Do you sleep with a pig?

EVERY night for the last year, Kathy Ruttenberg runescape gold has been taking a bath, putting on pajamas, turning on CNN and getting into bed with a little pig named Trixie.
“She’s a great cuddler if you lie still,” said Ms. Ruttenberg, a 53-year-old artist who lives near Woodstock, N.Y. “But if you’re restless, she gets annoyed, and her hooves are very sharp.”
Ms. Ruttenberg has the black-and-blue marks to show for it. Still, of all the animals she has in her bed (there are also two kittens and three terriers, to be precise), Trixie, a 16-pound Vietnamese pot-bellied pig, is her favorite, because of the way she spoons.
“I have an Angora rabbit, too,” Ms. Ruttenberg said. “But he’s on the floor running around because the other animals don’t allow him up. We have a hierarchy in our bedroom.”
Ms. Ruttenberg’s habit of sleeping with pets mirrors that of Paris Hilton, who has slept with a pig — of the four-legged variety — and was once bitten at her home at 3 a.m. by a kinkajou, a tiny raccoon-related creature. Keeping that sort of menagerie may be unusual, but the habit of allowing animals in bed is not. Figures vary, but according to a recent study published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 14 to 62 percent of the 165 million dogs and cats in this country sleep in bed with humans, with other surveys runescape gold skewing higher.
The reasons are well documented. First, touching, human or otherwise, raises levels of oxytocin in the body, creating feelings of contentment. And, of course, the comfort that an unconditionally loving animal provides in bed is a emotional balm, especially for the depressed, lonely or anxious.
“Animals are uncomplicated and keep us in the present tense,” said Mark Doty, the author of a memoir called “Dog Years,” which chronicles the death of a lover. “When Wally could barely move, I saw him lifting his hand to reach over and pet Beau, our young retriever, who was curled up next to him. He couldn’t even feed himself, but he had the strength and will to give comfort to a dog at his side. It was remarkable.”
It’s no surprise that pet owners like Mr. Doty seem unconcerned about the study published earlier this month by the C.D.C., in which two California doctors warn that allowing pets to sleep in the bed can be dangerous and can spread zoonoses (pronounced zoh-AN-ee-sees), pathogens that go from animals to people. According to Bruno B. Chomel, a professor at the University of California at Davis, and Ben Sun of the California Department of Public Health, the risks are rare, but real. They cite instances of fleas from cats transmitting bubonic plague. Cat scratch fever is a danger, too, they say, as are various forms of meningitis, Pasturella pneumonia and other infections.
“We know these are just the tip of the iceberg,” said Dr. Chomel, who said he has runescape gold owned dogs and cats, but has never allowed them in the bedroom. “There are risks and precautions to take. But we aren’t telling people not to be close to their pets.”
That’s a good thing, because kicking pets out of bed isn’t likely to be an option for many people. First of all, it’s difficult to retrain animals once they have established a routine. Erica Lehrer and Richard Goldman of Houston learned that when they tried to keep their three cats out of the bedroom after installing an expensive black carpet.
“They staged a protest: cried all night, pounded with their cat paws on the door,” said Ms. Lehrer, 52, a writer. After three sleepless nights, she said: “They won and moved back in. We bought a really good vacuum cleaner.”
“Now we know that white carpet is better than black if you have cats,” added Mr. Goldman, a 54-year-old business consultant who disliked all cats before he married Ms. Lehrer, and finds himself in the guest room when the two in his home are too active in the bed. “Marriage is a journey, and this is part of it.”
At least their cats are indoor animals. That means there is less risk of having mice and other critters deposited in the bed. Staying indoors, like runescape gold most city cats do, also reduces the risk of fleas, ticks and other potential disease carriers.
Which brings us to dogs. Could all that slush they walk through and bring into bed at this time of year be a risk to health as well as to housekeeping?
“I’d say, just wipe them down and you’ll be fine,” said Lucy O’Byrne, a veterinarian at the West Village Veterinary Hospital in Manhattan. “As long as you have good flea and tick control, and keep your pet healthy the way most people do, you don’t have to worry.”
DR. CHOMEL, author of the C.D.C. study, doesn’t disagree. There is far more risk, he warned, with pet licks and kisses. If you have a wound or if your immune system is compromised, licking should be avoided. (Meaning, don’t let the dog lick you — the hazards involved in the other way around have not been researched.) It’s also not good for babies. And there have been cases of animals spreading resistant strains of staph infections and other diseases by licking cuts and wounds after surgery, so it’s not recommended that pets be allowed in bed then.
On the other hand, what would Patricia Garcia-Gomez have done without a dog in bed after major surgery? Six months after falling in love with her boyfriend, but not his territorial Rhodesian ridgeback, Sylvie (who made it clear that she didn’t like her turf being invaded by urinating in his apartment while staring into Ms. Garcia-Gomez’s eyes), she was recuperating when the Great Dane-size dog surprised her by joining her in bed. It was a great comfort.
“She’s been in bed with us since,” said Ms. Garcia-Gomez, who works in branding and lives in Manhattan (and runescape gold is happy to provide Sylvie’s age, 8 ?, but not her own). “It can also be tricky, because when she stretches, she pushes us off. Humans only have two big legs, and she has four.”
Ms. Garcia-Gomez doesn’t worry about the dog’s giant licks, despite the fact that they present a real risk — just as the popular notion that dog saliva is cleaner than human saliva is a real myth.
“I’ll just continue to believe what I want to believe,” she said.
AND why not? Even if licking is risky, the risks might well be offset by the benefits, given the evidence suggesting that pets can increase longevity and boost the immune system.
“If the dog starts licking the baby too much, we discourage it,” said Alexandra Horowitz, author of the bestselling “Inside of a Dog,” and a psychology professor at Barnard, who sleeps with her toddler, husband and dog without worry. “But in general, if you’re a dog person, you live with dirt and other things that come in benign and less benign forms. I think the health risks are overstated. I say that if it’s mutually agreeable, just as it is between two people, then sharing a bed with a dog is fine.”
Even Cesar Millan, the hard-nosed dog trainer known for his TV series “The Dog Whisperer,” agrees, although he believes the dog should be invited up each night, just to show it who’s the real leader of the pack.
“Then choose the portion of the bed where the dog sleeps,” he writes in his book “Cesar’s Way.” “Sweet dreams.”
Sometimes, however, sweet dreams are not an option, as Tracy Rudd, an illustrator in Manhattan, has discovered. One man she dated years ago picked up her growling, nipping Chihuahua and tossed her out of the bedroom, later to find his clothes soaked in runescape gold urine. When Ms. Rudd, 47, met her current husband, she said she knew he was the one because when he put his arm around her in bed during the night, causing her dog to growl and nip at him, he didn’t seem to mind.
“He just said he respected her for defending her space,” Ms. Rudd said.
As a result, the dog respected him and a lasting marriage was born.
Perhaps one day it will be the same for Ms. Ruttenberg with her upstate menagerie. “Although I’m starting to think it’s not likely,” she said.
Most gentlemen callers don’t even make it to the bedroom. One bolted when Ms. Ruttenberg, who has a total of 160 animals on her sprawling mountainside property, let a baby goat into the living room after Trixie, the pig, had already joined the visit.
“I thought he would find a little goat charming,” she said. “But after the pig, it was too much for him. Especially as the goat, Iris, was runescape gold leaving droppings on the floor.”
Another date fled, after some wine and a soak in the hot tub under the stars, when Oola, one of the resident pigs (black, 150 pounds) charged and tried to bite him.
“And then, the last guy I had in the bed was freaked out by the rabbit,” Ms. Ruttenberg said. “He’s huge, and he got territorial seeing this guy in the room, so he started thumping and picking up his dish in his mouth and tossing it in our direction.”
Bye-bye, boyfriend. Hello, love?
“The truth is, with all my animals around me, I feel loved here, and I always have someone to come home to and someone who misses me when I’m away,” said Ms. Ruttenberg, who grew up on the Upper East Side and got her first pet, a dog, 20 years ago, after a terrible romantic breakup.
Ms. Ruttenberg’s mother frets that her daughter has put herself in the permanent zone of marriage ineligibility. But Ms. Ruttenberg is too busy making art, having fun and cooking for her animals (baked potatoes, squash, scrambled eggs with truffle oil for the pigs) to worry about it. As for the health risks of letting the animals sleep in her bed, she’s more concerned with making them sick than catching something from them.
“I had the flu and called the vet to make sure I couldn’t give it to Trixie,” she said.
The vet told her not to worry, she said.
If she called a dating coach, it might be another runescape gold matter.

Cozy Taipei bars retain their '70s allure

In the 1970s, US soldiers taking leave in Taipei from the Vietnam War runescape gold would go to its cluster of boy-meets-bargirl nightclubs on holidays from the frontlines. They joked that the boisterous pubs were the only fighting they could find in pre-modernized Taiwan.
"Back in those days, just about the only places to go for just drinking were the girlie bars," recalls Dirk Bennett, an American who lived in Taipei for more than 30 years. "So, it was natural for the first pubs to open in this area."
After soldiers faded out with the end of the war, Shuangcheng and the narrow alleys around it have weathered a steep drop in business, noise complaints from residential neighbors and an ill-fated civic effort to reinvent the strip's seedier side.
Instead most of the bars closed, leaving boarded-up holes and just 20 or 30 hardboiled survivors, fewer than half the rs gold former total.
It's no wonder the Shuangcheng bar district is best known as Taipei's combat zone.
But a cluster of cozy yet international neighborhood bars has emerged from the rubble. These are places where hosts and their repeat customers from anywhere in the world take pride in knowing one another's names.
Granted, the seedier side persists in doing combat with customers. Women launch themselves from places such as the Volcano and the Miami Pub at passing men, who if captured may lose US$20 or US$30 buying drinks for them.
But some of the longer lasting tenants of the zone's narrow alleys that come alive around 9 pm are wholesome watering holes where the same crowd of expatriate North Americans, Europeans, Filipinos and Japanese go every week or even every night.
Often just off work, they sit bottle-to-bottle runescape money with locals and the occasional tourist from the Chinese mainland as the zone lights up in neons of all colors and music from the Beatles to disco beats issue from inside.
"Wild it's not. Relaxed it is," said Richard Vuylsteke, a Hong Kong-based business official who visits one of the bars when in Taipei. Barkeepers remember his name from when he lived in town.
"Over the decades the area has shrunk in size and precipitously declined in boisterousness, but it still remains an oasis for expats and locals alike who can find good Taiwanese snack food nearby and share a few beers and relaxed conversation in an economically priced environment," Vuylsteke said.
At My Place, an indoor-outdoor restaurant-pub combo, bartenders chat with solitary drinkers. Across the street at the Manila, the Filipina manager memorizes the orders of repeat customers and keeps the free popcorn coming all evening.
Hosts at one-room bars such as Peace Jazz and Malibu West also make efforts to get to know the customers, even cooking special meal runescape items requests.
"This is a bar where people never get ripped off, never get cheated, no girls you have to buy a drink for. People feel comfortable," said William Gan, manager of the 14-year-old, 58-seat, wood-paneled Malibu West, which is known for its Californian and Mexican foods. "The foreigners, they just keep coming back. They sign their names on the ceiling. We're running out of space up there."
The zone also remains cheap and down-market - the upholstery may be torn or the air-con misses a few spots - compared to bar districts in newer parts of Taipei.
Happy hour beers go for as little as $2.50. Bars that open after 9 pm still allow smoking, a thing of the past elsewhere in town. The music volume increases as the hour gets later, unless crowds are drawn to sports on overhead television screens.
What's left of the zone, which is located just behind the landmark Imperial Hotel, often rages late into the night as repeat customers just repeat and repeat. Crowds fill the friendlier bars on weekdays as well as weekends.
"It is the way we serve customers. That's one reason why they keep on coming," said Jackie Sotelo, floor manager at the ever-packed Manila Bar, where beers are cheap, snacks free and barmaids remember just about runescape accounts everyone's name.

Hollywood's A-list lights up Oscar red carpet

Hollywood's top stars began their annual runescape gold parade up the red carpet and into the world's top film honors, the Oscars, on Sunday where "The King's Speech" and "the Social Network" will vie for best picture.

The ceremony features two youthful co-hosts, actors James Franco, 32, and Anne Hathaway, 28, marking the first time a man and woman have presided the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences's big night.

Hathaway is the youngest host ever for one of the most-watched TV specials in the United States that also is broadcast live in more than 200 countries worldwide.

She arrived on the carpet in a strapless, red Valentino gown alongside nominees such as Melissa Leo, who is up for best rs gold supporting actress in "The Fighter", and 14-year-old Hailee Steinfeld, also nominated for supporting actress in "True Grit," who similarly dazzled fans in glamorous gowns.

Leo chose designer Marc Bouwer to dress her in a structured dress and bold print, and Steinfeld was fashioned by Marchesa in a light pink tea dress that designer Randolph Duke, who was watching events unfold, called "50s redux."

Steinfeld, he said, showed "the perfect balance between being a young girl and a young woman."

Brash comedian Russell Brand, who will present an Oscar, turned up with runescape money his mother. He said Helen Mirren told him to "express myself creatively and not worry about censors" who will be watching the live program for any verbal slip-ups.

Later, A-list stars such as Natalie Portman, Javier Bardem and Colin Firth will parade up the carpet outside the Kodak Theater where Hollywood's biggest event takes place.

Producers say the ceremony, at which 24 awards will be given out in just over three hours, is meant to connect movie fans to the Hollywood of old, while also giving a nod to the future with web cams and Twitter feeds.

THE OSCAR SWEEPSTAKES

Already in the months ahead of Sunday's big awards, a stream of honors have come from industry groups such as the New York Film Critics Circle, Hollywood Foreign Press Association, Directors Guild of America and Screen Actors Guild.

Where Oscar is concerned, fans saw "Social Network," which tells of the rise of Facebook from college-oriented website to global runescape items phenomenon, scoop up many early critics awards.

But as the season played out, "The King's Speech," which tells of a stuttering British king facing his personal demons, was embraced by numerous movie professional groups.

Now, the two will face-off for the Oscars with "King's Speech" tipped as the favorite.

Colin Firth, in the starring role of King George VI in "King's Speech," is widely expected to win best actor because he has claimed most honors from both critics and industry groups. Similarly, Christian Bale and Melissa Leo, both in boxing drama "The Fighter," are front-runners in supporting categories.

The race for best actress is close between "Black Swan" ballerina Natalie Portman and A-lister Annette Bening playing a lesbian mother with family issues in "The Kids Are All Right." The category of best director is tight between "Facebook" veteran David Fincher and "King's Speech" newcomer Tom Hooper.

Will there be a surprise? Oscar watchers think not.

"It looks as if the front-runners will cross the finish line," said Tom O'Neil, veteran Oscar watcher at awards websites goldderby.com and theenvelope.com.

But anything could happen. As they say in Hollywood, the red carpet is rolled out, the champagne is on ice runescape accounts and the limousines are waiting. It's Oscar time.

A dogged Aussie collective lands at the Oscars

The Australian filmmaking collective Blue-Tongue Films runescape power leveling has been around since 1996, when a handful of friends made a short that turned out good enough to warrant persistence.
Next Sunday, they'll enjoy a moment in movies' biggest spotlight: the Academy Awards. Among the nominees of Hollywood veterans and glamorous movie stars is Jacki Weaver, whose supporting actress nod represents not just her fine, disarming performance in David Michod's crime film "Animal Kingdom," but the ascendance of Blue-Tongue films and its tenacious gang of mates.
"We'll all be watching it from wherever we are," says Nash Edgerton, one of the group's founders, speaking from Berlin. "It's a long shot, but awesome that it got that far."
It's been a remarkable year for the seven members of Blue-Tongue, which isn't a production company or a business arrangement of any kind, but a loose group of friends who look to each other for help and inspiration.
Edgerton, a 38-year-old seasoned stuntman of many blockbusters, formed Blue-Tongue with his actor brother, Joel, and Kieran Darcy-Smith — the two of whom had just finished drama school. Their ranks have grown to include Michod, Luke Doolan, Tony Lynch and Spencer Susser, the lone American among the Aussies.
Edgerton's gritty noir "The Square" came out last year to strong reviews. Doolan's short "Miracle Fish" was nominated rs power leveling at last year's Oscars. In April, Susser's "Hesher," a film starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Natalie Portman about a heavy-metal drifter that befriends a grieving boy, will be released. Darcy-Smith recently wrapped shooting on his feature directorial debut, "Say Nothing," a psychological thriller.
"It's an incredibly positive time," says Darcy-Smith, speaking from an editing bay in Australia. "There's been a lot of interest. It's opened wider and more international doors. There's a healthy kind of pressure that that brings."
The members of Blue-Tongue are typically scattered across the credits of their films. "Animal Kingdom" was written and directed by Michod, co-starred Joel Edgerton and Darcy-Smith, was edited by Doolan and includes special thanks to Nash Edgerton.
They aren't bound by any aesthetic mantra, but their films do share a gritty realism, particularly in suburban sprawl environs and genre movie templates. They constitute one of the most exciting, hard-earned movements runescape coin in years. Film Comment hailed them as "the Next New Wave."
In "Hesher," a father and son (Rainn Wilson and Devin Brochu) are shocked out of a stupor when a tattooed, often-shirtless maniac (Gordon-Levitt) moves in. Similarly, Blue-Tongue seems to be injecting a dose of energy into movies — a good, deserved smack in the mouth.
"I think the worst thing that anyone can ever say about your work is, `Eh, it was OK,'" says Susser, speaking from Los Angeles where he's prepping the film's release. "You want people to be passionate in one way or the other."
It all started with 1996's 8-minute "Loaded," which proved to the Edgertons and Darcy-Smith that they — despite having no film school training — could succeed.
"It just inspired us to keep playing, and we found that we played together well," says Darcy-Smith. "We were bouncing ideas off each other. There rs2 items was a great collaborative spirit. We're also all really good mates. ... We've become, really, family."
Shorts have remained the group's training ground, a way to get their names out there, prove themselves capable to investors and get familiarized with directing. Doolan and both Edgertons recently completed new shorts, including one by Nash, "Bear," that's a sequel to his darkly comic "Spider," which was paired theatricallywith "The Square."
"Everyone is continuing to keep it up, keep the ball in the air," says Edgerton, who's currently writing a script for a film he expects to be bigger in scope than "The Square."
More than anything, Blue-Tongue functions like a support system. They share each other's scripts, seeking constructive feedback. When one succeeds, it only makes the others more confident that they might, too.
"It was never something we talked about," says Susser. "It was this group of friends that liked making films — kind of our hobby."
Susser, 33, fell in with the Edgertons while they were all working on "Star Wars: Attack of the Clones." Though he grew up in California, he counts himself as a "wannabe Aussie." He filmed his short "I Love Sarah Jane" in Australia, and is working a script of a buy runescape gold feature-length adaptation.
Blue-Tongue's kinship is partly based on their shared interest in portraying emotional authenticity — whether it comes in a crime drama like "Animal Kingdom" or a Zombie film like "Sarah Jane."
"I really like stuff that's honest," says Susser. "Whether it's fantasy or crazy or really silly, I like stuff that feels grounded. I feel like we all have that in common."
It's an inspiring tale: a group of filmmakers, thousands of miles from Hollywood, striving for years to build themselves into feature film directors, many of them arriving with their first movies at once.
"After years and years and years of plugging away at home and getting into a lot of debt," says Darcy-Smith. "It's great now that it's finally come to what I always thought it would: a film."
With movies in the pipeline and scripts in the works, Blue-Tongue may be just getting started.
"I'm keen to see what everyone does with a little more money and doing something a little bit bigger," says Edgerton. "Now, at least, some cheap runescape gold people will return our call."

First round bids come in for Warner Music assets

Several parties have started runescape gold putting in bids for parts or all of Warner Music Group, the world's third largest music company, sources said on Tuesday.
The bidders, who have had a preliminary review of Warner Music's books, include private equity firms, investor groups and strategic bidders like music companies.
Names that have moved ahead in the process include private equity firm KKR through its BMG Music Rights joint venture with Bertelsmann. Others include billionaire Len Blavatnik, who already owns around 2 percent of Warner Music. Vivendi's Universal Music Group and Sony Corp's label group Sony Music Entertainment rs gold and its song publishing joint venture Sony/ATV Publishing are also said to have moved ahead in pursuing their interest.
More official bids are expected this week.
The bids for Warner Music come even as investors are watching out for the next move from Citigroup which took control of rival music company EMI Music last month and is expected to soon put it up for sale.
Most industry watchers see the possibility of both companies being up for sale as a competitive situation which could reduce the respective sellers' bargaining power.
Warner Music Chief Executive Edgar Bronfman is also keeping an runescape money eye on the EMI process with the view that his company might in fact end up buying assets of EMI. One scenario could see Warner Music sell its Warner/Chappell song publishing unit and raise enough cash to buy all of EMI.
"They're trying to move closer to pole position to get more financial flexibility to be able to compete with some of the private equity guys who are interested in EMI's assets," said Standard & Poor's Tuna Amobi.
Warner Music has more than $2 billion of debt on its balance sheet and has seen its operating income growth slow down significantly in recent quarters as runescape items music sales continue to shrink across the industry.
"The amount of additional leverage they would need to make a bid for all of EMI would be challenging," said Amobi.
But another scenario could see Warner Music's assets ending up being sold to whoever ends up buying EMI.
The number of possibilities highlights the overall weakness and runescape accounts upheaval in the music industry.

Around the Web: Simple Steps to Happiness

There are plenty of spots around the rs power leveling web to turn to if you need a mood boost. Here are a few of our favorite websites that deal with happiness and how to find it.
Remember the pure, unadulterated joy of eating an ice-cream sundae oozing with hot fudge, chopped nuts, and fluffy clouds of whipped cream, with not one, but two Maraschino cherries on top?
Kids have such simple pleasures: Ice cream. A pony ride. The bumper cars at Six Flags. But as you get older, it takes a lot more to make you happy, and you start to wonder how to slip back into those innocent days before you’d ever heard of root canals or mortgages, when the most pressing matters on your mind were winning the Little League game and learning the multiplication table up to ten.
Unfortunately, we don’t have a time machine for you—but if happiness is what you’re after, there are plenty of spots around buying runescape gold the Internet to find tips on getting the most out of life.
Of course, we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention ourselves here—after all, what could make you happier than receiving good news in your mailbox every morning?—but if you still want more, we’ll fill you in on a few great sites that specialize in positive thinking. Here are a few of our favorites.
The Happiness Project
If you read our article “Come On, Get Happy!” a couple of months ago, you already know what writer Gretchen Rubin’s been up to. But if not, you’ll want to check out her blog, The Happiness Project. Rubin has dedicated a full year of her life to following every last piece of advice on happiness that she can find and recording her successes and failures alike. A book about her happiness project was published in 2010, but you can find happiness-related life tips, quotes, and other bons mots on her site every day. Don’t miss her tip sheet on ways to boost your energy in just ten minutes or this beautiful quote on happiness from runescape coin the Dalai Lama.
Zen Habits
Another star of the blogosphere, Zen Habits is chock-full of great articles on achieving happiness, health, and productivity and simplifying your life. In the blog, Leo Baubauta, a married man with six children who lives in Guam, shares his insights into human behavior and self-improvement with well-written articles on topics such as “Unproductivity: 8 Ways to Make the Most of Your Laziest Days” or “75 Simple Pleasures to Brighten Your Day.” Be sure to stop in every Thursday, for the blog’s special happiness-themed articles—but it’s well worth making this valuable blog an everyday stop during your time online.
The Chief Happiness Officer
For some of us, it’s easy to be happy when we’re hanging out at home. But the horrors of work are another story. Fortunately, Alexander Kjerulf is here to change all that: Kjerulf is a master consultant in the field of bringing joy to the workplace and has a blog called The Chief Happiness Officer, where he shares his wisdom on getting rs2 items comfortable in the cubicle on a near-daily basis. For a few great tips on feeling good, check out Kjerulf’s advice on using teamwork to beat stress and his tips on how to find a job you’ll love. Follow his advice, and who knows? Soon you may find yourself looking forward to your morning commute.
A Few More Great Sites on HappinessThe University of Pennsylvania offers the world’s only Master of Applied Positive Psychology program, focusing on the science of feeling good. Check out the happiness questionnaires and other great resources on the program’s site.
If you’re in your middle years, you won’t want to miss all the great articles and resources at LifeTwo, a site that can help you avoid the dreaded midlife crisis and transition gracefully through the ages.
The blog may be called Dumb Little Man, but the advice is some of the wisest you’ll find. For tips on organization, productivity, and self-improvement cheapest runescape gold of all varieties, this is the place to look.

The 10 most irritating parenting tips ever

I have nothing against friends and family offering runescape gold advice when you come to them with a dilemma. It's the people who pipe up, unbidden, because they see you with a child and assume you have no idea what you're doing. Too often these people are elderly great-aunts. Fortunately those ladies are afraid of the Internet, so I can rail against them and they'll be none the wiser! Thanks, ladies.
1. "Sleep now, because once that baby comes you'll never sleep again." Technically this is a pregnancy tip, of course, but I'm shoving it in here anyway. Yes, Great-Aunt Hildy, I will sleep throughout my entire third trimester. Because I am part bear.
2. "Sleep when the baby sleeps." Everyone gives you runescape power leveling this one — annoying relatives, pediatricians, the cashier at the drugstorewhere you were buying newborn diapers. Are these people all robots, capable of instantly dropping off to sleep whenever their child is unconscious? Do they not have other things to do, like bathe, or simply relish the rare moments of silence you get when you have an infant?
3. "I think your baby's hungry." Whether you're nursing or bottle-feeding, everyone assumes you don't know how to feed your child. And every time your child cries, whines, grimaces, or squirms, they are going to assume you are starving your poor baby and you need reminders to feed it. Lest you forget! This advice is especially maddening when they turn out to be correct.
4. "Relish every moment of your baby's first years, because they'll be grown before you know it." You mean, time only moves forward? I had no idea! I thought we'd be like this forever and ever! This sort of advice, obvious and innocuous as it seems, always put me on cheap runescape money the defensive, as if I had just been carrying my baby under my arm like a football, muttering, "Grow up already, why don't you. Just GROW UP."
5. "I hope you're sleep training that child. Do you WANT him to be spoiled?" Oh, distant relative/person whose aisle I shared at the supermarket, I'm so glad you know exactly my child needs. And that you know, from your years of scientific research, that any child not allowed to cry it out will be a horrible waste of flesh! (See #6 for this parenting tip's counterpart.)
6. "I hope you're not doing that 'crying it out' thing. It's so barbaric. Enjoy your baby all through the night!" Again, kudos to you, whoever you rs power leveling are, for knowing what's best for our unique family situation! I will be calling you at 4 a.m., so you can enjoy our baby as well.
7. "Why are you bringing your child outside when it's so cold out?" It never ceased to amaze me that, no matter what my child's age, total strangers will express alarm and revulsion that I dared expose him to the elements. "And WHY ISN'T BE WEARING MITTENS? He's going to get consumption!"
8. "Your child isn't really sad/angry/injured. He's just manipulating you." There's no doubt that children can push our buttons as if they've had professional training in it, but the notion that my kid's authentic feelings are in fact manufactured to elicit a reaction really chaps my hide. If that were always true, he'd be a rs gold pint-sized sociopath. I'm pretty sure that's not the case.
9. "Schools are just glorified prisons. If you loved your child, you'd homeschool." Oh, if only I loved my child enough to abandon my livelihood, tear him away from the community he so enjoys, separate him from the professionals who have dedicated their careers to childhood education, and forced him to stay home all day with me, where we'd be at each other's throats for hours! If only! Please note: I am not opposed to homeschooling, at all — in fact I wish it would work for us, but it would not.
10. "If I were you, I'd just—" OH NO YOU DON'T. I know where this is going. Listen, unnamed distant acquaintance who last parented in the 19th century (it's true — I often get my unwanted advice from ghosts) you don't know diddly about my kid, and our relationship, and what runescape accounts works for us.