For the record.

I would not nail Sarah Palin.

Just had to get that out there, since it seems I'm about the only person 'round here who wouldn't.

Eh, who am I kidding.

She's definitely on my list of gals I'd go gay for.*



















*Portia de Rossi, Gillian Anderson, Angelina Jolie, America Ferrera, Queen Latifah, and Mia Tyler, for the record.

It's been one of those weeks.

I got my financial aid award hours ahead of the payment deadline.

I got my check for the excess Pell Grant Thursday. Spent about $500 on books. Got a FULL tank of gas. Eighty-nine octane, even. (And what brilliant soul at Ford decided to make that the recommended grade for the Taurus? I mean, really!)

Turned twenty-nine Tuesday.

Got divorced Thursday. I think. (No way I was gonna be in court for that one when I didn't have to!) I shall wait for the papers in the mail, I guess. Still not happy about it.

Monday, heard the amusing line "I am rapidly approaching the conclusion that you're the only woman for me. No matter how hard I try."

It's been raining here all week. We're now only in a severe drought, as opposed to a really severe one. The burn ban has been lifted. I'ma gonna set me up a bonfire tonight!

I just dyed pink streaks into my hair.

I start school Monday.

I've been a chalice bearer two weeks running at church now. Keep this shit up, they're gonna have to ordain me. Or at least get better coffee.

Last night, I got involved in a discussion about breastfeeding. In a gay bar. I didn't start it. Reminds me of the time when, in the self-same gay bar at about one in the morning, in the midst of a "my husband just filed for divorce" drunken haze, I got into a discussion of home schooling philosophies. (I am told it was a coherent discussion, and that I gave a detailed explanation of Charlotte Mason's philosophy, but everyone else was drunk too, so God only knows.) I didn't start that one, either. There was also a rousing discussion of who, exactly, Obama was going to chose as his VP, and why Biden would be a really bad idea. (This was before we found out it is, in fact, Biden.) We also ripped his contradictory tax policies. This is Sabra when she parties. Exactly the same stuff you get here, but with vodka and lime slices.

Point to ponder: why are there so many straight ex-military men tending bar in gay clubs? Last night we had Robert, an ex-Marine, and Brendon, an ex-sailor.

I'm sure y'all have just been waiting for this update with bated breath. Screw this, go read MattG's blog. He's got some funny stuff there, yo.

*snort*

The Boys in the Band Ordered Boat Pranks.

You have to read the comments.

This one is my favorite:

We had a shit-talker from Canoe U that was getting the TDU weight-in-the-rack treatment already. About the time we are getting ready to leave I see him in the p-way and comment something about "being packed already?", he says that he has to see the Doc about some paperwork, but some of the guys were nice enough to finish packing his seabag. Spidey sense tingles and I hightail it to berthing to see if I can help. Sure enough there is a concerted effort to make sure that USNA has an adequate supply of TDU weights for the coming academic year. The LELT asks if I would like to make a contribution, and that's when genius strikes. We provide my addition, lockwire the seabag shut, and send it topside.


I never did miss that sock.

(I might just be one of very few females who gets that story.)

The only boat prank I know Rob to have been involved in wound up with him being on restriction for a month. They really do consider such pranks to be hazing these days, at least if someone gets hurt. (The guy they taped up cut the ligament twixt thumb & forefinger with his Boise pocketknife trying to cut the tape.) Sigh. Woulda been a great story but for the fallout.

This stuff is right up there with Skippy's List, though.

Ami DIscworld!

It's not often that I'll cross-post between this blog and my crochet blog, but I know some of my readers here are Terry Pratchett fans.

I was surfing the 'Net using StumbleUpon the other day and came across the following on Craftster.org:



(Note the copyright on the image; I believe I'm covered by fair use here.)

Here's her blog post on the project: Amigurumi Discworld.

Amigurumi, for those who don't know, is a Japanese word referring to crocheted cute things, basically. (It's a bit more complicated, but boils down to that.) It's like Manga, but in crochet--the same general artistic style is visible in both.

I could argue that this isn't really amigurumi, as there are not giant heads involved anywhere, but meh. I think it's frankly much nicer than amigurumi (as are her other crocheted animals), but if she wants to call it that she may.

It is definitely a marvel of geekiness, and I am so jealous I didn't think of it first. Maybe I'll go buy a used copy of a Monster Manual and start crocheting kobolds or something. (Excuse me while I go lay down and try to pretend I don't actually think that's a great idea.)

You have GOT to be kidding me!

This ties in nicely to my post about the "not cute enough" Chinese girl.

Went to HEB this evening after Rob's parents picked up the girls so I could buy bagels, ice cream, & cream cheese (yeah, there's a reason I look like that in my profile picture, lol).

Saw this at the check-out counter:
HoldThatPic.com

Jennifer Love Hewitt lost almost 20 pounds.

Huh.

This is the "before" picture:

HoldThatPic.com

Umm, yeah. She's really fat. (That creaking sound you hear is me rolling my eyes so hard they get stuck.)

This is the after picture:

HoldThatPic.com

Ms Hewitt is my age. Older than I by a few months, apparently, since she's already 29 & I've got...hmm, 4 days to go.

I could stand to lose twenty pounds. Twice. La Love? All she needed was a bikini that fit properly.

Yet another starlet goes from healthy weight to underweight.

Body Dysmorphic Disorder, anyone?

I love it.

Over at The Stupid Shall Be Punished, there's this story on the preparations for the christening of the USS New Hampshire. Apparently, they're making a special beer for the occasion.

That kicks the ass out of FSG fundraisers on the Boise. Hopefully the ombudsman-to-be is taking notes.

NO: white elephant auctions, colored trashbag drives, car washes
YES: custom beer, Jell-O wrestling, sex toy parties

THIS is what we get worked up over?

Apparently during the opening ceremonies of the Olympics some little girl was supposed to sing a song, but Chinese authorities decided she wasn't cute enough for the world stage, so they found a cuter girl to lip-synch.

This is quite the cause celebre today. I belong to a number of bulletin board sites, Mama Drama, Moms Who Think, MotheringDotCommune, etc. Members are in a tizzy about this on each of those sites, and undoubtedly many more across teh Intarwebz, being that my mother (who visits totally different websites than I) heard about it too.

It was even talked about quite a bit on KTSA this afternoon.

I've just got this to say about it:

How fucking superficial are we?

Seriously.

Two million Chinese were kicked out of their homes to build the Olympic village. Several former homeowners were jailed ahead of the opening ceremonies to ensure they could not protest. They've even jailed at least one person who applied to protest legally.

But this is what makes the news?

Girl babies are aborted regularly in China. Throughout Asia, sixty million girls are "missing" due to sex-selective abortion. I can't find stats right away for how much of that number China is responsible for, but according to this article, "Even families that violate the one-child policy usually make sure that their second child is male...parents who already have one daughter and discover that their second child is also a girl abort the baby 92% of the time." But we're worried because a lucky-to-be-alive little girl is deemed not cute enough?

Seriously?

And, c'mon. Let's be honest here. This is America, after all. We send out CONSTANT media messages that a given female doesn't look right. I make fun of women's magazines because of their ever-constant diet/dessert cover format. There's always one of each on the cover of everything from Woman's World to Good Housekeeping. There is a constant barrage of which celebrity has cellulite, as if it's a matter of Earth-shaking importance. Ninety-nine percent of the magazines aimed at little girls (who have been morphed into "tweens" by marketers and idiot parents) have fashion and "beauty" advice.

But we're worried about one little girl in China, rather than hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of girls here who receive the exact same message day after day?

Seriously? This is what it takes to knock John Edwards out of the news?

To be totally honest, I'm not exactly taking the high road myself, as I'm talking about this instead of that silly little dust-up in Georgia. But hey, at least I realize how ridiculous it is. Everyone else seems remarkably sincere.

Well, hell, if we're all doing cat pictures

Never met a bandwagon I didn't want to jump on!

Mark is doing it (though he's got a dog there too); so is LawDog.

Here's my contribution:


HoldThatPic.com

His name is Mr B. (He came with it.) He's approximately four years old, and the neediest cat I've ever had. I've been thinking I should rename him Bob; he's that much like my husband.

He is also the most laid-back feline imaginable, and soon to be the fattest. Not only does Miss Linda (who is four) carry him around pretty much constantly, but she and Bobbie also both take handfuls of food to him wherever he may be laying, or failing that will carry him to his food.

His adoption was sealed when he didn't so much as flinch when Esther threw her arms around his neck and kissed his face. According to the SCAT people (no idea what that acronym stands for), he was found abandoned. How could someone abandon a kitty this sweet? He was one of perhaps three adult cats in the adoption area at PetSmart, and the only male, which is probably why he was $35 to adopt (the adult females were $50; the kittens $75, or two for $140).

***

On the subject of "females who sleep in my bed", this is my contribution:


This is Esther.


This is Linda.

Esther's a full-time bed occupant. Linda wakes up with the dawn and stumbles down the hall into my bed and sleeps the next couple of hours. (She's actually napping on Esther's bed in this photo. Yes, Esther has a bed. She just doesn't see a need to use it.)

For those of us too lazy--er, busy--to write

The Lazy Blogger's Post Generator.

Gives me the following gem:

Abject apologies I just woke up to the fact I have not updated this since Paris Hilton was in jail... You would not believe the amount of people that are totally stalking me. But I'm sorry you'll just have to take my word for it..

I am lost in a sea of pseudo-olde-english with keeping up with my favourite daytime soaps, being distracted by the shiny, just generally being a nuisance to society in general, my day is passing in a blur from the moment my children manage to unlock my bedroom door and use me as a jumping castle to 11pm at which point I fall asleep on the couch. I am convinced that I absolutely deserve this after all my hard work. maybe tomorrow.

I absolutely, positively promise I will try to remember my blog password more often in future. I promise! Until my paycheck dawneth..

Man, I coulda been keeping up with my crochet blog all along!

My crochet blog is back.

I got started in blogging with a craft blog. A crochet blog, to be exact. This blog grew out of my desire to comment more on politics/life. The only thing that irritates me anywhere near as much as alleged crochet blogs filled with knitting projects (I mean, the Crochet Dude's first book was Men Who Knit and the Dogs Who Love Them. What the --?) is crochet blogs that turn into Mommy blogs.

The trainwreck that my personal life turned into 11 months ago (dear God, it's been almost a year?!) screwed my crochet blogging, 'cause what's a craft blog of any sort without pictures?

Well, with having internet access at home now--YAY!--I've been able to start it up again. I'm now blogging my crocheting over at: http://mrsmorse.wordpress.com

I almost overlooked World Breastfeeding Week.

It's August 1st through 7th.

I've celebrated it by...wait for it...breastfeeding. No, I don't subscribe to the "when they can ask for it, they're too old" theory.

I've got a Jesusfreak relation who told me that it's "gross" to breastfeed past six months. I thought about telling her Jesus was most likely nursed until He was two, in accordance with Talmudic guidelines, but I doubt she would've believed me.

I do wonder about our country's freakishness over the human breast. Once upon a time I was nursing my oldest daughter in the food court at MacArthur Center mall in Norfolk, Virginia, when a security guard came up to me and said "You know, you can do that in the family restroom. There's a couch in there."

Now y'all just think for a second about how much you'd like to eat your dinner in a public bathroom. I told her I could also do it right where I was, and she scurried off.

I nursed that child in the offices of Submarine Squadron Six, and also on the sub pier in Norfolk in a crowd of several hundred. My belief, formed then, remains If it doesn't bother the sub fleet, what the hell is your problem?

Of course, there's not much that fazes submariners.

I did, however, quit wearing nursing bras shortly after the incident at the Applebee's just off base in Norfolk where, absentmindedly re-hooking the cup of my nursing bra (it had hooks up near the shoulder), I caught the eye of a young sailor who apparently thought I was shaking my breast at him. He was certainly looking at my chest with a kind of pole-axed expression.

I was asked, some short while ago by a friend of a friend why I had chosen to breast feed. "Because I gave birth to humans." It's really tha simple. All milk is breastmilk, folks, and if you stop to think of it, the gross thing is that we humans regularly consume the breastmilk of another species.

Of course, babysitting a formula fed baby when I was thirteen and dealing with the royal pain in the rear that is powdered formula--not to mention being introduced to the fact that the stuff STINKS--was definitely a formative experience. I decided then and there I'd not do that unless there was no other option. I'm too lazy.

So: Happy World Breastfeeding Week, mi lecheras. (Yes, I know that word means milkmaid.) Nurse on.

How I avoided being caught up in the foreclosure crisis.

Once upon a time I was still happily married (at least, I thought I was), and hating the place we lived--where I still live--we wanted to buy a home.

On a whim one day we stopped by a Casa Linda development. We were leery going in, being that their other local development is up behind the subdivision Rob grew up in. Skanky part of town, and the particular area they're building in floods like New Orleans every time there's a hard rain. (Much like New Orleans, it's built in a natural bowl.) Moreover, 90% of their advertising is in Spanish, and 'round here that tends to mean they're trying to take advantage of folks who don't know any better.

But I like to tour model homes, and at the time we were looking into gaining custody of some cousins (I wish the best of them, hopefully they've been adopted far, far out of this family) , which meant that our two bedroom trailer would not work for eight people. So we were kinda on the desperate side, and bored, and so we stopped by to tour a model home.

First red flag: they didn't have any model homes. But we could tour one that was almost finished. It was only a 3-bedroom, but there was a space on the second floor they could finish into a fourth bedroom for us. Um, okay. Walking up the sidewalk, we looked down into the ditch they'd laid sewer line in. Rob was just in training then, but he made a funny noise and whispered to me that they'd screwed it up, having lain it much deeper, much more abruptly than they should have.

Second--well, third--red flag: it was cold inside. Granted, it was late November, and cold outside. But it should not have been colder inside than out. The saleslady tried telling us that it was because of the amazing power of their R-10 insulation. Yeah, R-10. Standard R-value for insulation in our area--for walls, at least--is either R-13 or R-18. (I thought at the time it was R-15, so I wasn't far off.) One of the double sinks in the master bathroom upstairs was dripping. Remember, please, that this house wasn't even finished.

Back to the sales house we went. I waited in the car, somewhat annoyed that Rob hadn't simply told her off. He came out, we drove away, and he told me she'd "prequalified" him for a $132,000 mortgage--coincidentally, just what the house she'd shown us cost.

At the time, Rob was pulling in $13/hour. A little over $2K a month, before anything was taken out. An $800+ house payment...Forty percent of gross income...Nope, don't think so. We laughed, and drove away.

A while later, I went on Lending Tree and applied for a $90,000 mortgage, about what we'd figured we could afford. We got one offer, for a fixed rate of 8% (not great credit), for a $900/month payment.

We simply couldn't afford it.

So we turned it down.

I wonder, as I listen to Dave Ramsey and the ongoing news stories about the credit crunch/foreclosure crisis, how people can be so stupid. I hear people call into his show with house payments that are 40% or 45% of their income, who owe more on their house than it was ever worth. I've even heard two different folks on the radio say they have an 11% interest rate.

I understand wanting a house. Damn it, I live in a singlewide that's old and falling apart and has only one closet. If we had moved out of this trailer park, we'd probably still be married.

But I'm glad we didn't go there.

Something else that should go without saying.

If the choice is between dead bad guy and dead police officer, I will always err on the side of dead bad guy.

This is what I said to an SAPD officer a couple of weeks ago. The subject in question was an officer-involved shooting wherein an officer shot and killed a man who'd rammed his car into the officer's cruiser, pinning it. (Story here.)

There has been a "rash of officer-involved shootings" locally, recently, two of them SAPD, two fatal, all three of which brought some second-guessing of the officer's actions.

This one in particular hits close to home for me. Literally. The incident occurred in the strip mall right behind the McDonald's I usually take my kids to, across the street from the HEB I typically patronize.

This particular story came to light shortly after the release of a bunch of recommendations for SAPD to basically improve its image and avoid more accusations of police abuse. One of the recommendations which Chief Bill McManus rejected out of hand would have prevented officers from shooting at a moving vehicle unless there was some other weapon involved. Which is all fine and dandy because as we know, no one has ever been murdered by being run over with a vehicle.

When we lived in Virginia, there was a similar uproar after police shot and killed a teenager who tried to run them over. (Police had been called for reports of a vehicle driving around without its headlights on very late at night; the guy turned out to have been high or drunk or both.)

Just a couple of days before this happened, police shot a man who pointed a pellet rifle at them. They did not know at the time it wasn't a real gun, and the man had been beating up on his girlfriend and threatening to kill her. So they drew the obvious--if erroneous--conclusion. And San Antonio is safer because of it.

Yeah, there are corrupt police. There are more who are simple assholes. Neither is the majority, and even put together they're not a majority. Most cops are, at worst, good men trying to do the right thing. And frankly, fine upstanding members of the community are very, very rarely involved in any sort of interaction with the police (save perhaps as the complainant), and the folks who choose to fight/threaten cops pretty much never turn out to be good Christian men. Mistakes are made, and occasionally on purpose--SAPD does not have a history of this, but until proven otherwise I will assume that the officer's in the right. Pretty much like I'll take the word of a police officer above the word of a petty criminal. It's kind of a no-brainer, I'd think.