Pot-smoking single parents, bad puns, and more

And now a roundup of best link bait you likely missed last week.

Let’s start with the good news. The Huffington Post offered this helpful guide for pot-smoking single parents: What Pot-Smoking Single Parents Need To Know. A must-read for anyone who can’t put down the pipe (or bong, or whatever) long enough to get through a custody dispute.

I can’t entirely believe someone would ask this question (also from HuffPo): I’ve Had Five Affairs With Married Men but Don’t Feel Guilty. Am I Morally Bankrupt?

The answer to that question is yes. Yes, you are.

MLive pulls off the week’s best pun with this headline: No milk in school lunches? Jackson school official says that’s udder nonsense.

In keeping with the media policy of making single mothers look desperate and needy, there’s this story from Sanford, Florida, news: Radio Show Helps Single Mother Get Into New Home. Great news for the family, but I wonder how they felt reading this sentence: “Painted yellow with a fish tank, a big backyard and energy efficient, a Sanford single mother of two moved her family into what she calls her dream home.

As if the mom doesn’t have enough to worry about. Now she’s been painted yellow with a fish tank. . . And you know that’s got to hurt.

‘He goes out on one-night stands,’ and other things moms really should say

Who hasn’t been on the receiving end of a mom’s embarrassing comment?

Just think how poor Ryan Lochte must have felt hearing his mom’s comment about his preference for one-night stands?

There’s really no bad outcome to that kind of disclosure, however much his mom later claimed that wasn’t what she meant.

What she really meant was that he just likes to date a girl once, maybe twice, but that’s it. He’s too busy to commit.

Uh huh.

I’m sure he’s too busy to commit, but how can a guy that good looking not use his formidable powers of beauty for seduction?

I would.

But, more importantly, what prompts a mom to share the most intimate details of her child’s life with strangers?

This situation reminds me of the weird, embarrassing things my mom used to share with my old boyfriends when I’d bring them by, like if they wanted to see “the fat pictures.”

I was a husky kid.  I wore a bowl cut on my plum-shaped head that matched my apple-shaped body. I was a vision. Kind of like this:

I’d include a photo, but my mom still has them.

It’s fun to imagine what she’d do if she were in the same situation as Ryan Lochte’s mom.

Flash forward to a fictional future where I’m an Olympic star. (I probably don’t need the word “fictional” in that last sentence.)

My mom is invited on the Today Show to talk about what it’s like being the mother of a really good-looking athlete. She chats merrily with Ann Curry (this is my fantasy) about how hard I work and how she always knew I was going to be great.

And then: “Well, Ann, I brought some pictures to show you.”  And right there on the Today Show couch, I’ll be outed as a fat kid.

There will be talk of Weight Watchers endorsements and lots of “but look at her now” comments. Maybe Michelle Obama will tweet something like, “Kennedy kicked the food habit, so can you!”

Every subsequent interview I have will mention my childhood as a fat kid — and how much greater I am for it. There really is no bad outcome to this kind of disclosure, which makes me think that the intimate-detail bombs mothers throw around strangers must have an evolutionary purpose. In Lochte’s case, it only increases his sexual prowess. Women will actually try harder to please him, to make him monogamous — to be “the one.”

My story makes me more attractive to companies that make diet products. Financial stability will be assured.

So the next time you find yourself biting your tongue, trying not to tell your daughter’s new boyfriend about her “fat phase,” stop. You could be denying her future greatness, or a Jenny Craig contract.

Crayon art, or something like it

It looked so good on Pinterest. And it sounded so easy.

Fabulous wall art in less than a hour with just a fistful of colored wax and a hair dryer?

Just glue the crayons to a canvas and apply heat.

How hard could it be?

So I tried it. It started out OK.

Then I applied a little heat. I used an embossing gun instead of a hair dryer because I thought that might work better.

You know, the embossing gun I never use but just had to have.

 I wasn’t sure what it was supposed to look like, but it didn’t look half as good as it did in my imagination. So I applied more heat.

I didn’t like that any better, so I added more heat.

This lovely mass of wax isn’t what you’d call the desired outcome.

So the lesson here is that a little heat goes a long way. And I recommend using a hairdryer to get the cool drip effect I was going for.

For real inspiration, I recommend the following excellent tutorials:

Check out Grandma’s Garden–Crayon Art on Artistic Life. The kids featured here were smart enough to figure out how to do it right, and their projects look great.

52 Kitchen Adventures offers a clear step-by-step melted crayon tutorial. Just follow the directions. You can’t go wrong.

Another great tutorial can be found on Unsimple Living.

And if you want even more inspiration, see the fun silhouettes this artist added to her canvases.