Blog Posts by The_Stir

The American Academy of Pediatrics has put its foot down on parents slipping crib bumpers into baby's bed. The nation's most respected group of parenting experts has released yet another set of warnings that the soft pads do nothing but put your baby in danger. So what are the chances that parents will actually listen to the warning this time? Fifty percent? Twenty?

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I'd like to put that at 100 percent, but people just seem to love them some crib bumpers. And I don't get it! The AAP is warning that those cute, fluffy pillow-like bands can actually kill our kids. Kill. Not hurt. KILL!

I'm not overstating things. The AAP's newest guidelines warn that these puppies can carry a potential risk of suffocation, strangulation, or entrapment. They make the risk of SIDS climb. And yet with all that scary talk, you can almost guarantee you'll see a bumper on the registry at the next baby shower in your

Two recent stories of toddlers maimed and killed will ensure you never look at your laundry room the same way again. And you shouldn't. Even if all of your detergents are stored securely, it's the washer and dryer themselves that can be death traps for toddlers.

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In the first story, out of Germany, a 3-year-old boy, Franz Bummel, crawled into his family's clothing dryer. His twin brother, Paul, apparently turned the machine on somehow, and their father found the boy dead there some time later. There are no words for how horrifying his discovery must have been.

In the second case, 3-year-old Lewis Lightfoot was trying to help his mother with the laundry. Somehow he was able to open the door while the front-loading machine was running, and his arm got stuck in it. His arm was completely ripped from his body. His mom described the awful event to the Daily Record:

hairy armpits on womanFor two months now I've been growing out my underarm hair. It was something I did once before, in my early-mid 20s, when I was a young feminist finding my way in the world. Back then I felt sexy, even if one girlfriend did beg me to shave my pits before her wedding day. Hairy pits were sensual, they were liberating, and they allowed me to feel like I didn't conform to the standard of hairless beauty that many of my girlfriends did.

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Still, I shaved for her wedding and then I decided to keep my pits clean for a while. I even tried laser but ouch.

So when I stopped shaving for eight days while at the Burning Man festival, it got me thinking about what it would be like to not shave now, over a decade after my last bout with hairy righteousness. Would men be more turned on, or turned off, by my hairy underarms?

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Let's go back for a

Man CaveLately I've been wondering: Don't Man Caves -- those spaces we give our husbands to store the stuff we won't allow in the rest of the house -- say more about us than they do about our husbands?

You know what I'm talking about, right? Man Caves are those designated rooms in which we let our spouses hang the baseball pennants, jerseys, and posters they rescued from their childhood bedrooms. Maybe they display their stamp or beer-bottle collections, or play their ridiculously infantile video games, or -- for all we know -- tuck away their secret collection of porn. (Really, who knows what they do in there?)

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Sometimes these Man Caves are hatched inside a spare bedroom, sometimes it's a corner of the basement, or the garage, or a shed. (My own husband doesn't even get that -- his sports paraphernalia is either shoved behind the shredded settee in our kids' playroom or left littering the bottom of his closet.)

Lots of us

lisa ling talks to amateur porn stars berkley and tylerWe've all dealt with the recession and unemployment rate in different ways. But for one young couple, personal and economic circumstances lead them to doing something that's certainly, err, out of the ordinary to create a better life for their toddler. 24-year-old Tyler and 21-year-old Berkley -- who are featured on the upcoming season premiere of Our America With Lisa Ling -- had been dating off and on for about five years when Berkley got pregnant at 19. Without a college degree, Berkley could only get short-term work as a cocktail waitress in a night club, and Tyler said he was only getting jobs that made less than $350 a week.

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But that all changed when they discovered they could make a decent living and support their daughter more comfortably by performing amateur sex sessions online. They just tried it out one night and found that they could make $300 in 30 minutes!

Now, the couple does it live

When you're trying to conceive, it's not always about the sex (sadly). For some, it's really stressful ... and full of sadness. TTC can be a difficult time especially if traditional methods aren't working. But if you are in the early days of TTC, there are some natural ways to try to speed the process of getting pregnant along.

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The average woman has a 28-day cycle -- that means 5 days of her period, and then 23 days in between. Many will tell you that you ovulate in the middle -- about 10-14 days after your period. While this may be true, it isn't for everyone. Call this TMI if you want, but I had a 33-day cycle -- 5 on, 28 off, ovulation around day 18. If we didn't know when I ovulated and I tried to go by day 14, and did the horizontal baby dance on day 13, assuming I was going to ovulate the next day ... well, I'd most likely be out of luck, wouldn't I, when no egg dropped for 5 more days, huh? Not to

Me, preparing for my spa treatmentI have a secret. I've never been to a spa, and I've never gotten a massage. Until the other day, that is. You want to know why it took me so long? Because I was legitimately frightened.

Call me a weirdo, it's fine. But the idea of someone I don't know touching my body in certain places makes me squeamish. My thoughts: How can I lie there and relax while I'm wondering where else my massage therapist's hands have been, what she does in her spare time, and even what sort of family she comes from? Holy Moses.

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But then an opportunity arose to check out the Stress Melter Ritual at Elizabeth Arden Red Door Spa right here in my concrete jungle of a backyard, and I decided it was time to face my fears. Because really, who can say no to a treatment that will "release built-up tension, increase blood circulation, and restore the flow of energy back into the body"?

So now ... off with

For months now, I've been pestering my woodwork-loving boyfriend to build me a bookshelf. He will get around to it, and when he does, it will be one of the best gifts ever. But filling it with classic tomes I think will make us look smarter wasn't exactly part of my master plan. Interestingly, though, the average person owns 80 books they haven't read and only keep around to make themselves appear more intellectual! Ha! A survey found that as many as 70 percent of books in the average bookcase remain unopened. That is so disappointing. And 57 percent of us make sure the books on view are literary classics (even if we haven't read them).

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Hahaha, wow. Okay, this survey was done by Lindeman's Wine in the U.K., but I wouldn't be surprised if the stats translate across the pond. I will admit -- hearing that people still value literature enough to have to LIE about it is reassuring in a twisted way. But at