Not that this woman needs a shout-out, but there's a particularly great post on Chez Miscarriage re some new book by a Judith Warner. Manages to skewer all the kibitzing and mother-bashing in just a few lines, while being really, really funny.

Okay, back to my life. Prima's behavior chart, which we're not following to the letter, I confess, is working spectacularly, except when I'm not home. I'm the bad cop, hardass, Generalissima over here. Or, as Prima succinctly puts it, I'm kind of mean. So things will be going swimmingly, and then the spousal unit's parents come over, or for some other fool reason I decide I need to leave the house, like to earn money, and I come back and no homework's done and she's been eating Cheetos for the past four hours. We even have charts for outside the home, but it seems the maternal unit-in-law was just checking things off because she didn't want to get Prima in trouble with me. And of course I came in like the Red Queen: "Did she do her homework?" Now Sighs steal out/And Tears begin to flow. In general, though, I feel like we have better control in the house these days: we have to do less fighting than Before Chart, and she's happier too.

So but anyway, the mornings are usually good, and I don't have to launch into my Great Santini thing: today she happily did a bunch of math with me and read a book to the dog (she fancied some article on therapy dogs who come to a library in Salt Lake City and the kids read to them: the domestic pet over here isn't that well-trained and wanders off when she's reading him The Magic Unicorn or whatever shite she's reading this week). And then she played w/her Gameboy (deconstruct name when have spare moment) and then got onto the bus and waved goodbye, temporarily not regretting her lot in life as my daughter.