Dirty Fortune Cookie.

Patrick got this "fortune" from our local Chinese restaurant.  He was shocked and laughing at the same time when he read it.

Driving Drunk Should be Legal!

About two-thirds of all accidents are caused by sober drivers!  So we need to focus on sober drivers instead of people who drive drunk.  Also?  "The campaign against so-called 'drunk drivers' is another feminist hate men program."

Yessss... there was really a serious news article about allowing drunks on the road legally in County Kerry, Ireland.  And I gleaned all that rockin' wisdom from the comments section.  But the local council reasons that allowing a few drunks on the road is a net social benefit because then these boozers wouldn't have to drink alone.  It will decrease depression!  Those poor rural men.  There is no way, I suppose, that an Irish man can socialize unless he's good and drunk.

I didn't say it!  But the article certainly implies that boozing it up is the only thing to do.  Have they not discovered basketball or golf in Ireland yet?  Pool?  Cards?  The Super Bowl?  I mean, really... there must be something else to do in County Kerry.  The Council thinks it's ok because nobody's been killed yet?

Thankfully the reaction from officials at a more national level has been more along the lines of, what the hell are you thinking.

Poor? You are a TV-Watching Screamer.

"Children who don’t go to preschool are usually from more disadvantaged families, which means they watch lots of TV and are yelled at more than they are praised, which some researchers believe can stunt cognitive development." 

This sounds really scientific!  But it got one commenter very confused.

"What happens if my kids are from a middle income family who does puzzles with them, reads books with them, plays games, takes them on outings, but also lets them watch television and the praise/shouting ratio is probably around 50/50 depending on the day?" wrote Reality_Jane.  "Do we send them to preschool for half a day, then?"

In totally unrelated news, my four-year-old attends preschool for four half-days each week. Ha ha!

New TV Series!

TLC premieres "Nursing Home High," a reality show about high schoolers living in a nursing home.

Here's how it works.  Three seniors are ushered into a nursing home their last semester.  If they make it through without leaving the building and pass all their classes via skype, they will receive a $45,000 college scholarship.  But during non-school/homework hours, their electronics, phones, everything is taken away because old people usually don't know how to work these and/or they are too expensive.  There will be no way they can text their friends or have social contact with them during that semester, either, or they forfeit the prize.

They are also not allowed to talk to any family member older than they are during the show because in real life no 90-year-old can still phone her mom.  The TV staff will select one friend or younger sibling they can communicate with, but what the contestants don't know?  Is that the friend or sibling will have to pretend to have dementia, speak slowly, and ramble on about, "Oh do you remember that time where we went to the park, and we were at the park?  Times were different then..."

It's gonna be great!  I can't wait to see the epic tantrums these "kids" throw when staff speak slowly and condescendingly to them AND TALK ALL IN CAPITAL LETTERS.  They're gonna go absolutely crazy for the cameras.  Especially when they finally resign themselves to a boring six months of reading in bed, only to find out that the only books they're allowed have three-point type so that the dwindling vision of older people is simulated.  They will find themselves greedily grabbing that large-print Reader's Digest and even laughing at the goofy comics.

Ok, all of the above is totally fake.  But I was just thinking for a second there (I forget why, because I'm old maybe) about how I'd rather be dead than stuck in a nursing home.  Seriously.  I can think of no other fate quite so legally cruel.  Unfortunately, life being what it is, we don't get to decide.

But (and why am I thinking this even, maybe because I'm old now) it would seriously be great if there could be secret shoppers in nursing homes.  You know.  Like the big companies hire to see if their employees are doing a good job, except these people would stay for a couple of weeks and hear what happens there at night.  And do things like check, are there enough staff to get all these sleeping oldsters out safely if there is a real fire??  Are there bedbugs?  What is the food like?  And can people contact friends in the outside world?  And is there cable TV?

I am seriously hooked on this Hoarders thing.  I'm probably going to have to watch every episode to get it out of my system.  Then I hear there is some new "Amish Mafia" series.  Really?  Like who wants to watch that?

But then I thought the same thing about "Who wants to watch people who live in piles of trash?" that is the premise of this series.

Bouncin' Boobs for Science!

Could you ever imagine an entire engineering festival selling boys the idea that they can be sex objects and great scientists at the same time?  Have a few oiled-up shirtless beefcakes strut their stuff in Speedos, do a few group-choreographed pelvic thrusts while chanting, "Chemical reaction!" maybe?  Could you?  To sold-out crowds at stadiums and whatnot?  And signing autographs after their "performance?"

That's right.  It will never happen.  People presume boys are more intelligent than that.  They have more self-respect than that.  They don't need to evaluate some dude's shaking wiener and butt to decide on a science career.

Why can't anyone respect the intelligent young women?  Is this really the sort of thing that "inspires" a girl to achieve academically?  I'm thinking no.

Prison or School? You Decide.

How would you like your kid to ride a prison bus to school?  Can you imagine anyone thinks this is a good thing?  I don't care if 75% of all inmates are high school dropouts.  What percentage of violent criminals are high school dropouts?  Because those are the people I'm scared of. 

Does the level of criminal activity actually decrease with an increase in education, or do people get better at hiding their crimes with more education/ access to CSI episodes?  Or do they just have money for a better attorney, thus not having to become an inmate at all?

Seems like a bullying form of coercion, painting a bus like that and implying that your little Greggie will get 20 to life if you let him stay home and play WarCraft or sleep in this morning.

By the way, there are now prison reviews online and you can compare your fave places to stay with the experiences of others.  Excerpt from a five star review of the Alameda County Santa Rita Jail:

"First off, you don't even need a ride here.  They pick you up from anywhere in the county.  Sometimes they even get you out of bed and bring you and its all free of charge.

"Upon arrival you will be relieves of your belt, your shoe laces or any other thing you can kill yourself with.  but don't worry, you can kill yourself with all that stuff when you get out.  You will get it all back."

 Classy.

A Picture Post!

This was Patrick's "ghetto racket."  He bought it (in better condition) at a thrift store for $3 and was too cheap to spend his money on a new one.  His team-mates kinda made fun of him for it.  I finally bought him a new one, but everyone remembers Patrick as the "ghetto racket" guy.

Elf got a magazine from Hy-Vee grocery store in the mail and tried their strawberry-banana recipe.  He added a bit of topping as well.

"Aaaaaaammmm!"  Too bad the pic does not have sound effects.  It's part of the whole dessert experience.  Elf demanded I take this photograph and share it with you.

Woodjie's first day of kindergarten/summer school was Monday!  Woodjie is now a SHARK because that's the mascot of this elementary school  He is in their "integrate the disabled kids and hopefully not spend any money on them next year" program.  Ok, it has a nicer name than that.   But hopefully he does well!  I have no idea... there are no notes home in elementary.  I suppose I will call his teacher in a couple weeks and say "hi!" after the class is well-established.

Miss Rose is Vogue-ing a shirt I lengthened with a bit of fabric.  The pic doesn't do it justice; the shirt flares everywhere as she walks about and is really quite cute.

I hemmed in/made narrower a medium T-shirt I bought at the thrift store for a dollar.  I'm thinking to make the shirt more "dress" like that I will need a ruffle or something at the bottom.  Or.  With a little less smiling and the right footwear she can just be Emo.

Indianapolis 500!

This 1935 photograph features Deacon Litz, my father's third cousin.  He finished fourth in the Indianapolis 500 in 1934.   He had a sharp set of wheels, didn't he?

Magnet Dress-Up

I bought the super-expensive picture magnet from the school picture package and not much else.  As you can see, they are perfect for playing dress-up with magnets that belong to Emperor's Hello Kitty set.  You could use the doll fashion ones or whatever else is handy in your house!

"AAAH!  NOOO!  Do not put Hello Kitty fashion accessories on me!"  Some little boy (whose five-year-old picture is blurred here for semi-anonymity) doesn't want to play the game.

Obnoxious.

I sure wouldn't appreciate if YOU took my picture while I was sleeping and posted it on the internet.  Somehow, though, the cuteness factor makes it all morally OK.  Miss Rose no longer falls asleep on the couch downstairs with Woodjie and has Dad carry her up around 11:30 pm.  Mom insisted:  new room, new routine.  (Bad enough Woodjie has such horrific troubles with bedtime; we had gotten into the habit of letting Rose do what Woodjie does.)  But now, we brush her teeth, read a book, and then Rose is free to read books in her own bed and turn out the light herself when she is ready.  :)

Y2K Disaster!

January 1, 2000 will surely bring an apocolypse like you've never seen!  The end of the world will be complete with a clonky computer, big circular floppy disk, a chunky square disk (high-tech!) and floating zeroes and ones.  It's a shakeable mayhem, folks!  Happy New Year!  I sure hope I didn't scare you too much! Feel free to hide your cash money at my house in case the ATMs don't work on the big day.  :)

Assorted Stuff Post.

Odds and ends that don't fit in a whole post alone... Be grateful if you are not a "real-life" friend because seriously... in real life... I MUST go through my lists of "things I want to tell my friend" every time I get together with people. If I even recognize my friends. Most of them are pretty ok and will find me, or tell me exactly where to meet them. I'll sort of go "hi!" noncommittally and see what sort of response I get. Ever do that when you don't know if you recognize someone? My whole life is like that. So here goes:

1. What is UP with this "Hogan's Heroes" show? I do NOT find it funny. My husband has bought the entire series and just howls with laughter at Colonel Klink. I'm thinking Nazi Germany isn't funny, but from the cackles I hear from everyone else you would think "Schultz" is a comedic genius. Ok, I *would* watch this before yet another Barney rerun. But only because they replaced the original Barney with someone who sounds even dopier (yeah, I know, I didn't think it possible, either).

2. Well. Today I told Emperor not to speak with his mouth full. Apparently he took it to mean that he could still talk with his mouth three-quarters full. Ew. Yes, I had to include that tidbit, sorry. It was on the list.

3. Filling out forms so G can play soccer. Schools throughout the state are now taking concussions more seriously after an athlete died in the spring.

A few years back, G fell backwards on some bleachers and was knocked out for a bit. When he came to, he was confused as to the day of the week and other basic information. I got the call from the school nurse that he ought to be seen in the ER.

School is across town, and takes me 15 mins. to get there. So the nurse had time to prepare me a note on school letterhead detailing the circumstances of the injury and the fact that it happened in PE class.

At the hospital, they spent valuable time taking him aside and making sure **I** didn't cause the injury. These stupid buffoons should have treated him and assigned someone to call the school if they were that suspicious. Still mad about that. And G is autistic. Ask him questions like, "Do you get enough to eat at home?" and he doesn't "get" where this is leading. He will tell you "no" if he is hungry right then. I think they interviewed him three different times. I thought he was going in for tests.

Anywayyy... here's hoping the HOSPITALS know what to do, because what's the point of knowing there is a problem if the hospital wastes valuable time like that??

4. Soccer expenses: $50 "pay to play" fee, just under $100 in equipment and probably another $50 for food and incidentals. When I was a kid, you got a pair of shinguards and a T-shirt. "Snacks" are one orange quarter per kid and a drink; none of this "deli sandwiches" stuff. And they put the boys and girls TOGETHER on teams. If you were a girl, you'd just better be better than the average boy. I wasn't. I dropped that sport in my second season or so. The team-mates nicknamed me "Grandma" and what's worse is the coach picked up on that and cheered me from the sidelines with that. Yay.

5. In other news, here is a realllly funny post written by my bloggy buddy Fi. Moms get it. :)

6/PS. Pray for the peace of the UK. Hopefully everything dies down mighty quick and my friend Mother of Shrek is safe. Thanks.

Miss Airport 2011

A friend sent me an entire pretend calendar with a different "pose" for each month. I think I'll stick with the cartoon one currently hanging from my cabinet door... I'm left wondering who thinks of these things, who poses for them, and whether the whole thing is a photoshop gag.

Short Thoughts

1. Elf wants to know if in New York, they eat those "British muffins." I keep telling him it's "English muffins," but when he asks, I can't tell him why there would be any difference. I hate how I can't get the last word in when it comes to stuff like that.

2. Another thing I don't get: whyyy did the NEA endorse Obama so early in the election cycle? I don't even know who all the Republican candidates ARE yet, let alone what they think about public education.

I DO know, however, that Obama seems to get zero flak for sending his kids to private school and simultaneously working against school "choice" for the rest of us. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, though? Is criticised for sending his children to private school. I dunno; I'd be hesitant to send my kid to public school if the entire state's teachers' union is praying for my DEATH. Nevermind the politics a sec on that one. But yes, Mr. Christie, it IS relevant and it IS our business.

3. Yes, it's very sad that Caylee Anthony is dead. Sadder still? There are children being killed every day via abortion, and millions of other kids already born who are being abused and/or who don't have enough food to eat, and no one is making a big stink about them. Read Dianne's beautiful post and reflect a minute on that.

4. Emperor doesn't get a few things. He would like to know, is there a website that explains the jokes and stuff you see on TV or hear from other people? Because many of these things are a mystery to him and the clues have to be somewhere... Poor Emperor.

5. And poor Elf. I am explaining to him that "Have a nice night! I hope no one sabotaged your car while you were visiting!" is probably not an appropriate way to say good-bye to our guests.

Arg.

6. We just got a membership to the Kansas City Zoo. Yes, I took all the children. Yes, we are all still alive. We'll have to go back several times this summer. The polar bear is probably the best part of the zoo. Most of the zoo is (sadly!) just the old-fashioned cement block display areas with bars in front. Maybe a cement-cast "stone" and a tree inside. Needs improvement, but still worth the visit.

Product Review: Tajin!

I'm talking about Tajin (pronounced tah-heen) today because I think some of YOU might be interested in this product. I wasn't compensated for this review.

Tajin is a spice made with lime and chili peppers and tastes just a little salty. You can sprinkle it on fruit such as bananas or apples, and it really does give it a unique and new taste combination. At about $2 a bottle, you might just consider trying it and seeing if it's something you want to keep in your pantry regularly.

Rose's speech therapist J got us some bottles from her Wal-Mart across town. It's not available in our local store. I really MISSED the Tajin seasoning once our second bottle was gone... but I just wasn't able to make a trip across town for fruit seasoning. Enter La Tienda Chiquita near the Liberty Square. Like 'em on facebook and hear more about their specials if you're interested. For those of you not local to the KC area, I'd suggest looking in Wal-Mart first and then trying amazon.com or a local store that carries a large selection of Mexican foods.

I first learnt about Tajin from J. Rose had many difficulties in eating certain kinds of foods and still does show a strong *preference* for cereal and bread and cheese balls only, I think mostly because she had a weakness on one side of her mouth. Every couple of weeks, we would introduce a new food or taste and give her lots of encouragement. The food would be in tiny amounts on her plate about once a day. Rose had a bit of trouble eating mushy foods like bananas. J thought that we should try Tajin to "define" the fruit in her mouth. Bananas can be very mild and this gives it a little kick and texture.

Rose likes Tajin, but I will not pretend that it solved all her feeding difficulties. For us it has worked out using a bit of Tajin can help her take more than one bite of something, however.

*picture credit: wikipedia's Tajin (seasoning) page

The Potty Post

Strange things make me wonder. When I last flew several years ago, it seemed that all the old folks in wheelchairs and walkers and the whole shebang were loaded up first. It took them over 10 minutes to load six people and I wondered if there were a fire, would anybody make it out? I'm hardly a "survival of the fittest" kind of person, but I question the wisdom of allowing so many physically handicapped people to use a plane at once if there aren't good ways to get them in and out of the plane QUICKLY. It's a safety issue. (I'm not saying no handicapped people should fly. Just maybe not so many on one flight! Or have a few rows without standard seats in which you bolt the chairs to the floor like they do on the handicap busses, and wider aisles so you can just scoot these folks out fast! Just askin' for some common sense.)

Now I'm wondering how they would EVER be able to use the potty. The wheelchair doesn't even go up the aisles, so people who can't take a few steps can't get on the plane in the first place unless someone carries them. I guess people in wheelchairs don't have families to travel to and never need to use the restroom. Well, good for them! :)

No, seriously, planes are an extreme example, but almost no business has accessable anything. Try clothes shopping sometime at a department store. Could you imagine getting between the clothes racks and looking around? Even stores built within the last few years allow for practically zero room between the racks. Aisles that are carefully constructed to allow wheelchairs to go through are clogged with rolling sales racks. And the bathroom, you have to open a really heavy door to get in WHILE you are going round a corner. Imagine yourself unable to move from the waist down and sitting in a chair. You can't open the door and get in, can you?

I don't know that I agree with forcing businesses to make things "handicap accessible" and spending zoodles of dollars, especially if it does no blinking good for people who really need the chair to get around. By the way, I weigh something like 468 pounds (well, maybe 458 but am using the upper end of my weight to make a point) and I cannot get into the stall, turn and shut the door. I have to use the handicap stall or I won't be able to fit without getting toilet water on my hiney when I stand up. By the way, automatic flushers are JUST WRONG! You can't stand and get away in time without getting splashed in the small stalls! And too bad for you if you don't like seeing me hold my skirts around my stomach when I exit; I am not letting my skirts touch the potty, so I will hold them next to my body until I clear the stall AND the splash area. Man. Who needs Sea World when I can get splashed every day at Wal-Mart for free? Eew.

As noted in the previous paragraph, I am fat. Deal with it or I will squash you. But I must say it is absolutely WRONG of some of these folks to use the Wal-Mart automated chairs IN the restroom! If you're that stinkin' handicapped, you should have a chair of your own that doesn't take up six feet by three feet. Wal-Mart (God bless 'em) is providing those chairs as a COURTESY because their store is so large, and they know some people get tired of walking all that way. Please have the COURTESY not to take them into the restroom and run over the toddlers there. It's 20 steps. You took at least that getting into the building before plunking your fat self on the chair. Courtesy, people.

I dunno. I think we can ask for some courtesy in the design of these businesses, too. Does anybody actually use the tiny stalls if there isn't a line and a real need to go?

Science is Racist.

Ohhhhkayyy. Black ladies are less attractive than white ladies.

No, this isn't Bob's personal preference. Or Jason's. It's a scientific fact that black ladies aren't as cute as Asian or white ladies. It's evolutionary, even, that they evolved to have bigger butts or something. Go ahead and click on the link. It's BET discussing a new scientific study and being a little snarky. It's ok.

Here's the link they're outraged about and I think rightly so. Psychology Today deleted it from their servers, but I think you should check it out on the cache before it disappears entirely. It's very nice to get all scientific and try to find the differences in the races (and yes, there are some!) to find the cure for cancer or how to prevent heart attacks or whathaveyou. MAYBE it is that black folks or Asians or Irish people all respond differently biologically to a given medicine... I dunno. Let the science lead where it may. We already know sickle cell affects more blacks than whites and guess who gets the most skin cancer. But this "let's check out why black people or short people or whatever are unattractive" is racist, discriminatory, wrong... oh, I don't know what else. Something else. Fill in the blank for me here...

BABY Robins!

There are at least three in the nest, but this one in front is the pushiest. I don't know how this little thing could STAND for a second and get a raw worm from its mom. It has eyes shut, I think, and is fluffy. Aside from the beak, it doesn't really look like a robin at all.

Misc.

Junk drawer post. I have some DS chargers, bulletin board tacks, old McDonald's Monopoly papers, and a few elastic bands in this somewhere...

Ok. First, do you want to hear a nice story about a nice family? They're nice people. They wanted to buy a house in a nice neighbourhood. They kept getting outbid by other families, so they did something different this time. THIS time, they stapled a picture of their beautiful family and a note about how much they will enjoy the house and sent it along with their offer on the place. Not only were they able to buy the place from the seller, but the seller rejected an offer of $10,000 more than this family was offering!

Nice, huh?

But maybe not all of us are nice people. I know I'm not. I'm fat and old and I don't photograph well. I have teen boys and sorry, when I'm shopping for houses and see evidence of teen boys I think loud music and dangerous driving and go somewhere else. My letter would be about yeah, we like your house because it has this one room in which I can corral my autistic child and we can get rid of the metal cage we currently use. That would go over reallly well.

Or suppose the family that bid the $10,000 more than the one that sent the picture weren't weird like me. Say they were perfectly regular people, but they were (egads) black people. Does your opinion change? Is it still ok for realtors to allow people to market themselves as buyers, knowing certain sorts of customers won't get the best deals?

I don't like this story. I know it's supposed to be a feel-good story about a nice family, but I don't feel it's a nice trend. I think if we're going to play this game we ought to at least allow listings that say "young families only" or "no Mexicans." Can we just be honest about it? I guess I will be ok with it if we are just honest about this being the pretty/ outgoing/ nice people with connections or the right ethnicity getting what they want. Nobody should be forced to sell to a given bunch of folks if they don't want to... well... and I'd like to think most people try to set that stuff aside when it's business because it's simply in their best interest to do so.

Next up: time to sign up for Pizza Hut book-it program if you homeschool! Yeah. You like free pizza.

Third... the math dance. We need choreographers to teach us that Gina has four letters. G-I-N-A. I was going to scoff at this outright but I suppose there are some children who learn kinetically and need to sort of move to get those math concepts. I don't know that graduate students and teachers need to do this for a whole day workshop or if they do, how much time they spend with real live little children. I do remember one thing we did when Emperor was tiny was get a long number line out and let him hop back and forth for addition and subtraction. When it was time to learn about adding a negative number, he did get a little bit stuck. But I think past a certain point, you can't learn 3x -2y = 75 with a dance. (If you can, please post to youtube because that really would be interesting.)

And finally, I found this little article in my browsing. I think you can certainly tell someone the chair has a 200 pound weight limit and that there's an extra charge BEFORE someone sits in it. You'd think, though, that smart business people would know there are quite a large number (ha ha) of people over 200 pounds out there. You could get a more durable chair or whatever or maybe even charge every customer a dollar more from now on. Not as a separate charge... just raise your fees to accomodate expenses such as the chair. I'm sure buffets charge a husky teen football player the same amount they charge for my three-year-old to dine and guess which one eats more...

Talking Too Much

Ohhhh, this post is refreshing. I can relate because I'm either NOT going to say anything or I talk wayyyy too much. I can remember to sort of curb it (sometimes) when I'm sitting still and thinking about it, but it's pretty hard.

I'm the person who gets the joke 10 minutes after it's told unless you are kind enough to WRITE the joke down for me. Really. I can most usually understand written words and curb myself from typing most of the stupid thoughts that occur to me. Most of the time. (Maybe the other times are why you are really reading my blog? Scary.)

The other day I was in Wal-Mart, The Place of Evil. On my grocery list were laundry soap, Smarties, pop, detangling spray, the souls of the living, and frosting. Guess which one was helpfully added by Patrick. I guess they were out of stock.

Annyway. One of the shoppers was peeking at a product label for a minute (mac-n-cheese in a box), then reaching wayyy in and rearranging the whole display. Yeah, I do stuff like that sometimes, too. You can't just accidentally knock one thing down without neatening up EVERYTHING there before moving on with your shopping. I understand.

But since I was waiting for some photos to be printed, I had to hang out for a fairly long time. Maybe about 45 minutes... aimlessly wandering about the aisles. This lady had moved on to another aisle and was rearranging other stuff. Ok, that's odd. Her home life must be really awful, but her knicknack drawer is probably organized at least. More than I can say for myself.

Ta-da, the photos are finished and now it's time to pick up the refrigerated stuff on the other side of the store before heading out. Didn't want to put that into my cart and then wait forever while it got all stale. Passed by the lady yet again, rearranging things...

"OH! YOU WORK HERE! Thank God! I was beginning to feel *very sorry* for you. But you are WORKING." (oh blehh that just slipped out, keen statement of the obvious.)

"Yeah," she said rather noncommitally. "You gotta do what you gotta do."

Ohhhkayyyy... I am relieved she doesn't have extreme mental illness in the form of obsessive-compulsive Wal-Mart shelf rearranging, and she is talking of the economy and the crapfulness of her job. Only later did I realize this. Duh.