Everyone was vocal with their opinions, which often strayed from the issue at hand: Casey Anthony’s guilt or innocence in the death of her toddler, Caylee. The public considered George and Cindy Anthony fair game to judge and lambaste on the news, some even trespassing on their front lawn to protest with signs. Much of the outrage came from the perceived ignorance of the Anthonys and their unwavering support of their daughter. Others decided Casey was a product of bad parenting but sympathizers of George and Cindy believed Casey must have been born a monster capable of filicide – the nature versus nurture argument.

If the plight of the Anthonys interested you, you might enjoy the bestselling novel by William Landay, Defending Jacob. The narrator of the story is Andy Barber, a highly respected assistant district attorney in Massachusetts suburbia. He is assigned the shocking murder case of a teenage boy, Ben Rifkin, only to be put on paid leave as his son Jacob becomes a suspect and is subsequently arrested.

Andy and his wife Laurie are stunned to become social pariahs overnight as even their decades-old friendships are strained. Laurie begins homeschooling an ostracized Jacob. Andy personally investigates the Rifkin homicide, hoping to find the real killer and exonerate his son. While in extreme denial about the damming evidence mounting against Jacob, Andy does face the reality of heading to trial and finally confesses to Laurie the truth about his family’s history of violence. The bloody Barber legacy is another cause for Laurie to question Jacob’s innocence but Andy remains resolute in support of their son.

Any parent could find it frightening to ask themselves the questions the Barbers were forced to consider: How well do you really know your child? Do you know how they spend their time online (keeping in mind that tech savvy kids can circumvent parental controls and permanently erase their history)? Are you really following their Facebook activity? Do you know what social peer group they fall into at school? Have you met their friends?

Some reviewers of Defending Jacob commented it gets a little sluggish during the murder trial. While I don’t entirely disagree, I was never bored and I give William Landay credit for a satisfying ending with a surprise.

“My what?!” I quickly examined myself – was my zipper down? Had a button come undone?

“Your aura,” she repeated. “It’s orange.”

“Thanks,” I same dumbly. How do you respond to something like that? I had a vague idea of what an aura was – it’s the “electromagnetic field that surrounds the human body,” if you want a textbook definition. Some people claim to see auras and you can find books on the subject with how-to instructions. What an orange one meant I had no idea but later learned it varies widely depending on who you ask. Some sources say it shows a desire or ability to control people. Others say orange is the color of vitality and it indicates energy, creativity, productivity, and courage. I’ve also heard it’s indicative of stress and addiction. I don’t believe in any of that hocus-pocus but I did wonder if an orange aura would have anything to do with orange being my favorite color.

You might think it would be a good thing that if I had to sum up my week in a word it would be “orange.” My previous post, a recommend of the book Orange is the New Black by Piper Kerman, was the good part. The rest… not so much.

It started with the sickeningly sweet orange drink for the glucose screening every pregnant woman has to take. I chug-a-lugged the nasty beverage and an hour later a phlebotomist drew my blood. If you haven’t had the displeasure of drinking the syrupy soda used to check your sugar level in your third trimester, then let me tell you it’s enough to ruin every happy childhood memory of Orange Tang. When I was little I remember my great aunt always having some in her pantry. When her back was turned I’d sneak scoop after heaping scoop of the powdery mix into my water glass. It was so thick I’d have to eat it with a spoon.

Thinking all the grossness of glucose testing was behind me, I was surprised when my doctor called a few days later to say that my sugar levels were elevated and I needed to come back and re-test. Except this “re-test” was more than a repeat of the first time. Now I needed to do a three-hour glucose tolerance test. This meant after midnight I wouldn’t be allowed to eat or drink anything – not so much as a stick of gum or ice chip was to pass through my lips. I was to show up at 8:00 a.m. and get my blood drawn. Then I had to drink that orange concoction again in five minutes or less. For the next three hours on the hour they would re-take my blood. That’s a total of FOUR BLOOD DRAWS but who’s counting?

So that was how I ended my week – sitting in the waiting room of my doctor’s office. Hungry. Thirsty. Getting poked twice in each arm. I passed the time reading a New York Times Bestseller on my Kindle, of course with an orange case.

Now I’m just crossing my fingers for good test results. Although, after reading about the symptoms of gestational diabetes (what would I do without Google?) I’m pretty sure I can see where things are going.

So… what was funny this week? To be continued…

Would it surprise you to learn that I know someone who actually lived out the nightmare of being incarcerated? It shouldn’t. Not with mandatory sentencing laws swelling the U.S. prison population to unprecedented numbers. It’s becoming more likely everyday that you know someone in prison or who has served time. The woman I knew who became another statistic was a co-worker. She started using drugs and within a few months the all-American life she’d once known was entirely dismantled: she was fired for “job abandonment,” her husband left and took custody of their two young kids, and she was living in her car the day she got arrested for robbery. (She stole to support her $400-a-day heroin habit.) She received a seven and a half year prison sentence, of which she served every single day, and behind bars she learned that through her intravenous drug habit she’d contracted Hepatitis C.

I can’t personally relate to being addicted to drugs, least of all to sharing dirty syringes. (I’m a wimp getting my blood drawn at the doctor’s office!) But I can empathize with the feeling of, “How did I get here?” The night I wore an ill-fitting mortar board bobby-pinned to my hair and was handed my high school diploma my biggest fear was tripping across the stage. It never occurred to me while being set free in the world with my dreams that things might not go exactly as I planned them. Getting married, having a daughter, and getting divorced by the age of 21 was certainly not on my to-do list but it’s what happened. Granted, starter marriages and early motherhood pale in comparison to opiates and the Cement Hilton. But it’s the detours I’ve taken from my own life goals that has given me compassion for those who’ve wondered how they got lost on some random road.

So, I was ecstatic when my book club chose to read the memoir by Piper Kerman, Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison. Newly graduated from Smith college, Kerman was directionless and looking for adventure when she met Nina, who had a lucrative and exciting lifestyle as part of an international drug ring. Naively agreeing to accompany Nina to Europe on a drug-smuggling trip, Kerman wound up taking part in the mission by delivering a large amount of cash. Realizing what she’d gotten involved in, she promptly severed ties with Nina when they returned to the U.S.

Flash forward several years and the feds came knocking on Piper Kerman’s door, who was then living in New York with her fiancé. Indictments followed, she accepted a plea bargain, and after legal delays related to extraditing a co-defendant, she began serving her fifteen-month sentence in Danbury, Connecticut a full ten years after her crime.

The moment she self-surrendered at the minimum security facility Piper Kerman began navigating the unique culture of prison. She shares details of inmate life: the microwave recipe for “prison cheesecake,” how to make eyeliner from pencil lead and Vaseline, and avoiding tension at the salad bar when rare vegetables are served. She describes the ever-present and inflexible interpersonal politics: never ask anyone about their crime and never make your own bed if you are a newbie – the inmates who’ve served a lot of time insist only they can make it passable for inspection.

Orange is the New Black is far from a prison survival handbook. It tells the tale of how relationships form behind bars that become like surrogate families. Through bonding with the women Kerman fully repents of the wrongness of her actions with Nina a decade earlier as she sees how their lives were destroyed by drugs. It shows the women she serves time with to be flawed, compassionate, frightened, poorly educated and redeemable. Perhaps most importantly, Kerman’s memoir exposes the plight of the prisoner, such as guards that run the gamut from indifferent to heartless, the pathetic excuse for the “law library,” and the release programs that make a pitiful attempt at helping inmates integrate back into society.

If the stories of the women at Danbury, Connecticut’s federal prison move you and leave you feeling curious or called to action, you will appreciate that the memoir concludes with a helpful list of resources. The topic of prison reform can be polarizing but I believe most of us can agree that we do not want our correctional facilities to simply warehouse the “undesirables of society,” i.e. the poor, the uneducated, and the mentally ill. We want change. We just need the right information widely circulated to inspire and empower those who are willing and committed to effect changes. Piper Kerman has done her part by sharing her story in Orange is the New Black.

So do I. Sadly, one of the most memorable for me was the Valentine’s Day that wasn’t, circa 1985. I was in fourth grade and on February 13th the whole class decorated brown lunch bags with red, pink, and white construction paper hearts, wrote our names on them in giant letters, and hung them in the back of the classroom by the cubbies.

Anticipation was high for the party the next day since it was the last big hoorah for the school year. St. Patrick’s Day would pass with some shamrock decorations and warnings not to pinch anyone for not wearing green. If we were lucky we’d make some bunny craft in Art class for Easter. Certainly we’d make something in May for our mothers but Valentine’s Day was bigger than all of that.

First, there was the all important valentine selection. Fourth grade protocol demanded nothing too cutesy or juvenile and woe to the kid whose mother took them shopping too late and found everything picked over! They’d have two options: buy the crappy ones or make homemade valentines. Second, there was the party. The teacher would call your row and you’d get to distribute your valentines into everyone’s lunch bags then go get a paper plate full of sugary goodies: cupcakes, frosted cookies, conversation hearts, and suckers. You could fill a paper cup from the punchbowl full of red KoolAid. All day there would be no real lessons or learning and definitely no homework. Third, the valentine revelations. I don’t know what the boys were doing but in fourth grade there was some critical analysis taking place by the girls. Each valentine was assessed individually: a card with a large piece of candy, an extra sticker, or anything written in addition to the boy’s name could mean you were the object of someone’s crush. Everyone understood a crush could lead to “going steady,” which meant that the other person saved you a seat on the bus and might call you at home one day for five minutes while their friends laughed and prompted them what to say in the background.

But the morning of Valentine’s Day I awoke feverishly ill and, despite my pleas that I WOULD MISS THE CLASS PARTY, my mother insisted that I stay home and not infect my classmates with my germs. In my weakened condition I did my best all day to pout and explain how she was ruining my life.

Wouldn’t you know I woke up February 15th having made a miraculous recovery and my mother made me go to school? The day after Valentine’s Day it was back to business. Finally in the afternoon my teacher gave me my paper bag of cards. A few kids taped suckers or conversation hearts to the envelopes but other than that I’d been cheated out of all the sugary loot. I was allowed to pass out my own cards but since I hadn’t put any candy with mine they seemed like a pitiful afterthought as I went around the desks handing them out.

This is just one of the reasons I’m in therapy.

Me, before the psychological damage.

Hope your Valentine’s Day isn’t emotionally scarring.

Does this artwork stir your emotions? Does it capture the jarring impact as the teenage boy crushed my back bumper in a parking lot? Can you feel the joyous relief when I learn my unborn baby girl is unharmed and has a healthy heartbeat in the 140s? Do you hear the instrumental melodies as I wait on hold with the auto insurance company? Can you taste the crunchy taco dinner that left me with a cracked tooth? Can you feel my sadness from learning a house we’d been interested in is sold? Yeah, I thought so.

Now on to what made me laugh:

•  Madison scares easily. Poor girl wouldn’t last two minutes on Fear Factor. Couple that with her gullibility and she might as well walk around with a target on her back. Recently we were in the car and I tricked her into thinking she was about to get wet when we drove past some sprinklers. That was nothing compared to her genuine reaction to a bumblebee buzzing around the car while we were parked at a red light. She startled, squealed, curled into a ball and yelled, “Aaaaaack! A BEE!” After laughing until my stomach hurt I’m like, “The windshield is solid, Madison.”

•  Catnap. For non-parents, this is exactly what sleeping with children is like.

•  Done in 30 Minutes with the kids versus WITHOUT them. Another NickMom gem.

•  My friend’s Facebook status: “Last night I told my twins they could be anything they want when they grow up. Hannah announced she wants to be a Daddy. Abbie announced she wants to be an M&M. A red one.”

•  1984 Realized. (Thanks, Luke.)

Hope your week was less eventful and even funnier than mine. Have a great weekend… and watch out for those teenage drivers!

Speaking of aging… does laughter help keep you young? I hope so. Here’s what made me laugh this week:

•  Hudson is officially old enough to make embarrassing comments. Here is the cringe worthy moment in my husband’s words…

“Yesterday we met a man who was walking to get his mail and had some obvious physical impediment. Hudson walked directly into his path, points at his radically bowed legs and says “Ouchies!” I didn’t know what to say but somehow ‘yeah, ouchies’ slipped out of my face. Without skipping a beat the guy changed course and walked by without saying a word. Here’s to hoping he was deaf too.”

•  I did these things as a kid (but my kid won’t). You’ll love this blog, Parenting. Illustrated with Crappy Pictures.

• Brain dead teen to be euthanized. Gotta love satire from The Onion.

•  Dancing zebra. Just another silly gif.

•  The Simple Dog Goes for a Joy Ride, from Hyperbole and a Half. This post is hilarious to me because A) I have two stupid dogs B) both stupid dogs have gotten loose and gone wild and C) last weekend I witnessed about ten adults and children gather on my street and spend like an hour trying to coax one small, stupid dog to get close enough so they could put his collar back on.

•  Daniel Radcliffe co-hosting Live! With Kelly was funny, especially when they played “The Bachelor.” Can’t wait to see his new movie, The Woman in Black. So glad to see he’s moving on after the Harry Potter franchise.

Happy Friday!

•  An entire Spanish village wins the lottery… except for one man who didn’t buy a ticket. Sodeto’s only loser doesn’t seem terribly bitter about it, saying that he’d been trying to sell some land and now that everyone’s rich he’s having no trouble finding a buyer. And the women of the village? They wanted to spend some their six-digit winnings on a trip to the hairdresser. Unfortunately for them the hairdresser also won and was taking some time off.

•  After 30 years Suzanne Somers and Joyce DeWitt reunite. I can’t see any actor from Three’s Company without getting the theme song stuck in my head the rest of the day. Do you remember the episode where  the three roommates couldn’t come up with the $300 rent so they had to concoct a zany scheme to get money while avoiding their nosy landlord and pretending Jack was gay? Oh wait…

•  A Florida man legally adopts his girlfriend to (allegedly) protect his assets from the wrongful death suit against him filed by the family of a man he hit and killed last year while driving with a blood alcohol level twice the legal limit. His criminal trial is set to start next month and he faces up to 30 years in prison.

•  Food for thought on sending farewell emails to co-workers when resigning. With a turnover rate on the rise at one of my former companies, the HR department nipped that practice in the bud by blocking employees’ ability to send email blasts to everyone at once. I was disappointed. Some of those goodbye emails would’ve made great water cooler gossip. (In lieu of an email, I considered giving my boss my resignation letter while playing “Take This Job and Shove It” to get my point across. Thankfully, a good night’s sleep helped me think better of it.)

•  And a high school player scores the winning basket for the opposing team. Oops.

With the SuperBowl right around the corner there was a link to “the perfect guacamole recipe” but that I skipped, figuring I’ve already got that down. Right, honey?

Speaking of Superman… you know how Clark Kent always made up flimsy excuses to leave, changed in a phone booth, and then rescued someone/something from impending doom/destruction? Well, my husband does that. Sort of. I’m starting to think he is an actual superhero.

Exhibit A – the house fire. One evening Lucas suddenly decided to go for a walk around the block. Just down our street he heard a dog’s frantic barking and smelled smoke. He dialed 9-1-1 and, because of his call for help and the fire department’s quick response, a family’s home is saved from burning to the ground just before Christmas. Should’ve made the news.

Sure, these aren’t the greatest pictures but I never said he was Jimmy Olson.

Exhibit B – the accident victim. Another time Lucas just had to excuse himself from a family gathering. He forgot his cell phone, he said. I get that phones become like an appendage and it can be nerve-wracking to be without them. But… it’s a little coincidental that on the way back he witnesses an accident, again is the first to call 9-1-1, and he was able to console the young, drunken, and emotionally shattered driver. She might have fled the scene had it not been for him, which wouldn’t have been in her long-term best interest. He sat on the sidewalk with her and listened while she sobbed and gave the highlights of her troubled life until the paramedics and police arrived.

Always he downplays his helping role in a crisis and always he behaves as if he’s just in the right place at the right time… time and time again. There are other instances I could mention but for now I’ll keep those a secret – a real superhero never brags about their heroic deeds and they like their privacy. Although, I’m still on the lookout for clues and accumulating evidence. So far I haven’t found a costume hidden anywhere. If he has one it’s probably a chicken suit.

♦   Today when I went to pick up Madison from school, like I normally do, she opened the car door looking totally confused. She said, “Why is Dad here too?” I looked over and there, just two parking spaces away, was my husband. We were both like, “What are you doing here?” Apparently we’d had a misunderstanding but I had to laugh that we’d both been waiting so close to each other without noticing.

♦   Inmate arrested for refusing to leave jail. So, who is the winner in this?

♦   Middle school football team’s trick play.

♦   Are you a Nick Mom? You should checkout this funny site…
Letters from camp.
What you’d give for 10 minutes of peace and quiet.
Playground equipment

Hope your weekend is off to a great start. And if you need a smile today, try taking this quiz to see if you can spot the difference between real and fake smiles. I got 15 out of 20 correct, probably because I tried to look at the eyes as the giveaway.

Remember the time… you knocked yourself out?
1.  When I was five my BFF said to me, “Let’s teeter-totter!” That sounded like a great idea. Then we were joined by two friends on the adjacent seesaw. We decided to hold hands across so that we could teeter-totter synchronized. Then I slipped and… BANG! That’s the last thing I remember before waking up with my kindergarten teacher and the whole playground surrounding me. It took seven stitches to close up the wound in my forehead.

Remember the time… your sister taught you to write?
2.  I was jealous when my older sister learned to write. One afternoon I bugged my busy mother to teach me how until she finally told my sister to help me. She taught me alright… how to write her name.

Remember the time… you broke your sister’s finger?
3.  My sister and I were jumping around in sleeping bags like they were potato sacks. We fell, me landing with my elbow on the ring finger of my sister’s right hand. I don’t remember her tears or going to the doctors office. I remember resenting her splint because Mom wouldn’t take us bowling that day.

Remember the time… your sister got lost in Disneyland?
4.  Nothing is scarier than when a child is missing. We got separated from my sister in Disneyland for four hours - the longest four hours I’ve ever lived. I seriously thought we’d end up putting her face on a milk carton. When we finally found her (she’d gone back to the hotel looking for us) I was so happy to see her I cried.

Remember the time… Mom lost the radio station contest?
5.  A popular local radio station ran a contest where they dialed random numbers and asked whoever answered, “What music station do you listen to?” The correct response, “KZZP, 104.7 FM, the number one hit music station,” earned you a cash prize. My mother got their call at work. Her response? “KZZP.” Did that count? Nope.

Madison’s antics have made for some great stories. These are her contributions to the list:

Remember the time… you said the most embarrassing thing EVER?
6.  A friend we were visiting had a guest who was, um… very obese. Madison hadn’t met anyone at that weight before. So, she marched right up to him, patted his stomach and said, “Your tummy is full. You ate all of the food.” I hoped the ground would open up and swallow me whole.

Remember the time… you puked at school?
7.  Madison is known for her weak stomach. Her threshold for what is gross is especially low when it comes to food. The policy at her elementary school was to send home any child who threw up, which resulted in many post lunch pick-ups for me. My favorite incident happened in fourth grade when she said she threw up because the boy sitting next to her “put barbecue sauce on his pizza… and ate it.“

Remember the time… you were taken off the playground in a wheelchair?
8. Madison is also known to be overly dramatic about injuries, which makes it difficult to diagnose when something is actually wrong. One day at recess she fell and banged her shin pretty hard. She screamed, cried, and could not get up. The nurse took her off the playground in a wheelchair and called me at work saying Madison’s leg was probably broken. I rushed her to the emergency room but by the time a doctor examined her she’d stopped crying and her leg hardly looked bruised. They didn’t even take an X-ray.

Remember the time… you broke your arm and didn’t know it?
9.  Flash forward to middle school. Madison was outside playing when she banged her right elbow and skinned it. She came home holding her arm funny but when I asked her what happened she said, “Yeah, yeah, I hurt my arm but guess what? Guess what?!” Then she launched into a story about how much fun she had. Throughout dinner she favored her arm but refused Tylenol and hesitantly accepted an ice pack. By her bedtime I’d forgotten all about it. The next morning her Dad found her in the bathroom trying to do her hair left handed – her right elbow was swollen and black and blue. Instead of school we took her to Urgent Care. This time she’d broken a bone, ended up in a cast and yet hadn’t shed a single tear. Go figure.

Remember the time… we surprised you with a total bedroom makeover?
10.  When Madison was in 6th grade she went on a school field trip to Catalina Island for three days. While she was gone we totally redid her bedroom – new furniture and fresh paint with a blue accent wall and funky design. Read about it and see pictures here.

Checkout stories like this and more at MamaKat’s Writer’s Workshop.