tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-84488235161938780432024-03-13T05:56:54.953-04:00A Side of Kater TotsKater Totshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06367751420260748711noreply@blogger.comBlogger23125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8448823516193878043.post-67616655270299211882014-02-19T13:42:00.001-05:002014-02-19T13:50:05.904-05:00Gay Marriage.<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17.940000534057617px;">I'm so sick of hearing about "gay marriage."</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17.940000534057617px;">Traditional marriage is a man agreeing with another man that their families are of similar social standing and could benefit from combining their land and wealth. These two men would then arrange for a marriage between their very young children who may have never even met. They draw up a contract, and essentially "sell" their children to each other. The people - whether they ever love each other or not - are then married. Tada</span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; display: inline; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17.940000534057617px;">. The families go on, the wealth grows. The end.<br /><br />This romantic idea that marriage is all about "love" is adorable, and shows how awesome our culture has become as far as honoring individual wishes. It's still a civil, legal arrangement though, which makes it a government matter, not a church matter.<br /><br />I challenge every person who believes that marriage is a religious and Godly matter to get married in their churches, but never make it legal. I challenge them to give up every legal benefit they receive from the government and live their own lives according to their religious traditions, to give up all the benefits they wish to deny to others, all the benefits that have nothing to do with whether or not the church was involved in their wedding.<br /><br />Until people are willing to do that, we have to admit that marriage is more than just a solemn religious ceremony. It is a social construct supported by the government that cannot be limited to any one religious interpretation because that's grossly unconstitutional.<br /><br />Whether or not gay people gross you out, whether you think it's wrong, whether you're suppressing others because you're trying to suppress these urges in yourself that you despise, none of that matters. What matters is how we treat people, how we treat the people we disagree with especially, and to what lengths we go to support each other so that we're all standing on two feet on equal ground.<br /><br />If you don't think that two men can get married according to your tradition, keep your mouth shut. You aren't even married according to just your tradition the second you let the government step in and give you benefits. Time to move on to bigger battles, people, and stop finding fancy ways to say, "Neighbor, I hate you."<br /></span>Kater Totshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06367751420260748711noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8448823516193878043.post-51724491165064649802012-07-10T00:45:00.001-04:002012-07-10T00:45:08.281-04:00Fears FadedEvelyn was sitting quietly on the kitchen floor while I prepared her lunch. She had found some old slow nipples in a drawer that we no longer use and was playing with them, sticking her skinny finger into the tip and bending it, then pointing it at me with a goofy grin spread across her face. A small cry from the living room got our attention - August, who had been napping in the swing, was waking up.<br /><br />Evelyn stood up, nipple in hand, and walked into the dining room. She stood facing the living room and pointed at Gus, whose small whining cry was escalating into something more. "Bubba," she said in a very matter-of-fact tone. It was one of the few baby words we ever used with her, a word much easier for her to learn and say than "bottle" would have been. She proceeded to walk purposefully to the swing, holding the nipple as if a bottle were attached and she was ready to offer it to soothe his cries. Mama, after all, does it all the time and it seems to work.<br /><div>
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All the fears I faced during my pregnancy with my son, now three months old, have faded, bleached by the sun of our loving and carefree lives together. Our days are full of love and play - the jealousy I feared Evelyn would harbor never materialized, the slight neglect of her physical needs while I took care of her infant brother was never a credible threat. The truth to the question every child with a sibling eventually ponders, one I didn't quite think I was ready to face, that question as to whether or not parents did in fact have a favorite or preferred child, proved itself negative. My confidence, the size of a small seed, grew into a fruit tree that cast a fragrant shade on the otherwise hot summer days of motherhood. <br /><br />I live in an almost constant state of awe. I watch my children interact with one another and the world around them free of the bonds of what we mistake for knowledge - prejudice, fear, stereotypes, disgust. Living without a concrete sense of the concepts of "right" and "wrong," children invariably default to what is right - love, plentiful and eternal. If only we all could live with such innocence and optimism.<br /><br />August sits in his bouncy chair at times, watching his sister as she goes about her daily business of dancing, playing, drawing, and talking. At random intervals, he is the recipient of her attention - she runs in tiny steps from across the room, arms thrown out ahead of her as she yells "Hug!" and stops short so that she can gently place her arms around his shoulders and lower her head to his chest. He often finds himself with a toy between his feet, or a bottle of lightly scented lotion beneath his nose, things that Evelyn finds enjoyable and wants to share with him so that he, too, might find enjoyment in her simple pleasures. His hair is often gently stroked, his eyes kissed, his hands held. When he cries, he might find a pacifier thrust in his face by well-meaning little hands, or maybe an empty nipple.<br /><br />I don't expect it to always be so peaceful. I'm realistic, and I know that the docility between siblings is a temporary thing that seems to harden into something a little more competitive, a little more frustrated with age. However, every small interaction, every loving connection humbles me and I want to learn from them, the masters of humanity, what it is to be so unmarred by this cruel world. I want to encourage it to last as long as possible, though. <br /><br />Today, I was holding Gus and couldn't bend down. Struggling with my feet, I tried to kick the remote onto the couch or somehow balance it on the to of a foot so I could reach it and change the channel from droning political updates on a news channel to something more uplifting. Evelyn put down her crayon and walked over, picked up the remote and handed it to me. She then went back to drawing lines on her blank sheet of paper and all I could do was stand there and contemplate her gesture. I have so much to learn.</div>Kater Totshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06367751420260748711noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8448823516193878043.post-13943233017074275482012-06-09T12:32:00.002-04:002012-06-09T12:47:59.023-04:00A Jaded Society<div>
Like many children in my generation, I grew up with violence that poured forth from the box of light in the living room. It was disguised in colorful cartoons with talking animals who could be victimized in one scene yet live and breathe in the next; it was invited in when movies with titles like "Hellraiser" and "Nightmare on Elm Street" were rented and popped into VCRs at sleepovers where parents kept out of the way. </div>
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Who knows how many dramatized murders I, or anyone else, have seen. <br />
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I've always had a gross fascination with gore. I grew up on a steady diet of horror movies in dark rooms, eyes wide with excitement and fear. I was reading yellowed, well-worn Stephen King novels when other kids my age were just discovering RL Stein. I couldn't read enough about real-life serial killers - especially if the books had pictures.</div>
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There's a dark side to humanity that exists beneath the relatively still surface of average life, a curling, fetid reality that many of us will never experience, though we may gaze into it briefly when we read the news. I was enthralled by it - an innocent fascination that wanted to peel back the pretty wool over our eyes and see the grit we spend so much time denying.</div>
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It was a morbid curiosity that brought me to the dark corners of the internet where you can see anything you want to see, and don't want to see. I still can't shake those cobwebs loose.</div>
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Let's just get it out there: I've seen a snuff film. I've seen a few, actually. <i>Quite a few. </i>They come with little stories attached to make you feel better about what you're watching, like being told that the man being burnt alive by his neighbors was a rapist so he deserved it; it's okay to watch. The men being beheaded in the Middle East were part of a war, something we accept every day; it's okay to watch. The man cutting himself open and pulling out his intestines was on drugs, and he did it to himself; it's okay to watch.</div>
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We've seen all of this before anyway, haven't we? We just call it something else. We call it "Rambo." We call it "The Shining." We call it "Saw," we call it "Cannibal Holocaust," we call it "Natural Born Killers." </div>
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But we haven't seen it before,<i> really </i>seen it. No one reading this, I'm sure, has ever murdered anyone.</div>
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<b>The Dnepropetrovsk Maniacs</b></div>
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In Ukraine, in the months of June and July of 2007, two 19-year-old men went on a killing spree. They killed two people the first night, and wouldn't stop until 21 people were dead. One of those people was Sergei Yatzenko, and I watched him die.<br />
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His death wasn't scripted; he was not an actor. Sergei Yatzenko was just a man living his life - he was a father who had survived recurring bouts with cancer enjoying a beautiful summer day on his motorcycle, not knowing that his innocent life would come to an end that very afternoon at the hand of two thrill-killers who would record the gruesome scene, their laughter serving as a soundtrack.</div>
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The video shown in court as evidence was brutal. For four agonizing minutes, Yatzenko is beat in the head repeatedly with a hammer, his face broken and puckered like cracked glass. He would lapse in and out of consciousness, gasping and sputtering through the blood that pooled in the grooves of his collapsed skull. The boy who recorded it would laugh; the attacker would remark that he could see the man's brain, which he proceeded to stab with a screwdriver. </div>
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For how hardened I thought I had become, for how thick I would have sworn my skin was, I couldn't watch much of it. My blood pressure dropped, my vision blurred, my skin grew cold. I was shaking, despite the hot summer air hanging thick in my eleventh-floor apartment. My throat pinched shut, and I almost vomited.<br />
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That day, as I lay on the floor cradling my face in my hands trying to do the impossible - to un-see what I had just seen - was the last day that I ever looked at anything like that again. My "fascination" and "morbid curiosity" had left forever. <br />
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<b>Luka Rocco Magnotta</b></div>
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Fast-forward to ten days ago when dismembered body parts started their journey through the Canadian mail system, sent by a narcissist who would do anything for notoriety. He recorded himself killing, dismembering and violating his boyfriend, a 33-yr-old student from China named Lin Jun. He posted it to the internet, and it has been viewed almost one million times, an innocent man being murdered again and again with every person who clicked the link.</div>
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People treated it like entertainment. They recorded themselves watching the video and posted their reactions on YouTube. Go ahead and search for "One Lunatic, One Ice Pick Reactions" and you will see an assortment of faces: Some mortified, terrified; others, apathetic; some people laughed or joked. <br />
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I was innocent and curious once, but now what I see disgusts me. I see otherwise good people crawling into the shadows of the internet where lurk all manner of perversions, a place that used to only exist in filthy dark alleys, a place where only the depraved were brave enough to go - now available to all at the simple touch of a button. I see souls leaving bodies piece by piece, but leaving behind a living shell this time. I see people laughing at brutalities none should ever witness. I see a society becoming jaded to these horrors, and it terrifies me.<br />
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<b>Conclusion</b><br />
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I had to stop writing this blog halfway through as the memory of what I had seen had given me a panic attack. I urge you all not to seek out the Magnotta film. You will never be the same.</div>Kater Totshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06367751420260748711noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8448823516193878043.post-33303718449519999532012-05-31T21:23:00.002-04:002012-05-31T21:27:54.137-04:00On Easter Sunday<br />
Easter Sunday is the quintessential Christian holiday that summarizes our faith quite succinctly: Jesus lives. It is the day that he rose from the dead after suffering and dying for our sins. The Son of God, the Son of Man who preached acceptance over persecution and, through love, brought countless sinners to redemption met his end nailed to a cross after a humiliating trial and a series of dehumanizing punishments that broke his body, but not his spirit nor his conviction. When he rose from the dead on that holy day, his divinity was validated and his power over death and sin fixed in the world forever.<br />
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His resurrection was not lost on me as I labored in pain that quiet morning. It feels significant that my son should enter the world on the anniversary of the day that Christ shook it to the core.<br />
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That was nearly two months ago, when he made that passage through a tunnel of darkness into a world of light, when he first breathed into his eager lungs the cool air of an early April morning. The first time that we stared into each other's eyes, both of us so new in the moment - a moment shared by many families every day but still unique in each experience. The first time he lay upon my chest, wrapped in my arms in an embrace symbolic of the nurture, of the protection I would fight to offer him for the rest of his life. <br />
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We fell into a love more pure, more expressive, more meaningful than any other relationship in the world could offer - the love of a mother, started nine months prior, for the child that God in his wisdom had given her, the whole and perfect human that sought refuge in her womb and would someday seek refuge in her wisdom. Our allowance as participants in the divine act of creation is among the greatest blessings the Lord could ever give us.<br />
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It is said that as the family grows, the love multiplies. It does not divide itself, taken away from one to share with another. Emotionally and spiritually it is a concept that seems easy enough to understand, but until it is experienced, it is a foreign word whispered into deaf ears. The birth of a first child is momentous, an occasion in which your heart swells until it is unrecognizable, until it fills every thought and dream and consumes you. The birth of a second child is experiencing this expansion one more time, the growing of something already so big that you can't imagine it could ever stop or ever be contained. It defies all we know of reality: Inside, we are bigger than we are outside. Inside, we overflow.<br />
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I look into my son's dark eyes, contemplative, thoughtful, ever-searching, and I see a soul so beautiful and tender beginning to break the chrysalis of a lifetime, ready to slowly emerge and dry its wings in each second that passes. I see the future in the curves of his face, the angles of his features, as I am called to watch carefully each slow frame of his emergence - pupae to butterfly, new moon to full, acorn to mighty oak. Infant to adult. Human becoming, and human being.<br />
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On Easter Sunday, the Son rose from the dead, my son emerged into the world, and for the third time, I was born again.Kater Totshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06367751420260748711noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8448823516193878043.post-24968602442030506872012-03-21T22:14:00.001-04:002012-03-21T22:14:25.458-04:00With Love, WorryWe were sitting in the pediatrician's office after my daughter's one-year well baby check. She was in her diaper sitting in her daddy's lap, playing with a magazine, completely oblivious to what was about to happen. I sat across from them, biting my lip and tapping my feet as the familiar pool of anxiety started to bubble in my stomach. <br /><br /><i>She has no idea,</i> I thought to myself, looking at my beautiful daughter with her big, innocent grin. <i>She has no idea that the worst has yet to come. </i><div>
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A light tapping on the door preceded the entrance of the resident who was going to give our daughter her vaccinations, followed closely by a flamboyant and talkative nurse who was there to guide him through it. We agreed to let the young man give our daughter the injections as part of his training, though we shouldn't have. The nurses who normally give the vaccinations get it over with within seconds: Stab, stab, stab done. The young man in the clean white coat took his time, and it seemed that just when the shock of one needle wore off and her crying wavered for even a second, another needle poked through her tender skin and the whole painful, scary process was repeated. </div>
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Seeing the tears streaming down her cheeks as she sniffled and choked on her own misery was too much to bear, and I broke down with her. We looked into each other's eyes, a baby in pain and her empathetic mother. I held her close, apologizing and covering her in kisses, wet tears salty on my lips. She eventually regained her composure but it took me a little more time. <br /><br />Then I wondered to myself, <i>How can I go through this kind of stuff all over again? </i>as I rubbed my belly, bulging with a son ready to be born within the next three weeks.<i> </i>We packed ourselves up and took our daughter, now giggling and waving at strangers, to the lab to have her blood drawn as the bitter cherry on top of a horrible day. <i>How?</i></div>
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<b>The Love, and the Worry, Grow On</b></div>
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We're curled up in bed together, happy to bid good-night to a long day. The fan blowing gently, my fingers tapping on the keys, the occasional car driving by are the only sounds that permeate the silence as we lay here, Evie's back pressed against my stomach, both of my children sleeping motionless. I know that these nights of perfect peace are soon coming to a close as my son's entrance into this world draws nearer, and I want to breathe in every second that I can, as if I could store them in my lungs so that with every frustrated sigh that will soon come with sleeplessness, I can release these memories and know that peace will be restored with time.</div>
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I never doubt that I am blessed; I never doubt that these people created brand-new in the dark stillness of my womb have been gifted to me for a reason. With each child that I carry, I learn that love isn't a commodity of which we have only a set amount to mete out into the world, that it isn't decimated by each additional object of affection. It is a living thing, like a tree that continuously grows and bears more fruit to feed those who hunger. I never doubt that I will have enough love to nurture my children.</div>
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Still, I get scared. If love is a tree, its bitter cousin, worry, is a locust. One hungry insect can't take down something mighty and strong, but it can feast and grow and reproduce and flourish right alongside its food source. I'm learning this, too, that worry is a parasite that grows in the shadow of love. We worry the most for those we love.<br /><br /><b>Pain Like None Other</b></div>
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When Evelyn is scared, when she's hurting, when she's confused, it is a pain like none I have ever experienced in my life. It isn't my personal pain, shallow and fleeting, not a pain that I understand and can calm on my own. It is a pain that eats through my heart, a primal emotion that doesn't thrive in a place that my reason can access - I can't think my way through it, I can't remove the sting. I am powerless against it, and in its face I crumble. <br /><br />I know that I'll be weaponless in the battle with my son's fear, too. I know that I'll feel his misery and helpless watch him suffer through eyes clouded with tears like I did with Evie today; that somewhere inside, I'll be crushed. I'll never know from where parents hemorrhage, and I'll never know where to apply the pressure to stop it, but I think if you don't bleed with your children, figuratively if not literally, then you live with a barren plot where otherwise empathy would grow. </div>
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I don't know if I'm completely ready to face this. I don't know what the future holds: If I'll suffer through postpartum depression again despite my preemptive attack with medication; if my son will keep me up all night as he cries with colick; if my daughter will feel anything negative as my attention is diverted to care for her brother; if, if, if.<br /><br />All I know is that I have a love whose roots run deep and wide, and though there may be some holes chewed into the leaves of that tree, it will feed us for a long time. </div>Kater Totshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06367751420260748711noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8448823516193878043.post-2044045810510545752012-03-14T22:27:00.002-04:002012-03-14T22:31:27.194-04:00We Don't Have a Problem<div>
<i>Warning: I have more testosterone in my body than I've ever had before, and it makes me angrier than usual. Which is a tough accomplishment, given my propensity toward anger. If you have no sense of humor, if you can't detect sarcasm, and if you take yourself way too seriously and are guilty of having said anything to me that you might find in this blog, you may want to skip this one.</i></div>
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I feel sorry for the next person who tries to give me unsolicited parenting advice.<br />
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I've been doing this for a year now, and through most of that year, I've been pregnant on top of it. I'm getting a pretty good idea of what works for my family and what doesn't. I'm beginning to resent the random implications that I can't possibly know what's good for us simply because it doesn't fit the blueprint of someone else's life. <br />
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Most of the judgment I receive falls into the sleep category. Because we co-sleep, some people automatically see it as a "problem." It might surprise them to know that we, in fact, don't have a problem, despite everyone trying to convince me we do.</div>
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"<b>She needs a space of her own</b>." She has one. She doesn't like it. Most kids don't actually like sleeping alone; just because they learned to shut up and deal with their discomfort alone in the dark doesn't mean that they enjoy it. Why do you think they call the cry-it-out method "sleep training"? If sleeping alone was something that came naturally to children, you wouldn't have to "train" them to do it.<br />
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"<b>Don't you want space to yourself?</b>" Nope, not really. I don't move at all in my sleep, so I don't need a lot of room, and since I'm unconscious, I'm completely unaware of "all that space to myself" that I'm not using, and not missing, anyway. I gave birth to my daughter; she's more important to me than my "self" anyway. I don't consider her as taking up valuable real estate on my bed.<br />
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"<b>What about when your son is born?</b>" We have a co-sleeper that attaches to the bed and he'll sleep in that just like his sister did til she was big enough to sit up on her own. From that point on, he'll be treated the same as his sister: He'll be given opportunities to sleep in his crib, and if it doesn't work, we'll make room for him. If there's anyone who knows how to deal with sudden changes and come up with solutions on the fly, it's a Gemini woman. We're adaptable - where other people apparently see these huge brick walls blocking their way, we see an opportunity to practice our ladder-building skills. Set them up around me, and I will tear them down every time.</div>
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"<b>What about your husband?</b>" Well, let's see. He has a queen-size bed to himself on which he can sprawl, watch TV til all hours of the night while staying up late to work on some computer program, and he gets sleep without being interrupted by a crying baby who hates being in her crib. I'm not going into detail about anything else. Trust me, he's fine with it.<br />
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"<b>You're going to be sorry you didn't get her into a crib sooner.</b>" What is there to be sorry for? That what we do works for us? That we both sleep soundly through the night? That I didn't put my needs before hers, that I didn't let her cry herself to sleep in a dark lonely room in what essentially amounts to a wooden cage? I'm supposed to be sorry that you're uncomfortable with our nighttime routine? Nope, not going to happen.<br />
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That's just the tip of the iceberg. <br />
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What gets me is that people act like we have some kind of problem. Sleep experts would say that we have the opposite of a problem: My daughter gets a full night's sleep completely uninterrupted (except on those gassier nights where she has to wake me up before she farts herself back to sleep) - 11.5 hours of healthy sleep cycling that leads to better physical, intellectual and emotional development during the day, as well as a healthier appetite and a more even temperament. That's the only important part: The quality of sleep. Not how you get there. <br />
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If your kid falls asleep at midnight and gets up at noon, and you're both sleeping on the couch, you don't have a problem. If your kid falls asleep in his crib at 7:00 p.m. and doesn't get up until 6:30 a.m., you don't have a problem. If my kid falls asleep in bed with me and we both get a full night's sleep (except me, but that's my own fault for staying up way too late sometimes), <b>we don't have a problem</b>. <br />
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The other thing I'm incredibly sick of hearing is about how close my children will be in age. Here's every single thing anyone has ever said to me on the subject summed up in one sentence:</div>
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<b>That's awesome they'll be so close, but that's going to be so hard!</b></div>
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Yeah, it is pretty awesome that they'll be so close in age. Thanks for finally saying something positive to me about it. That makes you a bigger person than the socially-awkward pediatrician with the open schedule that my daughter has to see when her normal doctor is too booked up. <br />
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Do you think if Evelyn was five, you'd be saying, "That's awesome she'll have a little brother! This is going to be so easy!" No, you wouldn't. Being the parent of a young child is never easy, and I don't expect it to be. Yes, I know it's going to be a challenge and I knew that before you told me. I mean, I'm having a newborn all over again - it wasn't easy the first time, and it certainly won't be easy the second time. I'm armed with knowledge that I didn't have before (acquired by actually parenting, not listening to people's crappy advice - imagine that) but I also have a small daughter to chase. I expect a challenge, and since I love my family and my babies, I'm looking forward to it. <br />
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I appreciate and respect my friends, I really do. But that can only go so far when the same basic courtesies aren't extended to me. In short, don't talk to me about how co-sleeping must be some kind of horrible hassle, and don't tell me that my children are going to make my life miserable. I'm at the end of my already-short patience with people acting like assholes.</div>
</div>Kater Totshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06367751420260748711noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8448823516193878043.post-34677470579704943712012-02-22T00:36:00.000-05:002012-02-22T00:36:49.731-05:00Random Thoughts, My Favorite Kind.<b>Frankenblog.</b><div><b><br />
</b></div><div>I'm resurrecting my blog. Me writing this now is the equivalent of Dr. Frankenstein exposing his monster to the lightning and shouting "Live!" in an overly-dramatic tone. Let's hope I'm more successful with reanimation than the good doc.<br />
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<b>Co-Sleeping.</b></div><div><b><br />
</b></div><div>Quite possibly the most hilarious parenting decision a person can make.</div><div><br />
</div><div>Actually, it was less of a "Decision" than it was a "Result". Evelyn didn't want to sleep in her crib, and I didn't want to lose a week's worth of sleep trying to get her to sleep in her crib, so naturally she ended up in bed with me. Hence, the <i>result</i> of my exhaustion and laziness. </div><div><br />
</div><div>It started off cute enough - we would go to bed and lay in the dark until she fell asleep, which facilitated some of the best moments of my motherhood thus far, like the time when she turned toward me, pressed her little nose up against mine and started stroking my cheek. (Actually, looking back on it now, that might have been some kind of plot to get me to sleep fast so she could go shopping online or something.) <br />
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Then, the farts began.<br />
<br />
They started out quite innocent. Sometimes, I would question whether I actually heard anything or not as a tiny toot squeaked by. Gradually, though, they became these big productions complete with their own dance numbers that would involve intricate twists and turns. Caution: Audience members in the first three rows might get punched. The show would always end with a gaseous eruption the likes of which would make a drunk frat boy blush. Encore? Sure, why not!<br />
<br />
Log-rolling is one of her favorite things now. She has limited space on the bed between the wall and my pregnant belly, so she maximizes it by rolling into a rock or a hard place and then manages to somehow continue rotating her body. Sometimes, she ends up on her stomach with her butt in the air (Act II of the fart show, perhaps), sometimes she ends up on her back in a funny super-hero pose. Rarely, she ends up on her side curled up to me like I remember from our nights of sleep when she was much less mobile. <br />
<br />
This of course leads to a lot of interesting ways for me to wake up: Suffocating in pee-smelling diaper butt is just one of the ways I've been woken up before. Far less hilarious and much more adorable is when she's sitting next to my face, patting my arm and saying "Mama?" with a huge grin. <br />
<br />
Some people think co-sleeping is dangerous (mostly the crib industry), some people think it's weird (because putting your baby in a box in a dark, lonely room to sleep is completely natural), and some people just plain don't get it. Clearly, none of these people have ever woken up to a baby's forehead pressed against theirs, eyes shining with anticipation for them to wake up and provide copious amounts of morning kisses without ever having to leave the bed first.<br />
<br />
<b>My son has no name.</b></div><div><b><br />
</b></div><div>I'm 33 weeks pregnant with a little boy who mercilessly beats upon my bladder and treats my diaphragm as his own personal trampoline while I'm trying to sleep. Tums have become their own food group to counteract the burning sting of near-constant heartburn. I'm collecting stretch marks like they'll be auctioned off at Christie's for millions of dollars someday. My belly button pops through my shirt like a turkey timer and braless, my breasts dangle to my knees. I gained nearly a third of my body weight in six months, I have no center of gravity anymore, I can't sleep and I still have to chase a nearly 1-yr-old child around all day regardless of whether I'm getting light-headed from random drops in blood pressure or if I'm suffering a hot flash. I pee every hour but I can't poop; I'm hungry but my stomach is too smashed up inside me to allow me to eat enough to satisfy myself. My hormones are out of control and I'm starting to get extremely uncomfortable Braxton-Hicks contractions that make standing up and breathing at the same time seem like some kind of magic trick.<br />
<br />
And my husband still won't give me the final say on my son's name.<br />
<br />
<b>In Erie.</b></div><div><b><br />
</b></div><div>I'm in Erie right now visiting family. My mom can't sleep in the same room as my dad because he snores so loudly, so she's in the other guest room across from the one the baby and I are staying in. I can hear her doing that "I'm going to sigh just loud enough to let you know that I'm still awake and I disapprove of you being up this late despite the fact that you're nearly 28 years old and can make the decision for yourself of when to go to bed" kind of sighing, so I guess I'm done updating. <br />
<br />
...for now. Live, little blog! LIVE!</div>Kater Totshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06367751420260748711noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8448823516193878043.post-10486589031129767302011-11-25T00:26:00.000-05:002011-11-25T00:26:04.616-05:00Motherhood and Tears: Part Three<i>This is the final part in my story of postpartum depression. I'm sorry that it has taken me so long to finish my story, but I've been enjoying life too much to have enough time to sit and post. Obviously, my story has a happy ending, and for this I am eternally grateful.</i><br />
<br />
<b>The First Night</b><br />
<b><br />
</b><br />
That first night spent in my parents' house was horrifying. I was finally in a safe place, one that threatened to blow me apart before it glued me back together as I started to revert into a helpless child, and in the safety of the house in which I grew up, in the company of the people who care most about me, it all fell apart. That first night, I should have slept: My mom was sleeping in the family room with me and the baby, and was taking care of her throughout the night. I lay awake, tossing and turning as I could feel my nerves crashing in me like waves, anxiety gripping my throat and knocking the breath out of me only to let up enough for one big breath before it crushed me again. <br />
<br />
I watched the starry summer sky turn from nighttime's inky infinite blackness to the velveteen indigo of dawn, watched the leaves on the maple in the backyard rattle with a gentle summer breeze. When morning finally came spilling through the skylights, I opened my eyes and realized I had slept for at least an hour.<br />
<br />
I remember my mom getting up when the baby cried, remembered hearing the squeaking of the rocking chair as she gently soothed her granddaughter back to sleep. I knew Evelyn was safe wrapped in her grandmother's arms, and a potpourri of conflicting emotions emerged within me. Feelings of guilt followed feelings of freedom like a shadow, behind comfort crept fear. I was off the hook, it seemed, as someone else was able to step in and parent for me before I started to fail miserably. The suggestion that I could focus on myself was the most damning of all, as what I had to focus on was hideous.<br />
<br />
<b>The Road to Wellness</b><br />
<b><br />
</b><br />
I tearfully scheduled an appointment with my old family doctor. When I showed up, I was clearly a wreck. My hair was wet from the first shower I had taken in days, my eyes puffy and red above my tear-stained cheeks. My face was hollow and sunken, as I couldn't eat or drink. I felt I couldn't even stand on my own two feet. Being upright made me dizzy, walking made me hyperventilate. I had just nursed my daughter for what would be the last time, and my mind was spinning with fear as she had never taken anything from a bottle, and could I really give up this soon? Three months of nursing was all I could offer my daughter?<br />
<br />
It wasn't a long appointment. I was started immediately on an SSRI I had taken previously for a panic disorder that plagued me most of my life. The doctor and her nurse both went out to meet my Evie in the waiting room and simultaneously tell my mother how lucky I was to have her and how happy they were that I was back with family through this. <br />
<br />
The pills took a week to work. In the meantime, I spent most of my days curled up in my parents' bed under the fan, hyperventilating while my mom rocked the baby in the hammock, or bathed her, or did all the things I should have been doing in those days. I went to the hospital with my then-fiance to visit his step-dad, but I ended up napping off a panic attack in the car. When I was feeling a little better, I went shoe shopping, but had to nap off another panic attack when we got home.<br />
<br />
Most of these days are lost to my memory, and I'm glad they are. They were full of moments where, in all my inadequacy, I just wanted to hold my daughter but was terrified because I kept seeing myself opening my arms and just letting her go. Other times, I would feed her and immediately want to hand her to my mom because I was afraid of myself, afraid of her. <br />
<br />
I ended up doubling my dosage of the medication, and the rest is pretty much history. It took a little while to feel confident mothering again, to hold my daughter close without fearing for her safety. Much had changed in the time I spent at my parents' house: Evelyn was on formula, and I had gone through the painful process of weaning cold-turkey, which hit me hard emotionally as well as physically; she didn't eat as often which gave me more time to actually do things with her; she was sleeping through the night, so I was able to sleep. <br />
<br />
When my mom finally brought me back home, she stayed a few days. My fiance and I went to a baseball game, but I had a panic attack. It was the last one I would have. A few days later, my mom left and it was back to life. Not life as normal, because "normal" up until that point was anything but. <br />
<br />
<b>Babies and Postpartum Depression</b><br />
<b><br />
</b><br />
There is a basic scale used to gauge how a child is dealing with her mother's depression. There are infants who are still happy to see their mother, who still prefer her to all other caregivers, who light up when they see their mom and who get nervous when they don't. They are the lucky ones. There are infants who are indifferent to their mothers, as they haven't been harmed but have been emotionally neglected by their mothers as they dealt with debilitating depression. Then there are the babies who are afraid of their own mothers, who cry in fear when they see them.<br />
<br />
Evelyn was one of the lucky ones.<br />
<br />
Despite all the fear and doubt and insecurity I suffered, the horrible thoughts that haunted me, I held my daughter close, and often. I nursed her on demand. I played with her, being able to cover up momentarily my lack of interest in anything. When I suffered a panic attack, I would just sit in the rocking chair holding her. She was young enough that this was interesting, thankfully. I fought with every last fiber of my being to make sure that Evelyn never suffered because I did.<br />
<br />
<b>Today</b><br />
Right now, my daughter is almost nine months old and we spend every hour of every day together, playing, reading, giggling, taking walks. We co-sleep, sometimes comfortably where she falls asleep stroking my face as I run my hand through her hair, sometimes uncomfortably, like when she wakes me up by smacking an elbow in my face or farting really loudly. She's hilarious, and I've never been happier with where my life is now. We always wake up with smiles on our faces, start each morning with generous hugs and kisses before we go downstairs for First Breakfast. It's almost as if nothing ever happened at all, and I like it that way.<br />
<br />
I've never been depressed in my life, and I never understood depression. I never understood how someone could be sad for no real reason, how a person couldn't just turn their attitude around. But I learned the hard way that it's real and it's terrifying, and it swallows you alive. I've gained perspective and empathy, two treasures found in an otherwise empty pit. Nothing will ever be perfect like we plan, but there is no path unworthy of walking, because the end always justifies the means. Somehow.Kater Totshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06367751420260748711noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8448823516193878043.post-81563195309754647912011-08-24T10:16:00.000-04:002011-08-24T10:16:57.701-04:00Motherhood and Tears: Part Two<b>"I think there's something wrong with me."</b><br />
<br />
The words rolled out of my mouth like thunder in the distance, echoing in the room as they surged forward and then dissipated into the atmosphere. <br />
<br />
"What do you mean?" JM responded as he wrapped his arms around me as tears started streaming down my face. So, I told him.<br />
<br />
Earlier that night, Evelyn had woken up to nurse. For the first time in a long time, I had actually been sleeping and my first response to this innocent cry for nourishment was to feel complete anger and frustration, followed by extreme guilt for ever allowing myself to feel that way. I picked her up gently, stroked her beautiful soft hair, and nursed her silently in the dark. When she fell back asleep, I gently put her back in the co-sleeper and just stared at her. <br />
<br />
It was when I finally laid my head back down to try to sleep again that the bad thoughts had started. I don't want to recount them here because even now they give me such shame and guilt, even though I know I wasn't in control of them. They were thoughts of hurting her, and they were ridiculous on all counts, but they were terrifying. That's when I knew something was wrong. It wasn't the panic attacks or the constant worry that got me; it wasn't the interest I was beginning to lose in life entirely and even my daughter that convinced me there was something wrong. It was a series of thoughts that occurred late at night that I couldn't drown out even with prayer as I lay trying to sleep with my perfect baby next to me.<br />
<br />
Instantly, I felt terror. It grew inside me like a sapling on a time-lapsed video, jerkily stretching it's bare arms through all my muscles and organs, tickling me with its thorns and trying to uproot my very sanity. I thought to myself, "If you can't even control your thoughts, how long will it be until you can't control your actions?" <br />
<br />
I'm glad I don't suffer from any over-inflated ego, from any undeserved self-confidence that would have tried to convince me that I was strong enough to deal with this on my own and keep it buried. It was in my weakness that I confessed to my fiance my feelings and fear that night, that made <i>my </i>problem <i>our</i> problem, that got me help.<br />
<br />
"Are you thinking about hurting the baby?" he asked me. Truthfully, and with tears, I answered, "Yes." <br />
<br />
"Would you?" That question caught me off guard. "No," I told him with honesty and conviction. "But I'm scared."<br />
<br />
<b>Seeking Help</b><br />
<br />
The next day, he went to work as usual and I sat in the rocking chair as usual, waiting for him to come home, rocking the baby and trying to read her a story. We both were worried enough, though, that he came home early. As he watched me crying on the phone and hyperventilating as I spoke to a nurse at the pediatrician's office asking her if there was anything I could take that would be safe during breastfeeding, he offered to drive me to my parents' house back in Erie so I wouldn't have to be alone during the days, and he encouraged me to stay there with the baby until I got better.<br />
<br />
It was upon arrival at my parents' house that things slipped even further downhill. Being there made me more aware of the situation. I was once again a child helpless against the big scary world searching for reassurance and safety in my mother's arms. <br />
<br />
That night, I sat in the living room alone while my father slept and my mom was out for a little bit. My parents had purchased an adorable pack n' play for Evelyn to sleep in when she visits, and it was set up next to me as I sat on the couch. I was holding her, but I didn't feel like she was actually in my arms. I stared blankly at the television, bright cartoon characters speaking words I wasn't interested in. <br />
<br />
"What would happen if I just shook her!?" The thought came out of nowhere. That's what they do; these thoughts are like rats, burrowed between the walls and beams of your mind, and they come out when things get their darkest. I turned Evie around to face me and I had my hands around her arms. <i>This is insane, </i>I thought to myself, but anxiety crept up on me and I quickly laid my baby down in the pack n' play and called my mom, asking her to come home. I didn't want to be alone; I had trusted myself, but I felt it slipping.<br />
<b><br />
</b><br />
<b>"Why would anyone want to hurt their child?"</b><br />
<br />
<b> </b>Postpartum depression doesn't care who you are. It doesn't care that you have infinite love to offer your child, it doesn't care that you've never done anything violent in your life. It doesn't care that you have patience to spare, an endless and well-researched knowledge of child development and the desire to encourage your child's growth with love and understanding. It doesn't care that your favorite smell is the scent of your daughter's hair or her sweet baby breath, or that your favorite feeling in the world is her tiny hands gripping at your face while her smile is so big that keeping her lips together couldn't possibly contain it.<br />
<br />
Postpartum depression can happen to anyone. It happened to me. <br />
<br />
For years, I wanted to have a child. It wasn't until two years ago that my fiance finally agreed that, while we wouldn't actively try, we wouldn't <i>not</i> try either. While I didn't keep charts of my cycles and calculate the most auspicious days for fertilization, I also didn't do anything that would even hint of trying to keep a pregnancy from happening. I loved Evelyn before she was even in the womb.<br />
<br />
I cried almost every time I heard her heartbeat at my prenatal appointments; I talked to her and referred to her by name during my pregnancy. I hardly ever used to words "me" or "I" anymore, but rather "we" and "us." <i>I</i> wasn't going grocery shopping, <i>we</i> were. She'd kick me, and I'd laugh at poke her back. She'd hiccup, and I'd rub my stomach gently hoping that she could feel the pressure and be reassured that hiccups weren't so bad. Despite throwing up all day for weeks, losing two jobs, having almost constant heartburn that would keep me up at night, low blood pressure after I ate, peeing every fifteen minutes and getting stretch marks, I never once felt any anger or regret or even remote annoyance at my pregnancy or my daughter.<br />
<br />
After giving birth, I wanted nothing but to hold her. To feel her weight in my arms and breathe in her newness while counting her breaths was my favorite past-time. When the nurses came to take her from me in the hospital to do whatever checks they do, I would wait up nervously til my baby was returned, swaddled tightly and sleeping, and I'd eventually end up with her right back in my arms where she belonged. <br />
<br />
I'm a good mom, and I wanted to be a mom more than anything in this world. I love my daughter with a passion I've never felt before in my life, the kind of raw emotion that convinces you that nothing in this entire world matters except your child and you would tear down anything that stood in your way to keeping her healthy and happy.<br />
<br />
And still, I got postpartum depression. <br />
<br />
It doesn't happen only to women with preexisting character flaws; it doesn't happen only to women who didn't really want their child in the first place; it doesn't happen only to women who are messed up to begin with. Postpartum depression doesn't care who you are; it can happen to anyone.<br />
<br />
Trust me when I tell you that those of us who suffer or have suffered from PPD don't <i>want</i> to hurt our children. These thoughts literally come out of nowhere and you can't control them, and they horrify us more than they horrify anyone else. That's our child.<br />
<br />
<i>To be continued in Part 3...</i><br />
<br />
Kater Totshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06367751420260748711noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8448823516193878043.post-56055997344330086382011-08-23T16:09:00.000-04:002011-08-23T16:09:36.178-04:00Motherhood and Tears: Part One<i>This is the story of my brief, yet terrifying, struggle with post-partum depression, a condition that is often misunderstood by those who never suffered it. In sharing this story, I hope to put a human face to this disorder to help people better understand what it is, and that it can happen to anyone. I also hope that any women who are pregnant now or who just delivered their babies can learn from my experience, and if they recognize the signs in themselves, can become empowered to seek help and support as soon as they can.</i><b><br />
</b><br />
<br />
<b>After Birth</b><br />
<br />
Five and a half months ago, I was laying in a hospital bed watching a screen where my contractions were monitored in jumping black lines that skidded slowly across a white grid, nervously shooting up into jagged mountains of pain only to slowly come back down every minute or two. I laughed, noting how I would never know the contractions were happening had it not been for that monitor as I made a last-minute decision to get the epidural when the nurse convinced me I didn't do enough research and that the medication I would receive wouldn't affect my daughter, who's heart rate beat across its own white grid in a comforting red line. Despite the rhythmic pounding of the walls of her womb-home closing in around her, she remained as calm and steady as I had. <br />
<br />
My mother, father, and of course fiance were all in the room to welcome Evelyn into the world. My dad was sitting on a couch as far from the action as possible; JM was next to me holding my hand and peeking down once in a while. My mom, however, was situated where she could get the best view, and when she started skipping in place and threw her hands up to her face, I knew that she could see the baby. She commented several times on how happy she was that she was allowed to experience the birth of her first grandchild, and Oh! Look! I can see her black hair!<br />
<br />
It took four fruitless hours of pushing before the doctor brought in the vacuum. She explained to me that I could push for several more hours and still make no progress, as Evie's head was tilted to a point that made it nearly impossible for her to get through the pelvic bone. I cried when she explained to me that if the vacuum didn't work, I'd have to have an emergency Cesarean section. I was determined that it wouldn't come to that, and with the help of the vacuum, we delivered a healthy, gorgeous child into this world.<br />
<br />
For two weeks, my mom stayed with JM, Evie and myself to spend as much time with her new granddaughter as possible, as well as wait on me hand and foot as I laid in bed nursing, unable to move thanks to all the stitching and subsequent swelling I endured. The post-partum period was extremely scary for me, worse than anything I experienced during my pregnancy and birth: I was afraid to use the bathroom, afraid to shower, afraid to walk down the stairs. I was in so much pain, and I was light-headed. <br />
<br />
My emotions were on a roller coaster as well from the massive change in hormones. One minute, I was absolutely elated to be holding my daughter in my arms; the next, I realized how exhausted I was and I'd catch a glimpse of the Japanese tsunami on the news and think of all the people who won't hold their daughters or granddaughters anymore and I would bawl.<br />
<br />
It's normal to experience emotional highs and lows as your body regulates itself and you settle into the new role of mother. It's one of the most life-changing experiences a person can go through, and coming to terms with an entirely new purpose in life takes a little time. They call this period the "baby blues," and most women can expect to feel it.<br />
<br />
I stopped crying over everything within two weeks. I instead filled my days nursing my daughter in her rocking chair, nervously checking over her and counting diapers and calling the pediatrician's office every other day with questions as I discovered new things. "Is her soft spot supposed to sink in this much? I think she might have thrush. Can I bring her in to weigh her so I know she's getting enough to eat?" Every time she cried, I'd try to nurse her. I was absolutely terrified that we weren't doing it right, that she was always hungry. Feeding her, worrying about feeding her, became my life.<b> </b><br />
<b> </b><br />
Within two months, I was having panic attacks. I didn't leave the rocking chair hardly ever, even to feed myself. The effort would cause me to hyperventilate, so Evelyn and I sat in that chair all day and watched television. She didn't realize anything was wrong, as she was asleep most of the time, a luxury I myself rarely got. You can imagine how boring it was being a shut-in; soon, I lost interest in nearly everything as my life was a continual loop of tossing and turning at night, not eating, rocking my daughter and nursing her while worrying the entire time. <br />
<br />
One Monday night when my daughter was just barely three months old, I knew something was wrong.<br />
<br />
<b>Not Just the Baby Blues</b><br />
<br />
My fiance and I were sleeping in separate rooms, as I had decided to keep Evie in our bedroom in a co-sleeper attached to the bed. She woke up every two to three hours, and he needed more sleep than that to be able to function at his job. So, he slept in the guest bedroom where he could unwind watching some TV as I caught a little sleep here and there between fits of the baby's wakefulness.<br />
<br />
I walked in to that guest room at 4:30 a.m., feeling like a ghost. I hovered in the doorway watching him sleep for a little while, hoping he'd wake up on his own as if by some miracle. When he didn't, I lurched into the dark room, illuminated by a small blue light on his laptop, and placed my hand on his shoulder. I changed my mind and walked away, but returned within minutes and sat on the edge of the bed and gently shook him awake.<br />
<br />
"I think there's something wrong with me," I said as my eyes welled up with tears. <br />
<br />
<i>To be continued...</i>Kater Totshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06367751420260748711noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8448823516193878043.post-17613818772850333952011-08-10T17:23:00.000-04:002011-08-10T17:23:41.132-04:00Spiders In My HouseOften times when I come across a spider in my home, I take a few minutes to watch her as she walks carefully across her web, tenuously checking each strand to see that it is placed impeccably along her web. I lose myself in thought as the philosophical questions regarding the spider's ultimate fate arise within me.<b> </b><br />
<br />
<b>The Life of a Spider</b><br />
<br />
A spider's nervous system is surprisingly simple for the complex tasks it allows a spider to accomplish. We know that spiders are capable of learning cause and effect, and when something is amiss in their webs, or if something they are doing to fix a web is only contributing to the problem, they drop their present task and instead focus on a different approach to overcoming the problem. <br />
<br />
We can't say for certain whether or not a spider feels pain, but if they do, we can say with some certainty that they attach no emotion to it as humans do. They simply do not have the ability, as their nervous systems are composed of two very basic ganglia, or clumps of nerve cells, and no brain capable of true thought. <br />
<br />
They are fascinating to watch, though. As artists in the medium of silk, they weave fantastic webs as they work their spinners behind them, and deftly move their eight legs across those thin strands like an expert dancer. The slightest disturbance in a web sends them into a frenzy, either fiendishly approaching the disturbance hoping for nourishment, or running away to avoid destruction. Those who don't spin webs are equally fascinating, as they roam across our windows, talented hunters ready to pounce upon their next meal.<br />
<br />
Most spiders wouldn't be considered menaces, as their diet consists of all the other insects that share our home like unwanted roommates. I often find the hollowed-out exoskeleton of house centipedes in the webs in the basement, and breathe a sigh of relief knowing there's one less of them trying to crawl up my leg as I do my laundry. Some spiders are dangerous, such as the brown recluse and the black widow, the venom of which is unapologetic and indiscriminate. But for the most part, the spiders in our homes are harmless.<br />
<br />
<b>Is it right to kill a spider?</b><br />
<br />
Life is here because our Creator, in all His wisdom that is often times out of our realm of understanding, has decided that the life is meant to be here. All living beings are under this divine purview, and all the non-human creatures were put under the stewardship of mankind. How far does this responsibility extend? Are we then allowed to do to these creatures whatever we feel, or must there be some ethics involved?<br />
<br />
Certainly, we must remain ethical in our treatment of the creatures around us to prevent needless suffering as well as we can. But if a creature is incapable of higher thinking, is incapable of fear, feels only rudimentary pain, like a spider, does it truly suffer?<br />
<br />
Is it right, then, to kill a spider?<br />
<br />
<b>Conclusion</b><br />
<br />
I don't know if it's right or not to kill a spider, and usually by the time all these thoughts have run through my head, I'm already carrying a tissue to the trash containing what was once a spider building a web in the corner of my house, and am on to my next task. They're creepy.<br />
<br />
Plus, they started this war by hanging out in our beds.Kater Totshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06367751420260748711noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8448823516193878043.post-83993278336921438922011-07-27T12:41:00.000-04:002011-07-27T12:41:36.400-04:00On MotherhoodOn March 3, 2011, I walked into the unfamiliar territory of motherhood to find that my surroundings were far more pleasant than they were on March 2, or any other time before that. I thought that my lawn was green enough, but the comforting emerald carpet that was the grass of being a parent was much brighter. It always seems to be that way on the other side, but this time I was able to leap the fence.<br />
<br />
Motherhood has changed me in ways unimaginable. It's supposed to change you. Watching my daughter grow from that first blurry black-and-white image of a twitching fetus into the smiling, inquisitive infant she is today has taught me more than all my combined 27 years of experience in this life could offer. Nurturing another human being requires patience, a sense of humor, humility and love. These things in my past life simply didn't exist as they do today if they ever really existed at all.<br />
<br />
I call my life before June 27, 2010, the day I found out I was pregnant, my past life because I feel as though I was reborn into this new role, as if all my years spent living as a gluttonous caterpillar meant nothing to the butterfly I am today. I ask nothing of my past but that it fade over time; it is the rug upon which I stand tall today, it's pile crushed beneath my feet as I now walk with purpose.<br />
<br />
Watching my daughter discover life every single day, watching her live with wonder and awe as an innocent person not yet jaded by the cold realities this world can thrust upon us, makes me appreciate humanity more and gives me great hope. We all start this way, tiny and helpless, and regardless of who we are and what we have become, we can always return to such innocence and simple grace in the presence of a child. <br />
<br />
We all have a lot to learn about how we treat each other, and my best professor in this necessary lesson has been my daughter Evelyn with the help of her assistant, Motherhood. I thank God every day that He has given me this opportunity, and I see Him every time I look into my daughter's smiling eyes.Kater Totshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06367751420260748711noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8448823516193878043.post-22630629223529505162011-02-04T22:21:00.000-05:002011-02-04T22:21:08.065-05:00Quick Update: I'm Still AroundThe whole family is sitting here in bed with me as I write. My fiance is sprawled next to me working feverishly on his laptop; the dog is fast asleep, serving as my slightly twitchy footstool; the baby is reclined comfortably in my womb, struggling against her increasingly tight living conditions with bumps and kicks against her walls. And here I am, slightly uncomfortable at nearly 37 weeks pregnant with an ever-expanding bowling ball in my stomach threatening to take over my entire 5'0", previously 115-pound frame. <br />
<br />
Nights like this have become the norm, calm nights spent enjoying my microcosm with reruns on the TV, crackers and cheese on the nightstand, and the random cuddle with either of my two boys: The hairy one with four legs, and the not-so-hairy one with only two. <br />
<br />
Tonight seemed like a good time to update my blog, which I have been neglecting for a variety of reasons. First of all, pregnancy brain is a very real condition that reduces an intelligent woman into a one-track-minded idiot who has to read every sentence she types at least three times to verify that it does, indeed, make sense. Second, I haven't had a whole lot of time to write between washing baby clothes and crib sets, preparing a nursery, trying to maintain a halfway-decent home and peeing every five minutes. Finally, I just feel that I haven't had a whole lot to say. Which is surprising, considering all that is going on in the world. I'm just very focused on my body and my baby lately, so focused that I don't have the energy to complain at any great length about much. (And complaining used to be my favorite!)<br />
<br />
I had great hopes for this blog, and still do. I don't want it to be relegated to the blog graveyard I've created for myself which floats somewhere in the darkest reaches of the internet, blogs whose names have been long forgotten and only ever had three updates. So I'm updating today, albeit a boring update, to keep my motivation and to remind my few followers that I'm still here and will continue to be. Just have a little patience with me as I make this huge transition from Just Me to Mother.Kater Totshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06367751420260748711noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8448823516193878043.post-56315050038370878762011-01-04T12:58:00.000-05:002011-01-04T12:58:41.667-05:00Fear and the Pregnant Woman<i><span style="color: #666666;">Apologies forthwith: I have a pretty severe case of "pregnant brain" which will probably cause me to lose my perspicacity halfway through this post. Babies take up a lot of brain power. ::drools and stares::</span></i><b> </b><br />
<br />
<b>Dark Undercurrents</b><br />
<br />
Each stage of my pregnancy, loosely marked by monumental milestones rather than by weeks, has been full of varying emotions. Love, hope and joy primarily take center stage as I marvel at what my body is capable of doing with two simple cells, and what those two simple cells were capable of doing on their own as they rapidly multiplied. However, there is always that thready vein of doubt that cascades across the otherwise positive emotional landscape like a dark and churning river that overflows in a deluge of anxiety and fear.<br />
<br />
In the early weeks, it was the low-hanging cloud of miscarriage and my prescription medication. It evolved into questioning every pain, every pulling of ligaments and pressing of nerves. Slowly it transitioned into fears of financial stability, which eventually gave way to fears of proper nutrition and my ability to physically and emotionally handle all the new discomforts life was throwing my way, like a diminished lung capacity being exacerbated by tiny feet River Dancing their way through my rib cage, the heavy pressure on my bladder that causes me to rush to the bathroom every time I stand up, the anxiety that comes with wondering when labor will start and what to expect. <br />
<br />
But the most pervasive fear that has moved expertly through every phase of my pregnancy was "Am I doing the Right Thing?" <br />
<br />
<b>Self-Doubt</b><br />
<br />
It's hard for anyone to really know what the elusive Right Thing is. From the second you tell the world you're pregnant, you're opening yourself up to unsolicited advice and veiled criticisms, conflicting information from family, friends, medical personnel, perfect strangers, studies and statistics. Even the information you personally seek out can be more offensive than enlightening, thanks to the great wide world of the internet and mothers who use it to tear down rather than build up women looking forward to the unique experience of birth by telling them how inferior their decisions are, in so many words, and accusing people of being uneducated and misinformed when they come to different conclusions and make different choices.<br />
<br />
It's not hard to feel like you're backed into the tiny corner of a very dark room with a single light-bulb hanging from a frayed wired swinging back and forth ominously. Just you, your fetus and a sudden craving for pickles and meatballs on your pizza. <br />
<br />
I fell victim to the self-doubt encouraged by others but that I alone am responsible for incubating. I was made to feel guilty or stupid by well-meaning friends and family for some of the choices I have made and decided to share, and I've been told all that I "should" be doing that maybe I wasn't. Most people have been helpful, but many have also been downright disgusting, preaching like ministers from the pulpit of pregnancy perfection. If those people have taught me anything, they taught me that humility is much more an endearing trait than hubris.<br />
<br />
<b>Looking Ahead</b><br />
<br />
Content that I'm doing everything I can for my baby while she's still in the womb, at 32 weeks I now have new fears working their way through the already-swelling serpentine river of anxiety. Fears for the near future about labor, breastfeeding and weaning, washing cloth diapers, remembering to take videos of every single little thing so I can fill up a hard-drive of memories that I can embarrass my daughter with later. Fears for the distant future about if I'll be able to instill a consistent set of values into my child, whether we'll be able to afford to keep her out of the public school system here, just trying not to screw it all up.<br />
<br />
I like these fears better, because they keep me looking to the future. They motivate me and give me hope, and it's a lot easier to filter out the bullshit because while I've never been pregnant before, I have been a kid and I was raised by great people. I can draw from that experience before I ever let anyone make me doubt myself again.Kater Totshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06367751420260748711noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8448823516193878043.post-70505448702619198382010-12-23T00:20:00.002-05:002010-12-23T00:33:52.716-05:00Christmas Magic<b>The Ghost of Christmas Past</b><br />
<br />
I remember being a wide-eyed child, mystified by the magic of the Christmas season and losing myself in the overwhelming sensory experiences. The glowing TV brought animated holiday specials into my living room where I sat with the sugary remnants of cookies still clinging to my teeth and the smell of fresh pine from a brightly-lit tree hanging in the air. The anticipation, seeing that empty spot beneath the tree and wondering what colorful packages Santa Claus would leave behind, would leave butterflies in my stomach as I lay awake in the darkness of my room, peering out the window hoping to catch the telltale glow of Rudolph's nose in the cold winter sky.<br />
<br />
As I slowly grew older, the magic began to wear off. Driving out in the snow to pick out the perfect Christmas tree was no longer met with the excited passion that it once was, nor was decorating it. No longer did I rely on the innocent dreams of Santa Claus to get me through those long nights before Christmas morning; rather, I would hope to get everything on the list I drew up for my mom. I eventually stopped watching for Rudolph, and I no longer had the Pavlovian response to the sound of bells that I used to when I was convinced it was the sound of Santa's sleigh.<br />
<br />
In my most recent years, Christmas has meant very little beyond driving back to my hometown and eating dinner with my family. It went from magic and innocence to forced obligations and consumer guilt. It was a gradual decline nearly 26 years in the making. This year, however, is different.<br />
<br />
<b>The Practice Christmas</b><br />
<br />
This year is my practice Christmas. It's our first holiday season together in our new home, our last Christmas together before our baby arrives. Compelled by this overwhelming urge to create a traditional base on which to build our celebrations for years to come, this Grinch heart grew three sizes and decided to celebrate Christmas again.<br />
<br />
Our tree reaches the ceiling, decorated in bright lights of multiple shapes, sizes and colors and glittering, shining bulbs; the Nativity scene I remember from my childhood has a place of honor in my living room surrounded by pine garland and poinsettias. Four stockings hang from the chimney, two red and two green, beneath a bough of pine, candles and a candy jar full of red and green M&Ms. The kitchen and the bathrooms all have holiday-themed hand soaps, and random Christmas trinkets decorate the first level of our house.<br />
<br />
Wanting desperately to draw on my own cultural background for traditions, I contemplated baking Polish favorites, but marathon baking isn't one of the traditions I'm quite ready for yet. Gingerbread was on the docket, but I had to take into consideration the traditions of the rest of my family: I can't bring cookies to our Christmas Eve celebration because I've tried that before and no one eats them, as they're all used to my grandmother's sweets spread and any deviation from the norm is sacrilege, and on Christmas day, the palate of my almost-five-year-old twin cousins is more suited to the Rice Krispies treats* and cake balls I decided to make.<br />
<br />
This year, Americans will spend an average of $741.00 on gifts. On Black Friday alone, the 212 million eager consumers that flooded retail establishments looking for bargains spent an average of $365.34 to a total estimated tune of $45 billion... in one day. This is one tradition we shirked this year, and I hope we can continue to limit ourselves in the future so the true meaning of Christmas isn't lost in the bowels of the economy as it so often is.<br />
<br />
We'll see how well I can keep that promise when my little girl starts staying awake at night to watch the sky for Rudolph like another little girl I used to know.<br />
<br />
<i><span style="color: #666666;">*I made traditional marshmallow squares, and a nice seasonal minty chocolate variation, as well!</span></i>Kater Totshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06367751420260748711noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8448823516193878043.post-14399434893315973642010-12-15T20:54:00.005-05:002010-12-17T14:28:35.114-05:00Another Frivolous McDonald's Lawsuit<b>Personal Responsibility: Sue Whoever You Want, You Still Won't Get It</b><br />
<b> </b><br />
<b> </b>In 1992, Stella Liebeck burned herself on McDonald's coffee. The 79-year-old from New Mexico had the coffee sitting between her thighs when she removed the lid to add cream and sugar. When she removed the lid, she spilled the coffee on her lap and received extensive scalding burns. She sued McDonald's because their coffee was "too hot."<br />
<br />
In August of 2002, the Pelman family of New York sued McDonald's for not disclosing their nutritional information plainly and clearly and causing their daughters to become obese. Jazlyn Bradley, a 19-yr-old involved in the lawsuit, said that her regular diet included an Egg McMuffin in the mornings and a Big Mac meal at dinner. Ashley Pelman had a taste for Happy Meals, and ate them three to four times a week. Despite the obvious detriment to anyone's health that burgers and deep-fried potatoes cause, Bradley's father claimed "I always believed McDonald's was healthy for my children."<br />
<br />
In 2003, Judge Robert Sweet in New York threw out a case brought by Ceasar Barber which also blamed McDonald's (as well as Burger King, Kentucky Fried Chicken and Wendy's) for his poor health. He claimed that because of their food, he, as well as others involved in this class-action suit, suffered from high cholesterol, coronary heart disease, obesity and diabetes.<br />
<br />
These three examples of lawsuits brought against McDonald's and similar corporations showcase the scapegoating that overly litigious Americans with no sense of responsibility turn to when they have no one to blame but themselves.<br />
<br />
<b>You Can't Be Trusted</b><br />
<br />
Fast-forward to 2010 when, surprise surprise, San Francisco essentially bans Happy Meals from being sold in the city. Requiring meals that include toys to meet specific nutritional criteria, specifically having less than 600 calories (35% or less of which from fat) and less than 640 milligrams of sodium, half a cup of fruit or three-quarters cup of vegetables, puts McDonald's and other fast-food locations in quite a bind.<br />
<br />
On the surface, it's a nice noble gesture to protect children from obesity and marketing. But when you dig deeper, it's actually a government regulation to protect children from what San Francisco believes must be horribly inept parents. It's actually quite offensive when you stop to think about it. What they think they're saying is: We don't trust corporations to the do the right thing. What they're really saying is: We don't trust you to make the right choice. The illusion of freedom isn't very comforting.*<br />
<br />
<b>Frivolity, Thy Name is Lawsuit</b><br />
<br />
And that brings us to that other titular frivolous lawsuit. Apparently, McDonald's is such a powerful force in the life of Monet Parham of Sacramento, California, and her two children that she essentially needs a restraining order because she just can't function as long as McD's is in her life. (As tempted as I am to draw a correlation between the fact that she works for the bankrupt state of California and is probably looking at a lay-off and the timing of her lawsuit, I won't...)<br />
<br />
"We have to say no to our kids so many times and McDonald's makes that so much harder to do. I object to the fact that McDonald's is getting into my kids' heads without my permission and actually changing what my kids want to eat." The lawsuit continues by suggesting that McDonald's is engaging in sleazy, illegal marketing techniques and that they have a responsibility to essentially parent your children. They compare McDonald's to tobacco companies, the latter of which can't market to children.<br />
<br />
Let's take this one step at a time:<br />
<br />
<i>Saying No.</i> Saying no is part of being a parent. If McDonald's of all things is making that hard for you, your issue is much larger than a toy being sold together with a cheeseburger.<br />
<br />
<i>Marketing Without Permission.</i> Most people who are presented with McDonald's marketing experience it in their own homes on television. When you plop your kid in front of a TV set, you give McDonald's, as well as a slew of other companies, permission to advertise to your child. It is your responsibility to monitor what they come into contact with, not the advertiser.<br />
<br />
<i>Sleazy, Illegal Marketing Techniques.</i> They equate what McDonald's is doing what tobacco companies are not allowed to do. Fast food isn't illegal; smoking under the age of 18 is. I shouldn't even need to clarify how completely different these two things are and how one clearly isn't illegal. Oh, unless you live in San Francisco, of course.<br />
<br />
<i>Corporations Parenting Your Children.</i> It's not their job. That's your job. If you don't want your child eating a Happy Meal, you don't drive them through McDonald's. It's that simple.<br />
<br />
<b>It's Common Sense, People</b><br />
<br />
You don't put a flimsy paper cup full of scalding hot coffee between your thighs and expect it to be stable. You don't eat cheeseburgers and deep-fried potatoes every day and assume you're going to be healthy. You don't feed your kids food you don't want them to eat.<br />
<br />
When will people stop blaming everyone else for their own shortcomings? Do we all really need to be paid indecent sums of money for being incompetent at taking care of ourselves?<br />
<br />
<div style="color: #666666;"><i>*Thankfully, and surprisingly (though maybe not surprisingly; California has a record of ignoring votes), Mayor Gavin Newsome vetoed the bill in November. </i> </div>Kater Totshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06367751420260748711noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8448823516193878043.post-67246336010298629512010-12-08T12:06:00.003-05:002010-12-08T12:19:46.333-05:00Sarah Palin's Caribou-boo?<b>Sarah Palin's Alaska</b><br />
<br />
As if former Governor of Alaska and failed vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin's life wasn't already like a reality show unfolding before us in the news, she now adds to her repertoire of media showmanship an eight-episode travelogue on TLC that documents what is presented to us as typical Alaskan life.<br />
<br />
"Sarah Palin's Alaska" set a network record when it debuted to an audience of five million. The second episode wasn't so lucky, seeing a whopping forty percent of viewers turn away. Not only does the show have to compete with Sunday Night Football, but it also competes with the general anti-Palin atmosphere that hangs over a large portion of the American audience. With their curiosity sated, people just stopped watching, except those in the "over 57" age bracket, who now make up most of the 3 million people who still watch the show.<br />
<br />
Admittedly, the show is boring. There is no real discernible plot, nothing that carries one episode to the next, and the gaping holes left where there should be charm, character and warmth are instead stuffed with dramatically dragged-out family interactions and what look like stock aerial shots of Alaska's unique landscape. Throw in a political quip here and there, a moment or two of real human emotion and Sarah's constantly impeccable "prom hair" (as Sarah's daughter, Bristol, puts it in one episode) and the show is pretty much what you expect it to be.<br />
<br />
<b>PETA</b><br />
<br />
The largest animal rights organization in the world with over two million members, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is a media machine in its own right. Boasting a sizable repertoire of celebrity supporters and a nearly <a href="http://www.peta.org/about/learn-about-peta/financial-report.aspx">$35 million dollar budget</a>, they manage to reach hundreds of thousands if not millions of people a year with various campaigns, advertising and through their members' personal outreach.<br />
<br />
Ingrid Newkirk, founder and president of PETA, combines mainstream guilt with radical activism nearly seamlessly, preaching that "animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, or use for entertainment" and aligning with radical terrorist groups like the Animal Liberation Front while simultaneously marketing her ideas to children with wide-eyed cartoons and internet games. <br />
<br />
<b>The Clash</b> <br />
<br />
Because of Sarah Palin's penchant for putting animals in her sights, PETA has put Palin in theirs. Referring to her in 2008 as the "moose-hunting, fur-wearing, pro-aerial-wolf-gunning governor of Alaska," PETA pretty much marked her as the enemy and while never really attacking her politics, she has been fair game for ridicule ever since.<br />
<br />
Take, for instance, the most recent episode of "Sarah Palin's Alaska." Sarah and her father travel to the arctic circle to hunt caribou, a large game animal used as a <a href="http://www.adfg.state.ak.us/pubs/notebook/biggame/caribou.php">food source</a> for many Alaskans. Despite several fumbling attempts behind the trigger and a few errant bullets, Sarah manages to proudly bag one.<br />
<br />
This same scene happens nearly 22,000 times a year in Alaska when families who have limited access to grocery stores, and therefore limited opportunity to partake in the $142 billion-a-year meat market, make the perilous trek to the frigid northernmost reaches of the state to put true free-range, organic food on the table. You'd think an organization committed to ending the cruel practices involved in factory farming would be able to appreciate, at the very least, that the animals hunted for food aren't treated cruelly at all in their lives until that final day.<br />
<br />
However, PETA's Vice President Dan Mathews released this statement yesterday:<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">"<i>Sarah seems to think that resorting to violence and blood and guts may lure people into watching her boring show, but the ratings remain as dead as the poor animals she shoots.</i>"</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">You could easily rephrase this to read:<br />
<br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"<i>PETA seems to think that resorting to nudity and celebrity endorsement may lure people into joining their ranks, but their membership still consists of less people than those who watch Sarah Palin's Alaska.</i>"</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Marketing to the carnal side of humanity, whether sexual or violent, isn't new and to attack another for utilizing a similar technique is a textbook example of hypocrisy. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Frankly, PETA is out of touch with the reality that exists between New York City and San Francisco, in spirit if not in geography. People have hunted to sustain themselves since time immemorial, and while many of us now have access to chewy blocks of tofu at our local Whole Foods Market (many of whom still don't eat it), this just isn't an option for others. At trying to deny reality and keep its followers in a shadow of idealistic ignorance, PETA excels.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Sarah Palin, of course, has her own faults that could (and have and continue to) fill entire blogs if one was so inclined. However, in this respect I have to commend her for giving people a glimpse of a life in a harsh land that they might not otherwise see, regardless of what it entails. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div>Kater Totshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06367751420260748711noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8448823516193878043.post-16336596389623183482010-12-05T02:31:00.001-05:002010-12-05T02:39:15.684-05:00The Facebook Phenomenon<b>Raising Awareness - A Half-Assed Approach to Curing the World's Ills</b><br />
<br />
White. Not that it's any of your business.<br />
Yellow... but it wasn't when I bought it!<br />
Black and lacy. Rawr!<br />
Non-existent. Woooooot!<br />
<br />
Thanks to Facebook and the tireless efforts of women across America typing fiercely on their keyboards to update their status with the color of their bra, breast cancer has been eradicated. Okay, maybe not, but at least the Susan G. Komen Foundation and other breast cancer-related charities took in record numbers of donations. Well, that's not entirely accurate. Let's just say all those status updates, all those little black letters sent into cyberspace, at least raised awareness... of bras.<br />
<br />
It's what I call the Facebook Phenomenon: The ability of a social networking site to make otherwise apathetic people feel like they care about a cause and are doing something to help. Every one of those little status updates makes one a member of A Movement, however brief and inefficient said movement is, and satisfies the ego temporarily. "Raising awareness" is the typical phrase used to justify the lemming behavior of the Facebook activist.<br />
<br />
Raising awareness can be an important first step toward advocacy of any kind, as you can't work to fix a problem you're unaware of. However, "raising awareness" is only effective when it actually educates people and gives them a reason to care about the cause. This never actually occurs in Facebook memes.<br />
<br />
"Red polka dots zomg!!!!111!!!!!1!!" versus "Breast cancer is the most frequently diagnosed non-skin cancer in women. The older you are, the higher your risk. Be sure to schedule a mammogram!" Guess which one the copy/paste messages sent to women encouraged them to post?<br />
<br />
The breast cancer thing is gone and done with, left as quickly as it arrived. It was fun for a little while. It made a brief comeback when women were encouraged to post where they like to put their purse (which raised awareness of sexual innuendos and how perverted our friends can be, yet again missing the entire "breast cancer awareness" mark). But where one fad takes leave, another must take it's place. Let's now say hello to cartoon characters. I mean, child abuse.<br />
<br />
<b>Another Facebook Failure</b><br />
<br />
The basic status reads something like this: "Help join the fight against child abuse! Change your profile picture to your favorite cartoon from your childhood! Copy and paste this status. The goal is not to see a single human face through December 6."<br />
<br />
Let's ignore the fact that Child Abuse Awareness month is April and that cartoons from my generation were primarily violent, which of course would be counter-productive.<br />
<br />
Let's focus instead on how much time people spent Googling images of cartoon characters instead of Googling local child abuse advocacy groups; let's focus on how many conversations revolved around the merits of Ren & Stimpy and how cartoons have changed since we were young instead of how many conversations revolved around signs of abuse and who to call if you suspect someone you know is being abused. Let's focus on the omission of facts and statistics, but the addition of several YouTube videos of cartoons from the 80s.<br />
<br />
<b>Today, Child Abuse. Tomorrow... Who Knows?</b><br />
<br />
The five-minute humanitarian on Facebook knows deep down that their efforts are accomplishing absolutely nothing. Some of them are even embarrassed, changing their pictures so they're not left out but quickly justifying it with lame excuses when rational people question the merits of Facebook fads and their ability to actually make a difference.<br />
<br />
Some of them are even more annoying, as this anonymous poster can illustrate quite well: <i>I think that it helps raise awareness to the cause and that people can make a difference. I have contributed, I have worked with children in an emergency abuse and neglect shelter, and I am now a CPS worker (how many people will hate me solely because of that?), and I still proudly put that as my status to raise awareness and inform others-the sense of nostalgia had not really crossed my mind</i>. In this case, this handy little fad gave this person a soap box upon which to stand and raise awareness of... well, herself. I'd love to go on about the blatant ego stroking ("I expect to be hated for all my tireless efforts"; "Oh, I didn't even realize this hinted at nostalgia... ... ...") but that's a whole different blog.<br />
<br />
So, the question is: How many times can we replace the phrases "breast cancer" and "child abuse" with other issues before people realize that it really doesn't matter, and that they'll return to blissful ignorance once again when the Facebook updates run their courses? How many people will be gung-ho about the temporarily-hot button issue for a week before returning to posting YouTube music videos and pictures of their pets?<br />
<br />
If you didn't care before, posting a picture of Fred Flintstone or Jem isn't going to suddenly make you care now. But of course, you care about everything, right? Just need that little reminder once in a while to make sure everyone knows. The Facebook Phenomenon will be there for you with the next fad, ready to pat you on the back and say, "You done good, kid." I wonder what it will be.Kater Totshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06367751420260748711noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8448823516193878043.post-47267354180965122572010-11-25T01:39:00.001-05:002010-11-25T01:40:50.994-05:00Giving Thanks<b>Life is Good</b><br />
<br />
It's easy to flounder in the sea of fear conjured up by the media and their uncanny ability to take every positive blessing we receive in this world and complain about it enough to make it feel like a curse. It's easy to forget that life actually is pretty good when you filter out all the muck and truly take a look, with fresh eyes, at everything we are given. <br />
<br />
Thanksgiving is one of the few reminders we get to just stop and enjoy life. To some people, it means a delicious meal spent in the company of family with football on the television, and that's good enough. To others, it is a calling to put aside our complaint calculators and start counting our blessings instead of trying to find fault with them.<br />
<br />
In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I'd like to put aside my own complaints and take a moment to be thankful for everything I've been given. I hope that any of my readers can make their own list even longer than mine and look to it when they feel hope beginning to slip.<br />
<br />
<b>I am thankful for...</b><br />
<br />
...<i>answered prayers.</i> God is good. For a long time, I have denied His very existence but when I sought forgiveness, it was given to me. When I seek comfort and peace, it is given to me. I don't ask for much, but God makes his presence known in my life when I need Him most, in both small and large ways.<br />
<i>...my daughter-to-be</i>, one of the largest blessings I will ever receive. She came as a welcome surprise amid worries and tears of ever having a family. Every little kick brings a smile to my face, and every milestone, tears to my eyes. Waiting to hold her in my arms instead of my womb is already teaching me the patience I know I'll need to parent her effectively.<br />
...<i>my fiance</i>, who provides me with a life I would be incapable of providing for myself. Words are inadequate to describe everything he has done for me and continues to do for me, but I am grateful for all his selfless sacrifices. His work ethic and dedication are to be admired, and he gives me hope in this world's ability to still produce good men. <br />
...<i>my family</i>, especially my mother and father who have always been a firm rock beneath my feet that keeps my head above water in the most turbulent of rivers. Ever giving, ever loving, and ever patient, they are the perfect example upon which I hope to model myself for my own daughter.<br />
<i>...my dog</i>, who sometimes tests my patience but loves me unconditionally and is a valued member of our family. He's loyal and cuddly, and his very presence makes me feel safe. <br />
<i>...our home</i>, a place to call our own with four walls and a roof to protect and comfort us. <br />
<i>...clean, safe water delivered to my home on demand.</i> I can drink, cook, clean and bathe with confidence with the simple act of turning a knob.<br />
<i>...grocery stores</i> that provide me with a variety of nutritional resources that would normally be unavailable in this region, especially to someone who doesn't find laboring in fields to be appealing.<br />
<i>...access to the internet</i>, a place where I can exercise my freedom of speech and share my ideas with people of all backgrounds and persuasions.<br />
<br />
<b>...and so much more.</b> But it's getting late, and I need to sleep so I can cook our first real Thanksgiving for Two (the only one I'll be cooking "for two") and start our own family traditions tomorrow.<br />
<br />
I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving!Kater Totshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06367751420260748711noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8448823516193878043.post-91524567435692657072010-11-12T00:51:00.004-05:002010-12-05T02:44:14.979-05:00Amazon Loses Another Customer<b>The Pedophile's Guide to Love & Pleasure: A Child Lover's Code of Conduct</b><br />
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"This is my attempt to make pedophile<i></i> situations safer for those juveniles that find themselves involved in them, by establishing certain rules for those adults to follow" writes author Phillip R. Greaves Jr. of his controversial e-book whose title reads more like a horror novel than anything concerned with the safety of juveniles. "I hope to achieve this by appealing to the better nature of pedosexuals, with hope that their doing so will result in less hatred and perhaps lighter sentences should they ever be caught."<br />
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And should they ever.<br />
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One would hope that this self-published guide to raping children with the hopes that it will become acceptable behavior would be universally shunned not only by people, but by corporate entities as well. It is no surprise, then, that public backlash to the availability of this questionable work by the massively popular online retailer, Amazon.com, had grown into a lurking behemoth so quickly that Amazon had to pull it from the e-shelves much to their own chagrin. What is a surprise is that it was there in the first place, defended by a corporation with obviously no sense of social responsibility.<br />
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<b>Amazon's Excuses</b> <br />
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This is the official, yet trite, statement released by Amazon supporting its right to capitalize off of products promoting gross sexual misconduct and criminal activities:<br />
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"Amazon believes it is censorship not to sell certain books simply because we or others believe their message is objectionable. Amazon does not support or promote hatred or criminal acts; however, we do support the right of every individual to make their own purchasing decisions."<br />
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The first sentence doesn't actually say anything other than they believe in the basic meaning of censorship, but it hints at their objection to it. It seems that it is more appropriate to sell a book training pedophiles than it is for Amazon to actually enforce their policy against offensive materials, the mere existence of which is laughable if pedophilia can slip through the filter. <br />
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Contrary to their next claim, they absolutely do support criminal acts by giving authors of books like this a platform by which to spread their filth to the masses. Amazon operates under the guise of "individual rights," but not offering a particular title for purchase doesn't stop an individual from buying it; it just keeps that person from buying it <i>from Amazon</i>. The idea of losing a dollar is more offensive than supporting pedophiles and books on how to commit that atrocious crime. <br />
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I guess it's not such a surprise after all.<br />
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<b>The Customers Are Always Right</b><br />
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Despite Amazon's lame attempt at being a beacon of free speech and anti-censorship, the customers have spoken. They have taken to Twitter and <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Boycott-Amazoncom-for-Selling-How-Guide-for-pedophile/160167204019884">Facebook</a> to express their disgust, call for a boycott and reaffirm that decent, responsible people still have some say over what is appropriate in their communities and in our society at large. It should never be as easy for pedophiles to share this kind of dangerous information as Amazon has made it; thank God the customer is always right and "The Pedophile's Guide" is no longer available.<br />
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I'm not sure if I'll ever be comfortable shopping at Amazon again either way, because I certainly don't support what they obviously stand for. This isn't the first time they've come under fire: In 2009, they had to be forced to stop carrying "RapeLay," a first-person video game that centered around stalking and raping a mother and her daughters. The fact that Amazon carries these kind of articles and only removes them when someone has to tell them it's inappropriate is enough for me to find a better retailer with which to exercise my individual right as a consumer. Since they love that right so much, I'm sure they won't blame me.Kater Totshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06367751420260748711noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8448823516193878043.post-33616216134883819382010-11-07T19:34:00.008-05:002010-12-05T02:42:16.739-05:00Johannes Mehserle: Not the DevilThere's something about the power of a random bystander's camera or video phone: The power to mislead and influence people into believing that they're seeing the entire truth of any situation. People tend to forget the stories before and after the few-minutes clip they see on their nightly news or are linked to via YouTube because "seeing is believing," even if the only thing being seen is one tiny fragment of a larger picture. If you live by this philosophy, you might not realize why the Mona Lisa, for example, is such an important work of art, because chances are great you're focused on one brush stroke in the background.<br />
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This isn't a new phenomenon brought about by the instant connectivity provided by the internet and YouTube, but rather something we've been seeing for quite awhile. Look back to that March night in 1991 in Sacramento, California. An inebriated man is leading a high-speed chase, a chase he admits in his own words occurred because a DUI would be disastrous to his parole (which translates to the selfish lawless that you can drive drunk, you just can't get caught), on a freeway and then through a residential area. When finally he stops the car, his passengers get out and are arrested without incident, but the driver taunts the police, fights them, resists arrest. None of this is seen on the video George Holliday taped from his apartment of Rodney King on that night; what does appear on that video is a gang of white cops beating a black man.<br />
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An incident that would have gone unnoticed instead went down in the annals of time as the quintessential race-motivated beating of an innocent man because people were presented with sensationalist reporting feeding on their very fear and paranoia driven by one random bystander's video. The now infamous Los Angeles Riots of 1992 were the result, where 53 people lost their lives, over 2,000 were injured and nearly countless damages occurred. Riots wherein truly innocent people were made to suffer.<br />
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I can't help but feel that the country is being made to walk through the fire again with Oscar Grant's unfortunate death in 2009. With the recent trial of Bay Area Rapid Transit officer Johannes Mehserle, we see the riots beginning to swell already. Organizers start with good, peaceful intentions to exercise their right to convene civilly in protest of something they feel is wrong only to degrade themselves once more into an animalistic frenzy of violence and destruction.<br />
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One need only do a rudimentary search on YouTube to find <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2LDw5l_yMI&feature=share">a collection of videos</a> and set oneself up to make his own judgment, videos that fail to mention that Oscar Grant was detained because he was positively identified by the train operator as one who was involved in starting fights that prompted the officers to be called in the first place, or that he had physically resisted arrest by trying to scramble back into a train car to be whisked away and avoid any punishment for the physical altercation. What we see, instead, is essentially a remake of an old classic: White cops brutalizing an innocent black man.<br />
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I don't buy that Mehserle, a trained officer who graduated from the academy in the top five of his class, mistook a heavy 40-caliber Sig Sauer for a taser, but I do buy his parallel line of <a href="http://cdn.sfgate.com/chronicle/acrobat/2009/01/30/motion_for_bail.pdf">defense</a>:<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"<i>...Officer Mehserle... attempted to restrain Mr. Grant and to seek his compliance by ordering him to put his hands behind his back to be handcuffed, but Mr. Grant resisted and refused to submit to handcuffing. Officer Mehserle was pulling at Mr. Grant’s right hand and arm, which <b>remained under his torso near his waistband</b>. Mr. Grant <b>had not been searched</b> by any officer for weapons, either prior to his initial detention or after being seated near the wall...</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">"<i>...(Officer) Pirone said he heard Mehserle say, "Put your hands behind your back, stop resisting, stop resisting, put your hands behind your back." Then Mehserle said, "I'm going to taze him, I'm going to taze him. I can't get his arms. He won't give me his arms. <b>His hands are going for his waistband</b>." Then Mehserle popped up and said, "Tony, Tony, <b>get away, back up, back up</b>." Pirone did not know if Grant was armed. Mehserle had fear in his voice. Pirone had never heard Mehserle's voice with that tone. Mehserle sounded afraid.</i>"</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Johannes Mehserle, having already responded to several calls involving illegal weapons that early New Year's morning, had believed Grant to be armed. Contrary to the popular, and erroneous, belief that Oscar Grant had been handcuffed and so couldn't have been reaching for any weapon, real or otherwise, he was not restrained by handcuffs. He had been resisting arrest, and the officers were clearly unable to place handcuffs upon him. <br />
<br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div style="text-align: left;">It is unfortunate that Oscar Grant had decided to resist arrest that night on the BART platform, and it's unfortunate that an officer already shaken up from a hectic night of duty made a decidedly poor decision in his attempts to subdue a criminal. It is unfortunate that people claim it was racially motivated (prompted by one officer's, not Mehserle, use of the word "nigger" in a parroting fashion after being called a "bitch-ass nigger" by Oscar Grant himself), and it's unfortunate that the rioting has already begun.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">However, I don't vilify Officer Mehserle, and I feel that his sentence of two years plus time served is more than reasonable for his actions in the line of duty. I can't join the raucous cacophony of angry YouTube viewers chanting the played-out "F*ck the police" line, and I refuse to accept criminals becoming the faces of innocence in the name of racially motivated politics. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">I don't put any stock in "seeing is believing" when seeing is only half of understanding. </div>Kater Totshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06367751420260748711noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8448823516193878043.post-3358171709163244252010-11-04T22:46:00.000-04:002010-11-04T23:12:48.857-04:00The (Birth) Teacher's Pets<b>That's Right. Birth Classes.</b><br />
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The Man and I are enrolled in Bradley Method birth classes at a local medical center. For those who don't know, the Bradley method focuses heavily on natural pain relief to empower women to give birth without medication and have a fully conscious, healthful birthing experience. I'm terrified of medication so it seemed like a good idea to me. <br />
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However, I still don't entirely get the concept of birth classes. It seems like someone who can read just as well as I can reads a book and then relays that information to us. We pay $160 for twelve weeks of siphoning information through a middle mom with the added benefits of watching videos produced in the 1960s showing real women in unmedicated childbirth situations. So far, everything that we've learned, from kegels and pelvic tilts to proper prenatal nutrition, could be covered with a careful Google search. (If you're gonna <a href="http://www.google.com/">Google</a> birth videos, please do so with your safe search on or you might end up with Two Girls One Fetus or something equally horrifying.)<br />
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Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy going. The short, friendly woman who leads the class is as helpful as they come and it's interesting to see other moms-to-be and share in their experiences. But I'm looking forward to more information on labor and delivery. You know, the scary parts that classes still can't really prepare you for. It's the same as watching those television programs with the guys who eat crazy food: They can tell you how bad a durion tastes and smells, but you'll never really know until you've tried it.<br />
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I'm not writing this blog to talk about Bradley or birth classes, but rather the people with whom I have to share my Thursday nights: The (Birth) Teacher's Pets. They know everything and they aren't afraid to tell you.<br />
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<b>Lukewarm Hipster Status</b><br />
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We'll just call them Rachel and Mark. Rachel really is her name, which doesn't matter because there are a million Rachels out there and I can guarantee that you don't know her. Mark probably isn't his name, though it sounds right. I generally just refer to him as Fauxhawk. I'll let you figure out why.<br />
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She is a "crunchy-overtanned-brown-leather-handbag skin in a Midwest November" level of annoying to look at; he's an "Olde Englishe Scripte Tattooe down the forearm poking out of my ironic indy band T-shirt" level of annoying. Together, they're a pretty good combination of people who's general appearance makes me groan at the though of having to talk to them. And once again, my judgments were confirmed.<br />
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<b>How Not to Act in Public</b><br />
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During our first class, we had to share some basic information about ourselves. Hi, my name is ______ and my due date is _______ and we'll be giving birth at ________ with Dr. _______. While everyone else seemed to do this without problems and without getting self-righteous, the hipsters had to take it a step further.<br />
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"Hi, my name is Mark. We don't <i>have</i> a doctor; we're using a <i>midwife.</i> And we're <u>not</u> giving birth at a <i>hospital</i>, we're going to do it at home" in the most condescending way possible. "Yeah," Rachel chimes in. "We don't have a due date, because we don't <i>believe</i> in due dates. But I guess when people ask, we need to have an answer so we just generally say the end of February."<br />
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All of us idiots who, for some odd reason, would choose to not give birth in a tub in our living room kind of shifted in our seats as if to say, "Oh boy, here it goes." And it pretty much set the stage for the rest of the Thursday evenings we'd be spending together: Condescending rhetoric and so much self-love that it's almost dripping from the ceilings.<br />
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<u>Birth Teacher (BT)</u>: "We'll be watching some videos during the course of..."<br />
<u>Mark</u>: "Will we be watching 'The Business of Being Born'? I think it's a very enlightening movie."<br />
<u>BT</u>: "Um, no. We won't really have time for that."<br />
<u>Mark</u>: "Oh. Because <i>I</i> think it's an invaluable resource that everyone should see. I mean, you really should watch it. I'd be more than happy to bring it in."<br />
<u>BT</u>: "Well, we're really trying to focus on short videos showing women in unmedicated birthing situations."<br />
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<u>Mark (While watching a video):</u> "Um, shouldn't those women be standing in a squat instead of pulling their legs up like that?"<br />
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<u>Rachel:</u> ::laughs:: "Um, expressed breast milk is not the same as breastfeeding. It's the <i>inferior option</i>. Dad can bond in so many other ways that doesn't involve feeding the baby, like, y'know, skin-to-skin contact. I tell all my patients to wait for three or four weeks before even attempting to give a pacifier."<br />
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This is obviously not what the rest of us came for: To ask questions to an instructor only to be met with laughter and condescension from someone who, despite knowing everything, is still attending birth classes; to be a potential audience to propaganda films by Ricki Lake of all people, decrying the horrors of modern medicine; to be basically told that our choices are "inferior" because despite us all having the same opportunity to educate ourselves, we reached different conclusions. How dare us.<br />
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And then on the day that JM and I signed up to bring in a snack for the class, which was healthy enough to include a vegetable, a whole grain and a jug of orange juice, they brought in bags of Hostess cupcakes, Ho-Hos and mini-muffins. Because they're smart enough to push out their offspring in their filthy bath tub without some ignorant doctor, but not smart enough to not try to load up a bunch of pregnant women with refined flour and corn syrup.<br />
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All I can do is sigh and wait to see what unfortunate entertainment I'm subjected to next week.Kater Totshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06367751420260748711noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8448823516193878043.post-43919924863716569542010-11-04T15:20:00.001-04:002010-12-15T21:33:34.205-05:00Kater Tot's Grand Opening!<b>It's About Time</b> <br />
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I'm at that stage in my life that is so conducive to blogging: That "stay-at-home mom-to-be with opinions so damn important that they must be shared with the world" stage, that "I don't get out of my house enough to socialize, but dammit I read the news" stage. That self-important stage that you hit when you realize you really haven't done much with your life, but you're somehow more than qualified to share your opinion on the wide world of the internet.<br />
<br />
If the internet wasn't created with people like me in mind, then I have no idea what it was created for.*<br />
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<b>Weekly Specials</b><br />
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I wanted to say "Daily Specials," but my ability to commit to anything beyond my daughter-to-be, my fiancee and my dog is questionable, so I'm going with something more realistic: Weekly updates. That way, it will feel like a tremendous gift when you get more than one every seven days. This is also my optimistic way of motivating myself to actually keep writing in this blog and not to just write two posts and forget about it.<br />
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<b></b>Things I like to write about might not be things you like to read about. I'll share way too much information about my pregnancy and all the interesting body changes that have occurred and will continue to occur; I'll probably piss you off once or twice with my politically incorrect views on the hot-button issues of our times; I'll discuss in grand detail my dog's farts.<br />
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In short, I'm not interested in serving the same meatloaf-and-mashed-potatoes plate that I normally have to dish out just to keep a friend or two. I serve <u>Kater Tots</u>. If you don't like Kater Tots, I'm sure the Huffington Post would be more than happy to pander to your sensitive viewpoints all the while keeping you in the victim mentality. Go ahead, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiot">check them out.</a><br />
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<div style="color: #666666;"><i><span style="font-size: small;">*Actually, I'm pretty sure Al Gore invented it to as a means to brainwash the masses into building their own cars out of bamboo that run on guilt and Duracells, but I can't verify that. Check Snopes. </span></i></div>Kater Totshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06367751420260748711noreply@blogger.com0