Okay, so I most definitely have a rant this morning.

I open up my e-mail to find an article with a cover photo of a blogger breastfeeding her 4 year old son and the headline, “Are you mom enough?” See below:

I’m a TIME Magazine subscriber & I have to say I was disappointed with the angle they used for the cover. While the story itself was somewhat benign and featured the ever popular Dr. Sears discussing attachment parenting, the imagery on the cover had nothing to do with Dr. Sears. It was a call to action, but in a bad way. It pins moms against moms, and almost implies that if you are more of a mom if you breastfeed on an extended basis, not even just breastfeeding at all. Even the way in which they were posed was challenging. I understand that TIME must engage the readers, but this seems like a slick trick to get people buzzing, including myself. They are much better than that. I turned to TIME, like I turn to 60 Minutes on a Sunday night. I look at them as the respectful avenue of hardhitting news without the cheap tricks. Can I just say #brandfail ?

Okay, done with that rant. I will not let it consume me further. I just had to comment.

Here’s my other rant for the week: HOA’s

Some of you may know that I am in the process of moving. Well, the place I am moving to has an HOA. Where I live now has one too! However, the new place is taking a few weeks to get into. At the beginning of the month, we signed a contract to lease and then a lease with plans to move in on the 15th or really the 12th. However, we were informed that the HOA would need to 1-2 weeks minimum to do our background check and then we would have to wait until the next screening committee meeting to be approved to move in. So now we can only move our stuff in, but we are not allowed to occupy it until we are approved. This is especially rough when we need to be out of our current place by the 15th. Now we are looking at staying in a hotel or a friend’s house for a week or more waiting for the HOA to do a screening. It doesn’t matter that the current place we live at has already done this and we have only been here a year. I mean, seriously, a criminal background check can come back within 3 days if they moved on it. The realtors already did the credit check. I just don’t understand why it takes so long to get approval to move in somewhere.

Then there are their 50,000 rules about everything you must adhere to. Where we live now, we get notices all the time intended for the homeowner and based on the fact that the color of the outside fence was not the exact shade and that the fence was flat when it should be shadowbox. I mean this is just some of the things, but they are basically making sure your home fits into their cookie cutter image. Uck!

My Raves:

Saturday at the Versace Mansion with my husband for Mom 2.0 was a once in a lifetime experience and on cinco de mayo no less. National Mom’s Nite Out & Simon Malls for planning awesome events to help pamper moms, even if it’s just for a night. Enterprise Rental Car for being so awesome with my whole car rental experience. It turns out my grandpa worked for them for years, so that makes me all the more happier.

*Photographed for Time Magazine by Martin Schoeller