’d end up with when processing berries for the bakery. Niko has consumed almost an entire pint in one day. I plan to make strawberry short cake tonight, and strawberry pancakes tomorrow or the day after. Would strawberry oatmeal be tasty? What other strawberry recipes would you recommend?

I have a freezer full of strawberries. Send help. is a post from: Now Showing! Please stop by and leave a comment! If you like my baby blog, please check out my other blog as well.

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I don’t.

It’s really, really hard being a kid– especially a young kid. A really little kid flips out when his cheese is the wrong shape or her milk’s in the wrong cup because 1) that means it’s just plain WRONG and/or 2) that’s one thing in a huge world they have control over and now they’ve lost that control. Good’s blog post feels empathic. It reads as a guy who understands that it’s hard to be a little kid, and that it can be frustrating to be the parent of a little kid, but if you step back you can see the humor in the situation. The tumblr feels… I don’t know. My mind lights on words like “cruel” and “predatory” but I don’t think that’s quite it. Friends of mine suggest it’s something that was designed to go viral and sure enough, the creator and his family were on TV concerning it. But what’s the difference between Good’s blog post and the tumblr?

I think the biggest thing is that Good put in effort after the fact to list reasons his kid was flipping out and the sheer number, and ridiculousness of them, builds and is funny. And a lot of stuff he talks about were things he was doing with his kid, interacting with his kid. The tumblr is quick snapshots of a kid that already looks stressed out accompanied by one-sentence descriptions. It feels like the tumblr author prioritizes taking a photo of his kid in crises to helping his kid in crises solve the problem. Good talks about his kid, the tumblr author complains about his kid.

And, you know, sometimes parents and caregivers need to vent. Kids can be frustrating, challenging, hard work. And when parents and caregivers complain they’re frequently abused for doing so, especially if they’re women. (In fact, one friend of mine asked if the tumblr would be as popular if it were a mom writing it; dads get way more leeway to be less than saints. I think it’d fly as long as she was white, affluent, and joked about how much wine she drinks. Several “mommybloggers” fitting that description landed book deals based on their HILARZ discussions of alcoholic parenting, then checked into rehab. That really wouldn’t have worked for them if they weren’t a certain type.) So I’m all for finding and creating safe spaces to vent, to unload, to ask for help. But that really doesn’t feel like it’s what’s happening.

In my experience, which is fairly limited to my own relatively laid back 4 year old and some babysitting (age ranges from 1 1/2-7 years old) most freak outs can be nipped in the bud by remembering HALT. Is the kid Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired? If your kid (or adult) starts getting on edge and acting brittle, look at the circumstances. When did they last eat? Do they need to calm down and sleep? Do they need attention? Are they angry/frustrated and need to express that and then calm down before proceeding? For really little kids, also check to see if they need to use the bathroom or are generally over whelmed. Being mindful of your kid’s needs can go a long way toward creating a smoother life for everyone involved. This isn’t some magic bullet that will solve all your problems, obviously.

It’s also important to remember that little kids don’t have adult brains. If they ask for a piece of cheese and you give them the “wrong” shape of cheese? That is not what they asked for. Until they make certain synaptic connections, they cannot translate that. It’s not possible. Their brains are growing, and they aren’t just increasing in size they’re increasing connections and the ability to make deductions. They have very little control over their lives, so cling to what they CAN control: what color cup they use, what shirt they wear. They are just learning new skills and get frustrated easily because what they WANT to do is so much harder than it should be because they are still learning how to do it. When little kids flip out, it’s because they can’t cope with the world at the moment. Part of maturing is learning to cope with it, even when frustrating… and part of parenting is teaching kids how to cope with a frustrating world.

Or you could take photos of your sobbing child and post it to tumblr, I guess.

It’s hard being a kid. is a post from: Now Showing! Please stop by and leave a comment! If you like my baby blog, please check out my other blog as well.

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“Mama, is this dinosaur a plant eater, or a meat eater?”
“Well, it’s got forward facing eyes and big sharp teeth. It looks like a meat eater.”
“No, I think it’s a plant eater.”
“But look, it’s a therapod. It’s got two feet with three toes on it, and a long tail for balance, and–”
“WELL MAMA, next time Elliot comes over I will ask HIM if it’s a plant eater or a meat eater.”
“And will you believe what he says?”
“I will if he says it’s a plant eater.”

“Ahhhh! Ahhh! Ahh! The living room is fulllll of dinosaur zombies!”
“Oh, huh.”
“DO YOU KNOW HOWWWWW to stop dinosaur zombies?”
“Do you…. I don’t know. How do you stop dinosaur zombies?”
“WITH FLOWER GUNS! pew pew pew pew pew.”

“I wanna watch that train show with that fox and that hound.”
“Oh… do you mean “The Fox And The Hound”?”
“Yes, it’s got a train in it.”

“Niko, no puppet show in the kitchen. No toys in the kitchen. You need to take that puppet show out of here.”
“TOO BAD it’s stuck to the floor TOO BAD I can’t move it OH WELL TOO BAD.”

“Hey, do you want to watch ‘Word World’?”
“Yes! They make words on that show, that word world show. Do they make the word dinosaur?”
“I don’t think so, that’s kind of a big word and they mostly spell little words.”
“What about Stegosaurus? That’s my favorite word.”
“Why is that your favorite word?”
“Because of all the S’es.”

We are ONCE AGAIN trying to transition Niko to sleep in his own little bed and not in our bed, kicking and punching us all night. The night before last he was up literally every hour, yowling and crying, resulting in three very tired people the next day. I had a headache LITERALLY ALL DAY from lack of sleep. Nesko slept in until almost 11:00, scuttling our plans to run errands in the morning. Niko was lobbying hard to go to the park that day and I told him that we’d planned to take him to the park in the morning but we were too tired to go because he’d kept us up all night. TOO BAD. He asked several times and I told him the same thing each time. Why can’t we go to the park? Why can’t we go outside? Why can’t tata play with him? Because he’s sleeping, because he’s tired, because he was up all night because Niko was being mean and unkind and not being quiet and not letting us sleep.

Last night went much better. He did wake us up with his crying once, but I think it was a legit nightmare. Nesko settled him and came back to bed. We both went to bed around 10:30 (although I had a hard time falling asleep) and woke up around 8:00 and my mood and energy levels are both vastly improved. I’ve still got a sleep deficit but am feeling a lot better. Niko and I had a talk today about his future allowance.

Basically, he gets 10 cents for each night he sleeps through the night without being a dick and if he makes it for a full week he gets an additional 30 cents, which makes a dollar. Also, if he helps us pick up all his toys and books before going to bed he gets 10 cents with a 30 cent bonus if he does it every night for a full week. This is another dollar. So he’s got the potential to earn $2.00 a week just by being a decent person and not an asshole. He wants to buy some more trans, so he’s got a goal to work toward. I’m going to make a chart so he can see how well he’s doing, including showing how well he’s working toward his goal. The train he wants costs $10.95 and I figure Nesko and I can handle the tax since he’s so young. When he’s 6 or so he can start figuring that out and accounting for it himself.

I know some people will object to “bribing” him for basic good behavior, but honestly, I want him in the habit of doing these things and I want to give him an allowance any way. Some people push for giving kids a base allowance that’s not dependent on behavior or chores. I think most people just do what their parents did, but neither Nesko nor I got an allowance so we don’t have that to fall back on.

How do you handle allowance in your household? Was it an easy decision, or hard? Is it what your parents did, or different? Is it dependent on chores, or not? What’s your pay scale? I’d love to hear more.

BTW, I wrote a post about diets, body size, and taking photos of yourself at my main blog. Please feel free to check it out.

Some Recent Conversations Around Here is a post from: Now Showing! Please stop by and leave a comment! If you like my baby blog, please check out my other blog as well.

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This commercial makes me so, so angry.

Look.

There is nothing preventing you from taking photos of your fat ass, or living your life, but you. I super hate the societal message that women who are fat should hide away and never be seen, should exist in a state of shame, should do everything they can to reduce their physical bodies to an acceptable size. It leads to ill health both physical and mental, and it leads to people putting their lives on hold, waiting forever for the magic moment when they’re slim enough, when they’re good enough, when they’re deserving enough, to actually live.

Get out there and live.

Bust out the camera and take photos of yourself, have family and friends photograph you.

Then look at the photos.

You may hate the way you look, but seriously, the more you look at them the more used you get to them, and the more you’ll get to like them. Pretty soon you’ll stop focusing on your belly or thighs or double chin or weird hair or the way your shirt bunched up or your crooked teeth or your zits or whatever the problems are. You’ll just see you. And you’ll see you having fun and doing things and being with people you love.

I have very few photos of my mom, because she spends most of her time hiding from the camera “feeling fat.” Looking through family photo albums there’s a weird sense that she doesn’t exist. When she is photographed, she’s usually hiding behind someone or something, or half out of the photo, or something like that. One of my favorite photos of her is her on the stairs with a terrible haircut, a perm that went awry. My dad took it to document her awful hair, and she’s laughing, and you can see her brilliant smile and sense of humor and how gorgeous and full of life she is. Another snapshot is her on the day she graduated from college, holding her diploma triumphantly, in her weird hippy shirt and her hair longer than she usually wore it. She’s so alive, so present. Her favorite photo of herself, one that she carried around in her wallet for years (and might still have), is her standing in the sunlight in cut off jean shorts. She’s at her slimmest, and she keeps it to remind herself of how perfect she was then. She was taking prescription amphetamines and spending time she normally would have been sleeping running on treadmills to use up the excess energy. She was also in her 20s and hadn’t had kids yet. But oh, how she clings to that photo. It’s like something out of the long-running (now ended) syndicated comic “Cathy.” I mean, at one point, Cathy pulls out a photo of herself at her slimmest and compares her current fat self to it.

There’s a quote I ran across once and now I can’t find it again. I don’t know if it’s from a story, a blog post, a song lyric, or what. “We were young and beautiful and didn’t even know it.”

We’re all young and beautiful, and we don’t realize it, don’t recognize it. Especially those of us raised female. We worry about our fat and our breasts and hips being too large or not large enough. We fret over our skin and hair and posture. We’re perfect, but convinced we are imperfect and those imperfections make us unlovable. And we get older and bigger and more wrinkled and our hair thins and we lament our lost pasts. Why didn’t we take more photos? Why didn’t we run around enjoying our bodies? Why did we spend so much time hating ourselves? But we’re still unkind to our bodies, still viewing them with suspicions, still expecting perfection and disappointed in the reality. We had from the camera, too fat, too wrinkled, too female.

And our family looks through photo albums and we’re not present, we’ve made ourselves invisible.

It’s easy to pick up a camera and take on photo taking duties. It’s a service. It’s part of the emotional heavy lifting that’s expected of women. But it’s also an excuse. If you’re handling the photos nobody else has to. If you’re the only photographer, it’s an easy out, an easy excuse to not be in the photographs yourself.

Please stop doing this.

Take photographs of yourself, let others take photos of you. Leave a record of your life, be present in your life. Just live. Stop thinking about your body and live, exist. Give yourself permission to exist and take up space. Stop being afraid of not being perfect, not being good enough. Stand in front of the camera and just be.

When Niko was an infant, my sister-in-law snapped of photo of me sacked out on the couch holding him. I hated the photo when I first saw it, the first tens of times I saw it. I’m so fat. Look at my chins. Look at that huge mole. Ugh, my hair. Ugh, my hairy arms. Ugh, my crooked glasses. But the more I saw it the more used to it I got. Yes, I’m fat. That’s how my body is. I’m fat and I’m hairy and that’s just me, it’s how I am. And look at me, there with my baby, relaxed and happy and both of us safe and comfortable and asleep. It’s an intimate moment, a photo of us just being together and loving each other. I love that photo now, and Niko loves to look at it.

You are who you are. Please, please, stop putting your life on hold until you’re a better version of yourself. Start your life now and actually live it.

And take some photos.

You’ll appreciate it later.

Blog post copyright Brigid Keely Barjaktarevic. Originally posted at Words Words Words Art. If you enjoy this blog, check out my parenting blog at Now Showing!.

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I have a mostly devoured loaf of bread on the counter, cut side down, and two loaves shaped and going through their second rise on the stove top. The loaf on the counter is full of holes because Niko keeps sneaking into the kitchen and stabbing it.

I just need to kill this loaf of bread, mama, so I can eat it. I’m a bread hunter.

OH WELL DUH OF COURSE.

If you’re interested in making your own bread, you should try it. You have to plan ahead (from start to finish, making bread can literally take hours if not days, if you’re doing a sourdough), and remember that fresh bread will only keep a few days before getting rock hard. But all you need is flour (preferably bread flour), water, yeast, and a bit of salt.

WHAT I DO IS THIS: I put 1 tbl each yeast¹ and white sugar in a liquid cup-size measuring cup and add 1/2 c hot water (hot from the tap, not heated up). I let it proof until the yeast foam reaches the 1c line on the cup. Then I take the stainless steel mixing bowl of my super powerful and awesome stand mixer and rinse it with hot water until it’s warm. Then I dump the yeast water in, and fill the 1c measure to the 1c line with more hot water and put that in, too. I add 2c of bread flour and sprinkle 1/2-1 tbl salt on top of that and put the bowl in the stand mixer and add the bread hook. Once it’s mixed together I add UP TO 3 additional cups of flour (often closer to only 1 cup, though. I add 1/3c at a time) and let the mixer knead away for about five minutes.

Bread dough is ready when it feels like a baby’s butt. It should be soft but spring back when you touch it. It shouldn’t be sticky, but it shouldn’t be dry either. I recommend erring on the side of too-wet. It’s easier to incorporate more flour than more water.

When your dough is ready, slap it into a bowl that’s been well oiled. Cover it with plastic wrap and then a towel and stick it in a warm, draft-free place. I put it on top of my oven and turn the oven to “warm.” If I don’t use plastic wrap the dough dries out. Let it rise until doubled, which can take 30-90 minutes, then gently deflate it, knead it a few times, and either shape it into one large or two small loaves, depending on your pans. Oil your pans up, drop your loaves into the pans, and cover them the same way you covered the bowls. Let them rise for about half an hour, then turn on the oven to 400*F. Once it’s heated up, slash the tops of your loaves and slap them in the oven for 15-30 minutes depending on the size of the pans. You’ll know your bread is done when it’s browned on top and sounds hollow when you slip it out of the pan and tap on the bottom. If the bottom and sides of your loaf are too pale, set the naked loaf directly on the oven rack for 5-10 minutes until it’s toasted up a bit. When you pull the bread out, you can brush the top with melted butter for looks and taste. I usually skip this step because I have friends & family who are vegan, so if I’m making an un-enriched (IE, not made with eggs/milk/butter) loaf, I keep it “clean” just in case they stop by.

If you want to make pizza dough, add 3tbl oil (I use olive oil) to the water in the bowl, continue as directed. Instead of dividing into 2 loaves, though, split it into 2-4 balls (depending on how thin you like your crust) before the second rise. Back at 400*F on a pan for 10-15 minutes (keep an eye on it) being careful not to over-top the pizza because it’ll be soggy.

If you buy a loaf of bread from the store it can cost US$2-5.00. A 5lb sack of bread flour costs less than $5.00 and I buy yeast cheaply in bulk and pretty much always have water, salt, and olive oil on hand. It’s pretty economical to make your own bread once you’ve practiced a bit, and it makes the house smell AMAZING. AH-MAZE-ING. I’m super glad I have my stand mixer, though, because I have carpal tunnel and arthritis and when I have to knead dough by hand I hurt for a long time afterward.

Dough is a post from: Now Showing! Please stop by and leave a comment! If you like my baby blog, please check out my other blog as well.

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You’ve probably seen the latest Dove viral ad campaign. It’s a video available on you tube about how totally awesome Dove is because of their decade long “Real Beauty” campaign and how now they’re going after the people who are REALLY evil: “art directors, graphic designers, and photo retouchers.” Not ad executives and companies, no. Just those evil artists who for reasons TOTALLY UNKNOWN make women feel bad ON PURPOSE about their bodies. But how to “catch them in the act!!!” and “make them reconsider”? They needed a plan! So they created a Photoshop Action and released it into the wild, where it will be used by amateurs who want to make wedding and baby photographs look better. Billed as a “skin glow effect” they posted it on reddit and other places where art directors, graphic designers, and professional photo retouchers TOTALLY hang out and get their totally professional Photoshop Actions, Brushes, etc from.

In reality, all the Action does is revert all changes made to the original image and pop up a scolding message.

Don’t manipulate our perceptions of real beauty.

Of course, to undo that reversion, all one has to do is hit… well… undo.

BAM! A totally effective message that will OBVIOUSLY CHANGE THE WORLD FOREVER!

Or, more likely, go viral and make Dove look totally awesome and progressive because they just love women so much and are so willing to take on those horrible evil photo retouchers who are just the WORST, right?

Dove, remember, is owned by Unilver which has those atrocious Axe commercials (women! they are fuck beasts for fucking!) and SlimFast (women: you are fat cows, stop eating!). If they really wanted to push for long acting real social change, they could apply pressure to Unilver to at the very least stop marketing Axe the way it’s marketed.

Of course, they could also change their own advertising as well.

I mean, if Dove really thinks womens’ bodies are beautiful and we should all stop altering our perceptions of real beauty, maybe they shouldn’t find new body parts for women to be ashamed of? I, for one, never knew my armpits were ugly until Dove told me so.

If Dove really thinks womens’ bodies are beautiful and we should all stop altering our perceptions of real beauty, they wouldn’t market Firming Creams, and their criteria for casting calls wouldn’t be quite as shameful (beautiful skin and hair only! No zits or scars, those are GROSSSSSSSS).

If Dove (and Unilever) really thinks womens’ bodies are beautiful and we should all stop altering our perceptions of real beauty, they wouldn’t market skin-lightening creams (which are physically as well as emotionally harmful) around the world.

Like diet companies who co-opt HAES and Size Acceptance verbage, and companies who practice Greenwashing, Dove is taking Body Acceptance language and using it to sell product. They are telling women what they think women want to hear for the sole reason that they want to sell products to those women. There’s nothing inherently wrong with companies advertising their wares. What’s wrong is the incredibly hypocritical advertising Dove uses. They aren’t trying to change the world, but they very willing to use social justice and activism language to sell their products and their subtle form of body hate. Dove doesn’t give a shit about your body or how beautiful you feel, they just want your money.

One of the worst things is that Dove is actually in a position to make actual changes in the industry. Instead of telling everyone that we should pat them on the back for promoting size acceptance and bodily diversity (while actually showing a pretty narrow range of sizes and skin colors), they could just use a wide variety of women of different body types and ethnicities. They could show instead of telling. They could push for Unilever to do the same with other ad campaigns as well. And they could pressure Unilever to drop the body shaming, sexist, manipulative language and images that other Unilever products use. But Dove isn’t doing that. Instead, they’re creating viral videos that do the bulk of advertising for them (saving them money) and creating good will among their users. It’s an effective ad campaign, but it’s also an insulting one.

Dove claims that they’re against distorting perceptions of beauty, which is harmful to women, while telling women that their armpits are ugly and their skin is saggy and their scars are gross and their frizzy hair is uggsville and their dark/uneven skin is THE WORST, but hey it’s ok because they can spend money on products to make them prettier YAY GIRL POWER WOOOOO now how about a nice round of SlimFast for all? The hypocrisy is thick on the ground.

Blog post copyright Brigid Keely Barjaktarevic. Originally posted at Words Words Words Art. If you enjoy this blog, check out my parenting blog at Now Showing!.

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Once upon a time there was a family that lived at the edge of the woods. There was a mama and a tata and a boy named Hansel and a girl named Gretel. Their papa was a woodcutter, and he cut firewood and sold it, and made charcoal, and he made furniture. In good times, people from the village bought his firewood and charcoal and furniture and they lived a very good life indeed. But times had been hard lately, and the villagers did not have much money to spend on luxuries like firewood cut by somebody else, and new furniture. So the family had been tending their little garden and hunting in the forest, but their food was running out and winter was coming.

Hansel and Gretel had a long talk one night and decided that the next morning they would go into the forest to seek their fortune, or at least have an adventure. Maybe they would find a treasure, or a would rescue a prince, or would find a berry bush ready to be stripped of berries. They set out early the next morning with their pockets full of small white pebbles, and a hard boiled egg and piece of bread each for breakfast. They munched on their egg and bread as they walked, and dropped pebbles behind them to mark their path, so they wouldn’t get lost on their way home. However, before they found their big adventure, they ran out of pebbles. They decided to keep walking, going deeper and further into the woods.

They were hungry and tired and thirsty and very lost when they came upon a small clearing in the forest. In the middle of the clearing, in the thin light of the setting sun, was a small house that looked like it was made entirely of candy and cookies. They were surprised! Was it a real house, or were they imagining it? Was it real candy, or just something that looked like candy? Hansel and Gretel crept close and found that it was a real house. They touched it, and sniffed it, and licked it, and found it was real candy! They were so hungry that they started eating the house, nibbling on chocolate and cookies and gum drops.

Suddenly, they heard a creaky wavery voice calling out “Nibble, nibble little mouse… who’s that nibbling on my house?”

Hansel panicked and called out “It’s ooooonly the wiiiiiiiiind.” Gretel glared at him. “Only the wind?” she hissed at him. He shrugged. They heard a laugh from inside the house, and the front door swung open. A tiny woman with a crooked back tottered out, leaning heavily on her cane. She had long white braids down to her knees, and a long nose that curved down and a long chin that curved up. She squinted at the children and they gathered, ashamed and afraid, in front of her.

“Now, children, why are you eating my poor little house?”

“Oh, grandmother!” they said. She wasn’t really their grandmother, but she was so old they called her grandmother. “Oh, grandmother! We were just so hungry and tired that we couldn’t help it. We didn’t think anyone lived here. We’re so sorry.”

“Ah, now, children, if you are that hungry you are welcome to come in and share my dinner with me. I have more than enough for the three of us. Come in, come in.” And she gathered them into her snug, well-lit house.

Once inside, the children fell on the food she gave them and devoured it all. They hadn’t eaten so well in months! She served them beef stew and fresh made bread with butter and yellow cheese and cherry pie. They ate until they couldn’t eat any more and she showed them a soft feather bed with big fluffy pillows. They fell asleep immediately on lying down and didn’t wake up until morning.

The next morning they woke up feeling very well rested. Hansel helped the old woman cut wood and weed her garden while Gretel helped dust the house and do the other fine chores the old woman couldn’t see to do well. As they were finishing, the old woman finished making breakfast. She put bacon on the table, and eggs, and biscuits, and cold fresh milk, and roasted apples.

“I suppose your parents will be worried about you,” she said as they ate. They used much better manners this time because they weren’t as hungry.

“Yes, we didn’t tell them we were leaving.”

“Oh, they must be very worried indeed!” she said. “I know I would be, if my darling children vanished.”

“We thought we could find treasure for them, or some food. We’ve been so hungry.”

“I have just the solution for that,” the old woman said. “Gretel, go into the pantry and bring me the big iron pot with a lid on the second shelf.”

Gretel did as told and went into the pantry. She pulled the heavy iron pot with the lid off the second shelf and brought it to the table, where the old woman fussed with it and dusted it with the corner of her apron.

“You must take this pot home with you. It is a magic pot. When you are hungry tap it three times and say “Food please, pot!” and when everyone has eaten you must tap on it once and say “stop, pot, stop!” Do this and you will never be hungry.”

The children were amazed and exclaimed over this, and Gretel said “I am sure we can’t accept such a valuable gift, grandmother.”

“Nonsense,” said the old woman. “Take it and use it and think of me when you do. I hate to think of you going hungry when this pot could help you. Now, you must be on your way home. I will call my brother Wolf and he will escort you. It is a long way and you are deep in the forest. He will see you home safe.”

She went to the front door and opened it and howled a long and shivery howl that made the hair on the backs of Hansel and Gretel’s necks stand on end. Soon a wolf, the biggest grey wolf the children had ever seen, padded silently into the kitchen. The old woman stood.

“Brother Wolf, these are my friends Hansel and Gretel. Their father is the wood cutter who lives in the grey house at the edge of the woods. Please help them safely home.”

He dipped his big head to her and she fed him the last of the bacon and he licked his chops and then walked out of the house. The children quickly hugged the old woman and then ran after the wolf. He lead them quietly along a narrow path through dappled sunlight. They walked and walked through sun and shade, beneath whispering leaves, until they caught sight of their home. They smiled when they saw it, and when they looked for the wolf to thank him, he was gone. They ran as quickly as they could to their house, carrying the pot between them. Their parents were so happy to see them, and hugged them and kissed them and scolded them for running away, and then hugged and kissed them again. Gretel put the pot on the shelf and almost forgot about it as she and Hansel helped their parents with chores.

Night soon fell, and it was time for dinner. All they had was a bit of oatmeal and some dried apples. The family was very hungry and sad at how little food there was. then Gretel remembered the magic pot.

“Oh, we have the magic pot!” she said. Her parents asked her what she was talking about. “We met an old woman in the woods who fed us and gave us a safe place to sleep, and then gave us a magic pot. It creates food.”

Her father scoffed.

“There’s no such thing as magic,” he claimed. “That’s just an old iron pot.”

“No, no,” she said. “It’s magic. I’m sure of it. She wouldn’t lie about magic.”

“Old women are frequently confused. She probably just thinks it’s magic.”

“No, no. It’s magic, I’m very sure,” said Gretel. And she took the pot and set it on the table and tapped it three times. “Food please, pot!” she asked. And very soon good smells filled their kitchen. Gretel whisked the lid off the pot, and it was filled with thick beef and barley soup. Her parents exclaimed happily, and they all ate several bowls. The pot filled itself up each time. When they had eaten their fill, Gretel tapped on the pot and said “Stop, pot, stop!” and when she peeked inside the pot it was empty and clean. Hansel cleared the table and washed the dishes, and the family slept well with full bellies that night.

In the morning, the pot produced oatmeal with apples and walnuts and again they ate their fill. And then Gretel thought of the people in the village. If their family was suffering hunger, surely others were as well? She and Hansel had a long talk, and they took the magic pot into town where they fed everyone who came and asked for food.

They did this every day for months, through all of the long cold winter and into the spring. As summer came, the situation of the village changed for the better. As the villagers had more money to spend they remembered the kindness of the wood cutter’s family, and they went back to buying their fire wood and charcoal from them, and getting new furniture from them. Good times returned to the wood cutter’s family and they were comfortable till the end of their days.

The End

Blog post copyright Brigid Keely Barjaktarevic. Originally posted at Words Words Words Art. If you enjoy this blog, check out my parenting blog at Now Showing!.

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I was putzing around the kitchen the other day when Nesko walked into the living room and saw something he thought was ADORABLE. All of Niko’s dinosaur toys were lying on the floor on their sides, their heads gently resting on wooden blocks.

“Aww, Niko, are your dinosaurs asleep?”

“Yes, they are. I tucked them all in and read them two stories.”

“And their heads are on their pillows?”

“NO, tata, dinosaurs don’t HAVE pillows.”

“Oh, but they could use nice soft leaves and grasses.”

“No, they are using meat.”

“They… are using meat… for their pillows?”

“Yes.”

“That’s… pretty disgusting.”

“I know. But dinosaurs are pretty disgusting a lot of the time.”

Later he arranged all his dinosaurs in a conga line.

One of his favorite games to play with me is where I’m a Stegosaurus and he’s an Allosaurus and I’m eating ferns and he tries to menace me and I swing my “spiny tail” (my leg) at him to keep him away. He hops around growling for ten or fifteen minutes until he gets bored, and then he climbs on my back. YOU SEE, I am a mama stegosaurus motorcycle and he has to ride me. BRRM BRRRMMMM.

In this case, “Meat Pillows” is not a euphemism. is a post from: Now Showing! Please stop by and leave a comment! If you like my baby blog, please check out my other blog as well.

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OF COURSE I shared this with my friends.

They thought I was crazy.

Putting CHOCOLATE on BREAD? How ridiculous is that! No wonder you’re such a fat fatty! These FOOLS who enjoyed chocolate chip cookies, chocolate chip muffins, chocolate croissants, white and yellow cake with chocolate frosting, pound cake with chocolate ganache, chocolate bread pudding, etc could not FATHOM putting CHOCOLATE (and hazelnut) on BREAD. Ewwww, gross! I made them eat it, because that’s the kind of friend I am, and they all saw how amazing it was and liked it. And for years, Nutella was a staple in my cupboard.

Now it’s super popular and you can pick it up in almost every grocery store and there’s weird ads for it on television and in magazines where it sounds like it’s health food (it’s chocolate, people. chocolate. tasty, not healthy.) and there’s a million recipes and memes about Nutella online. You can find it pretty much everywhere… except my kitchen.

Why?

Because of Nesko.

I married a man who’s allergic to hazelnut. He’s also allergic to chestnuts and brazil nuts.

How allergic is he? I’ll tell you. Years ago, I worked at Fannie May and part of the job requirement was to be familiar with the product. I was sampling the new deluxe truffles (which were INCREDIBLE) and one of them was a hazelnut mousse filling (AMAZING). HOURS after I tried one single truffle with hazelnut Nesko came in to buy some Advent calendars for his cousin’s kids and I gave him a little kiss and his lips started tingling and got a little swollen.

Despite his allergic reactions (swelling, vomiting when he eats chestnuts) he continues to eat stuff with hazelnuts in it unless I remind him not to. His reasoning is that the allergic reaction isn’t THAT bad and hazelnuts taste good. My reasoning is that each exposure ups the chance his allergy will get worse, so stop making bad decisions you fool. So we don’t keep Nutella in the house.

Recently, some peanut butter companies have tried to jump on the Nutella bandwagon and put out their own chocolate spreads. Every time I see them I scrutinize them for hazelnut. Peanuts, after all, are tasty and they are peanut butter companies. Wouldn’t it make sense for them to use peanuts instead of hazelnuts in their java chocolate caramel whatever spreads? But no, they all cram hazelnuts in there.

Then I found these little single-serve packs by Jif. They’re one of the Jif To Go products and they are chocolate and peanut butter and hazelnut free and I ate some with pretzels and I almost died because it tasted so good. I wish they came in a full sized jar, but apparently they don’t. If you want to try out a great tasting nut and chocolate spread but can’t do hazelnut, give this a try because it’s really REALLY good.

This is a totally uncompensated post. Nobody asked me to write it, nobody’s paying me for it, I just wanted to share something super tasty with you because I love you.

Blog post copyright Brigid Keely Barjaktarevic. Originally posted at Words Words Words Art. If you enjoy this blog, check out my parenting blog at Now Showing!.

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