This article originally appeared on Ravishly

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As A Parent of 5 Kids, I Am Thinking Outside The Box. For Colleges.

As mama duck to my precious little ducklings, I have a lot on my plate.

3 meals a day for 7 mouths, 2 adults included, can start adding up fast. We have gone from 2 cups of dry rice to cook for dinner to 5 cups of dry rice, just to feed everyone. 1 loaf of bread a day. Apples are hardly a dime a dozen anymore…and don’t even begin on the amount of peanut butter and jelly we have gone through already.

Other questions of logistics come up, such as how do you keep everyone’s shoes in one place; particularly when the 3 year old keeps putting them on her teddy bears?  How long can we pass down clothes until we can’t remember who wore them first, in the first place? Will we ever see Disneyland, or is that going to be a vacation left for retirement?

These are all sorts of logistics and questions with a large family, to make sure everyone has what they need in order to feel loved and are all well provided for.

However, my mind goes to the not so distant future, well before I start pestering them for bundles of grandkids:  college.

If Disneyland is out of the picture for us, then paying for college 5 times over is well out of the picture.

Fortunately, these children have a mother who thinks outside the box: EUROPE.

Follow me on this idea.

5 Incredible European Colleges American Graduates Can Attend…For Free

I’m not even kidding, I love this idea so much.

1) Germany

Bist du von Deutschland?  Nein??  Good, then you are in a good place to apply for free college in good ol’ Deutschland.

DAAD: German Academic Exchange Service has all the resources you need to get yourself on a plane to enjoy your studies with a side of sauerkraut.

From the University of Duisburg-Essen to the Hamburg Institute of Technology…Germany has courses in German and English for your little expat.

2) Finland

Finland Scholarships for International Students
Would you like a little more Nordic in your life? Finland’s got’cha covered! They are lovely people, with the driest wit on earth. Do not underestimate their lack of smiling for ill humor. They are just biding their time until something genuinely strikes their fancy to dazzle you with their grin.  After homework, of course.

3) Scotland

Perhaps you are feeling a little more brave than frigid…Scotland is waiting for your budding college student to enroll!

Study in Scotland is where you begin your tartan travels into Bachelor degrees. And for goodness sake, invite your mother to come live with you. Because she loves you, and was in 20 hours of labor to give birth to you…she deserves some time in Scotland in her lifetime.  But, no pressure. Your education is more important.

4) Brazil

Talvez você gostaria de estudar no Brasil?

Maybe you need something completely different. Something you have never experienced before.  Maybe you aren’t the chilly-weather, independent, northern-European kind of student.

Maybe you need a university a little warmer, a little more flamboyant…a university with some South American pizazz.  Perhaps you need to be in a country where everyone is family, and many Acarajé and Moqueca meals await for you there.

Well, my friends, Science in Brazil is your new home.

5) Slovenia

Do not underestimate the idea of studying in Slovenia. Their tuition is free, their cost of living is reasonable and they have an incredible amount of programs available for American students…and it is a beautiful country.

In a country nestled in the Alps right next to Austria and a boat ride away from Italy, you will find a land…just smaller than New Jersey.  However, this small amount of historical land boasts both a coastal line on the Adriatic Sea, a mountain line of the Alps and valleys, farmland and delightfully charming towns in between.  This might be thinking out of the box in a big way…but…

Expand your educational horizons, and check out Studying in Slovenia.

There you have it, fellow parents!  5 different paths to college for your little, expatriate ducklings!

Why Blogging Is A Must.

I wrote this last week…it is going to be a series, so this isn’t the end.

But I thought I’d throw it out there. I’m kind of afraid to start writing the second part, because this turned out pretty well. I’m worried my mojo is tapped out 😉

Esther,

As queen who was grafted in.

Branches of myrtle, curved and embraced

into the mighty tree;

A rooted shelter from the bitter, continental elements.

The Queen

who had hid behind the harem,

as the fellow wife in the colony,

clinging to the roof of stones

which carried the names of previous wilderness queens.

Vashti, Hadassah, Sarah, Rachel.

A queen, grafted into marriage,

who sat on her imported wicker chair on her front porch

and allowed herself to be approached

by the wheat farmers’ next door. Blessed on a Friday

before shabbat; while she still worked;

while she still wore the crown.

Heaven help the man who knew

her first. They bent his arm too far, and he watched his farm

seized by a mightier, hungrier form;

The form of new money and wild,

Egyptian hands.

Our poor queen who walked down the long, transcontinental roads,

which divided the lands first staked down by

Benjamite apologists, roaming the dusty trails with their

women and herds of sheep across the earth,

illuminated by seasons of old moons and old loves,

waxing into movements of waning grief.

Not all the women had drawn close to

the mightier idea of walking into untamed and uncharted

plots, fraught with the vile and repugnant ravenous wolves,

seeking, in a pack, to seize and divide.

Hungry wolves, bitter of too many winters

with modest shrews to fill their bellies.

So this new woman, this grafted Queen,

who had her saddle packed to her boots with spices

she smuggled like Rachel out of her last caravan;

this new woman was our Queen.

On the plains, we had nothing more to give her, than our gaping,  Protestant stare.

This article originally appeared on Ravishly.

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Why Parenting Is Like A Silicon Valley Startup

Jared has diaper duty. Forever.

I am going all nerdy on y’all tonight.

We have been watching Silicon Valley from the very beginning of the show.

Naturally, at first with dubious and skeptical expectations, since geeks are naturally dubious and skeptical of other geeks, particularly actor nerds passing themselves off as geeks.  I will gladly admit that this show actually does an accurate representation of what living through a Start Up is like.  From the subtle in-fighting, to the khaki pants, to the sloppy button-up shirts, they look like Start Up geeks. Plus, the emotional ups and downs of software vs. hardware, hitting project goals and yet still making $0, if you’re lucky.  The endless hours spent at the keyboards, 20 hour workdays, dealing with odd landlords and nosy neighbors.  Plus: Ever wonder how these guys have health insurance?  lol…health insurance in a Start Up.  

The thing is, the more I watch this show, and the more I think back to the endless years in Start Up culture that we experienced, the more I keep thinking: “This is way too similar to parenting.”

Endless nights working? check.

Emotional toil? check.

Your clothes don’t match/fit anymore? check.

Everyone has a completely unhelpful, and most likely arbitrary piece of advice for you at the worst times: check.

You set the living room on fire by overloading the servers that had the worst cabling on the face of the earth? well, no.

But I have set the oven on fire by trying to reheat biscuits.  #fireextinguishers #everythingisokay

Follow me on this nerdy venture:

5 Ways Parenting Is Like Surviving a Silicon Valley Start Up:

1. Inexperience does not negate your position as the CEO 

If you have never had experience as a parent before, but read about it in a book once, then congratulations! You are perfect parenting material!

And you have the job.

Start Ups were notorious for putting the one person who couldn’t code as the head of the company, just to give them something to do.  Sometimes it worked out and they did actually rise to the occasion to lead their company to something great…like being acquired.  Probably by Oracle.

But as a parent, you have no out.  You are in this ship for the long haul, and you better make the most out of naptimes by either actually relaxing for an hour…or you make a game plan for your new position.

“Today, you may take the bottle, my son. But tomorrow, you take the world.” check.

2. Complete lack of “domain knowledge.”

If you have ever had the pleasure of getting conflicting information on key components to raising your infant “correctly,” then you have “lack of domain knowledge.”

“In software engineering domain knowledge is knowledge about the environment in which the target system operates…” Basically, it’s when you know your stuff with what you’re doing.

For example. Let’s say you and your spouse have a baby who gets fussy in the afternoon.  You guys can’t figure out what on earth is going on, because the baby is fine for the rest of the day, but right around 2pm she just loses her little mind. And you guys are just at your wit’s end about this…until you realize that around 2pm, you have been feeding her mashed peas, and those peas were giving her gas!  Problem solved!! *high 5s*

You have now acquired domain knowledge.

3. Everyone else wants to give you their domain knowledge too.

What works for one Start Up will probably not work for the next. What worked for Facebook and Twitter will absolutely, totally not work for an app that remotely checks your tire pressure.

In the same way, what works for one baby will probably not work for another. I have 5…I have had to change the game so many times, I don’t even remember where I started.

But try bringing up your ideas about cloth diapers, breastfeeding vs. bottlefeeding, when to start them on solids, or bigger topics like circumsicion and vaccinations.

You will find a circus of domain knowledge which somehow finds its way to you, tout de suite.

4. Companies who ignore revenues in order to keep striving for the “Perfect Product.”

This just is a recipe for failure in any company.

When the ideal of the product overshadows the realities of finance/growth/customers/lack of customers, then the only thing that will survive in the company is the ideal.

I know the image of Norman Rockwell’s paintings of happy, quiet children reading 500 page classical novels in front of a fireplace somewhere in Connecticut is the ideal we have been given for parenting…but it is a big load of idealized hogwash.

Real start ups are messy, in an uninsulated garage, underfunded, overworked and definitely hitting the wine bar after dinner.  Before going back to fix code that you just realized was buggy during your hamburger.

Similarly, real parenting is long, arduous, emotionally taxing, euphoric, defeated and….worth it.  Completely.

We can’t strive for the “ideal parenting” or the “ideal child,” and expect it to turn out the way we think. What we have is a beautiful child, who is ours to love, and the time available to create a relationship with them to last a lifetime.

5. “The Team Behind It”

Bill Gross, the founder of “Idealab,” has had many brilliant things to say about how companies live or die.

One thing he said about the teams that make up companies was fantastic:

“Gross said, “I never thought I’d be quoting boxer Mike Tyson on the TED stage, but he once said, “Everybody has a plan, until they get punched in the face.” And I think that’s so true about business as well. “So much about a team’s execution is its ability to adapt to getting punched in the face by the customer.”

If this doesn’t summarize parenting, I don’t know what does.

Things are going to come out of the blue and hit you in the face before you know it even existed, and your ability to adapt to those punches to the face is going to determine how you adapt to parenting.

When our first daughter was 3 months old, our pediatrician said she was a little “concerned” about a clicking in her hips.  So off we went to xrays and experts, only to find out that she didn’t even have a hipjoint on her right side, and the left was a little meager as well.  Hip dysplasia took us to doctors, harness fittings and xray technicians for years. But we took each doctor’s visit as another bold step in making sure our beautiful daughter had a fully functioning hip socket that would never give her trouble, ever again.

Parenting is never like it says in the pamphlets and books people give you while you’re pregnant.

Parenting is a wild roller coaster of emotions and experiences.

But parenting has been the biggest thing I will ever do, and I look forward to every defeat and every euphoric moment, because I will be spending those moments with the only team I have ever wanted. And if that isn’t succeeding in life, I don’t know what is.

This article originally appeared on Ravishly.

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The Greatest Red Wine Pairings Of All Time

In a breakthrough research study, that no one has ever tested before in the history of science, drunk scientists in Washington have declared that “red wine can help you lose weight.”

Yes, you heard that right. Your favorite beverage is the key to weight loss.

Goodbye Weight Watchers!  So long Jenny Craig. We have a new BFF in the house.

“…Lead researcher Professor Min Du, from Washington State University explaining how it works.

He says: ‘Polyphenols in fruit, including resveratrol, increase gene expression that enhances the oxidation of dietary fats so the body won’t be overloaded.

‘They convert white fat into beige fat which burns lipids (fats) off as heat, helping to keep the body in balance and prevent obesity and metabolic dysfunction.’”

Ladies!

This is fantastic news!!

My new hobby: Pinterest, here I come.

“New research has found that an ingredient in grapes and berries turns your fat into calorie-burning ‘brown’ fat.

Of course this ingredient, known as resveratrol, can also be found in blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, and apples.”

 

I have a theory.

My theory is, if you had a feast of blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, apples and red wine…you would magically grow a scarlet toga with an 18 inch golden belt, and be renamed “Aphrodite.” Which is a pretty sweet deal, if you think about it.

But we can’t all be Aphrodite. That would just be silly.  For one, it is very difficult to pronounce “Aphrodite” while drunk (#experience).

The only way we can control this mass transformation of all women on earth becoming Aphrodite is to pace ourselves.  We must have a devoted discipline with this newfound power of transfigurating metamorphosis.

The best way we can solve this problem is to pair our wine with our meals throughout the day.

Step 1: Fruit and wine. Step 2: World Domination…I mean, “weight loss.”

Starter Meal Plan:

A light cabernet sauvignon with our morning strawberry poptart/s.

Perhaps a pint of saucy pinot noir with your tuna salad lunch.

A bottle of petite sirah with goldfish crackers you stole from the kids’ snack cupboard in the afternoon.

Another bottle of merlot, while you finish watching “Jake and the Neverland Pirates.” Ugh. Captain Hook is not sexy in this version, at all. What happened to the sexy Captain Hook. What if Michael Fassbender wore that jacket…yes!! Hollywood needs to get on this, pronto. I need to text someone this great idea. 

A jug of “red wine blend” with to finish the evening as you rock out to your hidden Taylor Swift albumbs on ur iphone, and she is so cool. How can she be so cool. Talor is THE BEST. SHE HAS THE BEST HAIR. OMG I love her hair. And her shoes. I should find her shoes on Amazon. And buy them all.

I don’t even need food at this point. Just me and this song. That’s all I need.

At this point in the night, you are so in love with your jams, you don’t even remember that you are supposed to eat more than goldfish and poptarts.

But it doesn’t even matter. You are just happy and in love…and on the road to weight loss!

#science