Mamacita says:  I agree. When my kids were little, I used to subscribe to several parenting magazines, and few if any of my problems were ever featured anywhere in there. Maybe on the joke page, but never in an article with advice and solutions. Where were the articles about snakes and albino rats and a garden full of rotten tomatoes and little boys, and how to hang a swing on a tree when the branches are all taller than a four-story house, and how to tell a good yard sale from a bad yard sale just by reading the ad, and how a handful of chocolate chips won’t hurt your child in the long run, and how to deal with household trash when you can’t afford trash bags, and how to scrub out a child’s swimming pool without actually climbing inside, and how to make the neighbor’s cows stop breaking their fence and looking through your bedroom window and scaring the absolute living $%^&* out of you in the predawn hours before noon, and how to pack a school lunch when neither of your kids like sandwiches. . . . Etc.

It’s still that way. Magazines don’t talk to me. I’m not sure who they are talking to, but it’s somebody way richer and more normal than me.

It’s not that I don’t like magazines, whether online or paper; I like to read them.  I like to read magazines about Beautiful Homes, and about Cooking. However, my own admittedly unique problems are NEVER in there.  “Women’s magazines” are not written with a woman like me in mind.

For example, today I walked into the sun room and saw a slug the size and shape of a Caterpillar tractor on the air hockey table.  Where did it come from?  Why was it there?Nobody in the publishing world can tell me. Nobody in the house seems to know, either.  The cats looked as though they knew, but they weren’t telling.

As for the Cooking magazines. . . I do like to read through them as if they were fiction, but most of those are not for the likes of me.

See, when I read an article called “Quick and Easy Summer Meals Your Whole Family Will Love, Using Ingredients You Already Have In Your Pantry,” I do NOT expect the first recipe to start out with “Sprinkle 2 tsp. of saffron and 1/4 cup freshly-squeezed lime juice over two pounds of veal, let marinate for an hour, and grill, grill, grill!”

Whose family, and whose pantry, are they talking about? I love to cook and bake and I keep a pretty good inventory of spices and herbs, but SAFFRON? Who can afford saffron?

Lemons. I have no limes, but I always have lemons. The veal I don’t have either because I have a thing about eating something newborn, but maybe I could substitute the frozen catfish that’s been in the freezer since. . . . well, for a while.

I guess I can make this dish anyway, by substituting lemon for lime, paprika for saffron, and catfish for veal. Do you think anyone will notice?

Not in this house they won’t.

I’m really a very good cook, but some of the recipes I’ve seen on Pinterest, etc, lately seem to be aimed at either complete beginners who need to be shown, via picture diagrams, how to break an egg and deposit only the inside in the bowl whilst putting the outside in the trash, or people who advocate recipes using spices that can’t be found at Kroger’s and meats found only in gourmet shoppes or hanging in the attics of mighty hunters.

But don’t mind me.  I’m still flabbergasted that so many of the Girl Scouts in my troupe back in the sixties didn’t even know how to follow the directions on a box of CAKE MIX.

Flabbergasted, and more than just a little bit disgusted.

The truth is, I’d much rather read a good article about social media, electronics, business, blogging, education, market research, and baking.  THOSE are meant for women like me.  And if there’s something in there about TV or a promiscuous celebrity, I just skip it.

(By the way, if you haven’t already discovered “Stone Soup” by Jan Eliot, you’re missing out on a really wonderful comic strip. It’s one of my favorites.)