According to a post I briefly saw on Facebook yesterday, our friends Daniel and AmyJoy, the proprietors of Skreened.com, just ushered their little baby girl into the world. I can’t even begin to imagine how darned cute she must be, especially in whatever politically charged onesie I’m sure she’s wearing right now. There are some people you just KNOW will be fun parents, and that’s totally Daniel and AmyJoy. Their little half-pint will be raised on milk, Sufjan Stevens and game night all the while being watched closely by Blaze, the puppy nursemaid. If that’s not a great way to live, I don’t know what is.

While prowling around the internet, I also noticed a blog post by our dear friends from South Jerz, Angie and Jamin, announcing their pregnancy with numero dos. They are already the most outstanding parents to date, so I can only imagine what fun their family will be a year from now. Their little baby will be warmly welcomed by the most comprehensive movie knowledge EVER, terrific artwork, and uninhibited nights of karaoke. Plus Angie can knit a mean sweater.

For the longest time I didn’t want to have kids because I knew so few people who were raising their children with the values I held so dear. I was pretty repulsed by the spoiled rotten brats running around getting all diagnosed with ADHD and whatnot. But now that people like Daniel, Amyjoy, Angie & Jamin are poppin’ out kids like hotcakes, I have a renewed sense of hope that when it’s finally time for us to bite the bullet our kids will be able to make friends and perhaps even get through middle school without eating disorders. Kids who embrace their inner nerd, their inner beauty, and their inner canine. And who grow up knowing that life is more than just the nine to five… cause after work there’s a really good rock show!

To the Foxes and the Ferners, my warmest congratulations. I love you both so much, and am so excited to hang out with your kids… and teach them to pick their nose and eat it!

Ok, this requires further discussion. Beware: total rant ahead.

Feminism in the 21st century is an interesting thing. I give my mother’s generation a whole heap of street cred for working so hard to get us out of the mud room and into the work-force. We grew up being told we could do it all, and so we’re trying. Here we are, earning our equal paycheck, trying to do it all and succeed, being desperate housewives. But I think we’re starting to learn that we can’t have our cake and eat it too. We can’t be corporate giants and still make it to every soccer game. And so inevitably the soccer games get dropped, because our solid paycheck can’t be. And this is where it all falls apart. Because we can only give 100%.

Before feminism, mom gave 100% to the home, and dad brought in 100% of the money. Now that mom and dad are each bringing in 50% of the cash, shouldn’t they both be responsible for 50% of the homelife?

Countless surveys and research point to the fact that while women are working as many hours as the men in their lives, and in some cases earning more than men, they still manage 70% of the duties in the home. Everything from grocery shopping to laundry to the conversation about the birds and bees, woman are doing it. If you don’t believe it, just turn on any primetime sitcom and you’ll hear endless jokes about lazy men watching tv and drinking beer after a long day at work… while the wives make dinner and run errands. They don’t make this crap up, people. And because of this, women are dealing with stress and emotional breakdowns left and right.

I almost wind up blaming my father (well, not literally) and the rest of the men who allowed it all to happen. I’ve been in the workforce for a solid decade now, and I suppose I’ve been in a constant stream of relationships with men since then. So I feel like I’ve been on the bus long enough to say out loud that everywhere I look I see a whole lot of weak men. Men who sat back and watched while women picked up the reins and fought for equality in the workplace. Even though a man’s financial expectations have lessened, he’s not picking up the expectations in the home that have increased.

And that is what I hate even more than the expectation of women to do everything while running on fumes. The sheer number of men I run into who have little to no motivation to do whatever it takes to provide for their families. It’s not pure laziness, it’s not even just a lack of direction, it’s the fact that they were never told that the single most important thing they needed to do in life was take care of their babies. And their babies’ mommas. And I’m not just talking about teenage dads in the ghetto. I’m talking about 30 something men in the burbs!

Before you go on and tell me I have some personal beef that I’m moaning about in the public arena, let me give you this brief history. When I first met and started dating Matt, I was stunned at how little vocational passion he had. I was a girl with more career ideas than I could hack away at in an entire lifetime, and here came this guy who didn’t know what he wanted to do when he grew up. He has since stumbled providentially into a career that he LOVES, and now that he has gained career-related traction he’s excited about taking care of me, of us, of our life. He can now encourage me to fulfill my career dreams because he understands what that’s all about. He actively assists with home related tasks because he truly understands that if we’re each bringing in 50% of the paycheck, then we each need to do 50% of the housework. That’s the only way that we’re both putting in 100%.

There are guys like Matt who accept their fate and work really hard to manage stuff in our home. But from what I see it’s kind of uncommon. We had to talk a LOT before we got married about our expectations of one another. He knew that he was marrying someone who didn’t really like kids that much and always envisioned herself working. This meant he was going to have a lot of help bringing home the bacon. And I married someone in Education knowing it would likely mean I’d always HAVE to work and that I’d never have a life of leisure. I like to cook, but I’m only cooking one meal a day, the rest he has to forage for. I love doing laundry, but he generally winds up ironing his own clothes. It’s the only way we can both stay sane.

I consider myself blessed to have found him, and it truly infuriates me when I look around and see so many of my friends who are working like maniacs, raising their kids expertly, keeping their Real Simple model homes immaculate and going to therapy 3 hours a week because that guy they married spends his evenings playing Halo with the boys. By my constitution, you can play all the Halo you want, if you’re drawing six figures and dropping diamonds in my chocolate cake mix.

Note: I had tons of links in here to good ole Penny Trunk’s website and then pulled them out at the last minute to spare you. Although I know I’m not the only one with a girl crush on her.

I have done something a bit out of the ordinary this week. I’ve been reading portions of this month’s Atlantic. It’s unusual because I’m neither smart nor pretentious as most of their readership seems to be, aside from my sisters of course, who are both fabulously intelligent but quite modest about it.

I was actually turned on to the article about Google by one sister and the article on feminism by the other. So if you’re interested in my brief commentary on the aforementioned articles it is as follows.

Google, you’re like that nasty crack habit hiding in the bathroom. I can’t get enough of you, but the more I take, the more I wind up giving up of myself. One of these days you’re going to turn around and slap me silly. But where will I wind up? There’s no battered women’s shelters online! So I continue to be swept up by the beautiful promises on your Webmaster Central and Matt Cutts’ adorable cats (you clearly know my weak spot!). I’ll carry on relying on you for everything I do, day in and day out. And my IQ will persistently drop as the Shakespearean classics languish untouched on my bookshelves.

As far as the article on feminism, I’ve been toying around with posting my thoughts on this for months now. But right before I hit “publish” I’m always confronted by an article like this that says it all so much better. So I won’t try. I’ll just leave it to her. You seriously have to read this.

I know that I’m the only person who could never get tired of pictures of my cat. Just think of Matt who has to look at him day in and day out, share a home and a bed with him, and listen to me as I beg “Matty, Matty! Kiss Mojo on the mouth!”

One of my requirements for pets in our house is that they have fur fluffs between their toes. There have been a few exceptions to this rule including Mister Charlie, the hermit crab that I accidentally killed by constantly dipping him in water as that’s the only time he’d come out of his shell. Then, after all of his legs fell off because of stress, I Googled it and found out that hermit crabs should only “bathe” once weekly. I still cannot sing “take a little powder, take a little salt, put it in my shotgun as I go walkin out” without the blood of Mister Charlie taunting my conscience.

The other tuft-less creature who occupied our home was Winthrop, the blue betta fish. Winthrop lasted far longer than Matt ever expected because I cleaned his bowl like a phenom and always remembered to leave a fishbiscuit for him before we went away for the weekend. The day that Winthrop sucked his last air bubble and was flushed to his watery grave was the kind of day that tests the strength of even the best marriages. I could see Matt patiently reciting the rosary in his mind as he handed tissue after tissue to his blubbering, weeping wife who was utterly incapacitated and could not move from the couch. For two hours.

So it’s basically become a must that our pets pass the toe tuft test. Essentially this assumes their lifespan has strong chances of outlasting me in my old age. Or at least they will live long enough to mark the date that I am prescribed psychiatric medication to deal with my Obsessive Animal Attachment Disorder.

He tied many a water balloon for his neices and nephews. Summer was out in full force in New Jersey and Matt is the official sponsor of summer. The colors are a bit wonky, but I was trying something new.

Well, we’re back from New Jersey - had a wonderful time, but now it’s back to the grind. Standard stuff like shooing Mojo away from the dog food and forgetting my umbrella for a very cold and wet walk home from work in the rain. Some things never change.

We’re making a concerted effort to spend a little more time together this week as it seems we’re seeing less and less of each other lately. And as I write the majority of my blog drafts in the evenings, they might be a bit shorter than usual this week.

All the more reason for you to go out and buy that Tower of Power album you’ve been putting off.