Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture
“Kids’ birthday parties always sound so fun in the abstract. Maybe it’s that they’re a guilt-free way to avoid weekend errands for a few hours and at the same time load up on sugary cake. While most of them are fine, over the years there have been some real doozies. In escalating order of awfulness, here they are…” — Tracy Charlton, Scary Mommy
Read the full article here.
“I’ve tried everything I can think of to make bedtime a less painful time of day for us, but I’ve run the gamut between rewards and punishments and all I get is this same sequence of events, night after night.
“Bedtime is a monotonous, hellish time for me, as I am sure it is for a lot of parents. [. . .]” — Cheney Meaghan, Pickle Fork, January 4, 2019
“It is a well known fact that The Supermarket is in fact the seventh circle of hell for parents of toddlers. And pre-schoolers. And primary, secondary… oh stuff it, most kids. Shopping with kids full stop is a particular pain that most of us dread but for some reason, The Supermarket is a special, fire-burning hell that should only be braved by the thick of skin and girded of loin.” — Kate Dyson, The Motherload, February 9, 2018
Read the full article here.
“Bedtime – the hour that we spend all day counting down to. The curtain call to our kids’ shitty antics and incessant demands, so we can finally pour ourselves a drink and peruse Netflix for that perfect movie or show to serve as background noise while we scroll Facebook and fall asleep on the couch. Except bedtime is almost never the time we parents have chosen for bed. Oh, no. Kids are determined to not go gentle into that good night and to rage against the dying of the light.
“While most just flip their kids the bird under their throw blanket when little Jimmy comes stomping down the stairs for another goddamned glass of water, funny parents on Twitter are tweeting what we’re all thinking.
I like when someone else puts my kid to bed because then their night is ruined instead of mine.
— Lauren Mullen (@DraggingFeeties) April 14, 2017
I tucked my kids in last night and said, "See you in the morning!" and then we laughed and laughed. Saw them 16 more times before sunrise.
— Ash (an female) ⚪️ (@adult_mom) March 9, 2016
“Twitter parents know. Twitter parents understand. Twitter parents are also losing their effing minds one failed bedtime routine after another.” –Serena Dorman, Sammiches & Psych Meds, 2017.
You can check out all twenty-two tweets here.
“My mom-brain has turned to mush! Between my own job and my job as a mom, there’s not much time left in the day to read a book or the newspaper. Even the Singapore Math my son does for first-grade homework confounds me. It’s only a matter of time until I’m not smarter than my fifth-grader.
“In anticipation of my kid learning things that I’ve long since forgotten or never cared about in the first place, I’m trying to brush up on my long division, my algebra and those dreaded classics. Sure, most of my brushing up involves me Googling or Wiki-ing the Cliff’s Notes. But if I were to actually sit down and reread Shakespeare or Chaucer, I’m fairly certain I’d have no time left for feeding and clothing my kids.
“In my studies I came across Dante’s Inferno, which is the beginning of the epic poem Divine Comedy. Inferno, as it turns out, is Italian for ‘hell.’ The 14th-century epic poem tells the story of the writer suffering through the nine circles of hell located within Earth. Kinda sounds like motherhood, no?
“Let’s face it, some parts of motherhood are downright hellish. And while it seems like those sleepless nights with infants or days spent comforting a teething child are hell, they’re not. That’s because those phases end quickly. The real nine circles of hell for moms last longer and make even the most patient woman feel like she is in the middle of an Italian classic.” –Meredith Gordon, Mom.com (May 14, 2015)
Read the full article here.
