If you’re at trial, don’t blog about it.

Blogger Unmasked, Court Case Upended from the Boston Globe

Elizabeth N. Mulvey, the lawyer who represented Vinroy and Deborah Binns and unmasked Lindeman as Flea, said she laughed when she read a posting at the start of the trial in which Lindeman nicknamed her Carissa Lunt, noticed that she bit her fingernails and mused, “Wonder if she’s a pillow biter, too?”

Note to all idiots:  IF YOU PUBLISH IT, IT CAN BE READ BY OTHERS AND USED AGAINST YOU IN ANY CAPACITY THEY SO CHOOSE.

Jeez.

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I linked through a link through a link, (you know how it is, you addicted bloggers), and I found myself at Sweet|Salty.  The blog is very well written and compelling to read.  Particularly delightful are the author’s pre-baby assurances to the audience about how they would never be “those” parents and the post-baby discovery that there are actual reasons that parents do what they do.

The hours that new moms and dads spend staring at the baby? - Because they like it.  The silly, noisy toys covering the house? - Because the baby likes them and making the baby happy is one of the greatest joys in life.  Leaving the party early? - Because the baby needs sleep, and because it makes a happy baby, and a happy baby (as much as you are loved) is WAY more fun than you.  Your new parent friends don’t want to party anymore? - It’s more fun to stay home with the baby.

There are plenty of parents who choose to stay away from the kid.  Parents who fill the house with breakables and who make no concession for their child.  Parents are adult people just like the unbabied, and they do what they want to. It’s condescending to look at a mom covered in puke and racing her kid around a playground and mentally assume she’s doing it despite the burden, rather than because of joy.  Chances are more than even that Mom wants the baby and she is often perfectly happy with the constraints that come along with that baby.  You could offer her the choice of having her life back and she would never, ever take you up on it.  Not because of a sense of responsibility or because people don’t do that, but because babies and kid are just the coolest damned thing on the whole earth.

Wallace is the coolest damned thing on the whole wide earth.  I chose that.  I choose my family.  Forever and ever.  It’s just better than anything else I’ve ever experienced.

For those of you on the fence, or those of you who don’t believe people when they say that it’s different when it’s your own kids, go read Sweet|Salty from the beginning.  It’s a story of joyus adult reform, not without nostalgia, but without regret.

Apparently the author recently gave birth to premature twins. I’m still, as I said, in December of 2005, so her first boy is only 11 months old.  The writing continues to compel and I’ll be adding her to Specklinks as soon as I get to the current end of the story.

We’re not used to being perpetually misunderstood. I see them – kidless folk – watching us with condescending pity. We take turns trailing along behind Evan on the floor, spotting him as he scurries and climbs and skidaddles, anticipating every obstacle and temptation in his path. We never sit down. We leave early, before the appetizers even come out. How unappealing, they must think. Their lives have become so small, so confined. They can’t relax. They’re so scattered. They have to plan their day around his naps. Imagine! They can’t even carry on a normal conversation. I know that’s how I felt before Evan, seeing new parents. Thank God that’s not us! And we’d skip away, giddy with our fortunes and freedom.

Happy eleven-month birthday, kiddo. All the clichés are true: you, because you’re ours, are endlessly fascinating. We don’t miss living on a whim. We had no idea you would be so much fun. The rest of the world is right: we are consumed by you. But happily, so happily.

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Or: PLEASE CHECK LEFT WRIST FOR NO KILL ME THX

Last year during the whole dog bite debacle the doctors had me hospitalized and were trying me on several different antibiotics, you know, so they wouldn’t have to remove my arm and stuff.⁽¹⁾ One antibiotic they gave me was Penicillin. 

I’ve never been allergic to a med in my life, so imagine my shock when I look down at the port in the back of my hand and it suddenly appears that, in addition to all the swelling and infection and tracking and scary shit, my veins appear to be elephant veins.  Red and getting redder, itchier and bigger by the moment.

I immediately hit the call button and when the nurse came in she blanched pale, fairly ripped the IV out of my arm and brought in a big IV of Benedryl immediately if not sooner.

“Well,” she said, “Now you are allergic to Penicillin.  You need to let people know that.”

Great!  Developing an allergy to penicillin.  Next it will be latex and then I’ll be all sorted.  Nobody ever told me I needed to wear a medical alert bracelet, but if I’m ever in a big accident and people aren’t paying attention it’s not unlikely that I’d be dead of allergic shock before anyone realizes it.

Yay, me.

The thing is, medical alert bracelets are traditionally utilitarian and butt-ugly.  Fugly, even.  I, like most people, do not want to wear one.  I also need one that says that I have asthma and IC. I have three good reasons to wear a fugly bracelet, but I don’t want to!

Luckily, I don’t have to.  There are a few places on the web where you can purchase fashionista mediwear, but I like this one the best out of all I’ve seen.  Pretty soon I’ll be bejeweled AND safe.  It’s a win-win.

I think what I’ll do is order an engraved charm and then hire Nana Poopyhands, Jewelry-Maker Extraordinaire⁽²⁾, to put it on a handsome bracelet for me.  Maybe MORE than one, if I’m feeling spendy and would like to be able to accessorize.  Why not do the same?  NP is capable of making you one that is all about you and only you and you will never save your own life so stylishly.

Go do.

⁽¹⁾I wish I was overstating things, but they were seriously talking about having to open my hand and amputate things.  It was scary as hell.  Amusingish in retrospect, but scary as hell at the time.

⁽²⁾ Nana Poopyhands, despite having a hell of a time with her MS, has graduated to making stained glass, more exotic jewelry, pottery, etc.  She doesn’t sell any of it because she has been having lots of MS trouble, but her stuff is GORGEOUS, trust me.

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Bean, Wallace’s cousin guy down the street, is fond of dancing. He loves it.  Whereas Wallace has the “throw your arms in all directions” down pat, Bean has all sorts of little moves involving twirling his hands and lifting his knees and nodding his head to the music.

Is if this weren’t already stretching the boundaries of cute as far as science dares, his mom bought him a Spongebob backpack, and now dancing has become Backpack Dancing!

MoVo has captured it forever for your viewing pleasure:

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Look, I don’t like pigs.  I don’t like the way they taste, even the cooked ones, I don’t like the way they smell.  I don’t like pigs.  In fact, I don’t really have any particular sad feelings about this:

That’s some pig: Boy, 11, shoots 1,051 pound hog

I mean, that thing is utterly horrid.  I assured myself that it HAD to be photoshopped.  Had to.  But CNN is running the story and there are witnesses.  It freaks me the fucking fuck out.  BIG HUGE UGLY ASS PIG WITH GIANT HORRIBLE MAW KILL IT KILL IT.

All the same I have to say that I always feel sad when the “Biggest one ever!” is caught or killed.  Biggest killer squid.  Biggest bass.  Biggest wolf, biggest elephant, biggest whale, biggest tree.  The oldest.

In our caveman days Grog would have run back into the camp grunting and screaming, “UGGU GUGUG UGUGUG NG! GUG MARTINI!”

“I JUST ENCOUNTERED THE BIGGEST FUCKING PIG YOU’VE EVER SEEN IN YOUR LIFE AND I ONLY SURVIVED BY CLIMBING A THOUSAND FEET INTO THE AIR UP A TREE! GET ME A GODDAMNED MARTINI!”

Something that large must have been around for a very long time doing its piggy thing.  For chrissake, the kid shot it five times before it weakened enough that he could get it with a point-blank shot.  That is a pig that wishes to live!

They are going to make sausage out of it and I’d imagine that most of it will actually go to feed people and all that, but why do we have to destroy things to appreciate them?  Is it just a human trait?  KILL IT then talk about how gorgeous it is.

Sometimes I’m just ashamed of the human race.  Even if that pig is the most viscerally horrible thing I’ve ever clapped eyes on. 

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Rule 3: Pregnancy does not damage your child 

A well-written article on the tendency of the government and other nosey nellies to shove their nose up your crotch the second you consider conceiving.  Why you should take all their dire warnings and solemn self-satisfied nods with a grain of salt, one the size of the Empire State Building:

What’s the basis of this food fetish? So far as the science goes, I honestly have no idea – beyond the fact that if you ate nothing at all, your baby would perish with you. It doesn’t really matter, because you end up either following the rules or bending them and feeling terribly guilty. What seems very clear to me is that Constant Vigilance over diet in pregnancy is not motivated by clear evidence of a definite danger coming from this thing or that thing. It’s motivated by an unpalatable mixture of overblown risk-avoidance, mistrust of mothers, and the official promotion of lifestyle conformity.

The mistrust of mothers resonates with me greatly.  I’ve seen babies gestated and children raised with a whole host of varying theories and approaches.  Almost to a T the kids were born and grew up within socially acceptable guidelines, and in most cases even grew well.  Flourished, I dare say.

Stay at home mom?  Great!

Working? Great!

Cry it out? Fine.

Attachement parenting? Fine.

Abstaining during pregnancy?  Sounds good!

A half a glass of wine per week?  Sounds good!

One thing that pregnang moms need, often more than anything else, is absolution.  I’m all for equal parenting and intelligent decisions, but if all you can keep down is doughnuts?  EAT DOUGHNUTS.  If you want to have half a glass of wine at a wedding?  HAVE HALF A GLASS OF WINE.

Life as a walking incubator is tough enough and if you aren’t on the crack, it’s all good.

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I have, Peeps, what you might call, if you were in an understating mood, a fear of abandonment.  I frequently have nightmares that people die or disappear.  I think the worst part is that it’s always unintentional, but unremarkable.  My best friend is gone and nobody seems to know why or where she is, and nobody seems to care.  Those are awful.

The problem with a fear of abandoment, and in dating a man born and raised and living in England, and who is a wee bit cynical about women due to a particularly horrendous previous experience, is that situationally you can’t really get a circumstance that’s more likely to feed that fear.

I ran The Troublemaker down, Peeps.  I cornered him and chased him and called him and sweet talked him and sent him things and cajolled him just to remind him that I was out there.  It’s easy to forget what people mean to us over time.  I was terrified that he would forget me.

What is interesting is that, rather than abandoning my affections and turning them to someone more local, I just sunk my nails in and held on for dear life, because the only thing more frightening than being abandoned would be a life, any kind of life, without TT.

Now, for about a year, he has been working shockingly hard.  Mindbogglingly hard.  Sometimes going months without a day off.  I get to go to school because he works his fingers to the bone padding the bank account.  We’re at a good place, work has hit a minor lul, and in happy news his very best friend in the whole world is getting married to a lovely girl.  TT is taking ten days in England.

They are well-deserved.  A man who works as hard as he does and who picks up his whole life and moves countries for his wife gets to go home to see his family and friends whenever he wants and the means are available, period.  Life has changed quite a bit in the past six (SIX??) six years.  Now, instead of being a single guy returning to a lot of single friends and a single lifestylem, he’s a married man with the world’s cutest child who thinks that he walks on water.  Now, when he goes home he also leaves home.  Things are different.

Unfortunately my fears are the same.  So much so that TT starts interjecting, “You know I’m absolutely coming back” randomly into conversations when he feels that I’m starting to panic.  And, sadly, panic I do.  Mostly when I’m not paying attention and doing what I can to keep myself calm.

This time around we have told Wallace a few times what’s going to happen. That daddy’s going away for a short time (BOO!), Nana is coming to visit (YAY!), then Nana goes home (BOO!) and daddy comes back (YAY!).  Mommy’s here the whole time. (…)

It’s hard to shake up Wallace’s world like this.  He’s so comfortable with our going to work and dropping him off at day care, it’s unusual for us to see signs of worry in him.  His worry also can mirror my own.  We have always come for him, but what if this time daddy doesn’t come back?

We tell him what’s going to happen and stress that it will all be okay.  The theory is that if we tell him daddy’s going away, and he does, that ipso facto, when we say he’s coming back, that also is a guarantee.

Of course, two-year-old fears don’t always work that way.  Neither do crazy women.

I’m happy TT is going.  Wallace will be fine.  I’ll be fine.  It’s a perfectly normal and resonable thing to be doing and I hope he has TONS of fun and batchelors it up properly.  If anyone I know has earned an extended break, it’s this man. 

But I know that Wallace and I will sleep better when he comes back home.

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I wish to take part in this.  Maybe even next summer.

Want rilly, rilly, rilly badly.

Just so everyone knows.

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Thank you very much for all your compliments! 

One of the things that frustrate me is that when you’re a bigger girl it’s hard to do short hair that doesn’t make you look stereotypically lesbian.  Boy cuts on pixie chicks are cute, but boy cuts on larger women are tougher to pull off.  But I love the hair off of my neck!  I love the flippy funkiness of it!

Not too long ago a homeless man told me I was a “dyke” because I was wearing “dyke shoes”.  I was wearing brown and pink skating sneakers.  I wasn’t offended because a) being called a lesbian is like being called, I dunno, tall and b) he’s homeless.  I’m kind of naturally one-up, you know?

At the same time I did wonder if my shoes were lesbian shoes.  What are lesbian shoes?  Would any lesbians out there care to tell me?  I mean, I know there’s a “look” and my gaydar is pretty good and I can usually tell, but it goes off pretty much no matter what the person is wearing.  Does having clumpy feet make you lesbian?  I mean, stereotypically.  Obviously, sleeping with women is the thing that really makes you a lesbian.

There is a lesbian individual in our group at work who is darling and who has long hair and wears pink and girly things and heels, and yet I’d be surprised if she isn’t sussed everywhere she goes.  There’s just something about her. She’s a woman trying to attract women and that has a look or an affectation that is independent of hair and clothes.  At the same time she looks like a lesbian, not like a man, you know?

I don’t know.  It’s something I’ve thought about for a long time.  Even when I was thin and swing dancing and had big boobs and hips sometimes I’d get mistaken for a tranny because I was so tall and wore flashy clothes. Of course, that could be because I was living in Boystown at the time.  In fact, it was probably because I was living in Boystown at the time.

Maybe my jaw is strong?  Maybe my hands and feet are too big?

I’m not offended, as such, and I don’t think I’m particularly manny, but because it’s come up more than once I do wonder about how I look.  I met plenty of manly men who didn’t think I looked male, or gay.  I’m pretty sure my husband doesn’t think I look like a man.  I’m soft and curvy and pretty damn womanly.

I mean, is this just me?  How often have people figured you were a man trying to look like a woman?  How many times have homeless people “accused” you of being gay?   Is it just a natural consequence of being built like a Polish farm lady instead of a wispy barbiedoll?

I’m just wondering today.

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The new foster puppy.

Click here to see Candie, or click on Candie Land in the sidebar.  I’ll be shocked if she’s with us for more than a week without being adopted.  We’ve already had someone ask about her and she arrived at 6pm last night.

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