Inadequate Materials

We are less that 24 hours from the big family vacation, and I am DISTRACTED! I took Rusty and Jerome to the kennel in Booming Metropolis this morning. I miss them already. I have driven that route at least twice a month for the last four years, and yet somehow this morning, I managed to miss my turnoff on the way there...and then again on the way back! My only excuse is that the fog was pea-soup dense this morning. And also, I am really stressed. We're flying to North Carolina for the Captain's leave from Afghanistan, renting a car and taking a leisurely road trip designed to stop in on the three siblings I have in the south. So we'll spend our first weekend in North Carolina with Sister #4, make our way to Northern Florida to see Brother #2 and then finish up in New Mexico with Brother #1. We figured the kids would get more out of a road trip than an all-inclusive at this point. And I'm really looking forward to the road trip part. But here's the kicker. The Capta...

This evening I was giving my kids a bath. Rosemary's Baby has a new set of bath crayons from his therapist, who has just started a year-long maternity leave. She wanted to give him something that would encourage him to write and draw, one of his goals for this year. Rosemary's Baby had fun this evening writing on himself with them, while Firstborn took them to the inside surface of the bathtub. I was reading a magazine and not paying much attention to what they were doing, when I looked up to see this: Where does a 6 year-old learn this stuff?! He tells me he saw an animated character talking about his "sexy new hairstyle" on a kids' game site, and then wants me to explain to him exactly what "sexy" means! Time to tighten up the parental controls!

Happy Valentine's Day, kids! For the third year in a row, I am celebrating alone while the Captain is off having fun with the army. It's already looking like next year will bring more of the same. So I'm starting to learn that if I want romance on February 14th, I'm going to have to create it for myself. I was trying to think today about all the little, insignificant things that I love. Because all the big, super-significant things I love seem to exist on this earth for the sole purpose of breaking my stuff and making messes and smells, which isn't romantic at all. But my heart isn't quite in it this year. I'm trying to prepare for our (stressful, horrendous, scary) family vacation next week. Between that and Firstborn's declaration that I have to make a heart-shaped dessert tonight (I don't even own a heart-shaped cookie cutter), it was all I could do to think up ONE romantic thing to post. So here you have it. A band I have always loved for its inh...

And now back to what this blog is really all about. In December, I got sick and tired of dealing with dog hair and juice stains on my couch. We have one of those oversized microfiber things in bright red. It is incredibly unforgiving. So I decided it was finally time to get a slipcover. I've used slipcovers before, and I find that they slip and slide all over the place, and the end result is that it looks like you just draped your furniture in a big bedsheet. With that in mind, I decided to go all out and get one of the stretchy ones, which I convinced myself was sure to be the answer I was looking for. It'd cling to what it was supposed to and be form-fitting, and suddenly my dog hair problem would be a thing of the past and my life would be all martinis and designer gowns. What could possibly go wrong?! Here is a picture of the slipcover I chose: Here is a picture of what it looks like on my couch: I guess technically it does protect the way it's supposed to (please not...

I couldn't get all that stuff that was floating around in my head to make up one post without it turning into an incoherent rant. So I'm going to get to the second part and then I promise we can talk about something else. So, as I mentioned in my last post, I read a news article online that resonated with me and then I made the mistake of looking over the reader comments after it, which got me a little riled. Let me just say that I hope I haven't given the impression that I'm against debate. I welcome clear-headed debate on any issue. I simply feel that sometimes when emotions are running high, we zero-in on trying to convince others that we are right, and in the process we miss the bigger picture. My argument here is that if an acceptable amount of work was being done by the world of science into this epidemic, there would be no need for debate. We'd have some bloody answers. But anyway, the debate was not even what got me riled. It was actually something that I...

I've been trying to formulate this post in my head for a couple of days, but all the little bits of it are flying around up there and I can't get them to settle. Here goes. Earlier this week I read a news story online about the Lancet retracting the study by Dr. Andrew Wakefield potentially connecting the MMR vaccine with autism and bowel issues. For those of you not familiar, this study has been a source of serious controversy for a good few years now, with Dr. Wakefield having been accused of professional misconduct, both in how he obtained the data for his paper and in failing to disclose that he was being paid by lawyers representing parents of autistic children who were potentially looking to launch a lawsuit. He has denied the charges. Ten of his 12 co-authors have published retractions, essentially removing themselves from the whole thing. Is he a guilty scumbag who falsified data and took kickbacks? Is he the innocent victim of a smear campaign headed up by a pharmaceu...