Dear Swine Flu,
I am hauling my precious babies to the pediatrician's office tomorrow where they will be injected and sprayed with tiny bits of you, all to protect them from what the newspapers are leading me to believe is The Next Bubonic Plague. I am a little bit terrified, not least because I am taking two children to the pediatrician BY MYSELF, and I do hope you are going to behave yourself and leave them alone. Deal?
Respectfully,
Maggie Cheung

Dear My Eyebrows,
Now if YOU get swine flu, that's fine by me. About half of you needs to disappear anyway. Remember when we used to have a standing date with the nice waxer lady? Yeah, those were the days.
Wearily,
Your Owner

This week I will let a strange man into my house when my husband isn't home. I will greet him with heaps upon heaps of kisses and shouts of delight because he will be bearing gifts of mops and sponges and environmentally-friendly cleaning supplies. He is coming over to CLEAN MY HOUSE.

A few weeks ago, an old friend blasted an invitation to all of her Facebook contacts: her green cleaning service was in need of some fresh houses for training purposes. Was anyone interested in housecleaning at a wildly discounted rate? I just happened to spot this message when I was using Phillip's computer and it took me all of .002 seconds to draft a reply. It went something like, "YES PLEASE. HOW ABOUT THIS AFTERNOON?"

My talk with my mom about menstruation went something like this:

Me: “Mommy? We learned about periods in health class today. The teacher said we should get this kit. It comes with books and pads and stuff.”

My mom: “Okay.”

Uh, huh. That was the end of the conversation. She ordered the kit for me -- it came with three books about puberty and an assortment of pads and tampons -- and when it arrived, she handed it to me and we never talked about periods again.

Recently, my friend Bianca (a mother of four like me) said something that gave me a good chuckle: “It seems that half my life is spent dealing with food -- planning for it, shopping for it, fixing it and cleaning up after it.”

I laughed. And then I stopped laughing. Because, wow, she’s right.

In fact, I think the only thing she left off her insightful statement was the other big one: budgeting for it.

I’ve always thought of myself as a frugal shopper. I buy generic whenever possible, and I steer clear of expensive cuts of meat. While I think the idea of organic vegetables is a nice one, in reality, the price tag is too hefty for this family of six. I plan ahead on meals, and I even make special trips to Aldi when I have the chance.

But especially as my kids (and their appetites) are growing, I find myself operating with a nagging sense that I’m not maximizing my grocery budget. I feel like I’m missing something -- surely there must be a more economical way to feed this family.

I never realized how much I do in one day -- until I haven’t been able to do those things. It is like that infamous story of the wife whose husband asked her what she did all day and in order to “show” him, she decided not to do any of those things for one day. The result was complete and utter chaos.

Many moms have giggled over that story and wished they, too, could pull that off. I am here to tell you, when that situation is thrust upon you without your consent, the joke isn’t as funny anymore...