If you’ve been reading this column or my personal blog Sweetney for any length of time, you know that the past few years have been difficult ones for me. Sure, there’s The Topic Which Shall Not Be Named (okay, fine, I’ll say it: my divorce). But I’ve taken some other hard hits and been dealt some additional wounds – things I haven’t really written about before at length, anywhere. Like… Well, like the fact that the husband of someone I once considered one of my closest friends inexplicably turned on me and took it upon himself to wage a campaign of hate and lies against me online for the past couple of years. Yeah, I know. Admittedly, this is an unhinged person who openly confessed to (and later apologized for) trolling one of my group sites during the time his wife wrote for it — in his words, simply “for fun” — going so far as to call all of us, his wife included, racists (his wife is white, he’s African American – needless to say, this probably didn’t make for pleasant dinner conversation between them) (now that’s what I call FUN!). And so yeah, clearly there’s some sort of mental illness that should be taken in account (even if that doesn’t entirely excuse it), but the point is, that kind of betrayal and unprovoked cruelty (for FUN!) — coming during the worst time in my life, and from someone I dearly loved and trusted and called family — is a difficult thing to process and get over. Having multiple losses, multiple betrayals, all happening in your life at once can obviously change you, and that kind of thing doesn’t usually change you for the better. Let’s just say I’ve struggled with A LOT of hurt and anger (is it obvious? Yeeeeah.).

While few if any of us could ever claim with a straight face to be the best mom in the world (despite what a certain coffee mug you may been given would lead you believe), most of us can still sleep soundly at night, confident in the knowledge that we’re far from the worst. Why? Because TV and movies tell us so, duh!

Indeed, though they may be slightly cracked or warped mirrors, TV and movies have always reflected back to us mediated visions of our collective maternal nightmares alongside soft-focus idealizations of motherhood — unreal extremes we can all find a comfortable middle ground for ourselves to fit into . And whether these representations serve to make us feel inadequate or reassure us that maybe we’re really not all that bad at this parenting thing after all, the following characters to me represent some of the best portrayals of motherhood – the good, bad, and NO! WIRE! HANGERS! EVER!-ugly – ever shown on the small and big screen:

Everyday busyness and distractions oftentimes force us to put our relationships with our spouses or significant others on the back burner. But – as I found out the hard way myself – too much time on that back burner ends up creating distance and disconnection between you and your partner that can have adverse long-term effects. So how do we balance the demands of life and love and not lose touch with each other?

Well here are my top suggestions for busy people like you, gleaned from my own experience – 7 easy ways you can feel closer to your significant other every day and have a better, happier relationship with minimal effort:

Snapshot of me at age 21. It was a very Liz Phair era.

Oh so you thought there were only ten little known facts about me? Really? Well allow me to blow your blog reading minds with TEN MORE factoids, tidbits, and informational nuggets from my personal history, thereby reaching a grand total of twenty! Twenty! Twenty little know facts! Mwahahaha! /The Count From Sesame Street

(And what about you guys? I’d love to hear a little known something about YOU in comments, cool?)

Sometimes writing on the internet can seem like a very intimate act – for both the reader reading and the writer writing – but it’s always amazing to me how much goes unsaid, and how many details of my self and my life go unshared. Because for all the stories I tell here and elsewhere on the internet, there’s so much that’s never been told, and will probably never be told. I mean, sure, I like blogging, but a girl’s gotta sleep sometimes, right?

So anyway, let’s fill in the gaps, shall we?  Well, just a little.

Running the gamut from revealing to slightly mundane, I hereby present Ten Little Known Facts about moi:

Friends, I need to make a change.

For a long time I’ve been writing here about the end of my marriage, and topics related to divorce and separation. But I’ve recently decided I need to close that chapter in my life online as it’s closing offline, and move on to greener, happier, and more life-affirming pastures. I absolutely did need to write my way through that very difficult and painful time in my life, and no words can express how much I appreciate all the support and understanding y’all have given me, both here at Babble and on my personal blog, Sweetney. But I’ve spent too long wandering the halls of the mausoleum of my long-deceased past, and at some point examining the death of my marriage has started to feel slightly morbid and self-negating. Focusing on the past, on what I’ve lost and what used to be, has become an unhealthy pastime for me, I think. And for my health and sanity I need to start looking forward and ahead, to start enjoying the life I have now, and the people in it now. I need to move on, taking what lessons I can from the past, certainly, but with my eye trained on the present-tense and all that life has to offer.

Okay, okay – so maybe they’re not YOUR favorite break up songs, but they’re songs that a very VERY esteemed panel of internet personalities came up with (read: Tracey’s friends), and therefore, ergo, SHAZAM and voila! – the Top 10 Break Up Songs.

(Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain and just play along, alright?)

Back in February I told you all about some of my favorite Divorce Anthems, so now it’s ALL YOU, ZERO ME. Because we’ve all had a truly depressing or awful break up or two (or, uh, TWELVE) in our lifetimes, and so have alternately needed sad, angry, and/or bitter tunes to make us feel like we aren’t alone in our exquisite, newly loveless misery. So without further ado, here are some of the bestest songs of love, loss and heartbreak ever sobbed, sung or warbled:

Thanks to the brain trust at the NYC Department of Education, the city’s children will no longer be subjected to the horror of having to see the word “divorce” on any standardized test, where it might stir up, and I quote, “unpleasant emotions.”

And god forbid any of our children EVER experience any kind of unpleasantness. Why, that might lead to… discomfort. Or even mild perturbation! OMG! *gurgle*

But “divorce” wasn’t the only “loaded word” offender that needed banning in the NYC DOE’s view. Ooooh no. Potential unpleasant-feeling-inducing words such as “dinosaurs,” “birthdays,” Halloween,” and “pepperoni,” also got the axe. YES, PEPPERONI. Because that… totally makes sense, right? PEOPLE, I LIVE IN MORTAL FEAR OF THE PEPPERONI. IT IS A SCOURGE AND MUST BE STOPPED BEFORE IT GETS TO OUR CHILDREN. Now, may I mambo dogface to the banana patch? [pounds keyboard]

In this column last week, I discussed a variety of different behaviors, traits, and tastes I considered to be “dealbreakers” in friendships and romantic relationships I’ve had, past and present. A few of my choices might be considered silly or trivial by some (must not like Nickelback! Precious Moments figurines nooooo!), while others clearly struck a chord with many of you (the desire for others to have the capacity to appreciate sarcasm and irony is strong in this group, for example). Everyone’s tastes and boundaries are different, however, which is why discussing what exactly constitutes a dealbreaker is so fascinating and revealing.

At the end of last week’s post I asked – somewhat innocently – for you, the reader, to share what your relationship dealbreakers were… and woo boy did the floodgates open. Some of your responses were eyebrow-raising, some were pointed, and some were downright hilarious. But after reading all of them, I was certain of at least one thing: that they needed to be showcased and shared with the world. And so, without further ado, here are the Top 8 reader responses to my question: What, if anything, would be (or are) YOUR dealbreakers?

We all have them. And for most of us, at one time or other in our dating history, we’ve been in a relationship that ended because the other person crossed that line – or, as a friend once put it, “failed the test they didn’t know they were taking.”

I’m talking about dealbreakers here, people.

Oh don’t play innocent. Fine, you want me to go first and talk about mine? Okay. *DEEP BREATH*