Oxy Clean Review, In 6 Lines Or Less

(In an effort to keep a review to six lines or less, grammar goes to hell; forgive me.)

1. Even though I was confused by OxyClean (Do you use it instead of laundry detergent, or as a supplement?), I bought a bucket of it for out next trip to the laundromat.

2. The flimsy scoop provided broke on the third dip into the powder; I managed to hold it together long enough to scoop OxyClean into the rest of our waiting machines.

3. There was no noticeable difference in the laundry, but I schlepped the bucket along on the next trip to the laundromat, placing the bucket on top of the full laundry basket I was carrying -- from which it fell, onto the pavement, immediately splitting, nearly neatly in two.

4. Now I can't blame OxyClean for my clumsiness, but I can hold them accountable for inferior plastic in their packaging -- a scoop that breaks on the third use and a container that can't handle a single tumble.

5. I didn't leave the broken bucket spewing powder in the parking lot, instead put it back on top of the laundry basket; but since we had no bags or containers with us to pour the remaining powder into, we dumped the remaining product in the laundromat garbage.

6. However, some of the powder did get into the wash -- where it became a wad of goo on several of the sheets.

OxyClean: Epic Fail.

It's Not Like I Didn't Warn You

I've warned you about Gardasil, now Dr. Mercola says, "Don't Give This to Your Daughter - Despite What Your Doctor Says."

The word is out: despite what the CDC would have you believe, Gardasil's safety record is in serious question. As of September 28, 2010, the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) has more than 18,000 Gardasil-related adverse events listed in it, including at least 65 deaths.

As a vaccine used in the developed world, the science speaks for itself: Gardasil can't – and never will -- replace Pap smears, which are the reason that the incidence of cervical cancer is so low in the United States after decades of including pap smears in routine medical care for women.

Today, cervical cancer is not even in the top 10 cancers that kill American women every year.

As a vaccine for children, it doesn't make sense to vaccinate to try to prevent an infection that is cleared from your body without any negative effects within two years in most healthy persons, and is not transmitted in a school setting like other airborne diseases that are easily transmitted in crowded conditions.

Gardasil is designed to prevent only two of at least 15 strains of HPV that can lead to cervical cancer in those who do not clear the virus from their body within two years and become chronically infected.

There is also some evidence that Gardasil-induced immunity may wane after about five years. Pre-licensure clinical trials did not follow young girls or women for decades to find out if the vaccine does, in fact, prevent cervical cancer.

You can -- and should -- read more about the science vs. the politics of the Gardasil fiasco; especially if you either weren't listening to me before or somehow missed those of us who had raised our ire and eyebrows regarding the vaccine.

What interests me most now is how Dr. Mercola's article supports what I've been saying about the new eugenics in this country. From Dr. Mercola's article:

[C]ertain populations in the US are more prone to getting cervical cancer. According to CervicalCancerCampaign.org:

"Cervical cancer occurs most often in certain groups of women in the United States including African-American women, Hispanic women, white (non-Hispanic) women living in rural New York State and northern New England, American Indian women, and Vietnamese-American women.

• Hispanic women have twice the rate of cervical cancer compared to non-Hispanic white women. African-American women develop this cancer about 50 percent more than non-Hispanic white women".

These disparities are due, in part, from poor access to health care. The women who are most at risk for the disease are women who do not have regular check-ups that include pap tests.

Official reports from the CDC and WHO estimate that between 11,000 and 12,000 women in the US are diagnosed with cervical cancer each year, and 3,800 to 4,100 die from it.

About half of these women had never had a pap smear before they discovered they had cervical cancer. The majority of the others had not had a pap smear within the previous five years.

According to the CDC's report on HPV to Congress in 2004:

"Cervical cancer is an uncommon consequence of HPV infection in women, especially if they are screened for cancer regularly with pap tests and have appropriate follow-up of abnormalities.

The purpose of screening with the pap test is to detect cervical abnormalities that can be treated, thereby preventing progression to invasive cervical cancer, and also to detect invasive cervical cancer at a very early stage. If detected early and managed promptly, survival rates for cervical cancer are over 90 percent."

A study published in 2000 in the Archives of Family Medicine also showed that in the US, women who are elderly, unmarried, and uninsured are more likely to be diagnosed at a late stage of cervical cancer.

Nothing Brings You Back To Blogging Like Winning An Award! (2010 Top 30 Parenting Special Needs Blogs Award)

This blog has just been named one of the Top 30 Parenting Special Needs Blogs, 2010 Award:

Parenting is difficult, but your child is far above the ordinary when it comes to solutions. How do you parent a child with special needs? How do you keep then safe and healthy? How do you combat others who don't understand and are far more willing to criticize than offer any "real" help? Where do you receive the information you need to understand your special needs child better? Fortunately, these award-winning blogs will help you on your journey to solutions; from at-home care to sending your child off into the world for school or work. How do you know what your child should be able to do at a certain ages of mental development? How can you encourage them to improve? How can you help them, and yourself, when discouraged? These blogs will help.

The winners were chosen through a scoring system that included Internet
nominations from readers, so thank you!

So now I'll do my best to get back to blogging here (but in my defense, we did move this summer and we're still not as settled in as I'd like).

Survey Says My Family's Not So Strange After All

According to a national survey commissioned by SleepBetter.org and conducted by Ipsos Public Affairs, one in four Americans (23%) say that Goodnight Moon is their all-time favorite bedtime story. The study also says that moms are doing the bedtime story reading 3-to-1 over dads. But what's most surprising, to me anyway, is the fact that even more popular among young children (age 7 or younger) than bedtime classic Goodnight Moon are the stories that their parents make up themselves!

Now our family has a long tradition of making up stories -- not only at bedtime, but we share them at the breakfast table, and when we spend time with extended family (holidays, etc.) we spend time sitting around making up stories together: One person starts with the first sentence, the next person adds the next line, etc., and you go around the room with each person adding a sentence until the story is finished. (Warning: This is where family issues will be aired; the little brother will mock his sister, mom will mock dad, grandma will mock mom, etc. -- which is all in good fun, unless your participating teens are surly.)

Anyway, I just thought that our kids liked our stories and storytelling time because, well, frankly, because they were weird. ...Apples not falling far from the tree, and all that. *wink*

But it turns out, this sort of "weird" is in the majority -- making us all "normal."

Now The Bedtimes Stories Project is collecting these stories in their Sleepy Tales Book.

To encourage folks to submit their original family bedtime stories (all authors retain the copyrights to their stories), The Bedtime Project's got the incredible Betty White involved! (You know I adore Betty White!)

Not only has Betty even written her very own bedtime story, Sleep Better Snowball!, but she'll be reading from the Sleepy Tales Book -- and she may also read one of the submitted bedtime stories!

If you you want your story to be evaluated as one of the stories that Betty White will read from at the May 26th event in L.A., you need to submit your story by midnight EST Sat. May 22, 2010.

Also, by the end of the program in July, one story will be selected to inspire an illustration by noted artist Bill Nelson. The deadline for a chance to have your story illustrated by Nelson is midnight EST, Wednesday June 30, 2010.

So submit you family's story asap. Who knows, it could win a really cool honor! Stranger things -- like our kids liking our made-up stories -- have happened. *wink*

Jean-E-Ology

If you don't know how to sew, or just don't have time, Denim Therapy repairs jeans for just $7.

Motherhood In 6 Words

Smith Mag is challenging you to give your "Six-Word MOMoir,", telling the story of motherhood in six words. The abbreviated mommy memoirs can be stories of your role as a mom or about your mom. There are prizes too; but personally, I'm just enjoying reading the MOMoirs.

Is Your Child's Social Life Taking Over Your Life? Help Is On The Way!

There's another new social networking site that's launched, and while the thought of another social site in beta may seem more like clutter on your horizon than exciting news, this one sounds more like a time saver than a time waster.

SocialToddler.com is a social networking site helping parents organize their children's social networks by offering a safe virtual meeting place to plan & schedule events as well as, if you're willing, meet other families in your area.

I gave the social network for parents a quick look-see and was impressed.

At Social Toddler you can organize regular playgroups and individual playdates as well as birthday parties and even grown-up only events. (Me likey that last one a lot because my kids, while too big for parental organized playdates, run me ragged with the plans they make themselves).

SocialToddler.com would also be great for families moving to new locations who want to plug-in to activities in their new communities. Divorced parents living outside of their child's neighborhood &/or who have placement time away from their child's usual neighborhood could use Social Toddler to stay in touch with their children's primary playgroups as well as find new playgroups for visitation times.

There are a lot of positive possibilities with SocialToddler.com, so I decided to ask founder (and father) Rich Rotzang some questions to address concerns parents of young children might have.

There a many mom &/or parenting social network sites, what need(s) did you see that weren't yet being met that SocialToddler.com addresses?

Social Toddler focuses very specifically on playgroups and other small groups comprised of parents who know each other. We know that these are small groups of moms (or dads), that meet regularly, have very active children, and share information constantly. In practical terms, we offer our members tools and resources to support their real world parenting needs - planning events, managing their schedules (and their kids’), and sharing information in a private setting.

In terms of social networking, we went into this with a fundamental belief that for parents, the true value of a "social network" is not in the size of that network, but the quality of the information that is derived from it. That’s why unlike other parenting social networks, we focus on relationships that are true in the real world.

I see that members have options regarding how much information about themselves and themselves they share, with whom they share it, and even not to share any information about their child(ren) at all. What about concerns of people posing as parents just to get access to real world groups and their meetings... Any plans to address this?

This is a valid concern and something that we take very seriously. One of the elements we've built into the site is a set of security features that minimizes this risk.

Groups have the option of setting their privacy level as public or private. If a group is private, a person can only join if they are invited by another member of the group, or ask to join and are accepted. Until then, they have no access to any of the discussions, photos, events or members of that group. In public groups, however, information is made available to encourage parents to meet one another, plan playdates, etc. We realize that our members may have concerns about such issues so we have brought on a safety expert to help educate our users on how to protect themselves and their children on the internet, and also to offer suggestions on how we can make our site safer.

Is membership free? Will it remain free? What plans do you have to monetize the site, aside from the Google Ads I see, in order to keep it open for members? I ask this for two reasons: One, Ning's recent announcement has put many in a tizzy -- and it's not just the community owners/moderators who are frustrated, but members losing their connections, contacts, etc. Two, people would prefer to know of future plans to place ads etc. rather than feel like they are sprung on them (or fear that it's a sign of funding problems, threatening their "home").

Yes membership is free, and we have no plans of charging for membership in the future. Besides advertising, we intend to monetize the site in a number of ways. I can't get into the details at the moment because our monetization plan is closely tied to our product roadmap.

I notice in your FAQ you address the issue of dads and state that "we will be adding features for dads too". What exactly are "features for dads"?

To clarify, what we mean by this is that we will be adding features that dads will also find useful. What we've found so far is that the majority of our members are women, and almost all playgroups are for women. But we also know that there are a lot of active dads out there and we want to give them a reason to visit our site. We will be introducing a number of features that appeal to both parents and will be useful, and targeted, to both moms and dads.

Since the network is in beta, what do you advise in cases where members will join and not find any other folks in their local, "real world," communities?

If members join and don't find a group in their area, we suggest they start one. It's super easy, 5 minutes or less. There's no better way to meet parents in your community than to start a group, invite a few friends and go from there. By listing their group on our site, it will also help other parents looking for local connections. Also, by users surfing the site, they will see the other kinds of public groups that are popular, and this will inspire them to create their own.

Are there, or do you have plans for, apps etc to sync the website to phones or other gadgets?

Absolutely. We are already integrated with Facebook, so users can log in with their Facebook credentials. We'll also be adding some really cool mobile apps in the future.

Anything you'd like to add?

Although right now the site seems like just another social network, we are actively working on launching many more very useful and unique features that will be available in the next few months. These features will contribute to creating what we hope will be the most useful, user friendly and resourceful site for parents online. We’re very excited about the future!

Thanks, Rich!

If you're a parent struggling to organize your child's playgroups and meetings -- if you're feeling like managing those events and details is nearly as exhausting as herding the small children at them -- you'll probably want to give Social Toddler a try.

SocialToddler.com would also be great for families moving to new locations who want to plug-in to activities in their new communities. Divorced parents living outside of their child's neighborhood &/or who have placement time away from their child's usual neighborhood could use Social Toddler to stay in touch with their children's primary playgroups as well as find new playgroups for visitation times.

Baskin-Robbins & I Have A Scoop For You!

Baskin-Robbins is hosting its fourth annual 31 Cent Scoop Night on April 28 from 5–10 p.m. at stores nationwide. That means a family of four can enjoy their favorite flavors for less than $1.50!



It’s for a good cause too – as part of the event, the Baskin-Robbins Community Foundation will make a $100,000 donation to the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to honoring fallen fire heroes and assisting their families and coworkers. Participating Baskin-Robbins stores will help raise additional funds for local firehouses by inviting fire departments to the event to collect donations.

Here’s how you can help show your support for our firefighting heroes:

1) Post about 31 Cent Scoop Night on your blog to help spread the word!
2) Donate your Facebook status in honor of firefighters and RSVP for 31 Cent Scoop Night
3) Attend 31 Cent Scoop Night – find your neighborhood Baskin-Robbins.

I Hate To Be Right When Girls Die

Seems my continual skepticism and concern regarding Gardasil isn't unwarranted; the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has called for the immediate suspension of the cervical cancer control vaccination program after after four deaths (and complications among 120 girls) in the program were reported.

Are You Ready To Have Children?

A "should you have kids" decision tree by MomLogic.com:

Was Boo Radley Autistic?

DMFP contemplates if Arthur "Boo" Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird was on the spectrum:

He's shy. He likes children and the only time we see him comfortable in the story is when he's walking back to his home, Scout's hand in his.

But he stabbed someone in the leg, casually, without emotion. While collecting clippings for a scrapbook. He chooses odd ways to let someone know he likes them, leaving a strange assortment of bits and pieces in the hollow of the tree. It's a distant and unusual method of communication. And he knows enough to defend the innocent from impending danger. He's uncomfortable with lights and with talking to people.

The adults in the book consistently describe Boo as "harmless" and "innocent," in spite of the event with the scissors. The children and more dramatic neighbors manufacture dire tales of his yellow teeth and propensity to eat small mammals raw, but the people in the story whom we trust the most trust Boo and believe that he, at the core, is a good person, just kind of odd.

You'll have to read the rest to discover her conclusions. And you'll have to post a comment to let us know yours.

Brand Ambassador For The View

Last week I became an official View Brand Ambassador, part of the Mom Central campaign for ABC Daytime. This means you'll be hearing more from me on The View and while I will receive a tote bag or other The View branded items for &/or to facilitate my commentary &/or reviews, I'm really excited to have the opportunity to participate in the discussion about and promotion of one of my favorite shows -- yup, one of my favorite shoes, not just a daytime favorite. Being an ambassador for the show means I now have a legitimate reason to watch shows, uninterrupted. *wink*

So consider this post a disclaimer -- and warning of things to come, both here and at my other blog, Kitsch Slapped. (Heck, it might even show up at other places, depending upon the topic!)

If you're a fan of The View, right now Mom Central has an exciting contest: The View Sweepstakes. The prize for one lucky winner? A trip to New York City to watch a taping of The View! The sweepstakes is open until February 28th and I encourage you to enter -- but I hope I win!

PS If you join Mom Central, befriend me here!

PPS I am a participant in a Mom Central campaign for ABC Daytime and will receive a tote bag or other The View branded items to facilitate my review.