The kids are asleep, as of 11:55 p.m. EDT. I’ve got candles burning in the same tealight candelbra that did a job on Grey Kitty’s whiskers, lo those many years ago. I sit on the front porch as the rain cascades around me, letting me and my candles burn.
Oh, and I’m wearing a bathrobe, just to confirm that most hoary of prejudices against bloggers.
The kids will wake soon, and when they do, I’ll be presented with offerings. One involves dirt. Or earth. Or something that requires earth. I’m all for it, though I nearly managed to kill my ‘mater seedlings this weekend through a deadly combo of drought, too-close grow lights, and lack of fertilizer. (When my own fumbling incompetence rains down, I do wonder how my children continue to thrive. It helps that their CNS trumps the tomato’s defense mechanisms. I guess opposable thumbs don’t hurt, either. At any rate, my earth mother cred is shot to hell; just ask my ‘maters.)
I will tear up at my children’s sweet offerings, no matter that they felt obligated or spurred by a class assignment at school.
I will hug them and kiss them and keep their presents forever.
And yet, I still have a wishlist.
1) Can we get beyond the idea that women are uniquely suited to multitasking? Cordelia Fine just bulldozes this stereotype in her book, Delusionas of Gender. And more: Kevin Drum marshals the evidence that multitasking is folly for everyone, irrespective of gender. No wonder I still have a florid scar from the time when I tried to pull a baking sheet from the oven while ensuring that the mini-Tiger (aged not-quite-three) wouldn’t get burned. (Guess who got schorched instead??) I keep multitasking, I’m liable to lose that opposable thumb. Picture a dog watering a tree. Picture a dog baking a souffle. The intersection of that? Um, that would be me. Multitasking. The combo of onions and knives is a particularly foolhardy ideas.
2) Can we please just “be excellent to each other,” as Bill and Ted would say? The one thing I truly want from my beautiful boys is kindness. Toward each other. Toward me. They have mad skillz with their friends, so can we please bring those skillz home? Because, y’know, rudeness is a neurotoxin, especially when rudeness is spread among peer or near-peers. I’m well aware that another camp of researchers regards sibling arguments as healthy, spurring on their verbal development. May God, or some benevolent goddess, or my pal the Ceiling Cat save us from further precocious verbal development. We’re already at a point where the least bad outcome could be a Amero-Germanic version of Alan Dershowitz. But back to the neurotoxins. My kids appear to bee more than fine. They chat; they argue, they wear me down. But my brain? It’s in acute danger of rotting! Neural termites and mad-cow disease could hardly hollow it out any faster than the daily squabbles! No wonder the Red Cross recently rejected my blood on suspicion of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakobs disease, aka mad cow for homans. (True story.)
That’s just my very personal list. I know theere’s ooodles more to say about what other kids and mamas need – not to mention daddies. I realize that my personal wishlist is very much formed by the concerns and privileges of educated, middle-class mothers.As for what less-privileged mothers need – well, Katha Pollitt pretty kicked it into the goal with her commentary on the “Tiger Mother” flap.Please read what she has to say about class,mothering, and solidarity, and I’ll just leave it at that – with the injunction that we should all be excellent to each other, to our parents and our children, tomorrow and always.
Happy Mother’s Day to you all, be you bio-mother, step-mother, adoptive mother, other-mother … or just another exhausted multitasker of any age, gender, or species. May your day be crowned by candles, flowers, champagne, and the survival of your opposable thumbs.
And on those days when excellence turns to flatulence? Well, you’ll still be welcome here at the Kitteh, where we recognize that being a child or a parent or just a fallible hooman is simply who we are. Welcome to the club. I’d light a candle for you, but I must admit it’s rather perfumed, and you might just prefer eau de methane.
(Next up: our local Mama Robin, if I can manage not to terrify her.)
The other day on Facebook, I told an old friend (who lives near Bachmann territory, woe is he) that the only reason to look forward to a Palin candidacy would be the chance to use the phrase that I already blew in the title of the post.
I’m sorry to say that this post has just run out of indigenous humor. But fortunately, Jesus’ General recently posted a clip that does my concept one better: Pain and Bachmann as rock opera! I could do without the cheap Ann Coulter joke (really, if she were trans, it would be the most sympathetic thing about her!) but the rest is brilliant satire, a sort of politicized This Is Spinal Tap.
Also, the Tiger – with his seven-year-old’s taste – thinks it rocks. Clearly he needs much more exposure to The Who’s pioneering rock operas. He’s firmly anti-Justin Bieber, so we’ve still got time and opportunity. But I’ll admit that those power chords are firmly stuck in my head.
Henceforth, Kittywampus is banning all dudely commenters. Exceptions will be made if you bathe regularly, did not serve in the Boer War, have never called me a twat, and have never insulted the patron cat of this blog, Grey Kitty. Oh, and if you’re that dude who created Hufu, you got banned months ago. (That asshole – one of the AutoAdmit crowed – broke all the above: he abused my dear departed cat, reviled me as “dozy bint,” and called me a cunt. Given his predilection for war zones, he no doubt regrets missing the Boer War and bathes infrequently. He was a gleeful racist too. He has not been missed.)
I get that Twisty has every right to restrict commenting as much as she’d like on her blog. She already does anyway. I don’t regularly read Twisty because even though her writing is often amusing, her actual ideas are usually predictable once you’ve read a couple dozen of her posts. Also, the comments tend to be an echo chamber. I am quickly bored by any discussion where the first commandment is to police oneself. But hey – her blog, her rules. And while I don’t want to stray into all the pros and cons of same-sex spaces, there are times when a rather homogenous group can make headway on shared issues, and when a same-sex grouping can be productive as a temporary, tactical measure (with the caveat that each person gets to identify his/her/hir sex and gender, rather than having it imposed by fiat).
But it’s not just Twisty who nurtures some hope of creating a safe space – on the Internet? First, that’s just incoherent, because, well, it’s the fucking Internet! This is like expecting privacy while standing in front of the White House, naked except for a feather boa. The Internet just doesn’t do “safe.” (Ask any parent who’s installed NannyNet.)
Best case, the blog owner corralls hateful comments out of the comments section. But believe me, the blog owner will see the bile, and comments will never be a safe space for her or him! Contrary to Sady Doyle’s view, anti-feminist vitriol is not a special treat reserved for the “popular” feminist blogs. We little blogs get it, too, and while it may be less copious, it’s still ugly. It’s enough to be blogging while feminist. Perhaps on a private blog, you could create some sense of safety. But even then, you’d be wise to keep in mind that “safety” is not synonymous with self-censorship.
A “safe space” has some kinship what I try to foster in the classroom (though there’s always a power differential, always the knowledge that students’ work will be graded, which limits how “safe” they can – or should – feel.) There, “safety” has to do with the basic regard for the humanity of the other discussants. You can embrace norms in a small, defined group that actually facilitate conversation because people feel relatively safe and free. This works better when people can look into each others’ eyes, not so well when the community is wholly virtual and can more easily ignore the humanity of their counterpart. It cracks and crashes as soon as a participant expresses a hateful -ism, uses PC-ness to shame rather than educate, or gossips cruelly about a personal revelation. In my experience, “safety” is relative, often fragile and transient, sometimes deceptive, and generally not dependent on group homogeneity.
Which raises a crucial question: safe for whom? The comments on Twisty’s original dude-banning post troll the waters of transphobia and transmisogyny; on the follow-up, where Twisty affirms that trans folk are welcome (at least until the revolution, after which they’ll fade away), the comments jump right into the deep end of the pool. I am not going to sully my own space with direct quotes, but here’s the gist: commenters compare transness to pedophilia, call “cisprivilege” BS, declare all trans people “nuts,” and deny trans people’s experience – all in the name of radical feminism. At one point Twisty tells people to cut it out, but then Delphyne shows up and the party really gets started, with slams at the third wave, funfems, and sex workers.
By the time the fun’s over, the thread looks like the verbal equivalent of a frat party the morning after, complete with broken bottles and barf in the corner. Commenter yttik sums it up succinctly:
I kid you not, some of the worst patriarchal crap always winds up on this blog, just dripping it’s woman hatred all over the place. This is how women apparently define other women. No wonder we’re screwed.
just a bunch of cum-guzzling pole dancers
nothing but walking uteri and tits
third wave moron bandwagon
fucking dumb
a bunch of old, white, rich, racist women
a fuckhole
a party to human rights violations
white ass (American) women
backstabbing dykes
profoundly stupid and ignorant
step over the cold dead bodies of fucking white ass women-born-women feminists
Yttik is quoting from the other comments; those weren’t terms she personally used, and significantly, some were phrases commenters used to characterize their rhetorical opponents (sometimes fairly, sometimes not). The bile came from all directions, not just the anti-trans faction. But notice a pattern? The shouting match moved from transmisogyny to plain old-fashioned misogyny without skipping a beat.
And it managed all that without a single unauthorized dude in the house!
Twisty does have an actual dude problem, but it’s of a different order than the crap I got from Mr. Hufu. (Which I’m sure she sees by the buckets in her comment moderation queue and deletes on sight.) Twisty attracts men who want to please her, and so they engage in this fascinating yet repellent dance of “I’m so enlightened that I must verbally self-flagellate before your royal Twistyness so that I can become even more enlightened.” At a minimum, they ape her writing mannerisms. They may self-identify as a Nigel – Twisty’s one-size-fits-all name for dudes – and they decry douchiness even as they smarmily demonstrate it. Oh, just go read her example. It really is pretty funny. These guys aren’t standard-issue anti-feminist trolls. They’re not concern trolls. They’re … well, Twisty trolls, her own troll species. They are mutants. And I could see why she’d show them the door.
While she’s at it, maybe she could usher out a few transphobic self-described “radical” feminists, too?
Just for the record: I would not care to samba with Julian Assange. Anything more intimate that square dancing, and I’d wonder what tricky step he might try … bareback, of course. Hmm, maybe “dosido your partner” means something different to Australian men of mystery?
When I still lived in Germany, we regarded her as the Spawn of Helmut Kohl for her tenacity, risk aversion, and political acumen. Rather immaturely but accurately, we called her the Pillsbury Dough Girl. Back in the mid-1990s she honestly looked like she would end her career as a puff pastry; since then, she’s discovered tanning beds. I generally disapprove of tanning beds, but Merkel truthfully looks a whole lot less dowdy – unlike her mentor Kohl, who grew ever more dumpling-esque over time.
And today? Why, it’s Merkel Barbie! (Or do the other dolls just call her Angie?)
(Image from Mattel. Don’t miss the flag on the left, or Angie’s pink accessories. Yeah, I know – I’m just spiteful because I want a Sungold Barbie!)
Had I been in the State Department, Wikicables would be a lot more embarrassing. Just imagine if diplomats and snarky bloggers magically traded places for a day! Oh, the places we’d go! The scandals we’d sow! Mmmmm, I feel some Seuss coming on: The Cat in the Hat Comes to the U.N.! The North-Going Zax and the South-Going Zax meet on that disputed Korean island! The Star-Bellied Sneetches Rock Paris! The Butter Battle and the Big Boy Boomeroo – coming soon to a dictatorial Middle Eastern nation near you!
On second thought, maybe we bloggers ought to stay home and start poring through those cables ourselves. We might yet uncover a Big Boy Boomeroo. I hear Iran is building one.
Best Thanksgiving song ever? “Alice’s Restaurant.” Hands down.
(Then again, I can’t think of another T-day song except for “Over the River and through the Woods,” which was written by another kick-ass American dissident, Lydia Maria Child, who fought for the rights of slaves, Indians, and women. Her song wasn’t political – unless I’m missing a subtext – but I do want to know more about her.)
If you don’t know “Alice’s Restaurant” – or if you haven’t listened in a while – here’s Arlo Guthrie playing it a few years ago, with scenes from the “Alice’s Restaurant” movie interspersed. (The original lyrics are here, but Arlo updated and edited them a bit for this performance.)
Astonishingly, my very Republican, anti-hippie, draft-dodger-deprecating dad loved this song. He used to play it on the piano all the time when I was a little kid in the early 1970s. My sibs and I would sing along and dance. Only later did I read all the spoken-part lyrics and wonder: what’s a father-raper? By then I was maybe twelve and able to plunk the tune out myself on the piano. I was also abundantly old to realize my dad was not a good person to ask.
“Alice’s Restaurant” has been running through my head the past week or so, and it’s not just in honor of Thanksgiving. I’m thinking it’s time for a new edit of its final lyrics (with apologies to Arlo):
And the only reason I’m singing you this song now is cause you may know somebody in a similar situation, or you may be in a similar situation, or maybe you’re just tryin’ to hop a plane without gettin’ all irradiated and nekkid-scanned. So if you find yourself inspected, detected, infected, neglected and seee-lected for a backscatter scanner, just sing, “Officer, You can get anything you want, at Alice’s restaurant.” And opt out. You know, if one person, just one person does it they may think he’s really sick and they won’t grope him. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony, they may think they’re batshit and they won’t grope either of them. And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in singin’ a bar of Alice’s Restaurant and walking out. They may think it’s an organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day, I said fifty people a day walking in singin’ a bar of Alice’s Restaurant and walking out. And friends, they may think it’s a movement.
Or maybe you don’t care about opting out in the airport. Maybe you’re okay with people viewing your, ahem, junk. (Geez, I hate that term as much as I hate “vajayjay!” Now we’re stuck with it!)
Isn’t there something in your life, though, that just has to stop? Isn’t there some occasion that demands you sing a bar of “Alice” and just opt out? (And no, I don’t mean an irritating relative at your Thanksgiving table … though I just learned that my sister’s husband’s father’s third wife conducts training (??!!WTF??!!) for the TSA, so perhaps it’s just as well I missed out on this years family gathering in California, even though I’m aching to be there.)
If you’re ready to sing a bar of “Alice” – well, I’ll join in on the harmony. And I might – just might – sing it solo at the Columbus airport a week from today.
I’ve been away from Kittywampus for over a week, but I haven’t dropped off the edge of the universe; I just dropped into my college band reunion. Come to think of it, there’s not much difference, is there?
This time (unlike the last reunion in 2007) I actually practiced beforehand. I had a lot more fun playing, even though the music still insistently raised that classic, pitiless question: “Is it art?”
In fact, I had so much fun playing that my soft palate hurt afterward. Stop thinking dirty thoughts, you. Yes, you! It wasn’t that kind of fun. But it was the next best thing.
Of course, the biggest fun of all was reconnecting with my friends from the band. Some shared their futons and cats with me, along with delectable tabouli, peanut butter cookies, and JD. (Yes, I’m lookin’ at you, reader and occasional commenter KRS, oh goddess among tenrz, who also found me a mellophone!!) Others shed feathers from their magenta and black boas far and wide. Yet others picked up a tenor sax for the first time in ten (or three) years and played as though it was yesterday.
Reunions raise a raft of questions about identity. Who was I then? Who am I now? Who were we then, collectively? And is there any straight line that can be drawn between then and now?
I like to think of the self as sedimentary. We all have layers. Some layers run deeper than others, and those low-lying veins of sediment hold up the rest. It’s a great gift to know others whose deepest layers run along a parallel course to one’s own. It’s a blessing. I am blessed.
Or maybe it’s just that every once in a while, we all benefit from a chance to pretend we’re 19 again. Never mind that every muscle – from quadriceps to diaphragm to lips – will remind us of our true age the next day. For a few enchanted hours, the world is new again. All possible routes remain open to us. We are unencumbered by Serious Jobs. We don’t yet have major family responsibilities. We soar through our upper register on the sheer force of will.
Or maybe that’s a simplification. We did have worries, after all, at 19 and 20. Parents divorced. Friends suffered psychological crises. We either had fraught love affairs or none at all.
Maybe, in the end, it just comes back to the music. It was always there for us, regardless of how joyful or crappy our personal lives might be. No matter what, the music told us that everything was, in fact, now and forever, “All Right Now.”
Update late on Thursday, 10/28/10: After searching high and low (mostly low), I finally found a version of ARN on Youtube where I’m playing. It’s from the last reunion in 2007, where my chops were more like ground beef. Be grateful that a few hundred other musicians were covering up my suckitude.
I am still tickled to have been part of a band whose “fight song” is a classic rock anthem about hooking up (though in ye olden daze, it was called a “pick-up”). Not a trace of “go team, fight team, rah rah rah.” This is the song I played over and over again on the drive back from Columbus a couple years ago when I finally go the all-clear on a suspicious boobalicious lump. Someday there will come a time when things are not okay. All the more reason to celebrate when things really are all right now.
If you follow collegiate football, you probably saw this incident when it occurred two weeks ago. If not … well, I barely picked up on it myself.
My university’s mascot is the Bobcat – as is only fitting for a cat lady like myself. Unfortunately, when Ohio University got creamed by Ohio State a fortnight ago, Rufus the Bobcat decided to pounce on Brutus the Buckeye. (I will leave you to explain how a tree nut – the buckeye – could get a name like Brutus, because I haven’t a clue.)
The man inside the cat – one former OU student by the name of Brandon Hanning – premeditated the pounce for a whole year. In fact, that’s why he tried out for the mascot gig. After the game, he was unrepentant:
“I honestly don’t know what gave me the idea,” he said. “I just thought it would be really funny.”
After Ohio State and OU played back in 2008, Hanning said he realized the two teams would play again in 2010.
“I thought it would be really cool to beat (Brutus) up, and I realized we were playing them again (this) year, so I thought I’d try out for (the part of Rufus),” he said.
On Saturday, Hanning recounted how he got dressed up and went down near the cheerleaders.
“Ohio State’s band was all over the field and they made a tunnel,” he said. “I saw Brutus walk out with a big flag, and I took off down the sideline. As soon as he started running, I just ran out to do it.”
After the incident, Hanning said that Brutus didn’t say anything to him but was obviously angry.
“It’s been mixed reactions really,” he said about the feedback he’s gotten since the game. “All the people that I know thought it was awesome. But some people that I don’t know didn’t like it too well.”
Yeah. The Athletic Department was so unamused that Hanning is banned forever from impersonating Rufus again.
I agree it wasn’t an especially clever stunt. I personally have been involved in much better ones, like the time we band members each dropped a dollar bill on the field during a pregame show at USC. The ensuing pictures of the refs picking up the cash were precious. (It helped that USC had recently gotten busted for violating NCAA rules.) When it comes to college pranks, there’s a fine line between clever and stupid. Rufus landed on the wrong side of that line.
Then there’s the sterling example set by our head football coach, Frank Solich:
Around 9:45 on the evening of Nov. 26, 18-year veteran Athens (Ohio) police officer Krishea Osborne was ending her night shift and driving home when she noticed an SUV facing the wrong way on a one-way street. And still moving. She approached the vehicle and found Ohio University football coach Frank Solich “slumped” against the steering wheel, “pretty much drooling on himself.”
“He was not seeming to understand what I was wanting from him,” says Osborne, who adds that Solich could not locate his driver’s license and had to be asked three times to put the car in park. “He reeked. Somebody that smells that bad has had more to drink than just the three drinks he claims now. I’ve been doing this for 18 years, dealing with drunks around here and he definitely had more than three drinks, in my opinion.”
The former Nebraska football coach, who had just finished his first season in Athens and had spent that November evening having drinks at a Mexican restaurant called Casa Cantina in downtown Athens, later refused a Breathalyzer test and was charged with driving under the influence. He pleaded no contest, was fined $250 and had his license suspended. Although he was not fired from his coaching post, Solich began the humbling task of seeking redemption in the court of public opinion, right smack in the middle of the holiday season.
Not only did Solich keep his job; he’s been raking in massive bonuses and fringe benefits. (In the course of a year, he rakes in as much as ten Professor Sungolds.) He’s still here, coaching us to glorious moments like our 43-7 loss to OSU.
Hanning will never get to play Rufus again – even though he has broken no laws.
Almost all of these things enter into the story from Thursday night, through I don’t believe any wasps were involved. But honestly? I wouldn’t know; I was holed up with my kids. As I was cleaning up the dinner mess, I heard the scream of an emergency siren. I knew that the university was planning to test its emergency system – on Friday. So I flew out to my front porch, straining to hear the announcement through its bullhorn-distortions. All I picked up was “take shelter,” along with the oppressive air on my porch, and that was good enough for this North Dakotan-bred gal. I yelled upstairs, “Tornado warning!” The Tiger yelled, “Tornado warning!”
He and his brother, the Bear, tore down the stairs. I followed them into the basement, laptop and phone in hand. (Why, oh why, didn’t a flashlight even occur to me?) Minutes later, I chanced the upstairs again just long enough to rescue a few treasured stuffed animals and the cord for my laptop. I was alone with the kids. Mmy husband was at a meeting in the country, out of cell range, which was a blessing and a curse. A blessing, because he holds the theory that tornadoes never strike Athens, and that warning aren’t worth heeding. A curse, because I couldn’t be sure he was in safety.
For a good half hour, the biggest challenge was keeping the Tiger’s whine of “I’m bored!” from driving the rest of us around the bend. I let them watch a couple of silly YouTube clips (this one cracked them up again). I was hoping we could go back up once the warning expired at 7:15. The Bear would be about to go to his music practice, and we could try to track down their dad.
But then we heard the emergency siren again. And again. Soon sirens were wailing every minute or two. I still couldn’t catch the message, but I was certain it wasn’t “all clear.” I’d have guessed, oh, “prepare to die.” The next day, a friend said he’d heard “Tornadoes are surrounding Athens!” which I’m sure was close to the truth.
Here’s what it really said:
Looking around our basement hideaway, I started toting up the hazards. The small window. The bookshelves. My French horn (hey, that would be deadly if it went airborne.) I gave each kid an oversized pillow to shield their noggins and necks. At that, the Tiger’s boredom tipped over into terror. He would not be consoled by how silly it was to have a lumpy Winnie-the-Pooh chair over his head. I nixed YouTube so I could hear, and the LOLcats just weren’t cutting it as a distraction. Even the Bear was fighting tears. Heck, I was working hard to act brave. It didn’t help that the National Weather Service was starting to report multiple sightings of a twister touching down. Or that I was frantically hitting refresh on their page.
When we finally emerged from our secure underground location after an hour and a half (without ever sighting Cheney, I might add), we were all rattled. So were our neighbors and friends. We’d kept our power while most of the town and county had lost it. An acquaintance had actually seen the funnel cloud moving merrily down his road. Afterward, he had to take his chain saw to the large trees that had fallen across the road, trapping him and his family.
News filtered in only slowly. It seemed clear that Athens and its environs had been struck by at least one tornado. Rumors started to spread that the high school had been hit. One of the first reports noted that Pine-Aire Village had suffered damage and had to be evacuated due to a gas leak. The tornado had duked it out with the achingly poor mobile home park where I went canvassing in 2008. As usual, the tornado won. As usual, Pine-Aire Village lost. People who are trying their damnedest just to eke by now have new worries.
I haven’t taken a look at Pine-Aire because frankly, I’m still scared of the meth dealer and the vicious, unleashed dogs. But I did see how similar trailers were flipped and squished nearby in The Plains, the closest thing Athens has to a bedroom community. These mobile homes were located right next to Athens High School, which for bizarre reasons relating to government pork funds is located in the Plains.
This picture (and the next) was taken by my husband the next evening, as dusk was closing in. The woman next to the trailer is a Fox News local reporter. (They just lapped this up.)
Note how someone has scribbled “NOT SAFE” in big red letters. I’m not gonna argue.
The rumors about the high school turned out to be true. It was full with soccer and volleyball players and their families. The morning after the storm, a good friend of mine – the mother of the Bear’s best friend – responded to my worried email. She’d been working in the concession stand when some prescient soul yelled that a funnel cloud was approaching. She sprinted up the long steep hill to the high school and took shelter in the bunker-like locker rooms. Other adults, perhaps thinking they’d be safer sheltering in place (the hill is pretty daunting), remained in the concession stand. At least two of them were injured, though not seriously. One was taken to the hospital, the other treated on the scene.
That’s the inside of the concession stand.
That’s its exterior.
Meanwhile, the students on the field had sought shelter from the rain in the press box. Someone ushered them down to a locker room that’s located right on the edge of the field. Good thing. The press box blew clean off the top of the bleachers.
Cars were crushed as the press box collapsed behind the stands.
My friend had a bad half hour before she was reunited with her son. The fear of another strike hadn’t quite abated enough for everyone to be released. My friend was in cell contact with her son, but the wait was hard, especially as the smell of gas indicated leaks. When they were finally permitted to leave, they found a moonscape: mature trees snapped like sticks, debris everywhere, and a stadium that won’t host games anytime soon.
The scoreboard is whacked.
The football goals stand at jaunty new angles.
The wreckage in the foreground used to be a stadium light. (Those to the right and left remain standing, but their lamps have been turned 90 degrees.) The wreckage in the back – well, that was the visitors’ bleachers.
Structures to the right and left of the locker room were decimated. And yet, the kids sheltering there stayed safe.
School is called off until further notice. The high school suffered damage to some classrooms.
It also lost its two 1000-pound AC units, which blew off the roof.
It is a miracle that no one was killed. I heard one chopper take off Thursday night, and the next day a colleague confirmed that one person was injured badly enough to require transfer to Columbus. On the whole, though, injuries appear to be few and minor. Property damage is much more significant.
The tornado also touched down in Athens proper, leaving its main mark on Autotech, an automotive servicing and towing company at the edge of town. The only two buildings farther out along that road are the Super 8 Motel and the clinic where I had my colonoscopy. Those facilities survived with only minor damage (mostly missing shingles). Just a few yards away, Autotech was damaged beyond redemption.
The view from the highway.
Note the Coke machine encircled by corrugated metal. (I took this photo yesterday morning, and the machine was liberated by evening.) Note, too the wads of insulation. We saw them everywhere. All those years growing up in North Dakota, and I never imagined that the hallmark of a tornado could be oodles of rogue insulation.
Of course the impaired Coke dispenser adds credibility to the conspiracy theory …
… that this tornado was brought to us by Pepsi. (Photo from the high school.) Yes, I’m being flip. Black humor is one of the ways I deal with the world’s horrors.
I’m grateful that my family didn’t suffer any harm beyond the shock and fright. Today the Tiger has been playing with Lincoln Logs. Every once in a while a tornado comes and knocks them down. It’s spookily reminiscent of boys I knew who were 10 after the Twin Towers collapsed. They built mega-towers out of legos, which were level by terrorist flying planes. I shudder. Yet our kids seem to need these reenactments in order to come to grips with destruction that none of us can really fathom.
I’m grateful that all of the neighborhoods in Athens proper were spared, and that the elementary schools (except the Plains?) seem to be fine. (I still expect them to stay closed on Monday, given the track record of my boyfriend, the superintendent. We’ve now burned through a full third of our three calamity days.)
Ohio University got very lucky. It appears undamaged. Nor will the Darwin Award go to any of those students who went outdoors to watch the storm “cause I’ve never seen a tornado!”
Tonight, my thoughts are with the people of The Plains, the families of AHS students, and (further afield) the people who did succumb to the storm: a man in West Virginia as well as those killed in Queens in a separate, even freakier storm.
And I’m grateful for the rescuers, pictured here in an extraordinary photo by Spencer Heaps, taken the same evening as the storm:
Spencer Heaps has several other stunning photos at his blog. Please do pay him a visit.
There’s no really good footage of the tornado itself, thankfully. (I don’t want people putting themselves in harm’s way!) The next closest thing is this clip, taken by college students living on a hill on the south side of town, which to my knowledge was not damaged.
So yeah, that ought to be just how I feel. The kids started up a week ago. Except once the kids were in school, I got inspired to de-grungify the basement, one of several sites of permamess in my house. Seriously, the EPA ought to extend its Superfund program to cover domestic permamesses. At the very least, I’m lobbying for a gas mask fitted with a top-notch HEPA filter.
What I thought was allergies from the basement turned into a distinct bug – and not one of the creepy crawlies that calls our basement home. It seems to be a wretched virus. The hallmarks of this dread disease: bone-deep aches, a ferocious sore throat, and vats of self-pity. No fever, so I’m inclined to rule out strep or flu. It could be worse: A friend of mine, hit by the same villainous germ, has comprehensive exams over the weekend for her doctoral degree in civil engineering. Oy. Join me in wishing her a quick bounceback.
As for me, when I’m not wallowing in self-pity (did I mention my husband is on a business trip until mid-weekend?), I’m stunned at how part of the basement has been transfigured. (Only “part” because the rest harbors box upon box of old baby and toddler stuff destined for a rummage sale and then ReUse Industries, our local indie thrift stores/charity.) It turns out you don’t have to eliminate every last hairy centipeds. Just vacuum up the obviously dead insects, and the basement no longer looks like a vault for the undead. We had house guests last night, and they were not repulsed by the basement. They were brave enough to sleep there. I even went barefoot down below without any obvious skin eruptions. (Yet.)
Tomorrow, I’d like to do the cat thing and aim for 14 to 16 hours of sleep. instead, I’ve got full schedule of apppointments. My plan is to guzzle Mountain Dew in hopes of finishing my syllabi (so close to done!) and maybe even writing a substantive blog post in between my other commitments. If I can’t fire up, though, you’ll know it’s not for want of trying. There just might not be enough Yellow Dye no. 6 in the world supply of Dew to revivify me.
My “cleverest” parenting ideas are like radioactive compounds. They start out relatively stable, but shortly they begin to decompose. Soon, their positive effects can be measured in nanoseconds, while their toxic fallout is guaranteed to outlive me.
Such was my clever idea of challenging the kids to a “quiet contest” in the stairwell of our Berlin apartment building. We’re there for six weeks this summer, and we expect to return next summer, too. I don’t want to be an asshole to the neighbors who will hear most of our kid chaos. The stairwell has the kind of acoustics you’d expect in a medieval castle. Everything is amplified to eleven and beyond. Drop your keys, and they crash like a freeway pileup. Normal kid tromping, stomping, and shouting echoes until you imagine someone must be bleeding, though it’s only your own eardrums.
The first few “contests” went well, with the boys tying for first place and Mama (that’s me) losing decisively. But now the kids have begun to bicker about which of them “won.” They won’t drop the contest, even though they’ve proven to me, and to themselves, that they can be wonderfully considerate. They want to stick with it until it ends in a howling match that sets a new decibel record for the building.
It could be worse, though. Until last winter, kids were legally forbidden to make noise in Berlin. In other words, kids were forbidden to be kids! By law! Then Berlin became the first of Germany’s 16 states to allow children to make noise. (Berlin is a state in its own right, as well as a city.) Here’s how the BBC reported it last February:
Until now, only church bells, emergency sirens, snow ploughs and tractors have fallen outside the stringent rules on excessive noise in Germany.
In Berlin alone, hundreds of complaints are made each year about noise levels in kindergartens and children’s playgrounds.
Some day-care facilities have even been forced to close after local residents have gone to court in search of a quiet life.
“I know your daughter’s up there. She’s playing, isn’t she?”
Then came the doorbell.
Neglecting, for once, to peep through the spy-hole I opened the door, all unawares.
There she stood, square in the hallway, the neighbour from the third floor.
A successful detective novelist with a penchant for Parisian murders, she muscled her way in and could not be muscled-out again for quite some time.
The problem? My three-year-old daughter, Miranda – weight: under three stone; footwear: soft bedroom slippers – was allegedly making a noise. Only she was not. …
“Excessive child noise,” warranted a police call-out to our building for the crying of a newborn baby and, one Saturday afternoon, a group of cheerful 12-year-olds playing a game of Monopoly.
Berlin leaves me baffled. True to the spirit of the Brothers Grimm, childhood here is filled with wonders, but is unexpectedly grim.
We never had any formal complaints filed, though last week a woman in the subway was shooting poison darts out of her eyes at my two boys, who were the very picture of quiet civility. (At that moment, anyway.) But neighbors living upstairs from us had to contend with constant harassment and even a lawsuit from a hostile neighbor who simply hated kids.
Even with the new law, I’m not gonna get too smug. Childhood is officially authorized between 9 a.m. and 7 p.m. At all other times – including all of Sunday – they are not to be heard. Maybe the kids’ next contest will involve putting their noise on a schedule?
Meanwhile, the garbage trucks make as much noise as they like, even at 7 a.m. Oh, and jackhammers seem to enjoy similar rights. No word on the legality of vuvuzelas.
I’m just one Z-list (I prefer “boutique”) blogger, but I think it’s useful to recognize that instead of a bandwagon effect, various individuals independently began to ask apparently unanswerable questions about Palin’s pregnancy, which included more mysteries than the Virgin Mary’s. Now lit brit has added her voice to the skeptics, and she’s got a medium-sized bully pulpit at Cogitamus. Her first post and its followup sparked a rebuttal from Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon. (Much of the following is shamlessly borrowed from my comments there.)
First, why should we care? Well, if Palin lied about her final pregnancy, then she didn’t just hoodwink her immediate family. She took the whole country for a ride. I personally was not on the bus, but those who drank the Kool-Aid believe that Palin is the very embodiment of sacrificial motherhood – never mind that she seems quite content to delegate Trig’s care to others as much as possible. (Yes, I get the urge to delegate, and I’ve done it – most recently to Shaun the Sheep. I just don’t brag about my mothering practices as qualifying me for the presidency.)
I remaining mystified by Palin’s motives for faking a pregnancy. But whatever transpired back in winter 2008, she could puncture the rumors by releasing Trig’s birth certificate, as Obama has done with his own. This has been one of Andrew Sullivan’s core demands, and I agree with him. No, we voters cannot demand every last scrap of health information of our candidates. Convention, however, favors transparency when it comes to the wanna-be “leader of the free world.” Releasing Trig’s records wouldn’t just jibe with standard practice. It would also deflate me and everyone else who aren’t professional, full-time tin-foil-hatters. Most of us are highly educated, skeptical types. In fact, I came to this story precisely through my own skepticism. Give us some plausible evidence, and we’ll happily go back to writing schlock about Transformer Porn.
Before I proceed any further, one point of order: I think we should leave Bristol alone. It’s possible to juggle dates to create a scenario in which she bore two babies in quick succession. However, it fails the Occam’s Razor test. I can’t countenance picking on people who were minors at the time. Anyway, whenever we turn the camera toward Bristol, we’ve tilted it away from Palin herself. That’s not just ethically problematic, it’s also a tactical mistake.
Now, back to the evidence. Those pix from Sarah’s final weeks of pregnancy? There’s a reason why the women kicking up dust about this have primarily been mothers – me, various Alaskan bloggers, and now (on a bigger stage) litbrit. Of course not all women experience pregnancy the same. Of course a few barely show until the final week. Those “late show-ers” are almost invariably bringing their first pregnancy to term. They go on Oprah or they are expelled from their high schools. In any event, they’re not on baby number five. It’s not impossible, but it’s highly implausible to reach the seven-month mark without clearly looking pregnant. This is especially true for fit women. To hell with Palin’s ultra-fit abdominal muscles – if you’re slender, the bump is gonna show more dramatically. (BTW, I’d love to hear from other parents who can confirm or refute my observations.)
I come to this kerfuffle not just as a feminist and mother, but as a scholar with some relevant credentials. I wrote my dissertation on historical experiences of pregnancy, and though I’m not an M.D., I play one pretty well in the archives. I’m drawing on the absurd amount of time I’ve spent immersed medical journals (historical and present), plus my experiences as the mother of two sons. Sure, my experiences are not representative, nor are those of my friends and research “subjects.” However. I’ve collected enough experiences to know that Palin’s are just off the chart.
What most makes me wonder, more than anything, is Sarah’s wild ride. It smacks of gross negligence, which ought not to be a selling point with the pro-life crowd. It doesn’t even fit into her newish mama grizzly narrative. After all, the grizzly ought to protect her young, not eat ‘em … or endanger them by giving birth an hour outside of Anchorage, be it by car or plane.
I’m not gonna rehash my posts on Sarah’s wild ride here, but re-reading them, I’m struck at how it’s truly a tale of miracle and wonder. My old commentary starts here with Palin’s arrogance, moves on to my condemnation of her cowboy judgment, and concludes with a look at the tension between Palin’s actions and reproductive rights. Go read those posts if you’d like to offer up your own comments, because I’m loathe to trot through quotes from them, and yet I think they perfectly illustrate Sarah Palin’s absence from the reality-based world.
Sarah’s wild ride is a narrative that fits pretty well with shooting wolfs from planes. When it comes to establishing love and concern for disabled kids? Hmmm, that doesn’t work quite so well.
Not saying I’ve got the answers. Only that the questions are compelling enough – once you direct the focus away from Bristol – that they’re not merely JAQing off (a charge Amanda repeatedly raised in her post and comments). Even Sully, bless his male-centric soul, sees that Palin is using her cred as sacrificial mother of a “special needs” infant as a basis for her campaign. I don’t think it’s illegitimate to draw on one’s experience as a parent (or other caretaker) in campaigning or governing. I do think it’s bogus to build a campaign on a legend of fearless maternity that is either pathological or a prima facie lie. That’s the point where Sarah Palin’s right to family privacy evaporates into the same ether as her thoughts about Kyrgyzstan. Notice that the argument over privacy does not depend on her anti-choice politics, though they add an especially rich irony. In the end, I have to concur with a female reader of Sullivan’s Daily Dish:
As a woman and a mother I am deeply offended by your reader’s suggestion that Sarah Palin ought to be given privacy about whether she really gave birth to Trig because “women lie about pregnancy/birth/parentage all the time.” Give me a frickin’ break. If a woman lies to her mate about whether she’s carrying his child, that’s between them. But if Sarah Palin lied about giving birth to Trig and then goes around talking about his birth in her book and in speeches, that’s a public matter.
“E]ven if you prove what is likely true – that she is lying – it is neither unique nor crazy.” Well, it may not be unique to fib about a pregnancy, but it is crazy to build an entire political identity on what even this reader thinks is almost certainly a lie. If Palin can blatantly lie about something this big, and keep lying and embellishing the story, then how could we possibly trust her in public office? This is why it matters to voters.
I am sick and tired of this sexist bullshit. She’s a politician. She made it part of her identity. It’s fair game.
Yep. Just imagine if McCain had turned out to fake his war injuries or imprisonment? If Kerry’s medals came from a gumball machine?
Dontcha think the mainstream media would pounce on either of those (fake) stories?
So why is motherhood sacred, even if it’s essentially the greatest credential a candidate boasts in seeking higher office?
Anyone else getting a brimstone whiff of sexism about now?
This morning began with the Tiger waking the Bear by pelting him with stuffed animals. An hour later, he rammed him with a desk chair – “accidentally,” of course. By 11 they were fighting over a toy. I was calculating the days until school begins. And wallowing in self-pity.
So we fled the apartment, ran a couple errands, visited a playground. As my boys were romping happily on the play equipment, a woman rolled up with a one-year-old in a carriage. She turned slightly, and I saw it was actually a double carriage. She was ferrying year-old twins with a striking resemblance to Cabbage Patch babies (and I mean that in a nice way). The carriage was like the Queen Mary. She was rolling this whole ensemble through deep sand. She was patient and cheerful. I spoke with her and she did not make me feel like a loser for wondering how she manages.
I stopped feeling quite so sorry for myself.
By the end of the day, I’d seen no fewer than six sets of twins being strolled through Berlin. Whatever challenges my two bring, at least they aren’t doubled. Also, I had some great one-on-one time with the Bear this afternoon, which reminded me that they’re each marvelous company when they’re not together.
Now, if they could just get some sleep. It’s 11:40 Central European time, and the Bear popped out of bed again, for the eight time tonight. And you wonder why my blogging has been slow the past few months? It’s not just interference from teaching (and now the World Cup); I have two kids who went on sleep strike sometime last winter. Maybe they could take a page from the LOLcats on snoozing, too?
Traditionally, German soccer teams have purportedly embodied “German virtues” (die deutsche Tugenden): a tough work ethic, discipline, organization. They’ve been made to sound much like a Mercedez-Benz. At their best, their performance indeed resembled German engineering. Otherwise? As Swiss National Coach Ottmar Hitzfeld recently described the German virtues: “Not necessarily play well, but win anyway.” If you’ve never lived in Germany as an expat (or as a German!) there’s no way to convey what a basic article of faith the German virtues have been. There’s gravity. There’s the fear of draughts. And then there are the German football virtues. All these are fixed elements of the German universe.
In that spirit, the old-time German stars tended to take themselves pretty seriously. The legendary Franz Beckenbauer, for instance, is one of those guys who makes you worry his whole face might crack and shatter if he smiled too warmly. His skin looks that much like brittle leather (perhaps it’s an antique ball, circa 1927?). Luckily, Beckenbauer doesn’t crack a smile often. Sure, it’s a stereotype – the humorless German – and even some of Beckenbauer’s contemporaries, the stars of the 1970s and 1980s, broke the stereotype on occasion. Still, they didn’t break the edifice of “German virtues.” Why, they helped build it higher, brick by brick.
Monty Python had their own take on this, with their Philosophers’ World Cup:
So maybe Marx wasn’t the most promising footballer. (Note Beckenbauer, however, in the lineup of philosophers. They’re not quite shittin’ you.)
And yet, the revolution did come, ushered in by none other than my alltime favorite soccer star, Jürgen Klinsmann. My Klinsi** coached a young, inexperienced team to third place in 2006. The German football-nation danced in the streets. Everyone in Berlin forgot how to be humorless (possible exception: those yippy little dogs that poop everywhere). Upon Klinsi’s departure, he handed the baton to Jogi Löw, who’d provided the tactical brains of the operation.
And today, the revolution in the “German virtues” burst onto the world stage. The boys (and they’re mostly still boys, many too young to drink legally in the U.S.) didn’t just win 4:0 against Australia. They didn’t just pass the ball like magicians, with the grace and style of Otto the Goalie Kitteh. Above all, they looked like they were having a blast!
ABC has snagged my Klinsi as a commentator. His verdict? “They’re having fun with the ball.”
Sounds like a real improvement on the old virtues to me! And oh, were those young, pass-happy Germans ever fun to watch! “Fun” is a virtue I can gladly get behind.
I lived in Berlin for just shy of a decade. I stepped in a lot of the aforementioned yippy-dog-doo. I figure I’ve earned the right to prognosticate. Sungold’s magic 8-ball sez: Germany might just make it to the finals! And if they do, it’ll be with virtuoso command of their passing game and a huge dollop of fun! Oh, and I’m hoping to catch a glimpse of Klinsi now and again – always my idea of fun fun fun.
** I say “my Klinsi” because back in 1996, I appointed myself president of the American women’s Klinsi fan club. Since no one has stepped up to depose me, I hereby appoint myself president-for-life.
I would just like to state for the record that although my younger son (aka the Tiger) may never play in the World Cup, today on the soccer fields he distinguished himself as no other player has done in the illustrious history of the game.
He started doing the Chicken Dance during the quarter break. He continued with it while trotting around the field. And he performed the Chicken Dance while executing a pretty decent corner kick. I know Maradona and Ronaldo were bad-asses – but did they ever pull off a Chicken Dance? (The question doesn’t even arise for the German contingent: Franz Beckenbauer, Lothar Matthäus, Rudi Völler. These men don’t dance. They scowl, and then they win.)
Anyway, this pretty well kills my theory that the Tiger made a massive developmental leap over the winter. Or not? He did kick a goal early in the season – his first and only – and he now generally runs toward the ball, not away from it. His reading is approaching a tipover point: he’s just starting to read Junie B. Jones, albeit with middlin’ comprehension and the lisp of a Toothless Tiger. This weekend, he vacuumed my beloved porch furniture with alacrity and pride. He hasn’t broken any limbs since, um, January.
But back to the beautiful game. I don’t know if you can be a chicken dancer while missing four front teeth, though I’m positive it’s no hindrance to a soccer career. (Or so I remember earlier British teams, anyway.) Fortunately a six-year-old charmer can be beautiful even while his smile asymptotically approaches a jack-o-lantern’s.
I’m less certain about the fate of loser Tooth Fairies. The Tiger lost so many teeth so fast that I once again became the world’s worst tooth fairy. Uff da! I spaced out on the dollar-for-tooth swap after he lost tooth #3 (out of four). Sadly, loser tooth fairydom is well-trodden ground for me. Amends were made the next night.
Carol Burnett was recently interviewed on public radio by Bob Edwards. She said CBS executives told her that variety shows were a guy thing, and she only got her chance because she was under contract and they had to let her do something.
Good thing, too. Here, she foresees the future of commercial aviation back when flight attendants were still called stewardesses.
I still think she and Tim Conway are hilarious. And heaven help me, I still let the term “stewardess” slip from time to time. Maybe it stuck because that was my career aspiration when I was in fifth grade. I wanted to travel and see the world. I eventually figured out that grad school would let me do just that. Lucky thing, because the main difference between this sketch and flying today is that no one gets to smoke anymore.
We here at Kittywampus have a long tradition of kvelling about snow days. Foolishly, we thought that when our offspring entered public school, we would be able to pursue our paid work from 9 to 3:30 with only the occasional blip for ridiculous holidays like Columbus Day (the kids get it off, the uni doesn’t).
But I soon learned that our school district regards a quarter-inch of snow as an emergency. And thus we’ve been out of school since Tuesday. Add on the Bear’s sick day on Monday, and we’ve been out of school since December 18.
Verily, we’ve done something to anger the Ceiling Cat. He hath smote us with a plague of snow.
I’ve been trying to teach my classes at the college while our dear neighbor girl watches the kids whenever I can’t weasel out of a commitment. She’s wonderful – smart, responsible, and very kind to my kids – but she’s just 12. I keep feeling a little as though I’m stepping out of a 21st century Dickensian tableau whenever I slink off to work.
As soon our dear sitter leaves, my kids start climbing the walls. (Maybe ask Santa for crampons, next year?)
This scene is being played out, theme with variations, through Southeast Ohio. I advise you to buy stock in Celestial Seasonings (producer of Tension Tamer tea). If you’re living in SE Ohio, you might as well invest directly in the tea. I tried funnelling it into the Bear today, who said he was stressed. “It tastes yucky, Mama. Bitter.” I’d added honey, but I wasn’t about to argue. I happily guzzled the rest of his mug.
I think it’s a good thing that laudanum has gone out of fashion as a liquid chill-pill for kids.
Every once in a while, I hear childfree-by-choice people emphasize that they’re not anti-child; they just enrich the lives of kids by being actively involved with nieces and nephews, or they teach, or they volunteer for Big Brothers/Big Sisters. All of that is essential to keeping the lives of parents and kids afloat, and I’m not dissing it in any way. I think it’s wonderful. It’s lifesaving, in fact. I’m also 100% supportive of the decision not to reproduce. It’s really not for everyone – including a substantial fraction of those who’ve chosen (or stumbled into) parenthood.
But every once in a while someone says that their contribution to society’s future is equal to that of parents because they do some volunteer work with kids – and thus want to claim educational or health benefits equal to those of parents that they could then assign to a beneficiary of their choice – and if not, then no one should get such benefits. I balk at such arguments. In an ideal world, all humans ought to have such benefits, decoupled from their jobs, but as long as they adhere to employment status, then parents do have a special claim to including their kids under those bennies.
My argument for this boils down to this: “Kid puke.” I have lots of recent evidence for this, but since no browser supports scratch’n'sniff technology, you’ll just have to use your fertile imagination.
Because it’s only parents as a rule (occasionally grandparents) who are available to those kids 24/7. It’s only parents who clean up a trail of barf leading down the slide of a child’s cute bed from Ikea, who roll up the terminally soiled carpet and trundle it out to the garbage, and who attempt to decontaminate not just the floor but an amazing array of vertical surfaces. I say “parents” advisedly, because this is not a one-person job … and if it is, that partnership is either moribund or already dead. Surely solo barf clean-up has got to be one of the hardest jobs in single parenthood.
And yes, I knew this was part of the job description before i signed on to motherhood, but that doesn’t make it easy, trivial, or fun. That also won’t help me fall asleep. My ear is cocked for the next round. I know I need to sleep since the new quarter starts tomorrow, and I should be fresh and quick-witted. Instead I’ll probably sway and shuffle into the classroom and hope that my students are chatty.
I’ve got more to say on the differences between parenthood and other caretaking in a serious vein. But something about inhaling those fumes makes it hard to be philosophical or reflective.
I think the adage about dogs goes for sleeping tigers as well: one should let them lie.
But what if the tiger doesn’t stay in his bed?
Tonight my husband heard light footfalls on the stairs. He observed this stripy person perambulate as far as the landing …
… and then turn around, ascend the stairs, and return to his bed, where he lay clearly asleep with his eyes wide open.
Just what we needed: a Tiger who sleepwalks!
I know that sleepwalking is correlated with night terrors. The Tiger has had a few of those, as well as several wakings where his eyes were open but he couldn’t hold a conversation and he wasn’t quite there. Like any modern parent, I googled sleepwalking and quickly learned that it’s more common when kids are overtired. Goodness knows he was a cranky little cub today, and over dinner he kept flopping over. So yeah, he’s overtired.
I’m hoping this will be a one-time trick. If not, we’ll have to consider re-installing a baby gate at the top of the stairs. That feels like a quantum leap backward, but I don’t see any better alternatives. Even though the Tiger navigated the stairs expertly in his sleep, we can’t trust he’ll do it safely again.
I know kids generally grow out of it, but any been-there-done-that stories and advice will be gratefully appreciated!
And what’s mere anarchy, compared to my life at the moment?** I’ve got three classes, two kids in soccer four nights a week, one brain (that last stat is a rough estimate, generously rounded upward), all pitted against a stack of grading that approaches infinity asymptotically. Throw in multiple friends and students in crisis, a father who just mistook his wife for his mother, an ongoing case of the piglet flu, and voilá! my life:
Anyway, though a great deal is going wrong around me, I myself am okay. So are my kids and husband, except for the sniffles. I realize I’ve been away from the Kitty for long enough that people might start to fret. Any rumors of my demise should be reported to Snopes.com.
Actually, everything is getting away from me. And it’s doing so a lot less cutely than this, which my boys pronounced the Funniest LOLcat Ever. I didn’t quite LOL along with them – maybe because it’s just, um, a hair’s breadth from being a metaphor for my life?
I love critical but constructive feedback. I'm happy to entertain opposing arguments. I'm not willing to host mudslinging, ad hominem attacks, disrespect, unkindness, or hate - especially toward other commenters. Obvious trolls, jerks, and spammers will see their comments deleted and future comments blocked.
Patron cat of Kittywampus (1985-2001)
