55 Flash Fiction Friday: Getting Comfy

The heat came back. Sleeping attire was tossed aside at least for this night. Fans turned on, a necessity for slumber.

In the morning I opened her door. I looked upon her still half-asleep on her tummy. Sophia took her diaper off sometime during the night and slept in the buff…to wake on wet sheets.

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.

In trying to help a friend with her problem I boldly asked, “Has he ever considered sperm donation?”
“He would if he could. He’s had a vasectomy.”
“They can reverse those you know. If he donated sperm it would help his political career…When asked how much he donates to charitable causes he can say, ‘billions’.”

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.

I’m a horrible mom.  I sat on the spare bed while Sophia tapped on the keys of my laptop then she wanted up on the bed with me.  I pulled her up in front of me, while simultaneously leaning back and rolling to the side so that she would be beside me on her back.  But as I rolled my hand rubbed on a blanket on the bed.  It felt wet and I let Sophia drop onto the bed.  She landed right in a pile of cat puke.  I swear I had no idea it was there.  That stealthy little ninja bastard in a fur coat puked without me hearing it.

He’s so way off schedule.  He never pukes during daylight hours.  What the fuck is up with that?  Who gave him permission to change his hours?!

I’ve become accustomed to waking up at two, three, or four in the morning to the rhythmic sounds of, “Aaack hhck aack”.  Usually those sounds occur in the small hallway space between the bedrooms.  That patch of carpet has been cleaned more than any other part of the house.  All the bedrooms lead to that space and that’s as far as the cat seems to be willing to travel in order to puke privately.  Although there have been a couple very notable times aside from this one in which he changed up the routine a bit.

There was the time that in trying to get off our bed to puke he only made it as far as the footboard.  I could hear the sound of water splatter everywhere.  Because it was night, I only thought of the floor and cleaned up what I could find in dim light.  It wasn’t nearly as much as what it sounded like.  In the morning I saw some splatter on Kurt’s dresser.  I wiped it down, then for some reason thought to check inside the fully closed drawers.  I had to wash everything in the bottom two drawers.  It was EVERYWHERE!

The other memorable cat puke moment was the time Bailey was sleeping on Kurt’s stomach and began to hack up a fur ball.  The sound and motion woke Kurt, but only enough for him to sit up, nudge me, and yell, “Get him, Go Go Go!”

This post has been brought to you by Hills x/d and c/d feline prescription diet with chicken and the color tan.

On Thursday Al Franken announced the Senate Confirmation of Sotomayor for associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, and Chief Justice John Roberts swore Sotomayor in on Saturday. They actually work on Saturdays? I think they should have called in Al Franken to do the swearing in. He’s used to working Saturdays. I know it’s not normal procedure, but it would have given him a chance to swear her in as Stewart Smalley, “cause she’s good enough, she’s smart enough, and doggone it, people like her.”

Normally when a friend sends me a link to a news article it’s done knowing full well what side of the given news issue I will fall on and generally they just want to see me go stark raving mad into a rant complete with foaming at the mouth. On Friday I got an email request to blog about a certain news article and at the bottom it said, “I don’t care which side you take. I just want to see you tackle this.”

“If you don’t care what side I take, why do you want to see me blog about it?”

“Really, because I’m curious to see your reaction to it. Now dance, Monkey!”

I looked at the title and my eyes rolled into the back of my head, “Breast-Feeding Doll Too Real for Comfort?” I read the whole article from end to end. I have no strong feelings about a doll for children that simulates breast-feeding either way. It was the controversy about ‘over-sexualizing’ young girls that made my ass twitch.

However, a viral video demonstration on YouTube has been met with remarks that the doll is over-sexualizing young girls, or forcing girls to grow up too quickly, or teaching young girls about a natural part of motherhood.

Yes, breast-feeding requires breasts. In our Puritanical culture those evil things, which shall not be mentioned, are generally viewed as naughty pillows. They should be covered at all times for all reasons least the men folk go stir crazy at the sight and send young children screaming with blood streaming from the eyes. But breasts are also used by women to feed infants and though stimulating the milk to flow can have a very similar bodily response there is nothing sexual about it. Nothing! It would be like saying a job interview is the same as sex because your heart rate goes up and you sweat a little during both. Unless you’re a porn star or regularly date people seeking a sugar-daddy/sugar-mamma, sex and job interviews are not on the same playing field. And I hope you’re not sweating that much during interviews. By overreacting to anything remotely connected to sexual things in their twisted adult head these stupid dolts are just making sex a more forbidden fruit in the future and a much more enticing one at that.

“I heard people talking about it but, honestly, I thought it was a joke,” said Ilina Ewen, a writer for the Deep South Moms and her own blog Dirt and Noise.

“There are just things that I think kids are too little to understand,” she said.

Ewen worried that if her two boys, ages 4 and 6, saw the toy, they would be confused because neither had been breast-fed.

Yet Ewen admits she has seen many young girls mimic the behavior after watching their mothers nurse their infant siblings.

“They don’t understand they just see other moms doing that. Let kids use their imagination and play with a doll and not deal with what it can do,” Ewen said. “There’s no need to turn it into something that’s anatomically correct. Not at this age.”

The doll itself is as anatomically correct as any other on the market. This doll only works when the girl puts on a shirt that has flowers where her nipples are located. Unlike other dolls that girls pretending to breast-feed might actually put under their own shirt, this method is hardly anatomically correct. I have never in my live met a woman with flower nipples. Nor have I ever heard of a woman successfully breast-feeding a baby with flowers over her nipples.

I doubt it matters if children were breast-fed themselves or not. I stopped breast-feeding Sophia completely at about sixteen months. I seriously doubt she’ll remember if she was bottle-fed or breast-fed when she’s playing with dolls as a four to six year-old and to say a child doesn’t understand is a cop-out for ones own sensitivities to anything perceived as loosely connected to sex. Children do understand. They know A LOT, and trying to protect innocents really doesn’t serve the child well. It creates a category of information the child will learn never to ask questions about in order to not upset the ‘innocent child’ view of their stupidly sensitive parent.

Psychologist Jay Reeve, CEO of the Apalachee Center in Tallahassee, Fla., said Bebe Gloton’s realism goes too far.

Of course, children have played ‘parent’ with dolls for centuries, but this new twist seems to focus not on what babies are like as much as jumpstarting a focus on breast-feeding,” Reeve said. “I’m always a little disturbed by toys, games, or products that have the impact of accelerating childhood identification with being a full-blown adult.”

Is this a child psychologist? How can he not see the irony in his own response? That is exactly what role playing is all about! It’s moving into adulthood. Dumb-ass. I think giving an actual infant to a little girl and expecting her to give 100% of the care that would be accelerating adulthood to being a full-blown adult. It’s the perceived sex-thing about the doll isn’t it? I wonder what Freud would say about this?

Though I don’t care about the breast-feeding non-issue I still wouldn’t buy this doll for Sophia. I agree with the professor at the end of the article.

…toy expert, professor and author Diane Levin, said the problem with Bebe Gloton isn’t the breast-feeding. Levin has a problem with any toy that limits the play to a single activity.

“It’s not good for children to have everything structured for them,” said Levin…

… “As kids get used to instructive toys, they need more structured toys,” Levin said. “We take the creativity away.”

This is one of the reasons why I limit the battery operated toys Sophia has. The other reason is that I don’t want to have to buy millions of batteries, and third and most importantly I think any doll with any mechanical movements are fuckin’ creepy! Think Chucky.

My Grandpa took his whole top row of teeth out to brush. They looked real. “How do you do that?” My four-year-old self asked him.

“Oh don’t worry,” he said, “you’ll be able to do it soon.” Thinking he meant it was something that required practice, I kept tugging at my teeth. He just laughed.

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.

This morning I made breakfast and finished before Sophia, of course. I don’t eat the parts I like best and then use the rest to paint the table, but that’s just me. *glare at the toddler* I let her have her fun at the table, but in order to do that I have to leave the room, so I started on the dishes.

Sophia slid down her chair as soon as she realized I was putting the dishwasher dishes away. I didn’t even realize it until I turned around and saw her holding up a dinner plate by the top of the rim with both hands. Thank you honey, you’re such a big help. If I had to bend over that extra five inches to actually reach the plate I’m sure I’d break in half.

She gave me each and every dish until the bottom of the dishwasher was empty. She then ran back to the table to finish her breakfast, minus the icky apricots of course. Everyone knows apricots aren’t for eating. They’re for painting tables orange with gooey slime.

Sophia and I ran several errands including going to have my last name changed at yet another place. I completed my tedious list of tasks, which put Sophia to sleep in the car, and ventured to new experience. After several missed streets due to missing signs because of road construction and subsequent u-turns, I finally made it to a U-pick blueberry farm at noon.

Sophia loved it and I knew she would as putting little things into cups, buckets, bags, and boxes has been her long time favorite pass time. She took to it like a fish to water, though she was a bit over zealous. She didn’t just pick the blueberries she also picked the green-blueberries. *sigh* I guess that’s the price of cheap labor.

Here is Sophia on her union mandated milk-break:

We didn’t stay at the berry farm very long, but we did collect 3.5 pounds of blueberries of the blue variety. Since I didn’t get to the farm at my anticipated time I also didn’t get to make my anticipated dinner, so at dinner time it was off to Boston Market we went.

We went there specifically because Kurt wanted pizza and I didn’t. After some thought to the selection Kurt called a waitress over. He asked her the sizes of the pizzas. As she rattled off the diameter of each size, Kurt used his hands to give an approximate visual. The waitress left our table and Kurt continued with his decision. Then I hear him mumble, “four squared times three point one four.” OHMYGOD, seriously? I gave a concerned look, “are you trying to figure out the area of each pizza?” He smiled and I rolled my eyes. I can’t believe it.

As if knowing the area of the pizza helps in figuring out the amount that fits in his stomach. If he knew the volume his stomach could hold, and how low it was currently running, along with how thick the pizzas run at Boston Market he could be onto something. But area, useless. I mean I could eat two square feet of soup if it were spread out thin enough. Oh crap! He’s infected me. Shit.

On the way home, Sophia began to whine. Her forty-minute car nap on the way to the blueberry farm wasn’t quite enough to last her the day. She had dark circles around her eyes. Kurt casually said to her, “If you don’t stop I’ll run us into a tree.” All fussing discontinued. Who knew idol death threats work on toddlers?

I don’t know if it was originally a bug bite that was then scratched into an open wound or if Sophia was rubbing her hand on the textured wall her crib sits against at night. I doubt it was the second since knockdown is fairly smooth, but it was one of the theories. Either way I noticed a round wound on the back of her hand one morning, weeks ago. It was bleeding when I first saw it, so I washed it off and gave her a kiss. She never let the damn thing scab up. By the end of the day, I had to wipe the blood off her hand again. I kissed the back of her hand again. At the end of the second or third day, she was lifting the back of her hand to me in a slightly closed fist for a kiss. Later it progressed to kissing her wounded then unwounded hand as well and a kiss on the lips. At least she has finally learned to kiss with her mouth closed.

Her hand has healed and only a scar remains but Miss Princess, at random times, will still give me her hands to kiss.

If yelling can cause air molecules to vibrate faster, thereby making the air warmer, I think Sophia’s screaming every night for the last few weeks is to blame for the record temperatures in the Seattle area. All right fine, the math doesn’t support that theory.

I hear the Earth is getting closer to the sun.

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.