I owe a huge thank-you to my friend and co-blogger Swistle, who has contributed a ton of great content to this site. You can find her at her personal blog, as well as Swistle: Baby Names.

All the SundryBuzz.com articles will remain online for now, and you can browse them via the category links over on the right sidebar.

Both Swistle and myself are continuing to post product reviews and how-to ideas over at Work It, Mom!, and I hope you come visit.

Thanks for reading, everyone!

– Linda

For one thing, he’s only as strong as my DustBuster. Okay, sure, I have a very good DustBuster (Black & Decker 15.6V), but still: my new vacuum is a very good dustbuster on a long handle. I’m not saying a long handle isn’t a valuable attribute, I’m just saying you shouldn’t expect more than that.

This is the perfect vacuum cleaner for someone like me: I hate the heaviness and bulk and cords and “hauling it out of the closet” of vacuum cleaners so much, I generally only use the DustBuster. (You probably want to believe that I’m kidding, but I’m not.) This Dirt Devil is the same as my DustBuster, but I can skate around the house with it instead of crawling. I find it….well, I hesitate to even say this, especially in such a public forum, but I find it actually ENJOYABLE to vacuum with it. Not enjoyable as in I’d rather do it than mess around on Facebook, but enjoyable as in if I get it out to do a little vacuuming, I generally find I continue vacuuming just because I don’t mind it and even find it a little hypnotizing. I hum a little tune.

It’s surprisingly lightweight (about twice the weight of a dustbuster, I think), and it was easy to assemble. The charge lasts a nice long time: I’ve toodled around all the rooms (okay, granted, not very thoroughly, but that’s what a verb like “toodled” is good for) without the vacuum running out of power. (If it seems to run out of power, empty the little canister and smack it against the side of the trash can to get the dust out of the filter.) When you’re done with it, you set it in its little floor base and it charges itself back up. Plus, it has one of those “Energy Star” ratings.

But I’m very worried that you’ll get it because I’m so happy with it, and then be like, “This has NO SUCTION! I might as well use STICKY TAPE to pick up the dirt!” It is NOT VERY POWERFUL. It would be no good for wall-to-wall carpeting: it has a carpet setting with a rotating brushroll, so you can use it for the foot-wiping mat and for area rugs, but it’s not going to do the kind of job you want for a whole house of plush pile. I have mostly hard floors.

It’s not a REAL vacuum. It would be no good for someone who doesn’t mind vacuuming and does it regularly, unless they wanted a second vacuum for quick jobs. What it is is a much-improved DustBuster-type vacuum: very, very convenient, and very pleasant to use. I love it, and I have never loved a vacuum cleaner before. —Swistle

Link: date my boyfriend at Amazon.com
Ballpark price: $69.99

I was doing some preliminary shopping online and I found this bargain: a Pfaltzgraff Winterberry personal teapot for $7.86 down from $30.00. It is totally cute, and it would make a great gift for a teacher, a friend, a grandmother, a mother, a mother-in-law, a co-worker, a mail carrier—just about anyone. It would be a cute Secret Santa thing, if your workplace makes you do Secret Santa. You could make it a bigger gift by including some tea, or a mug. (There’s a set of four Winterberry mugs for $11.98 down from $40.00, so if you had four people to give this give to, you could give them each a teapot and a mug for $11.00 per person.)

They also have a really pretty Winterberry rectangular plate with a decorative edge for $13.60 down from $50.00; that would be a really nice gift with some cookies or brownies or candy on it, and it would be a good gift WITH the little teapot. Tea and cookies!

Oooo, or! You could do the sugar and creamer with the teapot! They’re $11.38 down from $50.00.

I don’t know how long they’re going to be at these prices. In fact, um, I bought MINE before I told you about the deals, just in case the prices went up while I was telling. —Swistle

Link: Pfaltzgraff Winterberry on Amazon.com

Oh, maybe you didn’t read those books when you were a child. This is how it works: you read a page of the book, and at the end of the page you have two choices to make. Do you want to go to college, or do you want to travel? If you want to go to college, you go to one page, and if you want to travel you go to a different page. After another page or two, you have another decision to make, and another page to turn to. You continue to make decisions until you come to the end of your path—almost always ending in your death. Then you can start again at the beginning, or you can go back several decisions and choose a different way to go this time.

I’ve been reading the book for several days now, going down path after path, and I’m nowhere near tired of it yet. —Swistle

Link: Pretty Little Mistakes at Amazon.com
Ballpark price: $10

It wasn’t until THIS VERY MORNING that it occurred to me to do it the other way around: add the DRY ingredients to the WET ones. This results in one powdery bowl that just needs a little swishy rinse, and only one sticky messy wet-ingredient bowl. MUCH BETTER. —Swistle

We don’t use them at night, though: they hold less than the brand-name diapers, which doesn’t matter during the day but definitely matters at night.

And if you try them, start with a smaller pack because different diapers work differently for different kids. For example, the Walmart brand diapers worked great on my firstborn, but my secondborn leaked out of them so often I thought I would lose my mind—and then he didn’t leak out of the Target ones, which are of comparable quality. And Huggies are a better diaper than the Target ones, and yet they don’t fit my babies well at all, causing many leaks—but Pampers and Luvs have fit all the kids GREAT, and we use those as nighttime diapers. So some of you will love the Target brand diapers as much as I do, but others of you may try them and wonder how anyone could ever use them. —Swistle

Where to buy: Target stores
Ballpark price: $13.69 for the big box (get the $5-ish small pack if you’re trying them for the first time, in case they don’t work out for your baby)

But what I like about these shirts is that they’re comfortable, and the fit is good on me: not too tight, not too sloppy. I’m long-torsoed, and these are some of the only shirts that are LONG enough without being tunics. And they’re CHEAP: I buy them when they’re on sale and I have a percent-off coupon, and so it doesn’t feel unfair if they fall apart a year later. —Swistle

Link: Perfect Fit Tees on OldNavy.com
Ballpark price: $10.50 each, but usually on some sort of sale (as of the posting date, if you buy more than one they’re $6.00 each)

Link: more info on Nestle.com
Ballpark price: about $3.50 for powdered or about $2.00 for liquid, at grocery stores and Target

1) Either marry someone with a family you get along with easily.
2) Or else marry an orphan.

There are few things more important to the happiness of the rest of your life (or, with any luck, their lives) than the in-law situation. And so if you have a choice (and with matters of the heart my guess is that we really don’t) it’s worth taking into consideration. Maybe place a singles ad to weed people out: “SWF seeks orphan.” —Swistle

It’s NOT about sports, and the title is probably what made the show fail: it’s a show about character development and relationships, and people who are interested in that kind of show are usually not the same people who are interested in sports.

The first few episodes, I disliked so much I only kept watching because I had the DVD from Netflix and couldn’t send it back until the next day anyway, and because I couldn’t believe any reviewer would have fought to save a show like this one. I thought it was cheesy, and trying too hard to be hip and fast and funny. I also thought the laugh track was distracting and stupid.

I don’t remember how many episodes it took for me to get into the show (and for them to stop using the laugh track, which thank goodness they did), but pretty soon I was laughing AND crying during EVERY episode, and DREADING the end of the series. I actually SOBBED when the last episode ended and I knew there would Never Be Another Episode Ever Again—but then again, I was pregnant at the time and may have been Emotionally Unstable to start with.

TWO of my children are named after either a character or an actor on this show. I really, really liked it. And I see they have a 10th anniversary edition, so I know what Santa is bringing me. —Swistle

Link: Sports Night: The Complete Series on Amazon.com
Ballpark price: listed for $70, currently at $52, but DVD sets tend to go up and down