And it's not always true that just because you gain a lot of weight, you'll have a big baby. A friend of mine gained about 60 pounds with each of her pregnancies and had babies in the low eight pound range, all totally healthy (and my friend is now done having babies and back to her high school weight... bitch). …

The advice I've always heard is that you only need a few hundred extra calories a day. At the beginning, they say about 300 extra (and then infuriatingly suggest that you should get those extra calories by having an extra glass of skim milk and a piece of dry wheat toast - jerks). I've never heard anyone suggest…

I'm sure that there were plenty of lay women complicit in all of this, but I can't get away from feeling like one of the Catholic church's biggest problems is that all the decision makers are male, and that that's by design. Maybe it's too simplistic, but it just feels like if there were more women in positions of…

For a lot of pets, the quality of their food totally matters. When we first got our dogs, we fed them a mid-range dog food. Our lab (who can eat pretty much anything and, at worst, get the farts) had no trouble with it. Our hound, as it turns out, has a bit of a sensitive tummy. She would only pick at the food and…

Wisconsin's got a ways to go before it unseats Arizona, but damn if they're not putting in a good effort. I think the kid might have what it takes!

Yikes. And I thought Ina May was really hippy crunchy. I'm really glad I stuck with my instincts, read three pages of a book on hypnobirthing recommended by my midwife, and said, "Nope. I'll stick with the Bradley Method, thanks. At least that makes some fucking sense."

No getting around it: she is one beautiful lady.

Yes, because if there's one thing ten year olds care about, it's whether or not your parents are legally married.

Aaaaaaaaaaand, hearted.

I think it's the fact that the swollen belly means definitive proof that the lady has had sex is what bothers people. People are weird about pregnancy. I have two Mexican ceramic figurines in my living room, one of a pregnant woman and one of a woman nursing an infant. Nobody ever has a problem with the nursing…

They tend to have really sensitive skin. Sometimes a super hypoallergenic food can help, but mostly they're just doomed to be stinky.

I was going to heart you for that, but then I realized you are already hearted. Carry on!

Yeah, that's the more worrying part for me, too. Nobody should be jumping into a new relationship or making any major life decisions like getting engaged so soon after someone important dies. You're not thinking clearly. It's great if he's there to support her, but marriage? No. That's aa really, really dangerous…

Different families use terms in different ways. For instance, when I say "my cousin", I mean someone who is the child of one of my mother or father's siblings. When my husband says "my cousin", he could mean someone who is actually a fairly distant blood relation. When people ask, I say that I have five brothers…

I don't think this is all that different from hooking up with a step-sibling you met when you were a teen. Nobody seems terribly icked out by Clueless or Emma. The being raised together thing only works if you were raised from early childhood. If you met when you were teenagers or even pre-teens, all bets are off.

Seriously, I keep wanting to say, "And which group is protecting Bernard Law from prosecution? Hand him over and maybe we can talk."

Jennifer Lawrence just upped her awesome by referring to Kim Kardashian as "the Kardashian girl."

Well, after birth they're not. Up until then, totally people.

Seriously. They spend more time thinking about my sex life than I do.

A cynical part of me thinks that becoming a powerless side show is actually their goal. You don't ever have to claim responsibility for anything or prove that your ideas are valid, you never have to confront tough realities that come with governing, you get to rake in tons of money by sending out emails that…