I love Ikea. For those of you who don’t have an Ikea nearby, it’s basically a Swedish-based home furnishings and decor store (with a few
cinnamon rolls thrown in) that gives you the ability to have very modern design at very affordable prices (we’re talking lower than a K-Mart blue light special). It’s a leader in
environmentally-friendly business practices and has been named one of the top 100 companies to work for by Fortune. Our huge area store feels like it’s having a grand opening all
the time even though it’s been open for six years– still filled with customers, still long lines to check out. But in spite of all its sleek, inexpensive stuff, don’t the
Swedish titles for everything sometimes bug you? I mean, at Ikea, it’s not a laundry hamper, it’s “Peva”.A measuring cup is “Fläckig”; bathroom mirrors, …
Month: August 2011
When Your Child’s Email Gets Hacked: My Look Into the Evil World of Spamming
I guess our first clue should have been when our preteen daughter, Emmie, couldn’t get into her email account a few
weeks ago– she said it wouldn’t let her in, and she figured that maybe she’d forgotten her password, even though it was the only one she ever used, and it always popped up automatically from
our home computer, anyway. (Her email service says that’s a sign that the account might have been compromised.) But unknowing doofus parents that we are, we just went on
about our business as she answered the security questions and reset her password (she chose to “change” it to the same one as before). Then yesterday morning, suspicious emails, with blank
“subject” lines, started arriving from her address, several every few minutes, into my inbox and into everyone else’s in her address book. They contained a link to a “pharmaceutical” website, a
site that contained descriptions of just how their products would help male enhancement and performance. It’s bad enough we all get …
Kids and Summer Boredom: Should Parents Come to the Rescue?
I got screamed at yesterday. Surprisingly, not by my teenager, but my soon-to-be teenager. And just what were those oft-repeated,
often-heard-in-summer-words, this time uttered at the top of her lungs? “I’M BORED!!!!!!!” Followed by: “WHAT CAN I DO?!! FIGURE OUT SOMETHING FOR ME TO DO!!!!!!! Followed by
bedroom door slamming, and after that, crying. Geesh. I thought I was over those years of “Mommy, please fill my every waking void…”
So that I could get even a shred of work done during the summer, I used to do just that, at least two to three days a week: schedule day camps, mothers-day-outs, etc., planning far in advance to
fill the summer calendar, beginning as early as late February. But as kids get older, I think they need to be more responsible for filling in their time, to foster creativity, independence, etc., and
so each summer for at least the …