Proud Minnesotan here - you're a credit to my true blue home state, and I appreciate your reasoning, your vocabulary, and your balls. And, just in case you're wondering, I'm a married straight woman, and I can assure everyone that gay marriage has not affected my marriage in the least.

Wow! Helluva due date! Sorry - my baby was born in Feb 2011. If you ever expand your group....

I always think your comments are really funny and on point. Is there room for new members in your online mom group?

Thank you. It really isn't the same thing at all, and I'm really tired of this false equating of the two.

Can you please explain the two columns? Why two columns? How are they ordered? Are they discrete comments, or are they responses to each other? I'm sorry, but I'm not getting this.

Is this the moment that we can acknowledge that, just because "it's their culture" doesn't make it okay?

It's because of the success of the BBC show Sherlock. You'll see - there will be more like this announced soon.

There is nothing more replaceable than an extra. And the experience of being one reflects that.

I actually think spanx are really comfortable. I'm wearing them now. I find that they make my clothes feel more comfortable. Different strokes...

Oy. Poor girl. She looks lovely and age and activity appropriate and well-groomed, and this is the shit she gets. And shame on whoever is giving her this shit.

Agreed. I thought it would change me, but it really hasn't. In fact, in some ways, it's just made me more so, distilled who I am, instead of diffusing who I am. A helluva journey, but not the only one that's valid.

But her hair does look like a white girl's hair - it looks like every other girl's hair on the team - pulled back into a pony tail and the strays clipped into barrettes.

Ok, forgive my ignorance, but I really don't understand something here: what's wrong with her hair? It looks nice - it's neat and sporty and shows off her face. Why is she getting so much grief? What do people want her to do with her hair?

I know what you mean - that was actually what I was trying to say - clumsily - that people don't always know everything about their own countries, let alone other countries - you can find this sort of thing anywhere. Btw, understood about the dairy farmers and the wifi, but I'm from Minneapolis!

You just made me spit diet coke on my monitor. Thank you! I enjoyed that!

Oy! I'm a white woman. I have curly hair. I straighten it some of the time, I wear it curly some of the time. My hair is not a political statement. I wear it the way I want to wear it on any given day. I would like to afford my African-American counterparts the same freedom to wear their goddamn hair any way…

Don't be too offended - I'm from Minnesota, and people on the East Coast ask me if I have cows in my yard and if we have wifi.

Well, it is a good time in a way, because you can write a dissertation on a very flexible schedule - you can actually do the work at 3am, if you happen to be awake at 3am, which, as you know, happens when you have a baby. This is as opposed to working in an office, where you have to be there at specific times. It's…

Oops - you're all right! Maybe she is really orthodox after all!

I think he's hot as hell.