Tag Archives: random

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What Should A 4 Year Old Know? How To Be Happy, That’s What……..


Stumbled on this article this morning.  It is just simply awesome.

I’m a great deal more concerned with mud pies and blowing bubbles than numbers and letters.  I am also much more focused on teaching the boys that whatever they are interested in, be it dinosaurs, cooking, painting/drawing, or playing with dollhouses, is not only okay….it’s awesome.

I think if we all spent more time building up our kids and teaching them to be secure in themselves, we’d have a lot less jacked up adults.  Gracen has a phenomenal kitchen set-up in his room, with an apron and chef hat, multiple burners & grills, and cash registers with a shopping cart for buying food.  He loves it.  He also has a vacuum cleaner and brooms and mops.  He has a toy iron, and ‘washes’ his clothes.

At least a couple times a week he cooks me something wonderful and we ‘eat’ it (usually Darth Maul Stew with artichokes).  Do I think there are traditionally girl & boy themed toys?  Yes.  Do I stick to the generally boyish themes?  Not on your life.  He gets what he is interested in, and plays with what he likes.  When he gets older, he’ll be a well adjusted person who knows how to cook and clean for himself, & how to wash his own clothes.  He also has tools, swords, cars, engines that can be disassembled, and superhero outfits, which are sometimes in use all at once (a la Samurai Delicatessen).

I really do believe the best investment we can make in the future is to concentrate on molding intelligent, creative, compassionate, empathetic, happy kids.  That isn’t to say that it isn’t also very important to help them reach their potential academically.  It absolutely is.  One complements the other, and both are important for a well adjusted adult.  I just want to be sure they are happy, safe, and healthy while they learn.

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Where Did The Last Week & A Half Go?


Wow.

They say real life can sometimes intrude when you least expect it.

Apparently when real life intrudes on me, it not only crashes on my sofa but also brings several rather odd friends with it who fill my house with peculiar happenings and multicolored smoke curling under the bathroom doors.

2 rounds of scarlatina, 2 24 hour bugs, a Thanksgiving holiday get together, and a lovely set of second degree burns across my dominant hand (turkey drippings……heavy roasting pan plus 5’2″ girl with stick figure muscles equals nothing good at all) later and I am actually reading the news and playing catch-up on what I missed for the past week and a half.

On the bright side, while I was short of time and unable to get to my computer, I got to catch up on several blogs I follow and read the awesome stuff their writers post.  I could lose myself for days just reading what y’all are talking about.  It’s always interesting and usually better than anything I have to say, anyway.

I was also nominated for a blog award by the Ranting Papizilla just before the bottom fell out on me around here, which tickled me no end, and now I can finally thank him properly and accept it.

So, here goes……..

Very Inspiring Blogger Award

Thanks, Papizilla!

 

Rules of Participation:

1. Display the award logo on your blog.

2. Link back to the person who nominated you.

3. State 7 things about yourself.

4. Nominate 15 other bloggers for this award and link to them.

5. Notify those bloggers of the nomination and the award’s requirements.

 

As for seven things about myself………

 

  • I have a Sheldon J. Plankton tattoo on the outside of my left hand, just below the thumb.  I love him.  He is sassy, and silly, and I have yet to meet anyone who has one anything like it.  Plankton is my favorite supervillain.  I call him the Wile E. Coyote of Bikini Bottom.  I cannot wait to be a wrinkled old geezette in a retirement home somewhere with a big ol’ Plankton tattoo.  It gives me something to look forward to.

My favorite-est tattoo, of my favorite-est baddie.

 

  • I recently turned 39, and it was NOT depressing.  Yeah, I know, I’m a chick, so it was supposed to be a morose affair…..but frankly, it wasn’t.  In fact, ever since I turned 34 I have been looking forward to the big 3–9.  Now I can stay 39 forever, just like my idol, the funniest man who ever walked this Earth………Jack Benny.

 

  • I need 4 things in order to be truly happy.  As long as I have those, poo can rain from the ceiling and it won’t faze me.  Running water, Green (plants), Music, and Books.  As long as my family is healthy and I have those, I am good to go.  Do your worst, world.

 

  • I own 2 pairs of Capri pants and one pair of jeans.  I only own about 4 shirts, and I have maybe 4 pairs of shoes (none of them dress shoes or high heels).  I am emphatically NOT a clothes horse in any sense whatsoever, but……….I have a purse illness.  A really, really bad one.  It’s like freakin’ Heroin.  Do not EVER let me see one on sale, ’cause I’ll drag that bad boy home in a heartbeat.  When we moved this last time, I had an entire box of nothing but purses.  I need help, I really do.  Anyone know of a Handbag Recovery Group?

The first step is admitting you have a problem. When I opened the closet and was buried in an avalanche of handbags, I realized I had a problem.

 

  • I grew up watching old black & white shows on a now defunct channel called CBN (I think it turned into Trinity Network).  When my friends were watching Punky Brewster and Webster, I was loading up on The Many Loves Of Dobie Gillis, The Ann Sothern Show, The Bob Cummings Show, I Married Joan, You Bet Your Life, The Burns & Allen Show, and the best of the bunch, The Jack Benny Show.  I maintain that nobody has ever been or ever will be funnier than a man who can stand on a stage with his arms crossed and command 5 minutes of laughter by saying nothing at all.  That’s it, he wins.  He is the king.  The violin was just icing on the cake.

 

  • My favorite holiday is Halloween.  My mom’s birthday is Halloween and each year it is celebrated with ooky creepy food and laughing at incredibly crappy old black and white horror movies.  This year was Dracula’s Daughter.  Last year was The Beast Of Yucca Flats.  Oh, dear lord, if you haven’t experienced that one, put it on your bucket list.  Next year we will be doing The Killer Shrews.  I can’t wait…….

 

  • My favorite Disney movie is Sleeping Beauty.  Maleficent is by far the coolest Disney baddie, ever.  The only one who ever came close is Ursula.

 

Now for the nominations.  Please give these blogs a visit.  They are all interesting.  Some are fun, some funny, and some serious, but all worth your time.

  1. Don In Massachusetts
  2. Simple Pleasures
  3. Frivolous Monsters
  4. Simple.  Interesting.
  5. Attack The System
  6. Unedited Politics
  7. LadyRomp
  8. The Wish Factor
  9. calculatedmess
  10. the dancing professor
  11. The Risible Rambler
  12. Pouring My Art Out
  13. Dysfunctional Literacy
  14. Hunting For Bliss
  15. Flamingo Dancer’s Blog

Give them a visit, you won’t be sorry!

 

 

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Pro-Choice As Defined By Sarah Jane……


I have had it.  No more tippy, tippy toeing around, folks.

I have been holding off on making any public Facebook posts about the pro-choice issue because it was one of the last couple of areas I hadn’t caught H-E-double hockey sticks for from my family.  Yesterday, though, I got a lovely (not really) private message from my annoyingly holier-than-pretty-much-everybody cousin accusing me of being an Atheist and wanting to know what went wrong.  I kid you not.

You know why?  Because I have steadfastly refused to repost anything from that embarrassment to our state Mike Huckabee’s public statements.  Because I do NOT support Chick-Fil-A.  Because I have shouted loud and long about the evils of legislation intermixing with religion.  I’ll tell you what went wrong, ma’am.  Religious fanatics have been trying to overtake our government and turn it into Nehemiah Scudder-ville.  I don’t want to live in Scudder-ville.  Arkansas is bad enough.

I refuse to skirt the issues anymore.  Y’all thought I was outspoken before, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

what is pro choice?

So there.

We now return to regular programming, already in progress………………….

(thank you to Liberal Hippie Nerd from whom I reposted the graphic on my Facebook feed.  It’s a great page, check it out.)

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Defriended Over a Wedding, a Straight Man Gains Perspective

Reblogged from evoL =:

Click to visit the original post

My younger brother is gay. Gay as laughter. Gay as the day is long. One of the finest moments in my life, and one of the greatest compliments anyone has ever paid me, was the day he felt safe to come out to me. He’s in his mid-30s now, but he’ll always be my little brother. And man, I love that kid.

Read more… 758 more words

Absolutely wonderful post. I have been slowly weeding out the intolerant and hateful among my Facebook 'friends'. I have also had several remove me, due to my increasing political and ideological postings and commentary. I thought I might miss at least some of them, but as it turns out, it has simplified and improved my Facebook experience. Less hate on my news-feed, less ugly commentary on my wall. As those intolerant, fearful, sad folks depart my social media life, I wish them well. In fact, I wish them all the happiness and joy they could ever wish for. Just someplace far away from me. I don't need their negative energy.
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Another Skirmish On My Wall…….


See, here’s the thing.  I keep my Facebook alive mostly because it is the easiest way to keep in touch with several old friends I will almost certainly never see in person again.  Unfortunately I cannot stand to see others continuous ideological, religious, & political posts without posting some of my own.  Wouldn’t you know it, every time I do, it seems I pee in somebody’s petunias.

I didn’t post any commentary on this one when I re-posted it. I thought it covered my opinions pretty well without any extra help from me.

This was followed shortly afterwards with this:

It is far more exhausting to think of new and creative ways to form tactful answers than to comment on original posts. Remind me again why I am working so hard to avoid hurting the feelings of those with no regard for mine?

Now here’s where I am genuinely curious about internet etiquette.  I make it a habit never to post argumentative commentary on friends’ posts.  If I feel I just have to say something and I know it will either offend my friend or  go completely against what they believe, I go around their re-post to the original page and post my comment there.  I tend to think that is just the tactful, polite way to behave.

While I certainly would never seek to bar my friends from posting or make them feel their opinions or thoughts are unwelcome, I still kinda’ think it would just be more polite to simply re-post on your own page and make your comments there, or do it on the main page.  If you don’t agree with a post, why argue on their public wall?  That puts the first poster in the position of either having to defend their post or to let contrary opinions stay under it, and all in front of every friend who can access their wall.  It just seems a bit tactless to me.  Sometimes it seems to me that many social media sites are slowly being taken over by a cacophony of squabbling.

What do you think?

Thank you to the Facebook page of Liberal Hippie Nerd, from whom I re-posted the above graphic.  It’s a great page, check it out sometime.

The original exchange on Facebook has been altered.  I noticed I had left out the key word “not” in my comment on the upper percent.  It now reads “not to pay a decent percentage.”  What can ya’ say, you forget some of those connecting words when you are typing long responses.

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I Admit It. Sometimes I Feed The Trolls……


Okay, so I wasn’t all that nice.  In my defense, if you lack a sense of humor and are blessed with hyper-active and easily hurt feelings, you should probably not hang out on an off-color adult oriented humor page.

Sometimes, I just can’t help myself.

micro wave

Seriously….show of hands, folks. How many people really thought this was an intentional slight against the handicapped? Geez. Try decaf, dude. And TURN OFF YOUR DAMN CAPS-LOCK.

My comment would, of course, be the last one.  My troll refuses to talk to me now.  Sniff.

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Thank You, Bill…….


It seems such a rare thing to see anyone of note from Arkansas doing anything positive, or that generates good press, that I simply wanted to give respect to our man Bill.  His DNC speech was excellent, and tonight, at least, I can go to bed with my head held high, because he is one of ours.  You rocked it, sir.

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You Can’t Fact-Check What Ain’t A Fact. Well, You Can, But Try & Get Anyone To Listen……..


Arguing with the entire world today on my Facebook feed.  Well, probably not the entire world, but sometimes it feels like it.  A Facebook friend just posted some copy/paste Obama bashing conspiracy crapola for the umpteenth time.  I tire of trying to reason with them directly, so I took this approach (by way of a generic status update) :

facebook post source your stuff

That pretty much sums it up for me. Feel free to disagree with me. Feel free to think I’m an idealistic idiot. At least have the decency to pretend to check the veracity of the stuff you post, though.

To be fair, all of us do it once in a while.  We see something come across our screen and it hits a chord in us.  Too busy to check it just then, we post it thinking we’ll check later, and just never get around to it.    Unfortunately, that just adds to the clutter online.  We either look foolish when others check out our sources, or we  simply spread more manure around and it gets on everybody.  The harder we try to be fair and accurate, the likelier we are to be listened to.  Folks figure out fairly quickly which online acquaintances blindly re-post spam and partially or totally untrue stories.  Then they ignore them.

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Knowledge Is Always A Good Thing……


Here’s what I have so far learned during my abrupt relocation to a new city.

  1. It’s hot here in the summer.  No, seriously.  It’s like the belly of Hell here.  I left a takeout cup on my back deck while putting away a few boxes and it melted on the bottom.
  2. A long empty home is full of lots and lots of loverly surprises, just waiting for you to find them.  Most of them aren’t very nice.  If you don’t believe me, I can refer you to the long dead, dessicated, and mummified mouse (with trap still attached) which I found under my new sink.  Eeewww.
  3. As stated in number 1, I have discovered that the specific definition of Hell is a home in late summer with no air conditioning and 2 small children who have completely lost their sense of humor about the situation.  Thankfully, we do have some window units up and going.  It was a hairy couple of days before that, though.  Mom and 2 kiddos, all trying to get the spot directly in front of the one piddly oscillating fan.  Still looking forward with glee to actually getting the outside unit going again.
  4. A week without television or internet access sucks the big one.  I was reduced to playing freaking Freecell.
  5. No water is not a thing to be desired at any time of the year.  In August it really, really stinks.  I was so thankful to have any water at all that the all-cold that I have now is manna from Heaven.  Who needs hot?  I just want wet.
  6. No matter how many trips you make, or how many boxes you pack and move, when you get back to continue packing there is just as much stuff as before you started.  I am almost certain it is breeding, because I have unpacked things I not only do not remember packing but have actually never seen before.
  7. I am pretty sure the war on drugs is fighting against the wrong substances.  I had to unstopper some contact cement to re-affix the formica edging on my Master Bath sink and garden tub surround, and I was high for at least a day and a half.  That seems to me to be a better bang for your buck than anything you buy off the street.  Perhaps they should wage a war on home improvement supplies instead.
  8. If you ever start to feel that your life is sinking into a rut, or begin to yearn for adventure, pack up your family and move somewhere you have never lived and know nothing about.  Just trying to find the damn grocery store suddenly becomes an odyssey worthy of Ulysses (who still made it home faster than I did last time I had to find something around here).

 

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Watching The Sun Rise With Simon’s Cat………


I am up quite early this morning, in a silent house filled with my sleeping family, watching the sun come up.  In about half an hour or so, there will be a little boy chirping and singing in the next room, but for now nobody needs me, or wants anything from me.  This is my net surfing, coffee drinking, sneak in a hot shower time.  In honor of a beautiful morning full of happy vibes, I thought I would share what I am watching right now with all of you, so y’all can all have a smile first thing this morning, too.

This is every cat I have ever owned.  I have yet to see one of these clips that doesn’t make me smile.  All of y’all have a beautiful day, afternoon, evening, wherever you are!