Taking Paternal Care to a Whole New Level

This morning, I had a renewed sense of pride in my ability to breast feed and only breast feed. You see, there appears to be a worm-like amphibian that provides for its young by allowing them to rip the skin off the parent. Makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, doesn't it?

The article Yummy Mummy Feeds Young its Skin is in the Science/Nature section of BBC News. Apparently, the Boulengerula taitanus babies are not well developed when hatched. So in order to ensure that the babies receive their proper dose of nutrients, the female B. Taitanus' skin "...becomes thicker and more nutrient-rich when she bears offspring and the young have specialised teeth for tearing and removing it."

Actually, I take it back. Think about how cool it would be to possess this ability. If not for the sole purpose of freaking out that portion of society who thinks it's distasteful when a woman breastfeeds her child in public. HA!

New Music

In a previous post I mentioned that I'm craving new music. My poor iPod has seen the same artists time and again, and my ears tune-out the tunes. Because the whole music shopping process is overwhelming, I'd curl up and nap instead. Actually, I would click my red converse 3 times and wish that my iPod will magically update itself. (it's Apple -- they ARE magic!) Ok. So the magic hasn't happened yet, which is fine because I have finally taken initiative. Every few days I devote about 30 minutes to finding new music. And after several frustrating days, I finally came across 2 gems: About and The Valentines (courtesy of 3Hive). Maybe it's because i'm a child of the 80's, but their synth sound totally appeals to me.

According to their site, The Valentines are in the midst of putting together their first full length album. As for About, I'm totally digging several songs from their label Cock Rock Disco. The name alone sold me. About goes from sounding rough to tight and jerky. Either way I find myself doing the robot or and dancing like Molly Ringwald in "Breakfast Club". LOVIN' IT.

Another band that I was recently introduced to (thank you April) is The Spinto Band. So far, my favourite song is 'Crack the Whip,' which gave me the urge to dance throughout my office building while wearing a totally cheesey grin, high-fiving everyone and shooting my 'finger guns' with a wink.

The only downside to this new obsession is that I appear to be falling in love with bands who primarily tour in Europe. Looks like I'll have to plan several trips abroad. I can't help it if they all tour at different times.

Ladies time..

A co-worker sent this to me and I busted out laughing. Sorry guys...

"A study conducted by UCLA's Department of Psychiatry has revealed that the kind of face a woman finds attractive on a man can differ depending on where she is in her menstrual cycle. For example: If she is ovulating, she is attracted to men with rugged and masculine features. However, if she is menstruating, or menopausal, she tends to prefer a man with scissors lodged in his temple and a bat jammed up his ass while he is on fire.

Further studies in this area have been canceled"

I'm in love...

Not with another man, but a machine. It's name is Bissel SpotBot.

Oh SpotBot. You totally know how to clean my carpets.

I bought Bissel to make me sane. A month or so ago, Ollie regressed in his house training and started to urinate on our carpet ... in the middle of the night. After he was done, Ollie would wake me up to bring me over to the newly made stain. Thanks bud. Really, thanks.

To tackle this, we had found a new pet odor/stain remover, which--oddly enough--has an overpowering smell of baby powder. On most of the stains the remover worked, but on Ollies last 'release' -- not so much. His last accident was super concentrated. My eyes teared-up when approaching it. Mix that with the smell baby powder and.. well.. can you feel my pain?

A couple of weeks have gone by since Ollie's last accident and I still can't get the smell out of my nose. I have to fix this if we ever plan on having guests again. So, during lunch I did a little investigating into hand-held steam cleaners (thanks to the advice from my chiropractor -- a fellow dog owner). Purusing Target (because I refuse to shop at Walmart and Target is close to home), I came across the Bissel SpotBot® Handsfree Compact Deep Cleaner. 5 stars. No bad reviews. This is too good to be true. Better do some comparison shopping. 5 minutes later (I'm a fast shopper) and I'm sold on the Spotbot.

After grabbing some grub, I went to work. There is one particular feature that really sold me on this particular "hand-held" cleaner -- hands-free cleaning. Wha??? How could this be? Technology my friend. Bissel technology.

Off I go. Add my mix of cleansers, plug in ol' Spotbot, place the circular-brush-suction do-hicky thing over the nasty stain, and press "Set-in Stain". 6 minutes later, Spotbot informs me that it has completed its job by beeping. and beeping. How do I stop this beeping? Oh.. hit the "Stop" button. Oops. I remove Spotbot from the stain and *gasp* what's this? NO MORE STAIN. My heart skips a beat and I became all goose-pimpley. I take in a deep breath -- cleanliness. I smell cleanliness. No more Ollie goodness mixed with baby powder. I LOVE YOU BISSEL.

18 minutes later, 3 additional stains are removed and I can't stop giggling. Oh yeah, I'm in love.