Am I talking to feel my lips waggle? #73

Me: "I told Uncle to come for Thanksgiving dinner around 2, so why don't you come at 2?"

Mom: "Your father says we'll be there at noon."

Abortion--it's all about the repeat business

So a study is out saying that a lot of women who have abortions have more than one.

This is not news to me, as the first person I ever met who mentioned having had an abortion, told me that she had had five of them. The study also found a significant proportion of women having abortions were over 30, already had living children, and were using birth control when they got pregnant.

The planned parenthood people, naturally, say that what this means is abortion clinics need to be telling women about birth control. But that the big, bad, conservatives won't let them.

First of all, that is bullshit. Saying that doctors can't tell woman to have an abortion is not the same as telling abortionists they can't encourage a woman NOT to have one.

Secondly, it kinda busts the image of the pathetic young girl too naive to avoid pregnancy. These are women who know all about it, and still choose to kill their children. That is disturbing. Too bad becoming a mother the first time around didn't teach these women that as adults you've got to deal with the cards you've been dealt.

And, lastly, yeah, there's the whole "birth control doesn't always work" thing. Some of us are just really fertile. But that isn't a license to kill, Ms. Bond.

I'm a giant reed diffuser

Today I broke down and bought a pair of those reed diffuser things at Target.

They look really cool and smell fantastic. And when I got them home I spilled a little. Since it was on my hand already, I ran it through my hair.

You can see where this is going. Every time I shake my head, I smell vanilla & mint. It is awesome. I am probably giving myself brain damage, but it smells fantastic.

How long before I'm buying that stuff, just for my hair? Your guess is as good as mine.

Son #1's school experience, thus far:

According to Son #1, public high school's academic load is "chump stuff" compared to homeschool.

Torn jeans and T-shirts are completely wrong. You must wear black, blacker than space. This requires a trip to the mall, which is an hour from home, and much more expensive than, say, the thrift store.

Racial tension is everywhere. But the kids who tease Justin for being latino, or Son #1 for being white and the wearer of a wicked Jewfro, are balanced by the kids who give him a new nickname. He is, in goth circles, "DK", while the African-American kids call him "C-Dogg".

While, back in the day, people cornered each other in the hall to find out who liked whom, today that is all done by text message, with similar results.

The bisexuals play spin-the-bottle after lunch.

Some classes are completely out of control, dominated by obscenity-shouting thugs, people who don't bother to do the (minimal) required work and then complain when they don't understand anything, and those who leave for the bathroom and never return. Substitute teachers are a fact of life. The principal relies on in-house sheriff's deputies to cart off the most unruly kids, so that teachers can at minimum enter their own classrooms. And yet, this is somehow seen as a more legitimate route to college than homeschooling, in the eyes of the State.

Son #1 comes home every day with stories about his school, his friends, his classes, and the rest. I am honored and thrilled to be intimately included in his life. I am also mortified, on a daily basis.

Just another FUBAR day...

Couldn't sleep last night, again. Or, more accurately, could only sleep in bursts of an hour or less, punctuated with periods of wakefulness. Got maybe 4 hours, all told.

Went to the school to register Son #1, at our appointed time. The registrar had an emergency, though, so he wasn't there, and nothing else can happen until after we deal with him. IF he shows up today, we'll register The Son, but otherwise we wait until Wednesday. So, we headed home...

...to find the heating duct guys here, waiting. Didn't know they were coming, wouldn't have been here to let them in if the registrar had been where he was supposed to be. So they slapped on the new registers, while I tried to sort out the heap on my desk. How hard could it be, right? Screw, screw, screw? So, they left. Hubby came home. At this point I actually LOOKED at the registers. They are not the right kind. So, those need to be replaced.

At this point I have a son who is still not registered for school; a headache and general brainlessness due to insufficient sleep; heaps in the center of every upstairs room so as to make space for the HVAC guys to replace the registers they put in this morning; boys who are a bit behind on the school schedule because I was gone/the HVAC guys were loud/they had to pile their belongings away from their windows before school started; and, of course, the original pile of papers on my desk, sections of which are starting to get cranky.

Betty Color?

It's Saturday, so after the gym, taking the younger sons to tae kwon do, and making a quick lunch, we watched the last half of West Side Story and spent the rest of the afternoon stacking the logs Son #1 split. It was a very relaxing day, and productive, and I feel great.

Apparently, some of us need a little more to feel great. Betty Color.

There was a time, I heard, when most men were happy to see pretty much whatever was down there. I think we are making this too hard, ok, ladies?

The scariest thing in the candy haul

Last night was Halloween. This morning, Son #4 found a "Happy Easter" lollipop in his sack. So, Happy Eastoween, everybody!

Snowflakes

One of the perks of blogging is I get to link to other people's great writing and take a tiny sliver of credit for it.