Well, my mom's Monday get another skin biopsy for new possibly location of cancer beat my termites.

Monday Falling Down My Stairs for Crap Starts to Mornings.

I am going to say that, like termites, this is also BAD.

The Princess Industrial Complex

Having written about girls’ adolescence, journalist Peggy Orenstein is quite the expert in parenting of young girls.

Her attempt in raising her daughter free of the girlie-girl stereotype, however, was nuked when – in what seems like an overnight transition – her 3-year-old daughter became enamored with being a princess.

And so began Peggy’s journey in understanding the "princess phase" – and the corporate drive to foster and cash in that phenomenon.

Orenstein takes us on a tour of the princess industrial complex, its practices as coolly calculating as its products are soft and fluffy. She describes a toy fair, held at the Javits Center in New York, at which the merchandise for girls seems to come in only one color: pink jewelry boxes, pink vanity mirrors, pink telephones, pink hair dryers, pink fur stoles. “Is all this pink really necessary?” Orenstein finally asks a sales rep.

“Only if you want to make money,” he replies.

The toy fair is one of many field trips undertaken by Orenstein in her effort to stem the frothy pink tide of princess products threatening to engulf her young daughter. The author of “Schoolgirls: Young Women, Self Esteem, and the Confidence Gap,” among other books, Orenstein is flummoxed by the intensity of the marketing blitz aimed at girls barely old enough to read the label on their Bonne Bell Lip Smackers. “I had read stacks of books devoted to girls’ adolescence,” she writes, “but where was I to turn to under­stand the new culture of little girls, from toddler to ‘tween,’ to help decipher the potential impact — if any — of the images and ideas they were absorbing about who they should be, what they should buy, what made them girls?”

Link to the book on Amazon: Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture

So I remembered that I didn't actually have a problem sleeping, once I feel asleep sitting up, so went ahead and took the Delsym.

I know you were all waiting for another installment of Jesse's Random Minor Health Issues, and What Should She Do About Them.

I would have assumed termite inspection was automatically done.

I thought it was a legal requirement for the sale. Maybe it's a state by state thing.

Good luck, quester!

Yikes, I'm sorry msbelle about both your mom and your termites.

Also sorry to hear about Aims' family and Plei's losing battle with gravity.

I wanted to note that:

Wednesday, January 26th is Onerous Task Day.

I think we need to have it more often.

Link to the book on Amazon: Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture

I'm not too worried about Matilda's princess obsession. It's not like she's actively thinking about a Prince or even lots of servants. She just likes dressing up in girly stuff.

I wasn't too worried about Emmett's obsession with superheros and supervillains either. Though, come to think of it, fighting and Krav is the thing that interests him the most right now.

Oh, good!

And yes, I agree. We need it probably a good bit more often.

I did tasks, anyway! I hauled firewood again; the SO split firewood yesterday. And I washed the icky fridge clean-out dishes yesterday and took out the resulting icky trash today.

Ooh, and we launched our new website (http://www.hopeintransit.org) for the curious, although for the tech savvy, I'm a bit concerned about the site traffic report, which still seems to indicate that there's still some propagating that's not done yet. That task turned out to be onerous, even though I didn't realize it was going to be at the time.

Anyway, I have the Big Year End stuff to do for work, so I'd better get on that. I'll still be doing it by the time Task Day gets here, so better get going now so I can finish by then.

Though, come to think of it, fighting and Krav is the thing that interests him the most right now.

You're making sure he's not in secret correspondence with MiracleMan, aren't you? Because I saw Dispicable Me, and every super villain needs a mad genius--especially one that hears you clearly when you ask for a dart gun.

Way to one up, Mom of msbelle! (hoping it is NOTHING!)