jennifer patel

Lack of the proper 'X' angle. Sometimes, I call him Tetas now. Last summer, we got an email through our adoption agency informing us that Choo Choo (this is what we call him) and family were personally inviting us (and paying for our tickets) to sit in his designated corner on a game deemed 'Korean Heritage Night at the Ballpark.' We were unable to attend and didn't think too much of it. This year, we were invited back and signed up to go. I feel that as much money as we have spent on the Texas Rangers organization, and the number of games we've been to, I have the right to be a seat snob. Best seats in the house (other than lowest level first rows behind the plate or either dugout) are second level infield baselines (sections 219-233)...1st base best because of early shade. When I emailed back for tickets, I assumed because they were free, they were going to throw us up on the third level nose bleed. We were very pleasantly surprised that we were l...

photo credit: Lynn in Love I make a lot of mistakes on the daily as a parent. Sometimes I let my frustration get the best of me and I make up crazy consequences that don't make any sense. For example once at Jason's Deli, Alex was eating chocolate soft serve and kept spilling it off of his spoon onto his clothes. I kept putting napkins everywhere where I anticipated it would land and it kept missing and landing on clothing. After the 5th time, I was like, "Are you serious?! If you spill one more spoonful, you are done and we are leaving!" And then once I say something, I'm stu[pid]bborn enough to follow through. Because you're supposed to follow through, right? I've gotten very good at apologizing. He did spill another time and we did end up leaving. Naturally, he screamed on the way out and even I walked out thinking, WTF MOM?! I did apologize to him for acting crazy later. Our latest battle is chewing and swallowing vegetables. Alex can cam...

To quote Amy Poehler from her memoir, Yes Please : (yes, I am getting kickbacks at this point) "I believe great people do things before they are ready." As we jump into summer I take with me a heavy heart. I am leaving the hellhole that is my school and going to a potentially new hellhole within the district. I never even wanted to be a teacher. I wanted to be a therapist. I wanted to run weird studies and collect data about human interactions and relationships. I wanted to win the lottery and become a funded humanitarian with a comfortable lifestyle. Unfortunately you can't really rock a Psychology degree. I mean you can, but it's not really recognized as a real thing by the "real world". The next best thing was becoming a teacher at an alternative school. I showed up 10 years ago in a bathing suit for my first, real adult job interview. I was still teaching swim lessons in the summers and the then principal of my school asked if I could swing by in b...

I'm not talking about JT's amazing 2002 album and I'm not talking about the FX series. I'm talking about the feeling of validation when I opened up the WSJ this morning and saw this: WSJ, a reputable publication on the right and my favorite reading, celebrity trash, on the left. Now granted, I hardly ever read the Wall Street Journal . It's hard to say whether US Weekly got the idea from the WSJ or vice versa. I like to think that even big time WSJ journalists enjoy a little celebrity gossip every now and again. If you're ever in the Andes though, beware of altitude sickness!  Hirstin Lazcano uses sorojchi pills. She also packs in her bag an electric teapot to brew decaffeinated herbal tea...another altitude sickness remedy. Maybe that's more educational than knowing Brandy loses her sh*t if she misplaces her Giorgio Armani's lip gloss in 103, but at the end of breakfast these stories are the same. The WSJ is V's favorite newspaper ...