If I didn’t know that bears probably aren’t that psychologically sophisticated, I’d bet that bear mother is a narcissist.

The difference between a narcissistic human mother and a bear? The bear had the decency to finish her cubs off quickly instead of killing them slowly, psychically, over a lifetime.

Does this sound like any mother you know—neglectful, vampiric, capable of eating you alive?

If you recognize any of the following situations, then the chances are good that your mother may be killing you.

The call

In the past, when all of your girlfriends are having Mother’s Day brunch with beloved matriarchs who cherished them from birth, do you spend the day alone, stressed out, wondering if the flowers you sent your mom arrived on time?

Do you call her later in the day, but not so late she thinks you’ve only just remembered—and then she accuses you of forgetting?

Does the conversation goes a little something like this?

“Hi, mom. Happy Mother’s Day! How was your day?”

“Fine, fine. Your brother came down and took me out for brunch. We had a nice time….” The small talk gets smaller, and notably absent any mention of the $100 bouquet of roses you had delivered days in advance. Finally, you ask, “So did you get the flowers?”

“What flowers?” she asks.

“I sent you roses, for Mother’s Day. I got the delivery confirmation that they arrived.”

“Oh, those flowers. Yes, yes, I got them days ago.”

“Aren’t they nice?” you ask, trying hard not to plead.

“Mmm hmm.”

The flashbacks

Enter flashbacks, like that feeling you had as a kid, when she used your homemade Mother’s Day card to scrape cigarette ashes off her bureau, tossing your macaroni-laden masterpiece in the trash.

Or that time when you fancied yourself an artist and offered to paint something for her  heavily nautical-themed home–think Gorton’s fisherman statues and wall barometers—-and she said, “Oh, no, please don’t.”

Or the time, after you’d just hit puberty and the baby weight from the first 12 years of your life had finally melted away and in its place emerged a not entirely bad looking adolescent girl, giddy over the emergence of her girl parts, when she said, “I liked you better when you were fat.”

Or when she made you a beautiful taffeta dress—two sizes too small—for a special dance you were really excited about going to. And when you couldn’t squeeze into it, she wore it around the house.

Or perhaps there was that time you asked her to fly out and help you with your soon-to-be-born daughter because you’d found out you needed a C-section and she said, “No, I’ll be in Florida then.”

Florida—where she spends about five months a year living on her very ample savings that she sometimes shares with you, at 3 percent interest.

Or that time when you offered to hire her a housekeeper (because she really, really needs one), cleaned her refrigerator out (because she couldn’t part with 10-year-old ketchup without an intervention), and asked her what she wanted you to do if she ever became incapacitated, you know, like her mother, who died of Alzheimer’s, and she flew into a rage.

And then she accused you of thinking she’s “stupid,” because, of course, she has a living will, and no, she’s not going to tell you what’s in it. And that ketchup you threw out? She fished it out of the trash as soon as you left the room.

The verdict

Of course, I don’t know anyone like this, but if you recognize yourself in these situations, if these flashbacks sound familiar, dear reader, then you might want to ask for a separate cage at the zoo–so to speak—because you’re probably not going to make it out alive.

That’s a rhetorical question. The answer is yes—if you have a dog.

At least once a week, I get to experience what life might have been like if I’d had that second child I always thought I wanted. That’s when my 7-year-old accuses the family dog of launching deeply personal attacks against her that include anything from the highly probable, like stealing a carrot from a hand held too close to the dog’s mouth, to the absurd, “Madge is staring at me. Make her stop!”

“Madge did it” has become such a familiar refrain that the humor of saying “the dog is in my room and won’t leave” is lost on my daughter—who shut the dog in with her in the first place.

Maybe, for some kids, the desire for a sibling is so strong, they’ll use any animate object to fill the role of sister or brother. I hadn’t paid much attention to the complex relationship developing between Olive and Madge until recently. It started with small things, typical things you expect a kid with a dog to do, like teasing the dog with a carrot. Madge is such a very good dog, she just stares and salivates, desperately hoping the carrot will fall to the ground, where she can safely devour it without hearing her people shout about how very bad she is.

These bouts of veiled aggression alternate with periods of near obsession when the dog is out of my daughter’s site for more than 15 minutes:

“Is Madge dead? What happens when she dies? Will we bury her in the backyard? If she dies, can we get a puppy? Isn’t she cute, mom? Mom, look how cute she is? Isn’t she adorable, mom? She’s old, but not that old, right, mom? I love her so, so much, mom!”

And when Madge went missing early Sunday morning—the small gate that keeps her squat 21-pound body in the yard had been knocked down during the night—you’d have thought we’d found her dismembered body on the sidewalk for the tears Olive shed during our search.

Minutes after the morning’s sidewalk dirge woke the neighbors, we spotted her, bouncing toward us from the alley across the street, entrails intact and smelling like she’d rolled in the carcass of a 12-day-old mouse. Celebration followed, dog treats were passed ’round. And Madge—thinking such praise meant that business with the carrot was forgotten—trotted toward Olive’s room to chew on a piece of paper she’d found somewhere.

She had but one paw over the threshold before Olive’s punishing ”no” stopped her at the door—and Madge had to find another place, on another floor, to eat her paper.

My personal favorite (or is that favourite?):

“You turn if you want to; the lady’s not for turning.”

There is no better way of saying “I won’t change my mind, and you can’t make me” than this. Your kid asks you to reconsider a curfew? Sorry, but “the lady’s not for turning.” And if said child gives you the stink eye, just tell him/her to look it up. A little learning never hurt anyone.

When it comes to parenting, everyone has an opinion, but Jackie Kennedy’s opinion matters more than most:

“If you bungle raising your children, I don’t think whatever else you do well matters very much.”

On marriage, you need only consult Jane Austen, who, incidentally, was never married:

“Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance.”

When facing frustrations with sneering wit, look no further than Dorothy Parker to play it as it lays:

“What fresh hell is this?”

Despite Taylor Swift’s inappropriate use of Madeline Albright’s words in her verbal tussle with Amy Poehler and Tina Fey around a comment made during the Golden Globes earlier this year, the searing truth of Albright’s words still ring true:

“There is a special place in hell for women who do not help other women.”

Like or loathe her, Hillary Clinton knows how to take a punch. Whether it’s a cheating husband or comments about her cankles, the lady does not back down from a good fight. And speaking of fights, here’s what she had to say about them:

“You  show people what you’re willing to fight for when you fight your friends.”

Don’t get me wrong, we had fun, and nobody could ever accuse me of not spending enough one-on-one time with my daughter. In fact, when I’m feeling guilty about not volunteering in her classroom as much as I’d like, I just have to recall the absolute volume of time my daughter and I spend together over any school vacations, when most of her friends are away, as well as my less expensive babysitters.

Since then, I plan vacations that either include other adults and kids, or I just stop all constructive parenting until vacation is over.

Let me just get this off my chest.

That was no exception during a short trip we just took to San Juan Island. We had a few days of spring break to kill, and having never been there, I figured, why not. Unfortunately, the weather didn’t cooperate, nor did the ferry that broke down and left us waiting five hours for the next one to the island.

Fortunately, a parenting vacation begins the moment we leave the house, so I offered my daughter unlimited time playing Temple Run 2 while I try to finish reading Cheryl Sandberg’s Lean In. I realize the irony of that.

Chase 45-minutes of Temple Run and Temple Run Oz with a chocolate-chip muffin the size of a small pumpkin, and there were just four hours left to kill before our ferry arrived.

Fortunately, I always travel with sandwich-making supplies. I made peanut-butter sandwiches in the trunk of my car, which we ate while sitting on a Dora the Explorer sheet on the small strip of beach near the ferry dock.

We finally made it to the island, where we ate more peanut-butter sandwiches and stayed up past 10 watching Parks & Recreation. My daughter has become such a big fan of the show, she built this Lego replica of Ann Perkin’s house and The Pit just before we left for our trip:

But I digress.

In all, the vacation only cost me a few hours of screen time, a foot-long lollipop, a stuffed Orca keychain, and half a Hershey bar to achieve something close to relaxation.

I call that a bargain.

“What the heck kind of parents do any of them have that they let this go on – why was a 16 year old girl out all night, drinking? Her parents sure failed in her upbringing – where were the parents of the boys that they were out all night? What is going on in that town? A bunch of unfit parents who let their kids run wild and then wonder what happened. Sounds like the girl has a history of drinking – at 16!!!! this girl needs some supervision and to be held responsible for the her actions – One night of stupidity can change lives for ever – kids need to think about this.”

I’m guessing Meech-942960 doesn’t have kids of his own.

I’ve got a few years before my daughter will be attending parties without me, but I’m already wondering about what to tell her, how to prepare her, how to teach her to avoid situations that leave her vulnerable.

I’m not sure how to draw from my own experience. When I look back on my behavior during high school and well into my first year of college–drinking too much, walking around late at night, alone, having had three too many at a party—I consider myself lucky to have graduated without having been sexually assaulted. Even so, my behavior  didn’t mean I was “asking for it,” but I also wasn’t doing my best to take care of myself. And yet, as a teenager, it never occurred to me that I needed to.

I was also at the University of New Hampshire the year a controversial rape case made national headlines. A female student was sexually assaulted by two male students while another group of students looked on and did nothing. I read about the case in the UNH student newspaper, but I remember thinking it was something that happened far outside my daily life, even though the rape had happened just a few floors below mine. The girlfriend of one of the accused lived on my floor.

Still, none of this prompted me to behave differently. Fortunately, I had matured enough during my freshman year to understand that getting good grades was slightly more important than partying.

As a parent, I look at this and wonder: What can I tell my daughter that will make her take her potential to be a victim seriously? And how do you warn without creating paranoia?

As we all know from having our consciousness raised over the last decade or so, two-thirds of sexual assault cases involve someone known to the victim, according to Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network statistics. Does this mean I should look at every boyfriend my daughter brings home as a potential rapist, every party she attends as a potential crime scene?

If statistics are any indicator of where the greatest risk lies, would I be negligent if didn’t?

Tomorrow is my birthday, and I’m feeling a little philosophical this year, like I need to take stock of something. And while I really don’t think introspective navel-gazing makes for good reading, I’m going to do it anyway.

So excuse me while I stare lovingly at my navel.

Time is a limited-quantity item, and once it’s gone, it’s gone for good. We hate to “waste” time or “give up” time to things that don’t jibe with what we think we should be doing. When I watch a movie I don’t like or suffer through a meeting that accomplishes nothing, I think: I can’t get that time back. In the wisdom of my advancing age, I’ve become more honest and confident about what I will and won’t spend time on. But I really wish I could get some of that “wasted” time back. For instance, the time I spent …

Trying to figure out what Michael Stipe was saying.

Attending step aerobics.

Not eating when I was hungry. I actually feel a little guilty when I think of the money my parents wasted funding my meal plan at college, a place where fried cheese was an entrée, not an appetizer.

Not using my better body parts for personal gain when I was young enough to pull that off. I really regret that one.

Checking and re-checking to make sure the stove wasn’t on during a short bout of OCD.

Saving myself for a guy I moved to Arizona to be with.

Hating that same guy after I found out he cheated on me the entire time we were together.

Trying to get my 70-year-old mother to understand that offering to hire a housecleaner for her shouldn’t be interpreted as a death wish.

Smoking.

On the balance, that’s not a terribly long list of regrets. And not all of it was a waste, either. I mean, you have to waste time to realize how valuable it is. You just hope that you don’t have to waste too much of it to learn that lesson. So here I am, on the eve of a significant birthday, feeling fully enlightened and ready to eat cake.

If I have any advice to my aging self, it would be to read and apply the trite credos from the poster (above) that’s hanging in my office. I mean, seriously, anyone who says “All emotions are beautiful” has never encountered a starving young woman after her daily step aerobic class.

But there are two that are worth reading and remembering: This is your life.

And life is short.

And if Marissa were Michael Mayer, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation, and women wouldn’t be quite so mad at her.

When the Marissa Mayer story first broke, my first reaction was more confused than hostile. Why would the new CEO of a global tech company ban employees from working remotely? I mean, this is Yahoo, not Target. A lot of tech work doesn’t require much more than an Internet connection and a computer, so what harm is there in occasionally working from home—especially if you’re getting your work done?

There is no harm if the last part of that sentence is actually true—that employees are getting their work done. From the many articles written about Yahoo’s new policy over the last week or so, it’s become pretty clear that the problems at Yahoo aren’t really about working remotely. They’re about work not getting done and a culture that doesn’t value, reward, or even model collaborative culture or how to effectively manager workers who are remote.

So Mayer looked at the VPN logs and open parking spaces and used a blunt instrument to remove Yahoo’s least productive workers.

The problem with blunt instruments is that, well, they’re blunt. They can cause bleeding and scarring. You get where I’m going with this metaphor?

For Yahoo, this may end up being a good thing. The gauntlet: Either come in to work or find another job. You really can’t get  more aggressive than that, and Mayer’s decree would annoy me if I worked at Yahoo.

Nobody wants to be told what to do, especially when the decision about where to work has been yours to make. I’d like to believe the ability to occasionally work from home to care for a sick child or await the cable guy would be supported. From what I’ve been able to find, Yahoo offers backup care, which is an amazing, company-subsidized perk that my company also provides. It means I can go in to the office when my daughter is sick because my company pays the bulk of an hourly rate for a trained childcare provider. I use it frequently, and I know how lucky I am to have it.

The great thing about my job is that I can (still) decide how I’ll get my work done. Because, at least where I work, you won’t survive for more than a review cycle if you’re not.

As an employee who generally works in the office, a policy change like the one Mayer made wouldn’t change my life very much, and I might appreciate knowing I can schedule face-to-face meetings with formerly remote colleagues. Maybe more innovation would stem from suddenly having  bodies in formerly vacant offices.

Maybe.

Whoa, girl!  You really know how to drop a bomb. Everyone is still talking about that HR memo. I’m sure you’re like, Hey can we move on and start making some money now, people?!

I’m totally with you, Ms. Mayer. Totally! I mean, we really need to tighten things up around here, get those lazy butts in seats. I’m a little bummed that my view of the parking lot will now be blocked by the guy across the hall—the one with the sweet window office—who hasn’t been in for the last six months.  But if innovation comes without access to direct sunlight, then I won’t complain. I am ALL in!

Let me also just say that I think those who’ve dubbed you “the Stalin of Silicon Valley” are completely out of line. I mean, that’s an insult to Stalin. He was way, way worse than you are. And, really, is being forced to work in your office really like the Great Purge? At least we get free lunch at Yahoo. Am I right? If we were face-to-face right now, we could fist-bump to that one.

Now that we’ll all be in the office, we can fist-bump all the time!

There’s just one thing I wanted to ask you about. It’s a family issue. And I know how important family is to you because you built an on-site nursery for your son—who, by the way, is adorable and SO smart. Just like his mom!

So here goes: I’m a solo single parent. I have a 6-year-old daughter who I adore probably as much as you adore your son. You’ve totally inspired me to become a CEO, though, so I can bring her to work and have her privately schooled on site while I work.

But until that happens (you can laugh at THAT idea now!), I sometimes have to work from home when she’s sick. She’s a pretty healthy kid, though, so I promise it won’t happen too much. Seriously, I can count on one hand how many times she’s missed school in the last two years. And as long as her fever isn’t too high, I can usually dose her with Tylenol long enough to make it into the office for a few hours before the school nurse calls demanding that I pick her up.

I will definitely use the company’s backup child care option, but—and I hate to complain—it gets expensive. And when yours is the only income, child care really adds up, not to mention sometimes a sick kid just wants to be with her mom.

Also, I occasionally volunteer in her classroom. Research shows that kids whose parents participate in their learning do better in school. I know you’re a data-driven decision-making kind of gal, so you can appreciate that one. Virtual fist-bump!

And just so you know, I’m a pretty decent performer. I’m actually one of those people who’s in the office every day, not one of those slackers you’re hoping to drive out of the fold. I actually like coming to work!

So I’m hoping you might make exceptions to the new policy in cases like these. And if not, then I get that too. We working gals can’t sacrifice getting ahead to take care of family needs, can we? So if keeping my job means my daughter has to raise herself, I am ready to take that for the team!

Thanks for listening, Ms. M!

Yours truly,

*An imaginary Yahoo employee

**Parody: A literary or artistic work that imitates the characteristic style of an author or a work for comic effect or ridicule.

Anne Hathaway‘s nipples joined her on the red carpet.

The general consensus seems to be that Renee Zellweger was on something.

Kristen Stewart was on crutches.

Adele was amazing.

Nicole Kidman‘s forehead didn’t move.

Barbra Streisand sang.

Michelle Obama stopped by.

And people love to make fun of the Oscars.

I posted this pretty unattractive image in support of Marlo Thomas, who wrote a helpful article  on just how far we haven’t come on the issue of equal pay for equal work. The short and sweet of it:

According to the National Women’s Law Center, the majority of America’s full-time working women are still being paid 77 cents for every dollar that a man makes — a paltry 18-cent increase over what women were making in 1970, when I first joined the fight for equal pay. This disparity, says the Law Center, translates into $10,622 less per median-income woman every year.

I don’t know about you, but I sure could use that 10K to cover childcare expenses, property taxes, and a few other incidentals—the same things any man of the house needs to pay for. And for working women who are both mom and man of the house, not having that 10K really, really sucks.

What would you do with an extra 10 large to spread around—buy a new car, take a vacation, maybe hire a lawyer?