China’s formula fiasco feeds Starshine’s (gulp) guilt about not breast-feeding.
Writer & Columnist • Santa Barbara, CA
Writer & Columnist • Santa Barbara, CA
Sex, politics, fashion and everything else a Gen-X everygal loves to dish about.
China’s formula fiasco feeds Starshine’s (gulp) guilt about not breast-feeding.
Crime scene confession: With OJ back in court, Starshine admits to shoddy reporting back when Simpson’s wife was murdered.
Life doesn’t live in the things that we have. It takes place in the things that we do.
Here are five words I never thought I’d type: Quit picking on the Republican.
Believe me, no one reviles the GOP more than I. No one is more resentful of the way — by spitting and sneering — they’ve made filthy epithets out of once-neutral words like “liberal,” “homosexual,” and “Muslim.” No one gets queasier when the party’s politicians cozy up to corporations and brandish Old Glory’s broad stripes and bright stars in an effort to distract us from waxing fuel prices and waning civil liberties.
Excuse me while I swig some Pepto.
But ever since Senator John McCain named Sarah Palin his running mate, red and blue voters alike have been all a-chirp over the woman’s qualifications. Not her qualifications for the vice presidency, mind you, but as a mother. Which doesn’t sit well in the ol’ gut, either.
Remember when you didn’t have to hire an elephant to fete a birthday?
Surely I heard him wrong.
“I think I’ll take the boys camping over your birthday weekend,” my husband had said, “and give you some time to yourself.”
As a freelance writer with two young sons and eight employers at any given instant, my “me-time” is confined to the shower and the car, driving to fetch someone from somewhere — not time for myself, just time by myself.
So his offer sounded absurd. I ran it through my trusty guilt check: I didn’t ask, he offered. They love camping, I hate it. It is my birthday.
I’m shocked by the lump in my throat as my family drives away. Is it instinctive grief over losing control of my flock? Or (gulp) a fear that I won’t know what to do with myself when they’re gone?
Bald? Rich? Covered in tattoos? Starshine gets hooked on the shockingly addictive, slightly creepy pastime of Googling exes.
Few people know what it’s like to have a name as odd as Starshine’s. But Talula Does the Hula from Hawaii? She knows.
I’d love to tell McCain exactly where he can put his stale rhetoric. Instead, I tell him where he can’t put it, and why.
Through some terrible mutation of natural law, a four-letter word has become my young son’s all-time favorite utterance.