Funny Friday

Parents get blamed for a lot of stuff, and moms are a particularly popular target. For instance, the sales of Matchbox cars are on the decline and Mattel thinks it's because of mothers. According to Mattel, women don't understand cars the way they do action figures, which are essentially dolls, or blocks, which allow creative expression. Moms don't comprehend the benefits of playing with toy cars because they themselves "have never played with them," Matt Petersen, a Mattel vice president, told Bloomberg Businessweek. According to Mattel, cars can be used to teach boys all sorts of things, including math and science and moms aren't aware of these benefits.

Obviously, this is very sexist. Not as sexist perhaps as this video, but pretty sexist. In my personal experience, it's also just incorrect. The Boy loved his cars and I bought tons of them, so back up, Mattel. I kid you not that he slept with a garage full of cars in his crib for two years. Before he had cars, he would take a block (which is something I understand with my lady-brain) and run it up and down the floor, pretending that it was a car, which is why I bought him some real cars. As I've mentioned, I'm not terribly introspective about this sort of thing, so I didn't reflect on whether he'd derive some additional educational benefit from the cars past just playing with them. Similarly, I never reflected on what benefit the Baby would get from having a doll; she just wanted to play with one and that was good enough for me. 

Further, I think it's quite a leap to say that because moms didn't play with cars when they were children, they can't understand boys' interest in cars. I don't have a penis and never have, but that doesn't mean I don't understand a little boy being fascinated when he discovers his. When you finish with the mom-doesn't-understand-cars issue, Mattel, get on the mom-doesn't-understand-penises issue.

A common sentiment among little boys.

Now that you're caught up on current events (oh yeah, there's also a new Pope), the remainder of Funny Friday is devoted to jobs and hobbies that I wasn't aware existed.

The Tooth Fairy

Thank goodness the Boy finally lost his second front tooth this week. It had been hanging in his mouth like a calcium pinata that he batted around with his tongue. After I threatened offered to help him pull it out, he sat and worked on it until it finally came out. This is great news because he has now lost four teeth and this is the first one he didn't swallow. He insisted that he wanted to keep the tooth, so he and the Girl worked on a note to leave to the Tooth Fairy with instructions regarding the retention of the tooth:

In case you can't read it, let me translate: 

Here is my tooth.

PLEASE! don't take and please don't let the talking dog regurgitate my tooth into a little kid's mouth!

Thanks

(P.S. and I mean it!)

Because, you see, the Tooth Fairy has a talking dog for an assistant and said dog eats the teeth and then barfs them into a baby's mouth. What? You thought the Tooth Fairy worked alone? Silly. Santa has elves to help him and the Tooth Fairy has a talking dog with an overactive gag reflex. 

Can We Get a Pet?

The other day when we were driving home from school, I had the following conversation with the girls. The Boy was there, too, but he wisely kept out of the discussion:

Girl: When can we get a pet?

Me: When you can take care of it yourselves.

Baby: I want a pony or a horse.

Me: Where would we keep a pony or a horse? Our yard isn't big enough and it's against the law in Decatur.

Girl: What if we turned our house into a horse riding academy?

Me: Illegal.

Baby: What if we turned our house into a lemonade stand?

Why does no one understand that we're not zoned for commercial use? 

Speaking of pets and unusual hobbies, have you seen pictures of dogs in extreme dog grooming competitions? Like this:

God Bless America.
Buffalo coming, eagle going.  

and this:

Kermit the dog, er frog. 

and this:

Ahoy there, Captain Jack Spaniel. Time to swab the poop deck. 

Don't these people have something better to do? Asks the woman who spends hours each week writing blog posts that entertain literally dozens.

Also, did you know that extreme ironing is something? It is and I discovered it when I started typing, "Extreme Dog Grooming" into Google Images and the first autocomplete suggestion was "Extreme Ironing." Thank you, Al Gore, for inventing the Internet so that I can Google pictures of dogs groomed like pirates and people ironing clothes while skiing and then share them with my friends.

This guy has a serious game face on.

How did she get that contraption up on the ski lift?

So this is like planking, only with props. For a minute I tried to think about funny ways to extreme iron. But then I remembered that I hate ironing, so forget it.

Pets and Tattoos Perfect Together

Thanks to the Internet I know that people love their pets and their tattoos. Because I wondered if there were people who love both of these things so much that they, you know, tattooed their pets, I Googled. There are:

Is this seriously, you know, legal?

Koi fish tattoos on a cat are just doubly cruel.
And the earring? Honestly?

Where the hell is PETA on this? Stop yelling at Beyonce and her sneakers and get on the pet tattoo epidemic. Well, maybe it's not an actual epidemic, but isn't one tattooed pet one too many?

Rebus McEntire

So, my new obsession comes courtesy of this blog that my friend Erica sent me. The beginning of the post is all about a leak in her bathroom, but that isn't nearly as interesting as her crazy song picture rebuses. A rebus is a picture puzzle, not to be confused with a rhombus, which is like a diamond or a drunken rectangle. In case you don't want to click over to read, Rachel, the blog author, uses the Emoji keyboard option on the iPhone she and her husband text rebuses of songs to each other to solve. Somehow in between dealing with ceiling leaks and creating song rebuses and homeschooling her children, she is also an expert jeans fitter (yes, that's a thing) and I got sucked into her post on the right jeans for plus-sized women. Even though I don't have a dog in that fight, I seriously read it like my life depended on it. I love when I find a blog full of new ideas and information and it's a bonus if it's funny and well-written.

Okay, here is my attempt to do a song rebus for you all to try to figure out:

I think it's pretty easy, but then again I'm not good at this kind of thing and I also know the answer. In case you want to make your own rebus, here are the directions to put the Emoji keyboard on your phone:

via Grasping for Objectivity

A Good Cause

My friend Erica, who you can thank or curse for sucking us all into the world of Emoji rebuses, has her own blog where she shares deals and health and wellness tips. One of her posts this week is about Alexandra's Playground, an organization that builds playgrounds and safe places to play for kids all over the world. Erica and I went to college with Andrea Vitale, who with her husband, started Alexandra's Playground. Erica is running the NYC Half Marathon on the Alexandra's Playground team and is holding a raffle on her blog to raise money for this great cause. She's offering a bunch of prizes including gift certificates to J. Crew and Lole if you donate. 

If you think you've solved the song rebus, leave a comment with what you think it is and I'll let you know if you're right. Have a great weekend!