If you’re going to get an annual update from a family, it usually comes in the form of a Christmas newsletter. Well, in 1974 my liberated mother decided to get her Erma Bombeck on and send out the update in the form of four-page article called “Dear Diary, or How I Spent My 35th Birthday.” If you’ve ever wondered how a blog-post would have read in 1974 (although, that’s something fairly specific to wonder, so likely, no one has), here’s your answer. Apparently, my mom had the makings of a blogger, long before the concept existed. She was, and still is, a woman truly ahead of her time.
And now, without further ado, I give you February 1974 and my mother’s 35th birthday …
My Actual Family, 1974-ish
“Happy birthday,” he said, as I gagged on the overpowering smell of his hairspray.
Where does it say that a wife should have to endure the noxious fumes of a man’s vanity? Where does it say that the husband has first crack at the hairdryer in the morning? I say, beware, girls, of the nice guy who fits in perfectly with your dreams of the ideal man and father for your children! I am convinced that these so-called “nice guys” are the ruination of the truly liberated woman. I’m so liberated that I find myself in a kind of oppressed liberation. With him sitting on the sidelines, full of self-satisfaction, watching my every move and thinking to himself, “You got yourself into this mess, Anita, and you can get yourself out of it.”
he way it really happened or simply the way it’s been remembered, I can’t say for sure. But family history has it that my mother was so enamored and protective of me that she didn’t let anyone — including my father and grandparents — hold me for the first six weeks of my life. So it’s not surprising that at an age when other babies were being potty-trained and learning to walk, I was perfecting my ability to manipulate my mom in order to get anything my devious little heart desired. 
Pucker Up Buttercup 