Originally published at American Family. Please leave any comments there.

I suppose it was too much to hope that I could enjoy the Olympics without having to talk about politics, but I was wrong.

I don’t even like sports, but last night during the opening ceremony, I kept getting teary.  Why?  Because the Olympics are one of the few moments that we share as human beings.  Chances are, eyes from ever single country on this planet are watching (or watched) the same thing I was watching.  Chances are good L’s family in China saw it too.

When ever Chinese person we knew was getting more and more excited about the olympics in Beijing, I poo-poo-ed  it.  I thought it was a big deal over nothing.  But when I saw it?  It was a big freaking deal.  It was something Chinese people could be proud of.

It was a moment where the country of China was saying “We want to be a respected member of the international community.  We want to play with the big boys.  We want your respect and admiration and we are willing to bend over fucking backwards and pay through the nose to get it.”

That moment, where the admiring eyes of the world watched one of the most spectacular performances I have ever seen, was not about the Chinese government.  It was about the Chinese *PEOPLE*.  One-fifth of the world’s population that has been trying to claw its way back into respectability for the last 35 years.  Can’t the Chinese people have a couple weeks where they can be proud of the massive accomplishments they have made in the last three decades?

Is the Chinese government fucked up?  Heck yeah!  They oppress their minorities, deny women and families their reproductive rights and force people to move for public work projects.

Is the Chinese government any more fucked up than the US government?  It depends on who you ask.  In case you are forgetting, the US government is responsible for this and this and this.  Oh wait, there is this and this and this and this.  Seriously, I could google US human rights abuses and misdeeds until my fingers bleed.

Do I wish the Chinese government would have saved the money they spent on the Olympics and spent it for their orphans or the poor or whatever?  Sure.  But I also wish the US government would save the $3 TRILLION dollars it is spending on the Iraq war to provide health care for poor people in America too.  Besides, I would rather watch the fireworks in China than watch US bombs blow people up.

You don’t like the Chinese government?  Fine.  Protest all you want.  Boycott Chinese-made goods.  Ooooh, maybe you won’t even watch the Olympics.   Is that going to do diddly-squat to change things in China?  Heck no, it won’t.

The Chinese government isn’t going to straighten up its act if we isolate and shame them.  What makes countries behave themselves is being a member of the larger community of developed nations.

When China grows up –and it WILL grow up eventually, because you can’t keep down a fifth of the world’s population if they have a lust for education and wealth like the Chinese — it will have to answer not only to the rest of the world.  The Chinese government is going to have to answer to the Chinese PEOPLE.  People who will eventually be relatively wealthy and educated and plugged in to the global community.
The Chinese people have tasted the Big Mac and they want more.  They want more and they want to be better, just like most of the rest of the citizens of this planet.

Sure some wrinkly old guys are trying to cling desperately to their party’s place in the corrupt power structure, but then, we have that here too.

China is changing faster than pretty much anywhere else on the planet.  It is impossible to predict what will happen there in 10 or 20 years, but I will go out on a limb and bet there is democracy in China in my lifetime.  (Not that democracy prevents human rights violations, as the US is so eager to demonstrate time and again.)  Things are changing there for the better and I expect the trend to continue, but it won’t happen over night.

It isn’t every day we get the honor of a truly global event.  This week, our family is going to enjoy watching the Olympics with the rest of the world.  You now, with all those people whose governments are imperfect but whose citizens hope for something better, just like us.

If you want to talk smack about Chinese politics, I am not going to provide the venue for it on my blog.  Not this week.

Originally published at American Family. Please leave any comments there.

Damn, wasn’t the Olympic opening ceremony pretty effing awesome?  I mean, no one else  can throw a couple thousand performers out there and do it as well as the Chinese.

I asked Mr. A what he thought as we were watching:

Me: “So, you are impressed?”

Mr.A: “Yes.”

Me: “What are you thinking?”

Mr. A: “I should have worked harder at learning Chinese.”

Me: “Does it make you feel proud of your people?”

Mr. A: “Yes, but also a little scared.”

Me: “Scared?”

Mr. A: “Yeah, see how those guys are walking all over that big lit-up globe?  It is like they are saying ‘We are coming to take over the world with our massive numbers and ostentatious display of new found wealth!’”

Me: “Yup, I can see how one might interpret it that way…but look!  There are the happy faces of all the children of the world flashing on the screens.  They are smiling because they are happy to be conquered by the wealthy Chinese masses!  If they manage the world has well as they have managed the opening ceremony, we will all be happier once China rules the world!  Just give into your Chinese-ruled destiny, my friend.”

Mr. A: “Man, the Chinese are good at propaganda.”

Originally published at American Family. Please leave any comments there.

It appears that two months without shopping has had an unexpected side effect.  In the last week, I have tried to buy things at the mall, target, and another mall.  Each time I came home completely empty-handed.  Target for crying out loud!  How could I leave Target with NOTHING??  (Actually, you can blame that one on a tired and hungry toddler.  It wasn’t worth the struggle to buy new toothbrushes.) 

 I even spent about 1.5 hours shoe shopping online last night and didn’t buy a damn thing.

I wonder if this is a long-term problem or if it will resolve itself with more shopping practice?

Originally published at American Family. Please leave any comments there.

On to less serious topics…

• Only 3 weeks until school starts.  I already bought all M’s school supplies, her lunch box/thermos and backpack.  We aren’t really going to buy her any new clothes until the weather turns chilly.  We are super-duper fortunate that my good friend sends M and L her girls’ hand-me-downs and they are in immaculate condition.  M may end up needing a few sweaters/jeans, but she will be dressed to the nines in name brand or boutique beautiful dresses and outfits for the first couple months.  She will need two new pairs of shoes so I am going to go get her feet measured today so I can order them online.  I am thinking she will probably need a pair of maryjanes and maybe some tennis / gym shoes.

• Since we don’t have to buy new clothes, I am going to indulge myself and buy new socks for both M and L.  Despite my best efforts to buy them all all the same kinds of only black and white socks, we seem to not have any matching pairs anywhere in this house.  WTF??  I am so fed up, I am just going to throw all the old socks away and start fresh.

• Is it wrong that I already google-stalked all the kindergarten teachers?

• Our shopping hiatus is officially over today. (We extended it one week into august because we didn’t want to worry so much about expenses on vacation in July)   I tried desperately to cheat and buy myself some much-needed new t-shirts and fall clothes last weekend but came home completely empty handed.  Apparently, this year the designers have decided that women are actually 7 feet tall, so the t-shirts all hang down to the bottom of my ass.  Is it too hard to make a standard, regular length t-shirt?

• Today, I read this article and then downloaded the Edison program.  We are working on making small changes to help cut our energy usage, so maybe this will help a little.  I have also been trying to unplug appliances we are not using.  Baby steps, but every little bit helps, right?

Over and out.

Originally published at American Family. Please leave any comments there.

In a comment, AlisonG asked:

I’m curious about how you talk to M and L about Asian appearance. My daughter (Chinese) is 2.5 and I’m searching for terms for her skin colour, eye shape, etc. that don’t come across as racist or offensive. Any suggestions?

I mentioned this in one of the previous posts, but I thought it might be good to elaborate on it a little.

We talk quite a bit about being Chinese or Taiwanesse or Asian and what that means.  It is just a regular part of our day-to-day conversation.  I suppose it might sound weird in other families, but in our house, it is was it is.

For example, last week we had tofu for dinner and this was the conversation:

Mr. A: “L sure is a good Chinese girl! She loves this tofu!”

M: “Do all chinese people like tofu?  Because I like this one but I don’t like the brown kind (dried tofu).”

Mr. A: “Oh, not all Chinese people like tofu, but in China people eat a lot of tofu.  Even if you don’t like tofu, you are still Chinese because I am Chinese.”

M: “Well, that brown kind is yucky.  I like RICE because I am Chinese, right Daddy?”

Mr. A: “Lots of people in China eat rice, that’s for sure.  The rice we buy comes from China.  People in China eat a lot of rice, but they also eat a lot of noodles.”

Yada, yada, yada.  (I should note that I often let Mr. A handle these conversations about what Chinese people are like, because I think it is his perogative to define “chinese” not mine.)
M doesn’t really have a handle on racial identification based on appearance yet, which is why I was so surprised by the park thing.  We have tried to discuss it with her, but she doesn’t get it.
I just went and asked M to tell me what Chinese people look like and she said this:  Black hair, kind of dark skin, and Chinese clothes (?!?).    I asked “What about you? Your hair isn’t black?”  She agreed that her hair isn’t black, then she said her skin is a little dark and she “knows Chinese words, silly!” so she is Chinese.

Then we ran through some examples of other people with brown skin and black hair who are not Chinese.  She could tell me the ethnicity of kids from school who meet this description (Japanese, Indian, Mexican/Germanese etc.) because they talked a lot about this at her school*.
Then, when we went over examples of other people whose ancestry she didn’t know, she was clueless.  For example, yesterday a friend and her son came to visit and they were both South Asian (but born here).  When I asked M what they were, she said “English.”  When I asked why she thought that, she said “Because I have only ever seen them in America.”  (Which totally  makes no sense given she has only known the vast majority of people in her life in America.)
I think she isn’t yet ready developmentally to grasp the subtleties of visual racial clues, unless they are very obvious or accompanied by another language/accent. I need to get out my book on raising multiracial kids and see what she is developmentally able to grasp at this age.

We usually let M lead these conversations and tell us how she thinks people look.

I just asked her if she thinks there is anything different about people’s eyes and she said “The colors? Oh, and also the size.  L has little eyes, you have big eyes, I have medium eyes.”

I thought maybe she was trying to talk about Asian eyes as “little” but then I asked her to elaborate and she said “L has the littlest eyes, mine are bigger, yours are bigger than mine, but Daddy’s are the biggest because he is the biggest person in our family!”

So I think she was actually talking about the size of the person’s body and head, not the shape of the eye.
Also, I think the distinctions between white and Asian will be less obvious to our kids because they see so many people of both groups intermixed all the time (in our family, extended family, their friend’s families, etc.).  It definitely isn’t unusual for them to see a white dad, Asian mom and 100% Asian kid in one family,  white mom and two Asian kids in another family or all Asians in a single family.  So I think no one really stands out as “different” in those to categories for her.

*There was also some negatives to this conversation happening outside our control.  For example, her teacher Mrs. Kim told the kids that “Koreans have white skin.  People from India have brown skin.”  So even though there were Indian kids and Korean kids in the class with *very* similar skin tones, they were being told that one was “white” and one was “brown”.  That isn’t exactly how I would have handled that situation, obviously.  I would have had each kid define their own skin color.

Originally published at American Family. Please leave any comments there.

When I decided to take M to the park, I was a little concerned about what might happen.  Sure, I wanted M to learn that she was being silly.  At the same time I didn’t want M to have an opportunity to hurt the other little girl’s feelings, which seemed like a definite possibility given M’s very forthright declaration of not wanting to play with someone who was “different” because she had “brown skin and braids”.  I was planning on very closely monitoring the situation.
As soon as we entered the park and the little girl caught sight of M, she headed straight toward us.  As she ran up, M said “HI!” but kept on doing what she was doing.   The other girl didn’t say anything.   M continued playing (and narrating her play to me and L) and the little girl continued following her wordlessly, always staying about 6-7 feet away.  The lack of interaction was a little strange.

M decided she wanted to swing, so M, L and I headed over there.  The little girl stuck right behind M, still not talking.

When we got to the swings, I decided I would talk if no one else was going to.

“So, what is your name?” I asked.

“Molly.”  she said.

“Hi Molly, this is M and L.”  I said.

“How old are you?” M asked, “I am five years old!  My birthday is on February 9, 2003!  What year were you born?
“I’m three.” Molly said.

Knowing that Molly was three, her lack of conversation made a lot more sense. Molly was only about an inch shorter than 5 1/2 year old M and she really looked 5.  As soon as we found out she was only three, it was clear she was just acting like a three year old who really likes big kids.  As the mostly one-sided conversation (from M) continued, I also concluded that Molly may be bilingual due to the way she was putting her sentences together and a slight accent.  (I am guessing her parents were from Africa, but I don’t know.)

M continued to chatter on and on.  Molly answered her questions occasionally.  M tried to explain an imaginary game that she wanted to play to Molly, but Molly didn’t always follow M’s rules.  I reminded M a few times that Molly was only three and M adjusted her play.  They ran off to the slides together and played uneventfully for another 10 minutes, until we had to go home.

On the way home, I reminded M that she had said she didn’t want to play with Molly before because she looked different.  “Well, that was before I knew her,” M said.  We talked about how silly that was and that Molly ended up being a good playmate.  We talked again about all our friends who had differences and how they are different.  (We have continued to have this conversation over the past few days.  M seems to enjoy it.)  We also talked about how M might feel if someone didn’t want to play with her because she was Chinese or had brown hair or was a girl.  M agreed she would feel sad and she didn’t want to make other people sad.  Then we went home and she went to bed.

Sorry to disappoint the folks who thought there would be some big, dramatic ending to this story, but it was real life.

I will be honest and say some part of me hopes that the original issue came up because Molly was only 3 (but looks 5) and didn’t play the way M expected her to.  Mr. A said they had talked a little before M started to ignore her, so it could be possible.  That doesn’t explain why M would blame Molly’s hair or skin color though.

The truth is I don’t know where this came from.  M does have some friends who are Black and she has made friends with other Black kids in the park easily recently.  There were no African American kids at M’s preschool, but there were a number of very dark-skinned south Asian kids.  While M could tell me where every classmate’s parents immigrated or ancestors originated from and their skin/hair color, she had never placed any good/bad value on it to my knowledge.
I know I shouldn’t have been so surprised that this would happen, but it caught me off guard.  I felt like we are trying to do a decent job of being anti-racist in our parenting.  I think talk a lot about race and ethnicity in what I think is an age-appropriate way.  I am realizing that we have talked a lot about differences, but not much about discrimination.   I think M has shown us it is time for us to broaden the conversation.

Maybe we haven’t done enough in our day to day lives either. Maybe it was a mistake to send M to the preschool where the ethnic mix was mostly Asian, white and hapa.  We knew we were sacrificing other diversity, but I felt like it was worth it for M to come out of preschool with a solid understanding of herself as (half) Asian and knowing other kids who shared that experience (which she did).  I don’t know.

While I am not proud of this situation, but if I had neglected to share it here, it would have been really hypocritical after all my talk about being anti-racist.  Even if we parent in a perfectly anti-racist way, our girls will be out in the world being influenced by people/things out of our control.  We are trying to use it as a learning opportunity.

We just have to keep plugging away, I guess.

Originally published at American Family. Please leave any comments there.

“Ok, M, we are going back to the park!” I said.

Even though this was a strange turn of events at 7:20 pm, M didn’t seem to mind.

“You know, M, you said something before that made me think of a story.  When Mommy and Daddy first met, some people said ‘I can’t believe you two are friends!  You look so different!’ but we said “Don’t be silly!  Looking alike doesn’t have anything to do with who is a good friend!’  and Mommy and Daddy became best friends.  We ended up getting married!   Weren’t those people silly?”  I said, possibly a little bit of desperation in my voice.

M looked confused.  “But you and daddy DO look alike,” she said.

Hmm.  This presented a problem.  In previous discussions, M had indicated that she has a very difficult time recognizing the physical traits that people generally use to differentiate between Asians and people of European descent.  (In part, I think this is because she currently refers to herself as “white skin,” but she has some of the other traits.  We have had other recent conversations about “half Chinese” and her confusion, but that would be a different post.)  So we spent a minute or two talking about how some people think Asians’ eyes look a certain way, skin tone, and hair color.   It still didn’t seem like she was getting that Mr. A and I were viewed as different from each other, so I decided to change stories.

“M, do you remember meeting my friend Amelia?  Do you remember what she looked like?”  I asked.

M described my friend’s brown skin and very short hair.  M has always been fascinated with Amelia’s very, very short hair.
“Amelia and Mommy look very different, don’t we?  Amelia has dark skin, because she is from Africa.  Mommy has lighter skin because my ancestors were from Europe. But we are still good friends, right?”

M conceded that yes, we are friends.

“Don’t you think it would be silly if I never talked to Amelia because she looked different from me?  How would I know she could be such a good friend if I never talked to her?”  I asked.

“Yes, she is your friend and she looks very different!” M said, “She has really, really, really short hair!”

“And she has dark skin,” I said, afraid M was trying to change the subject.  “I have lots of friends who look different from me and you have lots of friends who look different from you.  Can you think of ways our friends are different from us?”

Then we ran down a list of our friends, naming each one and describing something that was different than ourselves.  We talked about different hair color, skin color, different languages people speak etc.

“And look at F!” I said, “You are friends with him and he is a BOY! That is different from you!  He has a PENIS!”

M looked at me and said, “Mama, let’s keep potty talk out of this conversation.”

So then I told M I was surprised to hear her say she didn’t want to play with someone because she had different hair and dark skin.   “She could be a very nice girl and a good friend.  Just like all our other friends who are different from us. You will never know unless you talk to her.” I said.

Just then, we rounded the corner to the park.  I saw a little girl who was about M’s age with dark skin and braids playing on the playground.  I took a deep breath and we headed toward the slides.
(To be continued)

Originally published at American Family. Please leave any comments there.

The other night, Mr. A took the girls to the playground after dinner.  When they came home about 45 minutes later, Mr. A whispered “Uh, there was an incident at the playground…”

This is what he described:  M and L were playing at the playground and a little girl seemed VERY interested in playing with M.  The little girl was Black, with dark skin and many braids.  Usually, M is happy to play with anyone who will talk to her (particularly girls about her age), but not for some reason not this girl.  Mr. A said M consistently ignored the little girl, despite her clear interest.

“I think she didn’t want to play with her because she was Black!” Mr. A whispered, “I didn’t know what to do, so we just came home.”
As you can imagine, this information made my stomach drop.  I immediately flashed back to the many, many conversations I have had with M trying to avoid this very situation.

I decided to try to find out more info.  I casually asked M if she made any new friends at the park.

“Not tonight,” she said, refusing to elaborate.

“Oh, weren’t there any kids there who were your age?” I asked.

“There was a girl…” M said, “But she was DIFFERENT so I didn’t want to play with her.”

(That loud thunk you just heard in your imagination was the sound of my jaw hitting the floor.)

“How was she different?” I said, very afraid to hear the answer.

“She had BRAIDS,” M said, “Lots and lots of braids.  And her skin was very dark.”

So there it was.  There was no way to pretend that M was avoiding the girl for some other reason.  She just laid it all out there.

“Huh.” I said and backed out of the room to confer with Mr. A.

“OMFG!?!?! Did you hear what she said?? What the F-ITY F  F F?!??!?!?” I hissed.

“She said THAT?!?!” he said, “What are we supposed to DO?”

“Well, we damn well have to do SOMETHING.” I said, “Was that girl still at the park?  Maybe I should talk to M and take her back over there so she can learn that she is being ridiculous?”

After a quick discussion, that is exactly what I decided to do.

(To Be Continued)

Originally published at American Family. Please leave any comments there.

For lack of anything more interesting to say, this post is inspired by Princess Nebraska’s story prompt.

I wouldn’t say it was my best idea.  One summer evening when I was 12 and having a friend sleep over at my house, I decided that I would show off by sneaking alcohol out of my parent’s liquor cabinet.

My parents have never been big drinkers.  An occasional beer or maybe Fuzzy Navel was about as adventurous as they got.  This meant that the selection I had to choose from was small.  All I could find was a bottle of Peach Schnapps and a bottle of Root Beer Schnapps.  My friend and I mixed them together in a big cup and swilled them down.  Then we fell asleep.
As you might imagine, the combination of various schnapps and a ninety-pound sixth grader didn’t mix particularly well.  It wasn’t long before I woke up vomiting all over the basement couch.  It was a particularly nasty smell as the mix of beef-a-roni and flammable root beer alcohol filled the air. My friend panicked and ran to get my parents.

When my mom came to clean up the mess, she did not seem to notice anything was amiss.  “It must have been bad beef-a-roni.”  I told her as I stumbled up the stairs to my bed.

The next morning, I had a bitty-league softball game.  When I got up, my parents deemed me healthy enough to attend.  I didn’t mention my nausea and my splitting headache.  In retrospect, I wonder if they suspected we had been drinking because they served particularly runny eggs.  Maybe they were trying to punish me by making my hangover worse.

That was the beginning of a series of bad choices that went unnoticed or unacknowledged by my parents until I left for college.  Did they really not notice the occasional binge drinking?  The saying I was at the library when I was really sleeping with hanging out with a skateboarder boy?  The sneaking off to the nearest big city to hang out in college bars?  There were a million instances where I was convinced I had outsmarted them.
If my children happen to read this in their adolescent years, I want to take this time to assure them:   I will notice.  And there *will* be consequences.

While I don’t think there is anything necessarily wrong with experimentation and sneaking around (isn’t that the job of teenagers?), there will be consequences.  Or at the very least an acknowledgment of their dumb choices.
Why?  Because *my* children will not labor under the illusion that their parents are too dumb to figure out what they are doing.

To this day, I don’t know if my parents really were too oblivious to figure out what was going on, or if they just chose to ignore it.

Originally published at American Family. Please leave any comments there.

I swear, I never learn.

This winter I managed to successfully wean myself off caffeine because it wrecks my sleep no matter when I drink it.  (I sincerely believe I have this gene mutation.) Now, I only drink decaf coffee or caffeine free soda.  Unless there is a lack-of-sleep emergency, that is.

Last night, L was a sleep trainwreck.  She woke me up maybe four or five times (which is completely unacceptable for a 2.3 year old IMO).

This morning, I was very very tired, so I made myself a big cup of half-caf coffee.  HALF CAF.  That shouldn’t be a big deal, right?

So not 30 minutes later, I noticed I was feeling extremely anxious and shakey.  For no good reason, I am a giant barrel of anxiety.  And then I remembered the damn coffee.

Stupid coffee.

Now I am going to have to wait two hours for these damn jitters to wear off.
—————————————————————————

On to other things, I could use some suggestions.  M’s favorite books are the Junie B. Jones series.  For a long time, we would read them together, one chapter per night.  Now, all the sudden, she doesn’t have the patience to wait for that and has been reading them on her own.  Yesterday, she sat down for about an hour and a half and read three of them in a row.

She has read all but maybe 6 or 7 of them now.  I need to come up with another series of books to keep her busy.  She has already read all the Ramona books, but she isn’t quite ready to read at the Little House on the Prairie level of difficulty yet.

I also hope to keep her reading age-appropriate subject matter.  For example, I think she could probably read the Babysitters’ Club books level of difficulty, but she probably wouldn’t be interested in the pre-teen subject matter.  She is also adamantly opposed to anything remotely scary, so Harry Potter is not possible yet (plus, I think it is still to complex for her to understand the storyline.)
Any suggestions?

Originally published at American Family. Please leave any comments there.

Today, I finally managed to scratch one item off my list of 30 Things to Do Before I Die.

Only 8 years of watching them be eaten by others at dim sum, I finally tried chicken feet.  I was at dim sum with two friends today for lunch and I said I would give them a try.   I thought it would be no problem until they were on the table in front of me.

I am not usually a squeamish eater.  I have eaten frog, snails, intestines, stomach, rabbit, 1000 year old egg, and food served by dozens of dubious-looking street vendors without flinching.  None of those were nearly the challenge of the chicken foot.

Once it was on my plate, I couldn’t get past the nubs where the claws used to be.  Every time I looked at that part, I felt a little woozy.  But if I didn’t do it today, odds were I was never going to do it.   So I hiked up my sleeves, drew my chopsticks and took a nibble off a chicken knuckle.

It wasn’t terrible.  Mostly slightly greasy skin, but my teeth bumped up against cartilege or a joint or something and that was the end of that.  I could go no further.

But the nibble was enough to mark it off the list.

Now, I don’t ever have to feel obligated to do that again.

Originally published at American Family. Please leave any comments there.

Is there anyone out there who may know how to fix my computer problem?  When I read other people’s password protected posts in wordpress, I can’t access the post even though I enter the correct password.  It just gives me a blank page.  

Any ideas?  It is really, really annoying.

Edited to add: I also tried to login with foxfire and the same damn thing happened, so it must be my computer, right?

Also, the blank page is giving me the address of blogpage/wp-pass.php  WTFityFF!?!

Problem solved, but I am going to leave this here for internet posterity.   My computer had TWO firewalls running at the same time and this was causing a problem.  Once I turned the Computer Associates Personal Firewall off, passwords started working again.  yay!

Originally published at American Family. Please leave any comments there.

Once upon a time, Mr. A’s job bothered me.  I mean, I am a FEMINIST.  A LIBERAL.  And here I am, living off the profits Mr. A earned by representing corporations who kill puppies and destroy the ozone layer for fun.

Just kidding, I actually don’t know what companies he represent actually allegedly did or did not do. 

I don’t know, because when Mr. A starts talking about work, my brain gets cloudy and I hum a nice “la la la la la” song in my head while trying to look interested until he gets it out of his system.  I learned this technique when M started telling me ridiculously boring stories about dragons, imaginary friends and super heros.  It works equally well with both of them.

Anyway, what I was trying to say is that I used to be more bothered by Mr. A’s clients until I got used to living off his income and not needing to work myself.  The ethical stuff doesn’t bother me much at all anymore, now I just wonder why they aren’t paying him more.  Ahem.

Recently, though, Mr. A got assigned to a case that is clearly on the good guys’ side.  For the sake of lawyer-client-lawyer’s wife confidentiality, we will just call that client “Benevolent Corp.”  I like Benevolent Corp.  I think they are very interesting and cool, so I gave Mr. A a big thumbs up when he told me about the case.

I think Mr. A is trying to leverage this rare opportunity of wife job-approval.   His is name dropping Benevolent Corp. all over the place.

“I was really busy at work today, the Benevolent Corp. case is taking a lot of my time.” he said.

And: “I was researching blah blah blah for Benevolent Corp….” 

And “Today I was talking to XYZ person about Benevolent Corp…”

“I have to work late tonight — it is the Benevolent Corp. case!”  he said, knowing full well I wouldn’t begrudge the extra time for Benevolent Corp.

I am starting to think I am lucky he doesn’t work in public interest law all the time.  If it was his career I may actually have to be interested in his job, rather than just pretending to listen.  We would probably be a lot poorer if he did that kind of work too. 

Hopefully, he will get this bit of do-gooder-ness out of his system before it becomes a lifestyle choice.  Everything in moderation, right?

Originally published at American Family. Please leave any comments there.

I saw this over at Dawn’s and it dovetails with some questions I have received lately (here and IRL)about whether or not I will be closing up shop and why I blog.

1.)  Why did you start a blog?

I think I started blogging because I was very lonely.  We were living in a new city and had few friends here.  If that wasn’t enough, I was the very first person among all our friends to get pregnant and have a baby.  There was no one who could share the suck that is learning to be a parent.  It was a really hard time.

2.) Why do you continue to blog?

I love my blog.  I love the friends I have met here (both IRL and online).  I like getting feedback on things I am thinking through.  I like going back to see what the hell I was thinking in the past (even though it is often embarrassing).  I like it when people think I am funny.  I like having a place to vent.  I like meeting new people.  I like opening my email and seeing new comments.  I like knowing that someone will stumble on this blog and know they aren’t crazy or they aren’t the only one who ever felt how they feel right now.  I like helping people battle the scourge that is yucca plants.  Basically, I blog because I like it and the pros far outweigh the cons.  If it wasn’t enjoyable any more, I would stop.  Right now, blogging makes my little world better.

3.) Do you have a blogmother/blogfather?

My interest in internet communities started with the old Hipmama and Mamatron boards, but I rarely participated there.  I read blogs for maybe a year or so before I started blogging.  Dawn was one of the first blogs I read when I still lived in San Francisco and now we are real-life friends.  Most of the others I originally read are now long gone.

4.)  Any downsides to blogging?

Well, there was this incident.  That sucked.  There is also the double-edged sword of blog-drama.   It can be fun for a while, but then it just feels yucky.   I have always been someone who has the unfortunate tendency to take things a step or two too far then regret it later and blog drama certainly feeds that impulsivity.  I think I have managed to stay out of the fray for quite a while now.  Trolls used to bother me, but now they really don’t.  I moderate commenters who are just trying to be assholes, so that helps.  It also used to freak me out when I would meet people for the first time and they already know all about me because they read my blog.  Now I am used to it, so it rarely bothers me any more.

5.)  Do your ‘real world’ friends know you blog?

I used to keep it a secret, but I ended up with so many friends that I met online the two worlds began to overlap.  Right now, pretty much everyone knows about my blog except some relatives who are rarely online (though I suspect my sister will eventually find this — Hi there! Please don’t mention this to Mom and Dad!  You know they would not approve!).  Most of my friends know where they can find my blog if they want to.   I don’t link my name to the blog to protect my future job prospects (HA!) and to keep a tiny shred of anonimity for Mr. A and the girls.   

Originally published at American Family. Please leave any comments there.

Items I forgot to add to vacation by the numbers:

2.5 - hours of precious internet connectivity (wireless at the beach was VERY spotty) I wasted surfing the Jon & Kate plus 8 controversy websites.  Who knew that Aunt Jodi had been wronged and her sister was blogging in her defense?  Seriously, that is 2.5 hours I will never get back. 

9 - number of comments/looks that confirmed my mother’s dislike of people sharing all their personal dirt on the internet (when I was discussing the JK+8 shenannigans with my sister).  Ahem.  Glad she doesn’t know about this here blog, eh?

3 - number of people who could not refrain from commenting/staring at L in Charleston.  The first time, it was annoying.  The second time, I was visibly agitated by the gushing old lady.  By the third time, when a woman pointed rudely and called her very uninterested son’s attention to L at the aquarium and said “Look, Brendan!  Look at that baby girl!  Doesn’t she just look like a little doll!  She is just like a little china doll!  Just look at her!  Look at her!”  As if L was a fucking display like the fish.  Just as I was beginning to stomp over to tell her she was being rude when I saw my mom obliviously walking in my general direction.   My mom is NEVER someone who approves of a scene, no matter how justified.  So I stifled my rant and just moved to block the moron’s view of L.  These kind of interactions rarely happen at home, so I am wondering if my fine-tuned keep-away, what-do-you-think-you-are-doing-don’t-you-know-staring-is-rude and don’t-bother-my-kids vibe is only effective with a Midwestern audience.

16.25 - dollars earned by M on our trip.  The first day, I gave her 40 quarters.  Every time she whined, complained, threw a fit, or misbehaved, she had to give us a quarter.  I thought for sure she would come home broke, so I also gave her an additional 5 quarters every day.  It worked like magic.  The most quarters she lost in a single day was 3 and that was on the trip home when she was suffering from a bout of low blood sugar.  I also gave her 6 post-its to use when she wanted to ask “How much longer until we get there?”  Every time she asked, she had to give up a post-it.  After all the post-its were gone, she had to start paying a quarter each time she asked.  She only used 4 on the way to the beach and 2 on the way home.  For each post-it she didn’t use, she got another quarter.  Money was a good motivator for M, that is for sure.  A trip without whining was worth every single penny we spent.

Originally published at American Family. Please leave any comments there.

750- Miles.  Distance from our house to Seabrook Island.

5 - West Virginia style hotdogs at this restaurant.  Big thumbs up.  Difficult to find from the highway though.

2 - Nights in a town we dubbed “Asia of the South” while visiting a friend in North Carolina.  Seriously, all the signage in my friend’s apt complex was also in Korean.  Who knew?

3 - Days with my parents before Mr. A and I got extremely irritated.

0 - Arguments and confrontations about the irritation.  (Also, church discussion avoided.)

47 - Games played.  Wii tennis, Apples to Apples and Risk, mostly.

57 - Dollars.  Expensive rainy day visit to the Aquarium.

2 - Snails eaten by me.  Mr. A and I had dinner out at a nice restaurant.  Not fancy in appearance, but excellent food –though I could live without ever eating snails again.  (The first 4 chews of the snail were good.  The rest of the chews tasted exactly the way you would imagine snails would taste.  Ugh.)

103 - Dollars.  Cost of dinner and drinks at the fancy restaurant.

500 - Dollars.  Approximate total amount of money we spent on the entire week-long trip.  Thanks for financing the condo and the groceries Mom and Dad!

13 - Hours we will spend in the car tomorrow.  Fun. Fun. Fun.

Originally published at American Family. Please leave any comments there.

We seem to be facing a low-grade biblical style pestilence so far on vacation:

1.) L stepped on what we think is a hornet’s nest, was swarmed by about 30 insects and acquired two stings.  (Granted, this could happen anywhere, but it started us off on the wrong foot where creepy crawly things are concerned.)

2.) The chi-chi private-ish island where we are staying seems to be infested with spiders as big as M’s hand.  These things spin webs the size of a small house.   Seriously, that is about enough to keep me inside for the entire week.  That is, if I could be confident that they are not able to get into the house.  As of right now, I am not at all confident of that fact.

3.) I saw a cockroach the size of my thumb in the very fancy and clean condo kitchen.  Between the spiders and the roach, every time I enter a new room, as a precaution, I turn on the lights, stomp my feet a few times, and examine all the baseboards and corners of the room. 

4.)  Mr. A got stung by a jelly fish.   And yes, he did pee on it. Twice.  Actually, he peed into his cupped hand and splashed it on his leg.  Fortunately, we were near the beach club locker room so I didn’t actually have to watch this spectacle.   My niece also apparently brushed up against a jelly fish, but my sister would not allow anyone to pee on her.  She also rejected my offer of rubbing L’s pee diaper on little G’s leg.   G recovered despite her urine-free status a few minutes and one juicebox later.   Oh, and by the way, Mr. A claims the pee stopped the pain immediately.  (I didn’t tell him that Dr. Google claims it is not effective.)