Date:	2012-08-25 18:56
Subject:	*facepalm*
Security:	Public
Mood:	amused

So yesterday morning I volunteered to go pick up a bad-for-us breakfast from the local Sonic, because it is yummy. The 'cuda informed us that "I want my usual", to which her father took understandable exception due to a lack of "please".

"Your usual what?"

"My usual breakfast."

"You're missing a word, there."

"...Bacon?"

"PLEASE?"

"Please."

My aunt, for whom the 'cuda is named, used to describe me as "she's a good kid, she just crabsteps to the beat of a different drummer". Best summarized by the mildly exasperated note I found in a copy of the IQ test I took when I was six: "Asked child to draw a dog. Child insisted on drawing a horse; when I agreed to the horse, she drew a mare and foal and told me a story about them."

All of which is to say that my daughter did me proud in the obliviously-creative department tonight, when her week of Vacation Bible School wrapped up with a little tiny (cute!) praise-song recital. As allll the first-graders were making airplane arms, the child went *twirl* *pause to evaluate coperformers* *twirl twirl twirl!*

Second verse is sung, then back to the chorus and more airplane motions. The music lady is eyeing 'Cuda with a mixture of amusement and dread (no, this is not my constant emotional background, whydoyouask?). 'Cuda evaluates the situation once more and bows to conformity. Sorta.

*OKAY I WILL MAKE AIRPLANE ARMS BUT ALSO TWIRL WHILE I MAKE THEM*

*TWIRL TWIRL TWIRRRRRRRRRRL*

The scary thing is? I joke about sending her to drama classes, but when she gets enough into her role to forget herself and stop mugging for the adults, she's actually really good. Am skeert now. :)

Date:	2012-07-07 21:29
Subject:	Cats!!
Security:	Public
Mood:	amused

So once they left their three-day Why Did You Put Us In A Foreign House sulk, the cats went exploring. And discovered that the lower kitchen cabinets are 1) connected from one side of the kitchen to the other and 2) open-able with a paw. This has caused them to be proclaimed Kitty Territory Forever (I had no say in this particular proclamation).

All of which is fine if you know about it beforehand. Unfortunately, last week we had a plumber out to look at something. He opened the cabinet under the sink and was nearly knocked off his feet by a startled Flat Cat fleeing for the door. Various dumbfounded looks were exchanged (I mean, how do you deal with "I'm sorry you mistook my cat for a muskrat on meth; it's a totally understandable conclusion to draw"?) and about the time anybody could think of anything to say, Fat Cat strolled out of the same cabinet, gave the poor plumber his default "Hi, how ya doin'?" chirp, and ambled off to stuff his face.

The bad thing? Is that we've got to get this guy to come back...

Date:	2012-06-28 14:19
Subject:	Sigh.
Security:	Public
Mood:	disgusted

The next time there is a political upheaval that favors my particular perspective, I hope I handle it with the class and grace that my liberal friends on Twitter aren't.

Moved. Sitting in new house, listening to trains go by while the cats radiate Shock, Betrayal and Heartbreak through the walls at me.

It has to be through the walls, because they're nowhere to be seen.

More later.

Date:	2012-06-21 15:02
Subject:	I live! Sorta!
Security:	Public
Mood:	exhausted

Yes, I still exist.

Short version: we're moving 120 miles down the road to Kannapolis, a suburb of Charlotte, NC. Tomorrow. I have been frantically packing and cleaning for the last week-and-change and have therefore been completely out of contact.

I'm really looking forward to the move...my issues with Durham are, um, well-documented, and I've always loved Charlotte. I just want to have moved by this point. But, nice town, awesome house, and it's Not In Durham, so I could be living contentedly in a tent.

Moment of commentary: I love Mercedes Lackey's Elemental Masters/reworked fairy tale books. I do. Except for the part where she dedicated one of 'em to the runaway Wisconsin senators (listed reverently as "The Wisconsin Fourteen") and the most recent to freakin' Occupy. Which sufficiently soured my enjoyment of the sample I read that I will not be buying it in hardback, if at all. I'm sorry, I find myself sharply uneasy around a bunch of people who believe themselves to be morally Correct while citing the French Revolution. Juuuuuuust can't get into it somehow. I loathe it when people let their politics color their art (from the right, too; wish Dean Koontz would write fluffy bathtub-reading thrillers like he used to). Still miss Two Lumps, which I dropped after they went all Penny Arcade and followed an unfunny, controversial strip with one that was worse.

Last but not least: the latest from my daughter, who found the instructions for her pogo stick (YES, one of my relatives gave her a pogo stick, and no, I have not killed them for it YET) and read them one morning: "Mommy, do I weigh more than forty ibs and less than eighty ibs? The box says I can't ride this unless I weigh less than eighty ibs." Somehow I managed to keep a straight face...

Would anybody on my flist be willing to beta a short, spoiler-free and unabashedly fluffy post-ME3 fic? Working title "What I Did For Antidote Day, by Urdnot Mordin, Age 6". Which I think says it all re: plot and characters. :

My six-year-old daughter spent yesterday writing "Secrets of Droon" self-insert fanfiction.* On the sidewalk, with sidewalk chalk.

There may have been cuter things occurring on this planet at the time, but not to my knowledge.


*"This is a story about me and Eric and Julie from Secrets of Droon. It's a further adventure, because I don't know what the beginning adventure was yet. *deeeeeep breath* One day Gracie was memorizing her Bible books when she felt like she was being WATCHED. Mommy was watching her, Daddy was watching her**, but THAT wasn't it..."

**This says quite a lot about my child's perception of the universe and her relative place in it.

Date:	2011-11-22 17:50
Subject:	Um, NO.
Security:	Public
Mood:	irate

Seen on Twitter: "They were protesting, so they asked for it" is the new "she wore a short skirt, so she asked for it".

I have not seen analogy failure this total since my daughter tried to convince me that reaching page 85 of her math book was JUST LIKE level 85 in Warcraft so she shouldn't do any more today. I find it disrespectful to actual rape victims and ironic as hell on behalf of the ones victimized in Occupy camps.

And if I talk about it on Twitter, I will be shouted down by a host of people who went "oooh, pithy soundbite which mentions rape and is therefore UNASSAILABLE!!1!" I have absolutely no use for Occupy anyway; anybody who claims nonviolence while worshipping Michael "fuck small business" Moore and making veiled references to the French Revolution doesn't get anything from me but a snort of laughter and a resolve to lock my doors tighter.

Date:	2011-06-24 08:01
Subject:	I am a bad, bad censoring mommy...
Security:	Public
Mood:	grrrr...

I Was flipping through one of my daughter's fairytale collections last night, seeing what was short enough to be read before bedtime and what wasn't, when I came across Hans Christian Andersen's The Red Shoes. I skimmed through it to see if it was the way I remembered it, and 30 seconds later the scissors came out. Because gaaaah. Way to teach little girls that wanting things is bad, getting them on your own is worse, and disagreeing with your elders will get you tortured and killed. ('Cuda knows that disagreeing with this particular elder will bring the Wrath of Mommy on her head, and that is quite sufficient.) I know Andersen had Issues, and I can handle the ones on display in The Little Mermaid and The Steadfast Tin Soldier, but I am not repentant about hacking The Red Shoes out of the book.

She's a good kid and is smart enough to handle most things that come her way, but that story in a book full of things she thinks are supposed to make her happy...just NO.

(Meanwhile, if I had time and mental energy, I could draw some fascinating contrasts between The Red Shoes and Lois Bujold's Sharing Knife: Beguilement, because Lord knows Fawn wants. And fails, and gets right back on her feet and applies all that formidable willpower to making things happen right...)

Date:	2011-05-24 22:51
Subject:	...but does he have a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, and sunglasses?
Security:	Public
Mood:	giggling

So my daughter recently acquired a stuffed gecko, with which she is quite enthralled and which was having Adventures in the back seat while I was driving to pick my husband up this afternoon. I might have had some difficulty maintaining control of the car when I overheard "-and you can't stop ME, Mr. Bad Guy! I am a GECKO of GOD!!!"

...had to share.

...by the Dragon Age 2 reviewer explaining how he never, ever, ever liked Tolkien-inspired fantasy because "there was never anybody who looked like me", and never once having it cross his mind that heyyyyy, you can play a woman in this game.

Date:	2010-11-04 23:51
Subject:	CAT
Security:	Public
Mood:	busy

So I got a fair amount of boggled feedback on Facebook over my use of the word "obstreperous" to describe Fat Cat.

The thing you need to know about Fat Cat is that he is 1) companionable and prefers to share a room with the maximum number of humans in his family, and 2) very, very chatty. Most of his noises are best rendered as "frrp", which sounds like a muffled chirp and is surprisingly communicative.

So, I put my darling daughter to bed, and as we're snuggling and talking I hear the pounding of Fat Cat paws on the door, where he is demonstrating his displeasure at being locked out of the room containing two of his three humans. He forces the door open, lies down just inside the room, and says "frrp". (Which, in this case, indicates general pleasure at being where he's not supposed to be.) I let him stay in until we're done with bedtime.

"Move it, Livingston. Or you'll be on the wrong side of the door and start yowling and pounding within three minutes."

"Frrp," he says, informing me that this is a people problem and not a cat problem.

I am reluctant to pick Livingston up, as it's like trying to haul a large and hostile sack of Jell-O. So I nudge him, gently.

Mostly gently.

He wiggles away from my hand, slides into the bottom level of bookshelf, wedges himself behind a box, and blinks out at me. "Frrp." ("I can make this very hard. How much dignity are you willing to lose in one night?")

"Livingston, OUT." I get a hand behind his shoulder and roll him (literally) out into the floor, being vaguely thankful that he is sausage-shaped and easy to roll.

"FrrRRRp."("Wanna stay in HERE.")

I pick him up, haul him out into the hallway, and set him down on the floor. Faster than four paws and 30 pounds of flab really SHOULD be able to move, he has done an end-run around me and is sprinting for Gracie's bed, where he can hide against the wall until flushed out with a yardstick. (What? It worked LAST time.) I dive for the cat and catch him by the scruff right before he gets to home plate.

He hunkers down and glares at me. "Frrp." (Something else with four letters.)

This is generally the end of the evening's festivities. So I pick up the front end, pivot him on his hindquarters, and point him toward the door. He feints back toward the bookshelf.

"LIVINGSTON."

"Frrrrrrp." ("Fine then.") He stumps toward the door, pauses deliberately, and lies down on the carpet *just* short of the threshold, where the arc of the closing door will run right into his expansive butt.

"Frrp." ("You only THINK you've won. Tonight, I will sit on your head.")

Then I closed the door, and he stalked off, making menacing noises.

...so yeah. Obstreperous.

In an attempt to trim the Christmas budget this year, I have been experimenting today with homemade bath salts.

At this point, I am fairly certain that I has a flavr.

Date:	2010-09-19 19:17
Subject:	Nom
Security:	Public
Mood:	amused

So I'm doing low-carb for a while to kick up some very promising weight loss at the gym. (I'd like to do it long-term, as it worked very well for both Husband Unit and me, but it's just not feasible with 1) a four-year-old and 2) a down economy.) This is occasionally frustrating, but on the plus side, supper tonight was mushroom caps stuffed with cheese and wrapped in bacon. My privations, let me show you them.

Date:	2010-09-16 23:48
Subject:	I have just won World of Warcraft...
Security:	Public
Mood:	ecstatic

...Lich King 25 DOWN!

Date:	2010-09-13 16:33
Subject:	Dances with Strawmen
Security:	Public
Mood:	snippy

So I was reading this article on "why liberals are more intelligent than conservatives" (funny how the yammering about IQ tests and their history/bias/applicability completely vanishes when the IQ tests are saying something the author wants to hear) when I get to this quote: "one may reasonably define liberalism (as opposed to conservatism) in the contemporary United States as the genuine concern for the welfare of genetically unrelated others and the willingness to contribute larger proportions of private resources for the welfare of such others."

Um, no. One may reasonably define altruism that way, but one doesn't define liberalism that way unless one is having particular fun dressing up one's strawman to look all pretty and polished, in much the same way that one writes one's article in the oh-so-refined third person.

Silly me (but I'm conservative, so I'm stupid, you know!) thought that liberalism-when-contrasted-to-conservatism was a political orientation favoring increased state control and equality of outcome. Emotion-oriented hit pieces masquerading as factual articles annoy the hell out of me. Especially when you make such a gigantic logical error in a piece about intelligence.

Those planes didn't vanish into buildings, they were deliberately piloted into buildings with the intent to cause the greatest amount of physical and emotional damage possible.

Also, there were smoke, flames, plummeting masonry and falling human bodies. Those didn't vanish either.

Just sayin'.

Date:	2010-07-08 14:35
Subject:	Blizzard, I love you. Except when I loathe you.
Security:	Public
Mood:	infuriated

Sigh. I got into Cataclysm beta, and they have hit it out of the park. So much concentrated awesome in one game package, and enough details to make my Hordecore little heart skip a beat approximately once a level.

Then they do this (link to Husband Unit's blog for brevity and to spare everybody the link to a 2000-page (not post, PAGE) thread.) Short version: you will no longer be able to post on Blizzard forums without using your real first and last name. Slightly longer version: no female gamer is ever going to post on a Blizzard forum again because, by and large, we are not stupid.

And I'm very, very afraid that this will get even more intrusive, and then I'll have to ditch the account that I've had for five years. At this point, I'm just hoping I don't have to cancel before Cataclysm goes live.

Date:	2010-06-26 17:18
Subject:	My daughter's first Sue
Security:	Public
Mood:	giggling

Never let it be said that the urge for fanfic isn't natural...

My daughter has watched "Chicken Run" twice this week. She's come up and informed me that she's a chicken too, but SHE's the only one who can FLY. She's watching it again, and if I listen hard, I can just hear her whispering a narration where 'Cuda the Flying Chicken is leading all the chickens to freedom. This is cuter than words can describe.