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A collection of essays from Mary Widdicks: writer, humorist, novelist, and former psychologist who can't remember if she fed all her kids this morning.

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Who Needs Condoms When You Have Vomit?

August 14, 2016 by Mary Widdicks Leave a Comment

Who Needs Condoms When You Have Vomit?

Before I had children, many of my most embarrassing moments involved vomit: spewing milk from my nose, barfing on stage during the school musical, getting drunk and throwing up on that cute frat boy. But now that I have three children under five, puke is as much a part of my routine as showering or [Read more…]

Six Job Titles For Moms Looking To Pad Their Resume 

June 26, 2016 by Mary Widdicks Leave a Comment

Six Job Titles For Moms Looking To Pad Their Resume 

Being a stay at home mom is a lot like sweatshop labor. We are on duty twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, often with little or no sleep. We are not offered the benefits of vacations, sick days, unions, or employee appreciation days. The one benefit is that for years our positions as [Read more…]

15 Reasons Why In My Next Life I’ll Have Cats Instead

May 1, 2016 by Mary Widdicks 1 Comment

15 Reasons Why In My Next Life I’ll Have Cats Instead

The Crazy Cat Lady is a comical figure we’ve all encountered, with her wild hair, threadbare clothes, and faint odor of cat urine. You might have passed her in the grocery store with a cart full of liver snaps and Whiskas, or moved in next door to her and received a juicy, headless welcome gift [Read more…]

Why Moms Would Have Made Great 80s Rockers

March 13, 2016 by Mary Widdicks Leave a Comment

Why Moms Would Have Made Great 80s Rockers

  The 1980s were a time of prosperity and excess, when the classic rock bands of the ’70s took a swan dive into a pool of glitter, made love to the progressive (and androgynous) glam rockers, and popped out a feathered-hair, leather-clad love child known as the hair band. There was nothing practical about Kiss [Read more…]

T-Harmony.com: A Toddler Play Dating Community

January 31, 2016 by Mary Widdicks 1 Comment

T-Harmony.com: A Toddler Play Dating Community

Like everyone, toddlers are searching the world for their ideal partners: their play date soul mates. Unfortunately, young children are confined to the play dates their parents arrange for them and often end up thrust into awkward social situations with playmates who wouldn’t know a My Little Pony from a Hungry Hungry Hippo. It would [Read more…]

11 Reasons Why November is My Toddler’s Favorite Month

November 15, 2015 by Mary Widdicks Leave a Comment

11 Reasons Why November is My Toddler’s Favorite Month

When asked about their favorite time of year, most people get misty-eyed remembering summer BBQs, warm evening concerts in the park, sunbathing, and staying up late. Sounds idyllic, right? Unless you’re a toddler. Young children are physically incapable of sitting on a picnic blanket and enjoying a movie in the park without an obscene amount [Read more…]

Ode To My Milk Boobs

November 9, 2015 by Mary Widdicks 4 Comments

Ode To My Milk Boobs

When I was young, I used to wish for big boobs—terrific, tantalizing ta-tas like all the girls in movies seemed to have. I often asked myself: Wouldn’t I be the most popular girl at my middle school prom if I had giant melons instead of these prepubescent raisins? Sadly, I wouldn’t realize until many years [Read more…]

The Science of Bad Play Dates

November 6, 2015 by Mary Widdicks 1 Comment

The Science of Bad Play Dates

Please welcome Norine of Science of Parenthood as she gives us the hilarious story behind one of the cartoons in her new book: Science of Parenthood: Thoroughly Unscientific Explanations for Utterly Baffling Parenting Situations. I know all about bad playdates, but Norine takes it to a whole other level.  In fact you might say she has play date incompatibility [Read more…]

Review of Spending The Holidays With People I Want to Punch In The Throat

October 15, 2015 by Mary Widdicks 3 Comments

Review of Spending The Holidays With People I Want to Punch In The Throat

  Spending The Holidays With People I Want To Punch In The Throat is the second collection of hilarious essays from author Jen Mann. In her first book, People I Want To Punch In The Throat, she laid waste to suburban scourges and Stepford wives. This time she’s taking on the pumpkin-spice latte-drinking, Black Friday [Read more…]

How I Finally Learned To Cover My Boobs While Breastfeeding

October 4, 2015 by Mary Widdicks 5 Comments

How I Finally Learned To Cover My Boobs While Breastfeeding

Every day I am bombarded on social media by stories of women being shamed, berated, chastised, and even exiled because they have the nerve to expose the top half of their breast while nourishing their children in the natural, instinctual way females of the species have done for hundreds of thousands of years. I have [Read more…]

The New Cleavage

August 30, 2015 by Mary Widdicks 13 Comments

The New Cleavage

It’s everywhere, bursting forth from clothes made to fit my toddler, ambling nonchalantly through the supermarket (watch out for the freezer aisle!), tempting an entire generation of sex-obsessed teenage boys, and making me wonder how I missed this disturbing shift in fashion trends: Under-butt has become the new cleavage. As recently initiated member of the [Read more…]

Nobody Better Vomit on My Parade

August 23, 2015 by Mary Widdicks 6 Comments

Nobody Better Vomit on My Parade

As a mother of three children under five years old, there are many times when I feel like a superhero just for surviving a typical day.  Like the time I schlepped all three of my children, like a deranged mother possum, through the Target parking lot in the rain because apparently my four-year-old would melt [Read more…]

To Hell In A Handbag: Why Moms Can’t Have Nice Things

August 9, 2015 by Mary Widdicks 14 Comments

To Hell In A Handbag: Why Moms Can’t Have Nice Things

“It’s designer.” My husband beamed at me with such pride you would have thought he’d tanned the leather of the handbag himself with his own blood, sweat, and tears. I turned the large grey bag over in my hands, admiring the luscious purple lining and shiny metal buckle. The chrome reminded me of the hood [Read more…]

Baby Girls Are Grosser Than Baby Boys

June 28, 2015 by Mary Widdicks 6 Comments

Baby Girls Are Grosser Than Baby Boys

Boys are made of slime and snails and puppy-dog tails while girls are made of sugar and spice and everything nice. Right? As a mom of two little boys, I was delighted to find out my third child would be a girl: a delicate little rose to balance out the testosterone. I filled her room [Read more…]

Mothers-In-Law Are Not Romantic: Advice For My Sons’ Future Wives

June 21, 2015 by Mary Widdicks 34 Comments

Mothers-In-Law Are Not Romantic: Advice For My Sons’ Future Wives

Dear future daughters-in-law, You will one day think of me only as “mother-in-law” or “his mother”, but I can still remember being 18: the world was full of possibilities, love was all consuming, and marriage was the end of a fairytale. I thought I had it all figured out, but I’d forgotten one very important [Read more…]

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