How To Google What You Have and What You Need: The Critical Mom's Guide

If you're thinking--what?  Isn't that like writing "How to Snore" or "How to Sneeze?" And you can do all that?  Yes, I know.  It's just that yesterday the 13-year-old read my blog and said, "You know, Mommy, you could get into trouble telling people how to read The New York Times for free."

But I learned how to do that by learning to Google.  I was counting my shekels wondering how I'd afford $15 a month or whatever it is now and then it struck me that I could just write phrases for whatever I wanted into Google like this:

HOW TO READ THE NEW YORK TIMES FOR FREE

Reader, you can Google that phrase too.

Of course, then you, like me, will have to read pages of technospeak.  Often basic definitions of necessary phrases eluded me.  That's why I boiled down everything I learned into four and a half easy steps for all my readers out there celebrating The World's Most Un-Read Blog, possibly soon to be the sub-sub title of this one.

Meanwhile, today a minor crisis erupted when the Tooth Fairy forgot all about the tooth under my daughter's pillow, and if I'd only known the night before that I was going to forget, I could have Googled: WHAT TO DO WHEN THE TOOTH FAIRY FORGETS TO COME, an amusing website offering such useful phrases as "she had a molar emergency" and suggesting that I might sleight-of-hand a dollar into the bed and say "Oh, it must have shifted around while you were sleeping." 

You should Google exactly what you have and what you need.  When I want to cook something interesting and haven't managed to go shopping, I Google the ingredients I happen to have plus the word "recipe", for instance:

GARLIC GINGER ONIONS FISH RECIPE

You will get more recipes than you know what to do with.  You might Google

TEN YEAR OLD TALKS BACK  or

MY MOTHER HAS NARCISSISTIC PERSONALITY DISORDER  or

GUINEA PIGS EAT WHAT?

Let your imagination run wild.  And leave a comment by double clicking on the little blue phrase that says "no comments" below and then writing in the little box.  Love, THE CRITICAL MOM