Wordless Wednesday: Pride in Job
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Tag Archives: memes
Food for Gumming
I told Sophia we had to take Baily, our cat, to the vet so that his teeth can be fixed. “But I don’t like shots.” She said.
“You’re not getting shots. We’re taking Bailey in to get his teeth fixed.”
“But Bailey doesn’t like shots.”
“No one likes shots. Bailey isn’t getting shots. The doctor just needs to make Bailey’s teeth stop hurting.”
“Teef hurt?”
“Yes his teeth hurt.”
“Well my teef hurt.”
“Maybe we should take you to a dentist then.”
“But I don’t like shots.”
Oh when will I be able to have normal conversations with her? She makes my head spin.
The cat wasn’t being compliant about entering the kitty kennel for his short car ride to the vet so I wound up somehow holding his four paws with one hand and shoving him head first into the crate. I don’t know how I did it really but I know the cat wasn’t happy about it and it made Lukas laugh. Now that the boy butt scoots, he’s good at herding cats to me. It’s amazing what a semi mobile baby can do.
The ladies at the veterinary office thought I was quite a site. I had Lukas in the Ergo baby carrier, clutching a cat in his kennel, and a four year old wearing a purple and blue horizontal striped dress with a solid blue shirt over it, and green and white horizontal striped knee length shorts. She was also sporting one white sock and one pink black bear print sock from Alaska plus carrying her stuffed polar bear who now wears a butterfly print shirt and a diaper. But her hair was brushed and that was the important part.
We dropped off the cat and for the rest of the day I kept hearing, “Where’s Bailey?”
“We left him at the Vet’s office so that they can fix his teeth.”
“Can we get Bailey?”
“We’ll get Bailey later today.”
When the time came to pick Bailey up I told Sophia, “Ok let’s go get Bailey from the Vet’s office.”
“Hhhmm maybe later.” She said. Oh that kid kills me.
Bailey is back home safe and sound. They removed his fang-like K9 teeth. His teeth were rotting out of his mouth and quite infected. He’ll be on the nasty smelling canned cat food for a week and then he should be able to gum the crunchy kibble food.
Speaking of gumming food…Lukas was eleven months old as of November 1st and the boy still doesn’t have a single tooth. Not one. This is fine on the breastfeeding front but I’m running out of things to give the growing boy that he can gum.
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Bullies Harassing for Jesus
It was my sophomore year of high school and I had just moved from a town in Alaska of about six thousand people to a city in the Seattle area with about fifty thousand. It was a bit of a culture shock, but I quickly found a friend. She was in my Spanish class. She was funny and had some wild stories, which as I reflect on as an adult seem rather farfetched.
She told me one time about a friend of hers that was raped in a gas station bathroom. Her friend called her and she drove to pick up that friend. The only issue I had with that part of the story was that my classmate was only fifteen at the time of the story telling, so she had no license. Also at this time most cars were stick shift, so unless someone had taught her to drive it’s not like ten year old can just hop in the driver seat and take off as if it were a video game. Ya know.
Anyway, I don’t remember if it was the same girl or another girl she knew who had been raped, became pregnant, and kept the baby. My classmate looked at me searching for a response, but I had none. I thought it rather amazing that she personally knew someone that had gone through such an ordeal, because even then I knew that it was statistically improbable to not only be raped by a stranger but become pregnant from the one encounter. It was also odd that I had not come across such a news story in the paper because that’s the sort of thing I would have clipped. I’ve been a sick little fuck for a long time. I said nothing, so she continued by telling me that because of that one friend, she knows that anyone could do it and that abortion for any reason is just wrong. Wow. Talk about a logical fallacy. I certainly did not agree with that. I could never look a rape victim in the face and say they absolutely had to keep the resulting pregnancy to term. I was speechless.
Various stories like this went on for weeks. Some of them light and fun others more on the uuhh preachy side. Finally one day she asked me, “What religion are you?”
“I’m Catholic.” I said without hesitation. I had been and continued to be raised as Catholic at that point. I had no reason to say otherwise except that I had always had a hard time choking down the conflicting scriptures and that a deity would create human nature and then make moral rules that oppose it. You know, it’s the fine print I had issues with. The part no one else seems to read.
My classmate then says, “Oh I’m sorry.”
I laughed. I thought she was also Catholic. It’s sort of a common joke that the Catholic religion is a tough one to follow and that even the Catholics themselves feel bad they’re stuck with it.
She again said, “I’m so sorry for you.” But with a more serious tone.
I stopped laughing, “Why?”
“Because you’re going to hell.” She handed me a pamphlet and told me to read it. I glanced at it. I had no interest in reading her pamphlet. Whatever her religion was I knew it was nothing more than a spinoff of the one I had been raised in. I don’t know at what point I tossed it in the trash, but I’m sure it never made it home.
Now at no point did I ever feel bullied. Maybe let down by someone I thought of as a potential friend, but nothing I would cause me to commit suicide. I think most can see how this might make someone more religious feel bad. To tell a religious person in seriousness that they’re going to hell, well it’s rude to say the least. I could see someone with her beliefs, and the bluntness with which she told another Christian who didn’t follow her beliefs with lock-step exactness, telling another person their beliefs/lifestyle/manner in which they were born is an abomination. I can’t understand why the people that hold those beliefs feel compelled to push them onto others and I don’t think they should be separated from bullying laws. Harassing a person to tears or more is still harassment even if it happens to be motivated by religion.
In an emotional speech on the Senate floor, Democratic Leader Gretchen Whitmer accused her colleagues of creating a blueprint for consequence-free bullying. “As passed today,” said Whitmer, “bullying kids is okay if a student, parent, teacher or school employee can come up with a moral or religious reason for doing it.”
The bill is called “Matt’s Safe School Law,” after Matt Epling, a Michigan student who committed suicide in 2002 after enduring prolonged bullying. Matt’s father, Kevin Epling, expressed his dismay in a Facebook post after the state senate vote on Wednesday. “I am ashamed that this could be Michigan’s bill on anti-bullying,” wrote Epling. “For years the line [from Republicans] has been ‘no protected classes,’ and the first thing they throw in…was a very protected class, and limited them from repercussions of their own actions.”
Link to the amended version of the bill on the Michigan legislature’s website:
http://www.legislature.mi.gov/documents/2011-2012/billengrossed/Senate/htm/2011-SEBS-0137.htm
(8) This section does not abridge the rights under the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States or under article I of the state constitution of 1963 of a school employee, school volunteer, pupil, or a pupil’s parent or guardian. This section does not prohibit a statement of a sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction of a school employee, school volunteer, pupil, or a pupil’s parent or guardian.
If you disagree with this law, please email the people below. Please do this even if you live out of state or in a country other than the USA. You may want to mention that you will not visit Michigan or spend any money there if this bill making bullying a legal right passes. The bill name is Senate Bill No. 137.
Email:
Michigan’s governor, Rick Snyder, at Rick.Snyder@michigan.gov
Speaker of the House: JaseBolger@house.mi.gov
If you live in the state of Michigan, find your representative here and email them: http://www.house.mi.gov/mhrpublic/
Help stop this bill and you could be saving the lives of many people who are bullied to the point of suicide.
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Fair Warm Up
The first fair we go to for the season is actually the state fair. It’s smaller, more down home, very quaint. It took Sophia three hours to warm up to the idea of being there this year, but we waited and it happened. She even went on some of the rides ALL BY HERSELF.
Picture taken 8/28/2011
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Adding More to the Therapy Fund
Wild Kratts is a PBS cartoon about this team that saves animals from various things, some caused by humans and some just natural predators or other elements. Each show features one or two particular animals and two of the characters, the Kratt brothers, are given ‘creature powers’ to turn into those animals and save the day using those special powers.
While watching the show yesterday Sophia asked me if I could buy her some creature powers. I posted that on Facebook and then Kurt commented, “She already has some. She can sleep like a sloth, jump like a kangaroo, climb like a monkey and poop like an elephant.”
That evening I went to a tamale cooking class and Kurt put both kids to bed. Sophia went to the bathroom, came out completely nekkid, and tells Kurt, “Come here. Look, I made stinky.” He goes in to see and then she says, “Take a picture!” Kurt told her no and then she again demanded, “Take a picture!” It wasn’t an elephant poop. I know this because he actually took a picture of the contents of the toilet and then showed it to me.
Maybe she has seen me run to get the camera a few too many times to capture the baby squeezins diaper of the month. I’ll be adding some money to the therapy fund. Maybe I should take donations. I’m not sure we have enough. Kurt even asked if I wanted it for a post. Infant squeezins is one thing. I’m drawing a line. I know it’s blurry but it’s there…somewhere.
Picture taken 10/2/2011.
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55 Flash non-Fiction Friday: Fun Size
They say bigger is better. That’s a myth, but no one wants to pretend that a tiny bit will do the job. It’s embarrassing to want seconds and thirds just to get enough.
Who the hell came up with the “fun size” Halloween candy? There is nothing fun about that size!
What were you thinking?
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Monkey Boy and Pink Fairy Princess Halloween
Sophia’s first Halloween she was only one month old. We of course stayed home that year and handed out candy. I’ll never forget the stupid teenage boy that spotted Sophia across the room with her already long brown troll-doll hair and asked, “What is that? Is that a kitten?” Uumm no. “Oh, it’s a baby” he says, and then looks at me, “cute baby.” Uuhh yeah too late asshole.
The second Halloween we went with a group of friends to a neighborhood near them. I can’t remember if I carried Sophia in a front pack or pushed her in a stroller, but either way there was very little participation from her not that we expected much from a one year old. It was obvious from an early age that I would never need to warn Sophia about strangers. She would not even take a piece of candy from a bowl or bucket at age one.
At age two she mostly stayed in the stroller and would occasionally allow us to carry her up to the door. I think a couple of times she may have even picked out a piece of candy from a bowl. We still didn’t expect much from her and just the fact that she didn’t have a meltdown made it a great Halloween. It’s really hard to ruin a Halloween anyway.
Last year there wasn’t any participation from Sophia at all. She sat in the stroller the whole time. The only candy she received was from her friends (other three year olds) putting some in her bucket. We were disappointed that she never warned up to trick-or-treating last year, but Kurt was adopted by our friend’s three year old and he got to take her trick-or-treating. I was too pregnant to keep up. I just stood at the end of driveways or tried to waddle a head start to the next house.
This year was FANTASTIC! I think there was a trial run of trick or treating at preschool. She came home on the 29th, her last day for the week, and kept saying, “trick or treat”. On Halloween we had some friends over and headed out to terrorize our tiny town in sugared up mob style. It took Sophia a couple houses to get the idea of what was going on, but she did it. For some of the houses I held her hand and for others it was Kurt. I had a hard time keeping up with the other kids because I was carrying the Lukas monkey in the front pack.
Because no princess costume is complete without a polar bear wearing a butterfly shirt. 
At one house the mob of kids from our group was at a door and had already said their trick or treat line – Sophia pulled at my hand and rather frantically said, “trick or treat” as if she wouldn’t get anything if the magical Halloween phrase wasn’t uttered. That right there is the magical fun of producing spawn with an engineer. The world is such a black and white place with special rules for everything and each must be followed to the letter.
She was thrilled to be getting candy, but then what child wouldn’t. I didn’t hear a lot of giggling or chatter from her as one would expect from a child collecting candy. My child was on a mission, but I know she had fun because when we asked her in the car on the way home she said, “yes” without hesitation. She also asked me in the morning, “Can friends come over today?” As funny as I think it is that she believes the Halloween rules to be set in stone, I think it’s even more awesome that she’s enjoying normal childhood activities.
It's supposed to read, "Little Devil", but the way he's sitting and the angle I took the photo from it looks like, "Lite Evil". 
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Baby Squeezins: Diaper of the Month
Lukas sat in his booster seat situated to the side of the dinner table. He reached across the tray and pulled. His face turned beet red. I tried to finish my dinner while Kurt cheered him on with, “Come on boy, poop!”, and then Sophia parroting her father.
After the poop show was over and dinner was finished I went to change the boy despite the lack of stench. Nothing. Later I saw Lukas scooting around the toy room, then stop, lean forward, and then continue scooting around. That time a stench followed the boy. Taken on the 18th of October with my Nikon D60 for your high-resolution pleasure, I now present to you the double, double over butt-molded poop streak. The Baby Squeezins, Diaper of the Month.
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Dirty Kurtie’s Tunes: Curious George
We aren’t proud of ourselves. We did it for you. If you’ve been pining away for a Dirty Kurtie Twisted Tune today is your day.
A couple or few months ago (I’m not sure which because there was a long span of sleepless night there for a while) Kurt and I were watching Curious George with Sophia. While listening to the theme song Kurt said, he heard something different from what they said. He told me, and I could not shake it. After that, every time I watched the show with my then three-year old that is what I heard. As punishment, I made Kurt further defile the lyrics of the current favorite children’s show in our household. It is now with great regret that I present to you the greatly mangled version of a much-loved children’s show… To the tune from the theme song of Curious George – Dirty Kurtie’s version goes like this:
You never do know who’s in your bed
A hot, young stripper or a guy named Fred
When you’re bi-curious, Bi-Curious George
(Swing!)
Well everything (everything!) is so glorious (glorious!)
And everything (everything!) is so wonderous (wonderous!)
There’s more to explore
When you act like a whore
And make friends like this,
A guy to kiss
(Whooooa!)
Get bi-curious (bi-curious!) and that’s marvelous (marvelous!)
You’ll sleep with a slut
And take it in the butt
If you ask yourself, who needs tits?
Like bi-curious, bi-curious, Bi-Curious George
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My Dancing Queens
Every time I turn on one any of the toys that play music, Lukas’ arms fly up in the air. He sits on the floor twisting at the waist swinging his arms as if he’s a conductor. I always ask him, “Are you dancing?” He just laughs and swings his arms even harder.
Lukas’ babbling, “ah bah bah”, makes him sound like he likes ABBA, so that is exactly what Kurt played for him. Kurt called up a video on the interwebs and the boy was thrilled. “Your boy is a dancing queen,” he called to me as he then proceeded to sing all the words to the song perfectly in sync with the video.
Picture taken 10/14/2011. Lukas was being entertained by Sophia.