Exploiting My Baby : A Blog by Teresa Strasser

I ask this question during my fourth go-round with the song, “Ghostbusters.” It’s playing in the industrial parking lot of a quaint Pennsylvania suburb where a group of elementary school children are having a Halloween parade. An amplifier is perched on a chair, an orange extension cord leading to a cute schoolhouse, complete with glimmering [...]

There’s a social contract when it comes to birthday parties for kids. You can’t just be a recurring guest, enjoying the bouncy houses, gift bags and balloon animals arranged and paid for by other parents. No, you have to reciprocate. Like it or not, there’s a kid pro quo. Other parents helped you kill a [...]

“Desitin in my cuticles” is not the first line of a poignant country song, but I keep thinking it should be. No. Desitin in my cuticles is what concerns me when I’m asked the question I get at least once a day: “Are you having another one?” Really, this should not be an annoying question. [...]

When people talk about their “crazy” families, it really brings out my competitive nature. Unless one uncle shot himself in the head and one aunt suffocated herself with a plastic bag per the instructions in a paperback version of “Final Exit,” your people just aren’t that crazy. Oh, and don’t forget my great aunt Rose, [...]