Our Current Sentiments. . .

"I travel a lot; I hate having my life disrupted by routine."  

~Caskie Stinnet

Overheard. . . .

"You, vacuuming the driveway?"  asked Sophia, wondering why mommy was cleaning a rug out in front of the house.  Actually, it'd been in the garage while our wood floors were installed and acquired layer of sawdust.

"You're magic carpet's double parked. . ."Dana [my younger brother] flatly informed me--not bothering to ask why a large rug was sunning itself in front of our home.

"Yeah? Well if I go back out there and it's gone we're really in trouble. . ." 

Later that same day. . .

"What are you doing?"Dana asked casually.

"Waiting for the cable guy.   Every time I get on the internet. . . "

     "The fridge shuts off?"  He jokingly interrupted

"You should see what happens when I open the garage door . . ."  

This is normal sibling banter for the two of us.  The goal isn't an exchange of information, the priority is laughter.   Info is simply a vehicle for the next punch line.  

Let the Adventure Begin!

Congratulations Nate on your last day! Eight great years at Duane Arnold!  We're praying for you Monday as you start you latest venture!  You deserve this new challenge! You're gonna be great!

F.Y.I.

No traffic tickets were given in the making of this post.  My husband called asking me if I'd been pulled over--guess I'd just been day dreaming while I was pumping gas.  What can I say I'm an optimist?

My Gas Tank Made Made Me Do It

"Speeding?  I'd like to think of it as celebrating my fuel efficiency. . ."

"But officer, I can't afford to make a complete stop, can you?"

"No, I wasn't tailgating, I was drafting!"

What a beautiful story!

Many of your have gushed about these incredible photo's that I've pasted up all over my site. Unfortunately I don't have ANY around my house because I can't choose. I want them all and I want them HUGE! (Tres chic let me tell you!) Like a SHRINE to Sophia! Many of you have also commented that if money weren't an issue, you'd gladly fly your child to Florida to have their pics taken by this genius who makes your children look as adorable as you believe they are. So I had to share some of the magic behind the scenes.

Also I've become a HUGE believer in mom-based businesses, and I will give any and all support I can. Not that this mom needs my help :)

Do you recognize this man?

 If you think he looks like the autistic victim in Law & Order than you definitely don't have kids.  Look closely parents-if you have a child between 1-5 you have a chance?  Now imagine him in a green stripped rugby & khaki pants?   Still nothing?   Now picture him with an animated little dog.  Yep--that's him Steve, from the original Blues Clues!

It's official our two year old, Sophia has her first crush--and like many young girls, it's someone on TV who sings or dances.  Much to my husband's chagrin it's Steve from Blues Clues, the original host of the toddler show.  Nate much prefers Joe, Steve's replacement (he claims Steve reminds him too much of Pee Wee Herman.)  Personally, Joe's much more animated like a typical children's TV host (something that gets old when you have to watch it as many times as I do.) 

Sadly this is the debate in our house. Steve or Joe? 'Course most of the time Sophia calls them both Steve so maybe it only matters to us?  But the way she asks to see Steve--well we're both getting flashes of a 13-year old Sophia pining for some teen-heart-throb.  So to settle Nate's Pee Wee concerns of course we had to Google him.  Our fears were alleviated, but I will admit that knowledge of the show sort of ruined my motherhood ideal.  

The first time I saw Blues Clues (what Sophia has christened Cous Cous!) I was taken with the sweetness of Steve and his little banter with household objects.  After you spend any time with a toddler you find yourself talking like Steve weather its conscious or not.  So in my head I imagined that Steve was a stay at home Dad who made up a whole little world for his toddler and then turned it into an award winning TV show.  (I guess if I imagined him as a dad it was less creepy?!?)    Anyway if you're reading this and you're thinking --who cares!?!?  Well don't worry--someday you'll have kids and when they want to watch the same show OVER & OVER for weeks at a time till everyone has memorized EVERY line & EVERY pause.  Well then you may find yourself thinking What's the deal with this guy? Or girl? Whomever is the hero of your child's fascination.  And then you'll be glad for Google too!  Besides what else are you going to do while you watch that video AGAIN?!?

Wanna know why your toddler finds it SO fascinating--The Research Behind the Show

"Are you a super-hero daddy?"

  During a lull in the conversation the other day a little voice piped up from the backseat.  "Are you a super-hero daddy?"  It was adorable and completely caught him off guard.  Nate's taken several days off to help me update our kitchen, just a little paint & new wood floors, but it's enough for me to consider him a saint.   In fact, I may have gushed about daddy being a superhero.  She certainly isn't interested in super-hero's unless SuperGrover counts?  

I think she knew she needed to be extra nice to Daddy?  Earlier she'd asked me where a paint stain came from on the old carpet?  Without thinking (I wasn't attaching blame since we were going to pull the carpet out anyway) I said something like "Daddy made a mess."    Sure enough, Nate had  been home for only 5-10 minutes that day when she pointed at the floor at looked expectantly at him asking "Daddy made a mess?"  The look on Nate's face was priceless!   

"Well, she gets to see all the messes I make on a regular basis" I countered.  "It's good to see that daddy's make messes too!"  It was a weak defense I know but even Super-hero's make messes right?!?

Art as Inspiration as Decor

I'm sure I don't have to convince anyone that "Something's Gotta Give," the beautiful Hampton's movie starring Diane Keaton & Jack Nicholas, is breathtaking simply because of the decor.  Google the movie and you'll see several articles discussing the intense impact this film's had on interior design.  I've loved this movie for years and I FINALLY get it. When the world wants to be more glamorous, sexier, younger, richer, unattached,  this love story suggests that perhaps we've all gotten it wrong?  Perhaps life is simply best at home, in the beauty and dependance of love? 

Unlike your typical love story with the fresh young women & strong, young man who naturally complete each other's sentences.   The female in this story is strong, assertive and jumps into verbal tangles, sort of reminding us of our mothers.  Something ALL of us have believed is anything but sexy or attractive.  Then a funny thing happens.  Jack's never experienced the nurturing strength of a wife. He marvels at it.  Stranded in this lovely home, with this strong women, they both get to play  being "an old married couple."  He's trying new things, like cuddling, and real intimacy, she's understood & loosening up into a beautiful, sexy, woman.  Never loosing any of her strength she grows more beautiful as she softens.  He also discovers how wonderful it is to share his life with another person.  It's clumsy, it's awkward and yet it's breathtaking.

Personally I've had lotz of reason to fall for this precious, fiesty, precarious movie.  When I was a single woman I dove into creating a home for myself as a matter of survival, just like the main character.   Of course, I love any movie about writers, especially one who pours her internal drama into her work.     I love the line: "I've written this [type of situation] but I just never got it."    Helps that it's filled with incredible music.  Much of it French, this has become the unofficial theme music to my own journey.  

This whole thing started because Nate & I are in the process of some home projects and I need a little inspiration.  Check out the article below--I had to publish all of it because I LOVE hearing how art comes together.  I hope you like it as much as I do.  

Decor As Inspiration from Architectural Digest

Other Spaces

Set Design: Something’s Gotta Give

Setting the Scene for Romance in the Hamptons

Production Design by Jon Hutman/Set Decoration by Beth Rubino 
Text by Nancy Collins Published July 2007

For Something’s Gotta Give, director Nancy Meyers asked set decorator Beth Rubino to create a substantial Hamptons house for Diane Keaton, who plays a substantial Manhattan playwright whose daughter is having an affair with Jack Nicholson—until chest pains turn his heart up-side down in more ways than one. Forced to recuperate in the guest room of his girlfriend’s mother’s beach retreat, Nicholson finds that his unexpected infirmary is as big a player as those who inhabit it.

“The house had to reflect Diane’s character, who is a very successful, accomplished New York playwright in her mid-50s,” says Meyers. She is also a divorcée, following a 20-year marriage, who built her Hamptons house as “a gift to herself—no compromises—just her total vision of a peaceful life. Naturally, it’s a different mind-set than that of a woman who has been single or is part of a couple. There was no chance, for instance,” she chuckles, “that she was going to put a double sink in the bathroom.” Nor, for that matter, include an office. “The desk in her bedroom signifies she’s romantically shut down, in a stage of life where nothing’s going to be going on in the bedroom, so why not have a desk?”

The enthusiasm that went into the building of Diane Keaton’s unlikely love nest was matched only by the melancholy that came with tearing it down.

In other words, she is exactly the kind of dame primed for a romantic upset—who arrives in the form of music mogul Nicholson—“a chronic dater of young women,” says Meyers—who, upon showing up with Keaton’s daughter, Amanda Peet, for a Hamptons weekend, proceeds to collapse and get rushed by his hostess to the hospital, where his doctor happens to be Keanu Reeves. “It’s about people who know what the future holds—then find out it doesn’t, like Jack and Diane, who are falling in love late in life. This house is their desert island. If he hadn’t been stranded, he would never have noticed her.”

Though their five-room “island”—living room, dining room, two bedrooms and kitchen—originally called for a beach cottage, Meyers ended up “doing an elegant house, where I would like to live, with the feeling of ocean everywhere.” As a result, the interiors are awash in sea colors and blues. “They wanted me to go with white slipcovers,” says Meyers, “but this woman would say, ‘I don’t want slipcovers like everybody else.’ She was determined to be at the beach.”

Nancy Meyers’s most pressing conundrum was how to keep her film, an hour of which takes place in five rooms, from feeling like a stage play. “It’s about depth of field, constantly looking from room to room, out a window, believing the beach is beyond,” Meyers explains. “In one scene, where Jack is in the bedroom and Diane stands in the doorway, you see past her into the living room and kitchen. You shouldn’t feel claustrophobic.”

“Hamptons houses that size have space, simplicity and a certain austerity,” adds set decorator Beth Rubino, who, along with Meyers and production designer Jon Hutman, scouted hundreds of Long Island homes before settling on a Southampton beachfront (used for exterior shots only) that Rubino calls their “visual barometer.” “Nancy wanted a house that looked decorated,” she continues, “so we created something wonderful and homey, but chilling”—a feeling Nicholson picked up on when he first visited the set. “During wardrobe fittings,” re-calls Meyers, “I could see Jack was going toward shorts and polo shirts. So I said, ‘Let’s take a look at the house where you’ll be spending time,’ and as soon as we got there, he said, ‘Oh, I get it. No shorts.’”

It wasn’t Nicholson’s only melding with his make-believe environment. “Jack is a great art collector,” says Meyers, “and when he saw the original piece over the living room fireplace, he said, ‘You don’t have any of the great beach art,’ and turned us on to Edward Henry Potthast,” whose whimsical sand-and-umbrella landscape “is the centerpiece of the room. You don’t see it much, but its presence is felt.”

Presence is all when moviemakers are trying to make what is not real—seem so. For starters, movie homes automatically feature the permanent accoutrements of a camera and crew, whose accommodations require space and mobility, like the kitchen’s islands, easily zoomed around on casters. During her survey, Meyers noticed that all fabulous Hamptons houses had “blowout kitchens”— as does the director herself. “There’s a lot of action in the kitchen because lots of scenes in my life take place in mine, which, like the movie’s, is a little too big.”

“Diane’s character loves to cook, so we had to have a practical, functional kitchen,” says Rubino, “that could also hold a lot of people.” Even so, Meyers preferred to keep her walls right where they were. “I don’t like to take down walls because you always think, Where did that wall go? How did that camera get inside the refrigerator? I like to keep things real-looking.”

Which was no problem for the self-admitted perfectionist Rubino, an Academy Award nominee for The Cider House Rules. “In a movie set, as opposed to a residence, you have to intrinsically build the entire lives of the characters,” she explains. “In a regular residence, you’re creating the top layer of their environment; in a movie we do that but create subtext as well.”

Take, for instance, the 3,000 books that Rubino shipped out from New York’s Strand Book Store. “Writers are passionate about books, so you don’t just get a collection of spines, you arrange them as an evolution of what Diane was reading: Is she interested in perennials, native beach plants, self- help? In the bedroom, where she’s working on a play, it’s all reference books. Though you only see books shot by shot”—indeed, a mezzanine loaded with tomes, categorized foot by foot, goes virtually unnoticed—“it builds depth for the set, making a very rounded environment for the actors.”

For her part, Meyers called friend and playwright Donald Margulies, demanding: “Tell me what’s on your desk,” a request that elicited a “highly detailed e-mail.” As a result, when the cast took their initial walk-through of their new “home,” “we had Diane’s plays, hardbound, sitting on her desk, along with scrapbooks filled with her clippings. Beth even sprayed suntan lotion around so they’d feel they’d just come in from the beach.”

When it came to the dining room, Rubino and Meyers reserved the place of honor for the 70-inch round table designed to adapt to a specific 360-degree shot. Nearby is a wall of plates, “beautiful but absolutely colorless except for one that has a little color, as Beth pointed out to me one day,” recalls Meyers. “Well, in the movie, Diane’s character collects beach stones, and there’s a scene where Jack indicates that they’re all white. She says, ‘I don’t collect only white. Oh, God, I didn’t know. Does that mean I’m controlling? Not adventurous?’ So he hands her a big, dark brown stone, saying, ‘Here’s something to remember me by.’” Art imitating art, perhaps? “Well, it made us laugh.”

The women’s collective sensibility was not lost on Diane Keaton. “Diane has a brilliant eye,” says Meyers. “I showed her the house empty, then with furniture, and both times she went crazy, which was great for me because it wasn’t really her taste.”

Clearly, Meyers and Rubino were exquisitely in sync. “Nancy is very involved in the visual process,” says Rubino. “She approved every fabric, every shape.” Upon hearing this compliment, Meyers laughs. “That’s code for ‘She’s a pain in the butt.’ But if you’ve spent a chunk of your life writing a character and someone puts them in the wrong clothes, or in a bed with sheets you know she would never own, it’s as if someone’s written dialogue. Sometimes you pick up more from what you’re seeing than hearing.”

The enthusiasm that went into the building of Diane Keaton’s unlikely love nest was matched only by the melancholy that came with tearing down fully appointed rooms where, for two and a half months, people lived and worked. “It’s horrible,” admits Meyers. “People say, ‘Go watch them tear it down,’ but I can’t. It’s simply too sad.”

Unlike Something’s Gotta Give, which is a funny, truthful, charming movie about grown-ups. “Jack and Diane are such icons,” says Meyers. “And to see them at this age, still smart and good-looking, finding each other in this movie—when we all know their personal journeys—is great fun. After all, people don’t stop falling in love just because they get older.”

Something’s Gotta Give is currently available on DVD from Sony Pictures Home EntertainmentFor Something’s Gotta Give, director Nancy Meyers asked set decorator Beth Rubino to create a substantial Hamptons house for Diane Keaton, who plays a substantial Manhattan playwright whose daughter is having an affair with Jack Nicholson—until chest pains turn his heart up-side down in more ways than one. Forced to recuperate in the guest room of his girlfriend’s mother’s beach retreat, Nicholson finds that his unexpected infirmary is as big a player as those who inhabit it.

“The house had to reflect Diane’s character, who is a very successful, accomplished New York playwright in her mid-50s,” says Meyers. She is also a divorcée, following a 20-year marriage, who built her Hamptons house as “a gift to herself—no compromises—just her total vision of a peaceful life. Naturally, it’s a different mind-set than that of a woman who has been single or is part of a couple. There was no chance, for instance,” she chuckles, “that she was going to put a double sink in the bathroom.” Nor, for that matter, include an office. “The desk in her bedroom signifies she’s romantically shut down, in a stage of life where nothing’s going to be going on in the bedroom, so why not have a desk?”

The enthusiasm that went into the building of Diane Keaton’s unlikely love nest was matched only by the melancholy that came with tearing it down.

In other words, she is exactly the kind of dame primed for a romantic upset—who arrives in the form of music mogul Nicholson—“a chronic dater of young women,” says Meyers—who, upon showing up with Keaton’s daughter, Amanda Peet, for a Hamptons weekend, proceeds to collapse and get rushed by his hostess to the hospital, where his doctor happens to be Keanu Reeves. “It’s about people who know what the future holds—then find out it doesn’t, like Jack and Diane, who are falling in love late in life. This house is their desert island. If he hadn’t been stranded, he would never have noticed her.”

Though their five-room “island”—living room, dining room, two bedrooms and kitchen—originally called for a beach cottage, Meyers ended up “doing an elegant house, where I would like to live, with the feeling of ocean everywhere.” As a result, the interiors are awash in sea colors and blues. “They wanted me to go with white slipcovers,” says Meyers, “but this woman would say, ‘I don’t want slipcovers like everybody else.’ She was determined to be at the beach.”

Nancy Meyers’s most pressing conundrum was how to keep her film, an hour of which takes place in five rooms, from feeling like a stage play. “It’s about depth of field, constantly looking from room to room, out a window, believing the beach is beyond,” Meyers explains. “In one scene, where Jack is in the bedroom and Diane stands in the doorway, you see past her into the living room and kitchen. You shouldn’t feel claustrophobic.”

“Hamptons houses that size have space, simplicity and a certain austerity,” adds set decorator Beth Rubino, who, along with Meyers and production designer Jon Hutman, scouted hundreds of Long Island homes before settling on a Southampton beachfront (used for exterior shots only) that Rubino calls their “visual barometer.” “Nancy wanted a house that looked decorated,” she continues, “so we created something wonderful and homey, but chilling”—a feeling Nicholson picked up on when he first visited the set. “During wardrobe fittings,” re-calls Meyers, “I could see Jack was going toward shorts and polo shirts. So I said, ‘Let’s take a look at the house where you’ll be spending time,’ and as soon as we got there, he said, ‘Oh, I get it. No shorts.’”

It wasn’t Nicholson’s only melding with his make-believe environment. “Jack is a great art collector,” says Meyers, “and when he saw the original piece over the living room fireplace, he said, ‘You don’t have any of the great beach art,’ and turned us on to Edward Henry Potthast,” whose whimsical sand-and-umbrella landscape “is the centerpiece of the room. You don’t see it much, but its presence is felt.”

Presence is all when moviemakers are trying to make what is not real—seem so. For starters, movie homes automatically feature the permanent accoutrements of a camera and crew, whose accommodations require space and mobility, like the kitchen’s islands, easily zoomed around on casters. During her survey, Meyers noticed that all fabulous Hamptons houses had “blowout kitchens”— as does the director herself. “There’s a lot of action in the kitchen because lots of scenes in my life take place in mine, which, like the movie’s, is a little too big.”

“Diane’s character loves to cook, so we had to have a practical, functional kitchen,” says Rubino, “that could also hold a lot of people.” Even so, Meyers preferred to keep her walls right where they were. “I don’t like to take down walls because you always think, Where did that wall go? How did that camera get inside the refrigerator? I like to keep things real-looking.”

Which was no problem for the self-admitted perfectionist Rubino, an Academy Award nominee for The Cider House Rules. “In a movie set, as opposed to a residence, you have to intrinsically build the entire lives of the characters,” she explains. “In a regular residence, you’re creating the top layer of their environment; in a movie we do that but create subtext as well.”

Take, for instance, the 3,000 books that Rubino shipped out from New York’s Strand Book Store. “Writers are passionate about books, so you don’t just get a collection of spines, you arrange them as an evolution of what Diane was reading: Is she interested in perennials, native beach plants, self- help? In the bedroom, where she’s working on a play, it’s all reference books. Though you only see books shot by shot”—indeed, a mezzanine loaded with tomes, categorized foot by foot, goes virtually unnoticed—“it builds depth for the set, making a very rounded environment for the actors.”

For her part, Meyers called friend and playwright Donald Margulies, demanding: “Tell me what’s on your desk,” a request that elicited a “highly detailed e-mail.” As a result, when the cast took their initial walk-through of their new “home,” “we had Diane’s plays, hardbound, sitting on her desk, along with scrapbooks filled with her clippings. Beth even sprayed suntan lotion around so they’d feel they’d just come in from the beach.”

When it came to the dining room, Rubino and Meyers reserved the place of honor for the 70-inch round table designed to adapt to a specific 360-degree shot. Nearby is a wall of plates, “beautiful but absolutely colorless except for one that has a little color, as Beth pointed out to me one day,” recalls Meyers. “Well, in the movie, Diane’s character collects beach stones, and there’s a scene where Jack indicates that they’re all white. She says, ‘I don’t collect only white. Oh, God, I didn’t know. Does that mean I’m controlling? Not adventurous?’ So he hands her a big, dark brown stone, saying, ‘Here’s something to remember me by.’” Art imitating art, perhaps? “Well, it made us laugh.”

The women’s collective sensibility was not lost on Diane Keaton. “Diane has a brilliant eye,” says Meyers. “I showed her the house empty, then with furniture, and both times she went crazy, which was great for me because it wasn’t really her taste.”

Clearly, Meyers and Rubino were exquisitely in sync. “Nancy is very involved in the visual process,” says Rubino. “She approved every fabric, every shape.” Upon hearing this compliment, Meyers laughs. “That’s code for ‘She’s a pain in the butt.’ But if you’ve spent a chunk of your life writing a character and someone puts them in the wrong clothes, or in a bed with sheets you know she would never own, it’s as if someone’s written dialogue. Sometimes you pick up more from what you’re seeing than hearing.”

The enthusiasm that went into the building of Diane Keaton’s unlikely love nest was matched only by the melancholy that came with tearing down fully appointed rooms where, for two and a half months, people lived and worked. “It’s horrible,” admits Meyers. “People say, ‘Go watch them tear it down,’ but I can’t. It’s simply too sad.”

Unlike Something’s Gotta Give, which is a funny, truthful, charming movie about grown-ups. “Jack and Diane are such icons,” says Meyers. “And to see them at this age, still smart and good-looking, finding each other in this movie—when we all know their personal journeys—is great fun. After all, people don’t stop falling in love just because they get older.”

Something’s Gotta Give is currently available on DVD from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment

Nate's New Gig. . .

Finally, my husband will be doing something that I can explain to people. Better yet have this guy explain it to you (Yuval Brisker CEO TOA Technologies) after all he created the process. It's official, after eight years of service Nate will be moving from the Duane Arnold Power Plant, in Palo Iowa. His new upscale offices will be right next to Sophia's bedroom, although his territory will include far more exotic locations like-France, Spain, London, Portugal, the Netherlands, California & Florida to name a few. We're so proud of him & thankful that God has made His will so clear during this transition. Thankfully, Nate can take a global job while we keep our roots in Cedar Rapids. This city has been very good to us, after last months flooding we felt like we couldn't leave just yet. Thanks to everyone who's supported us during this transition--and all of our international friends get ready Nate may just be in your neighborhood soon!

Black Gold, Oil That Is. . .

Oil is making millionaires in North DakotaBy JAMES MacPHERSON, Associated Press Writer

Landowners in western North Dakota have a much better chance of striking it rich from oil than they do playing the lottery, say the Stohlers. Some of their neighbors in the town of about 120, from bar tenders to Tupperware salespeople, have become "overnight millionaires" from oil royalty payments.

"It's the easiest money we've ever made," said Lorene Stohler, who worked for decades as a sales clerk at a small department store.

State and industry officials say North Dakota is on pace to set a state oil-production record this year, surpassing the 52.6 million barrels produced in 1984. A record number of drill rigs are piercing the prairie and North Dakota has nearly 4,000 active oil wells.

The drilling frenzy has led companies to search for oil using horizontal drilling beneath Parshall, a town of about 980 in Mountrail County, and under Lake Sakakawea, 180-mile-long reservoir on the Missouri River.

"I have heard, anecdotally, that there is a millionaire a day being created in North Dakota," said Ron Ness, president of the North Dakota Petroleum Council.

Kathy Strombeck, a state Tax Department analyst, said the number of "income millionaires" in North Dakota is rising.

The number of taxpayers reporting adjusted gross income of more than $1 million in North Dakota rose from 266 in 2005 to 388 in 2006, Strombeck said. The 2007 numbers won't be known until October, she said.

There are about 1,000 some people in Parshall, a lovely little town on the wide-open expanse, that has been getting a lot of attention recently.  Personally, it's the hometown of several family members. On the LONG drive from Iowa to North Dakota, it was also the first sign that we were close to Grandma's!  This area is made up of hard-working farmers who've experienced extreme winters and some heartbreaking harvests.  I can't imagine a more deserving people.

JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB

"You ought, perhaps to include a larger allowance of prose in your daily study." J. Austen

"My idea of good company, is the company of clever, well-informed people who have a great deal of conversation."  J. Austen

This summer our book club will be starting with Mansfield Park.  But I noticed this little tid-bit from Emma.  See if you can guess the one word phrase from a series of clues in an original Austen Charades game:

"My first doth affliction denote

Which my second is destin'd to feel.

And my whole is the best antidote 

That affection to soften & heal.

To solve the charade, you must break down the riddle into parts. 'My first' is the hint to the first syllable of the word to be guessed. 'My second' hints at the second syllable of the word, and 'My whole' is the hint for the whole word. The first syllable of the word woe, the second syllable is man, which creates woe-man. The answer to the charade is woman."  

-John Lithgow, A Lithgow Palooza 101 Ways to entertain and Inspire your Kids. (A MUST HAVE FOR MOMS)