Link Love Archive

Kurt: How did you remember about the pumpkin?

Erica: Huh? What pumpkin?

Kurt: On your blog.

I was still confused.

Kurt: The pumpkin carving, I just read about that.

Erica: OH! You didn’t remember that?

Kurt: No, I read your blog post and got to the part about, “we can’t show each other till weren’t done.” And I thought, that really does sound like me, so I kept reading. When you got to the part about turning the pumpkins around at the same time, I thought,

[Kurt raised his fists to the side of his head and made them tremble excitedly side to side as he said the next line.]

Kurt: “oh my gosh, I wonder what I carved.”

Erica: Are you kidding me? You really didn’t remember? Do you remember carving “Kurtie [hearts] Erica” on the metal railing at Grand Coulee Damn?

Kurt: I defiled government property?

Last night we went out to our favorite Mexican restaurant. The waitress there always gushes over Sophia. No, that isn’t why it’s our favorite place, but I won’t lie it doesn’t hurt either. The second she sees us come in she comes out and picks up Sophia. Once she even took Sophia behind the counter and then looked up at us, “Ok what do you want to order?” We ordered and sat down. When our food arrived Kurt and I each gave little bits of our food to Sophia. Kurt gave rice, I gave beans, he gave her a small piece of chicken and I gave a small piece of beef. Sophia ate all the rice, one grain at a time of course, one bean, a tiny bite of chicken, but only touched the beef long enough to move it to the side where the chicken also went after her one bite. Kurt kept giving her more rice and when he was done, he slid his plate closer to her so she could continue picking rice off, one grain at a time. It was at that point our meal became a Monty Python skit.

FATHER: Guards! Make sure the Prince doesn’t leave this room until I come and get ‘im.
GUARD #1: Not to leave the room even if you come and get him.
FATHER: No, no. Until I come and get ‘im.
GUARD #1: Until you come and get him, we’re not to enter the room.
FATHER: No, no, no. You stay in the room and make sure ‘e doesn’t leave.
GUARD #1: And you’ll come and get him.
FATHER: Right.
GUARD #1: We don’t need to do anything, apart from just stop him entering the room.
FATHER: No, no. Leaving the room.
GUARD #1: Leaving the room, yes.
FATHER: All right?
GUARD #1: Right. Oh, if-if-if, uh, if-if-if, uh, if-if-if we…
FATHER: Yes, what is it?
GUARD #1: Oh, if-if, oh–
FATHER: Look, it’s quite simple. You just stay here, and make sure ‘e doesn’t leave the room. All right?
GUARD #1: Oh, I remember. Uh, can he leave the room with us?
FATHER: N- No no no. You just keep him in here, and make sure–
GUARD #1: Oh, yes, we’ll keep him in here, obviously. But if he had to leave and we were–
FATHER: No, no, just keep him in here–
GUARD #1: Until you, or anyone else,–
FATHER: No, not anyone else, just me–
GUARD #1: Just you.
FATHER: Get back.
GUARD #1: Get back.
FATHER: Right?
GUARD #1: Right, we’ll stay here until you get back.
FATHER: And, uh, make sure he doesn’t leave.
GUARD #1: What?
FATHER: Make sure ‘e doesn’t leave.
GUARD #1: The Prince?
FATHER: Yes, make sure ‘e doesn’t leave.
GUARD #1: Oh, yes, of course. I thought you meant him. Y’know, it seemed a bit daft, me havin’ to guard him when he’s a guard.
FATHER: Is that clear?
GUARD #1: Oh, quite clear, no problems.
FATHER: Right.
[starts to leave]
Where are you going?
GUARD #1: We’re coming with you.
FATHER: No no, I want you to stay ‘ere and make sure ‘e doesn’t leave.
GUARD #1: Oh, I see. Right.

Sophia didn’t know what to do with the dish. She leaned forward with her mouth open only it looked like she was aiming for the plate itself and not the rice. We told her to use her hands so she used her hand to touch the plate. Get the rice we told her. Again, she leaned towards the plate with her mouth open. “Pick the rice up with your hands.” She took the rice, one grain at a time, and began to place it on the table. “No, eat it. Put it in your mouth.” Finally, one grain at a time, she ate the rice.

“You know we’re going to be here for three hours at this rate.” I told Kurt as we watched the rice disappear at a pace which only finicky toddler and frozen molasses moves. Kurt tried to give her some rice off his fork. She pushed the fork away, but then opened her mouth while looking at the fork. Kurt tried again. She leaned in, but then closed her mouth right when the fork touched her lip. She pushed the fork away again, but then again opened her mouth and looked at the fork. Kurt tried one last time. The rice made it in but then she pushed all but a grain out with her tongue. She then proceeded to pick the rice off her clothes and put it in her mouth, one grain at a time.

Last week I went to the very pathetic strip mall near us to see if I could check off a couple things from our Christmas list. I didn’t use the baby carrier because I knew Sophia would want out to walk around so I had the umbrella stroller. She didn’t want to sit in it at all. Now that she knows how to walk that’s all she wants to do, and she doesn’t get tired, EVER! We walked all through the store. Her stumblly little legs are quick for their length, but when I wanted to get to a particular section she’s a bit of a drag. I let her walk. She pushed her own stroller as I guided it in the direction I wanted to go and away from obstacles. Unfortunately, once I got to my destination she wanted to keep going. She went at her same speed and I wanted to linger. We really need to get this teamwork thing down better. We wound up circling the spot I wanted to look at a dozen times. Each time I looked at one more detail of the merchandise on the list. I gave up and we left the store. She kept pushing her stroller down the sidewalk and I decided to poke around at the craft store.

Up and down all the isles we went. She stopped in the middle of one isle to get a closer look at something that caught her eye. “Leave it on the shelf.” I told her, and she did! I was shocked that was so easy. She went back to pushing her stroller. Down the next isle I found something I knew she would LOVE. I took it down, shook it and handed it to her. She laughed and walked down the isle ringing her cowbell. Up and down the isles she went giggling and ringing her bell. Thankfully, I went to the store during the day on a weekday so the only people there were “blue hairs” who love to tell me about their grandchildren that are her age. After a while, I traded Sophia a quieter jingle bell for her cowbell so that we didn’t annoy the employees too much. She would make a fine Salvation Army bell ringer volunteer. I bet she’d bring in more money than anyone else would if only she’d hold still by the bucket.

While I was in the shower my large thirty something child and the toddler were playing. Large child was chasing the toddling one. I’m guessing he was stomping too because it makes the toddling child laugh hysterically to be chased loudly. Toddling child ran over the one-inch thick foam world map puzzle we have on the floor and lost her footing as she stepped off. She didn’t have the time nor space to catch herself from falling and hitting the Parents Busy School Activity Cube we bought at Costco as her Christmas present. She hit the corner. All the corners are beveled, but it’s still a big ‘ol block of wood. As I got out of the shower, all I heard was shrieks. By the time Kurt brought her upstairs, still crying, Cro-Magnon baby had a very purple bruise over her left eye. I canceled the family Christmas pictures I had scheduled for Sunday.

We went to the first birthday party of a friend’s daughter. Sophia fell asleep in the car during the hour trip and was very shy at first. I took her to a quieter room and had her get comfortable being there, playing with toys, and walking around. Then I had her follow me around the couch and out of that area. Someone that hadn’t seen her walk before saw her, “Hi Sophia! Wow are you walking?” She sat down and butt scooted back around the couch. That was the first time I’ve seen her butt scoot in about a week. She’s good at this walking stuff and seems to like being all upright and human like. She’s not over the shy thing though.

I picked her up and brought her back where the rest of the kids were playing and she found her favorite boyfriend who is a couple weeks younger than she is. Except for being tired towards the end of the day she did really well. Everyone started calling her rubber band girl because she wandered all over the place but never out of sight of me and always coming back to check in with me every few seconds.

Seeking to define marriage as between male and female, they’ve left a loophole. In the past people with ambiguous genitalia became girls through surgery regardless of chromosomal sex. Simply living as the opposite sex, transgender people may legally switch gender. Gays shouldn’t have to, but take advantage of the opening definition of gender to marry.

Sex Change, No Surgery Required
Randy Dotinga
11.29.06
As for other forms of identification, Dr. Becky Allison, a transgender cardiologist who compiled the list of laws, said passport officials allow gender changes without requiring surgery, as do most state departments of motor vehicles.

The proposed New York City regulations raise plenty of issues.

Will the regulations allow same-sex marriage? Some state laws are murky regarding marriage involving one or two transgender people; one legal analyst reports that a pair of men were able to marry in Ohio because the state refused to recognize that one of them was no longer a woman following a sex-change operation.

On the other hand, some transgender people may be unable to marry because their states recognize their new sex but don’t allow same-sex marriages.

Keep fighting for your rights, but for now use the existing laws to your advantage.

State Supreme Court rejoins Prop. 8 battle
Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, November 20, 2008
The justices also asked for arguments on whether Prop. 8, if constitutional, would nullify 18,000 same-sex weddings performed between when the court’s marriage ruling took effect in mid-June and Nov. 4. Attorney General Jerry Brown, who will defend Prop. 8 as the state’s chief lawyer, contends those marriages are legal, but sponsors of the initiative disagree.

I say those marriages should be ‘grandfathered’.

Flash Fiction Friday is hosted by g-man. You may also visit Flash Fiction Friday 55′s, a blog dedicated to hosting 55 Flash Fiction Friday posts.

Between an infant carrier and the multistage car seat I choose the one that would last the longest, the seat that looks gigantic with a tiny newborn. It’s the Mad Hatter seat for infants. The car seat is probably never the first purchase, but because you cannot leave the hospital without one in which your newborn fits properly, it really should be higher on the list.

The only two problems with using the big car seat is:

1) The hospital is used to everyone choosing the newborn seat which detaches from it’s base and carrying it in as to checkout of the hospital so that the nurses may ensure the infant fits inside properly. Sadly that is the only parental requirement prior to leaving with a new baby, but that’s a rant for another occasion. I have no idea what people do when they only use public transit because the nurses seemed baffled by our choosing the big seat and refusing to take it out of the car to show them how well it swallows up our newborn. Typically the only time a baby doesn’t fit is when he or she is a preemie and then the hospital rents out a special car cradle type “seat”. Even though our newborn was a giant nine pounds (as opposed to a minuscule nine pounds), it’s similar to carding people at the bar who are quite clearly over 21.

2) Our other problem was our car. We don’t drive giant SUVs. I have a small pickup truck and Kurt drives a regular size four-door car when he’s not on one of his motorcycles, which I have dubbed “the mistresses”. Because infants in this state are required to sit rear facing until they are one year AND weigh twenty pounds, and because we have a regular sized car, we must put Sophia’s seat behind the front passenger’s seat. If we have a passenger other than Sophia, they must make a choice between sitting in the back with the baby or sitting in the front seat which cannot move back enough to allow for such things as knees and feet. Only not-a-nanny fit in the front seat comfortably. She’s about five foot one, and that’s with wheeley shoes.

We don’t mind these inconveniences and as I’ve stated many times, I’d much rather take Sophia out of her car seat and carry her in her Ergo carrier against my body than lean over as I carry up to a twenty pound infant and her seat with one arm.

What we sought in a car seat, forget about Consumer Reports, once the choice is made between the two major categories of infant carrier verses a multistage car seat they’re all very similar. All car seats are tested and all of them meet certain requirements. All of them, like seat belts, fail to have a 100% life saving guarantee. As a matter a fact, Consumer Reports tested many seats and most failed their overly zealous testing. They later retracted their findings and many news outlets ended their articles with, “Both the magazine and the government continue to emphasize that no matter what, the safest place for a child in an automobile is strapped into a car seat.” for fear that people would stop buying baby seats. The fact is the best baby seat is one that fits in your car and is properly installed. With that in mind the way we narrowed down our selection was by taking the car seat off the store shelf at Babies R Us and setting it on the van bench seat they provide to get an idea of how much room a particular seat needs for a rear facing set up. Most people think that van seat is just for the pregnant people to sit on, but it’s not.

We then pulled the front seat of our car all the way forward and measured how much space was between the back of he back seat and the back of the front seat. It may be necessary to use a rolled up towel under the baby seat to ensure the base is level, and then the back of a rear facing baby seat should not touch the back of the front seat of the car. There should be about two inches between the back of the baby seat and the back of the front seat of the car so that in the event of a collision, there is a buffer between the two and the baby seat isn’t crumpled. Check with your hospital for free car seat installation inspections, if possible, prior to baby’s arrival.

We considered three other things while making our choice. I pulled the cover back on the sides of each car seat looking for Styrofoam padding on advice from a friend of mine. It made sense to me that the Styrofoam sides would provide better cushion to a baby head than hard plastic.

The baby harness adjuster should be easily accessible whether the baby seat is rearfacing or forward facing.  Some of the older types of baby car seats lacked that featcher, and according to the hospital many parents apperantly left the harness at the same setting each use.  That is not the proper way to secure a baby to the seat.

The third thing we looked at was the cover itself. Kurt took into account color and pattern. He didn’t want a flowery frou-frou girly girl seat in his car. He didn’t say anything to me, but apparently, I’m not to pick car seats while pregnant ever again. I really liked some girly things while I was pregnant that now turn my stomach – ah back to my normalcy. It’s probably a good thing I already had a baby name in mind before becoming pregnant. My car seat cover concern was washability and if it wasn’t dryer friendly it should at least dry quickly.

Since choosing our seat I’ve found another thing to consider, the level of toxins in the car seat, which you can fret over find out about at HealthyCar.org. The seat we chose in an Evenflo Triumph Advance DLX Sandbox, and rated at one, which is a low concern. Of course the seat they actually rated was a 2008 and ours is a 2007, details.

Tell me she doesn’t look like she’s about to pounce on some unsuspecting prey and devour it. That’s the look of a crazed evil doer what does evil, evilly, if ever I’ve seen it.

I’m not the girly girl romantic type. As a matter a fact, I don’t think I’m girly at all. I can appreciate the sentiment behind a bouquet of flowers, but I’ve never demanded, begged or other wise hinted for anyone to send me any. I have a few treasured pieces of jewelry such as the one pair of earrings that I have worn since I was fifteen, but again I don’t get sparkles in my eyes as I pass by stores nor do I become envious of people dripping in ice. I just don’t care. It’s not my bag.

I’m not a big shopper. I don’t mind going to stores, but I never buy anything. I don’t wear makeup and I don’t keep up with any sort of fashion. Upon returning to work from maternity leave, one of the guys congratulated me on my “mom pants”. I knew he was being a little shit, but I thought he was insinuating that my pants looked like a sausage casing that I had been stuffed into. I wear I size six. Even if just after maternity leave I was bursting at my size six seems, nobody could honestly look at me and say I was fat, so I protested. “These are the same pants I’ve worn since high school.” He had to explain that “mom pants” had to do with the long pants zipper, not weight. Whatever, I don’t do fashion. I don’t like the show-off-your-belly pants, and I certainly wouldn’t couple the fuck-me-tattoo across the small of the back with the ass-crack-and-thong-display pants. I used to wear super short shorts in high school (as in wore it to school) and then wear a pullover top that was barely longer than my shorts. I was asked on a regular basis if I was wearing any pants underneath, and if I moved in a certain way the bottom of my bottom could be seen, so I’m not judging anyone’s fashion. I’m just sayin’ I had my own twisted sense of style.

Until I met Kurt I really didn’t care for kissing or cuddling. No, that isn’t a euphemism for something else. If I meant to say fucking, I would say FUCKING. MYGOD you really didn’t like kissing or cuddling? No, no I didn’t. And no, I’ve never been raped so spare me the wealth of Dr. Phil-isms and other such things that pass for psychology knowledge.

The first fall season Kurt and I were together, I went over to his apartment one night and he wanted to go buy pumpkins to carve into jack-o-lanterns. Really? Huh, ok. We walked across the street to the grocery store and picked out a couple of pumpkins. It was our eighth month together. My one girly trait is that I knew after four months that he was “the one”. I waited for him to indicate he felt the same because I knew if I said anything too soon I’d scare him off.

We took our pumpkins back to his kitchen and laid out newspaper for the ensuing mess (not that type of mess my twisted little monkeys). I had only carved a pumpkin once before so I didn’t really know what I was doing. Mr. engineering spreadsheet ruler and protractor fanatic went to town laying out his secret design. I followed suit and started with the typical triangle eyes. I turned my pumpkin around to face Kurt for design approval. “No,” he said, “we can’t show each other till weren’t done.” I turned my triangle eyed pumpkin head around again. I continued with my basic, very traditional toothy grinning pumpkin face and finished long before Kurt with all of his precise measurements. It was obvious that he was doing something much more elaborate than I had. I had no clue what type of decoration he was doing, but is was freehand, so sight unseen I was impressed. He finally finished his masterpiece and asked if I was ready to turn mine around. We turned our pumpkins around to show each other at the same time. He didn’t do a face at all! He wrote, “Kurt + Erica”. He didn’t actually tell me he loved me until after we’d been together for a year, but I knew.

I have a routine with Sophia, when we stand in line at any store she knows that when she sees my wallet she gets to hold it for me. I’ll ask to have it back in order to take out the store card and/or credit card, but then she gets to hold it again. Sometimes I’ll hand her the card after I swipe it, while other times I ask for the wallet again and put the card in it’s place. Either way she holds the wallet all the way to the car. If she drops it, I get it back before then.

Kurt didn’t know about this routine, so when Kurt pushed the cart right past me as I took out my wallet, Sophia threw a fit. I think he ruined her Jewy Jewy day. Jew baby calmed down immediately after I discovered the break in our routine and handed her my wallet. Funny thing was, she was wearing her “little devil” outfit, so if needed we could grab the little Jew by the horns.

Relax, she really was wearing her little devil outfit today, but the Jewy parts are a joke. However, if you insist on being a humorless bastard you may email my complaint department at half (dot) beaner (at) yahoo (dot) com. Have a Jewrific day!

This Jewy post was inspired by the Jewrific comedy of Sacha Baron Cohen and Lewis Black.