According to a prominent financial planner, it is useless to tell people to plan carefully for their children. The reason? They hate their children. However, tell them to plan for the grandchildren, and the toughest customer becomes a soft sell. After all, grandparents and grandchildren are natural allies--they have a common enemy.

As a soon-to-be parent, I don't find this encouraging.

All right, I admit, I have a problem. I scored about 11 out of a possible 14, which probably means I should check myself in somewhere immediately. DOB scored only 8, which still indicates a serious problem. And no doubt we will become parents of FFS sufferers, and perpetuate the problem to another generation. Tragic.

Useful Statistic

According to Reader's Digest, 78% of households with an overweight family member experience stress.

This raises two questions:

1. What is wrong with the other 22%?

2. Would someone fat please move in with us to lower our chances of experiencing stress? I don't know any all-thin households that never experience it.

Favorite smart remarks to responses to pregnancy announcement:

"Are you going to find out what it is?"

"No, we plan to change the diapers blindfolded and allow it to define its own gender."

"Was it planned?"

"Yeah, I had 'get pregnant' down in my daytimer right next to my dinner menus for the next nine months."

"Don't you know what causes that?"

"Oh yes, we know, but we're kind of wondering about you."
(Actually we haven't reached the stage where people ask this yet, but I heard that one from a usually demure mother of soon-to-be 9 who likes to use it on the purposefully childless.)

With Democratic presidential candidates working to top each other on who can propose the highest minimum raise and the biggest soak-the-rich tax increase, how long will it be before the two meet in the middle and minimum-wage workers qualify as rich?