Awesome gal-about-town Rachel links to an interesting story about Laura Ingalls Wilder and, extensively, her daughter Rose, of whom I was dimly aware but not knowledgeable. Great stuff there, particularly about Rose’s own writings and her Libertarianism. If you’ve got 20 minutes, give it a read.
It’s a pity they sold out of these, because they are awesome. It’s a vinyl stick-on for your mac that enlivens the apfel:
There’s other cool stuff. I wish I hadn’t spent all my money on a house.
I tried to play like I’d post on vacation, but gave up in favor of heavy drinking. Now that I’m back, you can enjoy some pictures taken on my vacation.
You likey the comics? You like puns? Enjoy.
Man, am I glad I’m not single. This would absolutely be a problem.
I don’t have that app (looking for it now), but I do have “iPity,” which is an app that shouts quotes from B.A. Baracas, as played by the inimitable Mr. T. Could you go on a date with a man who has an app like this?
Cats are messed up animals. Pete, for example, has developed a somewhat fatherly relationship with Josephine. Occasionally, when she’s being fed or resting in her bouncy seat, Pete will come by and gently lick her head, or rub against her.
She, of course, loves him. When he saunters by she can’t keep her eyes off him. It’s rather amusing. I have been told that cats tend to bond with humans of the opposite gender, but my anecdotal experience hasn’t borne that out. The cats at my parents house always prefer my father. (I guess he smells like a boss cat. Who knows.) At our house, Pete usually likes to sleep with me (until I start tossing and turning), and Poly’s always been Mommy’s girl. (JD and The Cheat didn’t seem to care.)
The best part about Fatherly Pete is that if Josephine is upstairs, and is crying, and we don’t go up to get her right away, Pete will sit at the bottom of the steps and stare at us, as if to say, “What the hell! She’s crying! You gonna do something about it? Jerks.”
Poly, of course, has responded to the appearance of another child by being annoyingly ingratiating. There’s been a lot of dragging of slippers and little plush toys all over the house, and a lot of loud midnight meowing, as if to say “Hey! Look at me! I’m still here! Look, I brought you a present!” until finally we kick her out so she doesn’t wake the baby.
The Cheat is now an outdoor kitty, since I couldn’t teach her not to pee in the basement. Sometimes she seems to be handling it well, and sometimes I find her huddled behind the air conditioning unit with a wild look in her eyes. She does at least have a cute collar now.
It’s terrifying to think that not only do these people exist, but they’re in positions of religious (and sometimes secular) authority.
The biggest hypocrite in the world is the person who believes in the death penalty for murderers and not for homosexuals. Hypocrite. The same God who instituted the death penalty for murderers is the same God who instituted the death penalty for rapists and for homosexuals – sodomites, queers!
…And you know who they’re after? Your children. …[T]hey’re being recruited by the sodomites. They’re being molested by the sodomites. I can tell you so many stories about people that I know being molested and recruited by the sodomites. They recruit through rape. They recruit through molestation. They recruit through violation. They are infecting our society. …The only way to stop it, you say “how do we stop it?” … You want to know why sodomites are recruiting? Because they have no natural predators.
Would you rather have government bureaucrats or big business bureaucrats making decisions about your healthcare insurance eligibility? I know which one Sophie’s Mom would prefer.
Just as our Blue Cross plan was set to start, we received a notice from them stating that they considered Sophie to have a pre-existing pulmonary problem (due to the amount of doctor’s visits for pneumonia), and that while they would cover her in general, they wouldn’t cover any pulmonary/respiratory issues until she had gone two years without needing medication or problems…
All of a sudden, Sophie was without coverage for pulmonary problems. This was absolutely terrifying. What if she got sick?! What if she needed to be hospitalized?! We spent the next couple of months researching every insurance company that we could, begging them to take Sophie. Nope, it wasn’t going to happen.
And then our biggest fear came true: Sophie got very, very sick. And I’m ashamed to say that although we knew that she was incredibly ill, we actually considered keeping her home from the doctor’s office, as we knew that this would be yet another strike against her getting insurance. Luckily we pulled our heads out of our asses and took her to the doctor anyway, and it’s good that we did, because Sophie was so critically ill that she was sent straight from the doctor’s office to ICU. She was so sick that we couldn’t even wait for an ambulance; they helped me throw our limp, blue daughter into our car, and I drove like hell to get her to the hospital next door.
Let me state that very clearly one more time: we almost didn’t take our baby girl, who was in severe respiratory distress, to the doctor because we knew that it would hurt her chances of getting insurance.
