NS January 29th, 2009
1. I don’t find LOLCats that amusing. I may be the only person in the world, I know, but it just doesn’t do it for me.
2. It is really difficult to get poo out of a baby’s ears. Don’t ask how I know this.
3. Apparently, “being a star” for a female contestant on American Idol means putting on a shorter skirt, higher heels, messing up your hair and putting on a pound of makeup. This cute-as-a-button, fresh-faced, naturally beautiful woman auditioned and even though she had an amazing voice the judges weren’t sold because they couldn’t picture her in the role. They told her to go away and “become a superstar.” When she came back in her mini-skirt, sparkly shoes and with black eyeliner caked on they were very pleased. NOW they could picture her as a pop star. How depressing is that?
4. This BBC website, Britain From Above, is really funkin’ cool. It’s full of aerial photographs of various cities, towns, open spaces, festivals, transport systems, traffic patterns and a whole lot more. I’ve spent hours watching video clips and looking at photos. I love looking at things and places from completely different, large-scale perspective.
5. My children have e-mail addresses now, so their father and I can send them messages that they can read when they’re older. I’m also keeping journals for them so they have hand-written accounts of their childhood. It gives me an excuse to practice my handwriting too!
NS January 28th, 2009
I’m sure you’ve heard by now about the woman in California who gave birth to eight children (octuplets) on Monday. The story would’ve been big in and of itself (there has only been one other live birth of octuplets in the US) but the ‘shocker’ was that they were only expecting seven. Baby number 8 was a surprise, apparently hidden away during scans and exams.
A few things bother me about this story. First and foremost, that the doctors have been the focus of the story, not the mother or the babies. The opening paragraph of this story in the LA Times is all about the team of physicians, surgeons and nurses and what a good job they did in planning the birth “for weeks.” No mention of the woman’s plans or fears for the birth, or mention of her health other than “Mom is doing well.”
The other thing that struck me is how the army of doctors were commended for delivering the babies so quickly — all eight were pulled from their mother’s womb within five minutes. I don’t find that commendable, I find it a bit scary and sad. This was obviously not a gentle arrival into the world for these babies. They were yanked out of there like gangbusters and “processed lovingly through an assembly line of medical workers.” I don’t care how gently they held the just-yanked-out babies, the person who should’ve been holding them lovingly was their mother and father. I realise that this was an impossibility in their situation, with so many babies to be delivered, but I’m sure it pained the mother immensely to not be able to hold or even see her babies as they emerged, instead passed down a conveyor belt of gloved and masked hands to an incubator and bright lights. To say that the workers held the babies ‘lovingly’ is a slight to the parents, who would’ve loved to be the ones holding their children first. But don’t forget, folks — doctors are GOD and if you don’t worship in their temple you will be excommunicated. Grrrr…
The silver lining in this story (and it’s a BIG silver lining) is that the mother is quoted as saying that she plans to breastfeed them all. Rock on, mama! Of course, others have already rolled their eyes and made comments about her naivety in thinking she could breastfeed eight babies when so many fail to feed even one, but those naysayers are likely thinking that she means exclusively breastfeed all of them for months on end. I’m sure that even if she can’t do that, the mother is perfectly able to ensure that each child gets at least some breastmilk, either by feeding them all for as long as she can cope or giving them each breastmilk and supplement with donated milk or formula. It’s certainly not outside the realm of possibility and I hate that people are being so negative and mean-spirited about it. The poor woman just had eight babies cut out of her and will have a long recovery and spend weeks, if not months, in the NICU visiting them and caring for them until they are well enough to go home. Why poo-poo her wish to give them the best start by ensuring they each receive at least some of her milk? I swear, some people just WANT others to fail. Meanies.
NS January 27th, 2009
In the course of doing my freelance job today, which requires reading a lot of news, I came across this lovely little news item in the New York Post.
In case you didn’t know, that’s pop singer and actress Jessica Simpson and the first couple paragraphs read:
Wow, Jessica Simpson looks as if she could be an offensive lineman for her quarterback boyfriend. A plump, jeans-busting Simpson stunned fans with her new bulky build over the weekend. Simpson, 28, has packed on some serious pounds in recent months, and also wore an outfit that accentuated every unflattering curve of her 5-foot-3 frame.
Nice, huh?
This recent picture of her shows that the Post purposely chose a shot taken from an awkward angle as she clearly does not look like the heifer they’re making her out to be. She’s gained weight, sure, but she’s probably gone from a US size 2 to a size 6 or 8. Somebody call the fat police! She might break double digits soon and be the butt of jokes about things seen from space! And then I won’t be surprised if she feels compelled to go on Oprah, crying about what a lard-ass she’s become, before having gastric bypass surgery and undergoing a grueling physical regime until she returns to a size so small that she can only be seen with a microscope.
Fortunately, she has said in interviews that she’s happy with her size and that she’s proud of her curves. Right on, Jess! I may think your music is crap and found your MTV show ‘Newlyweds’ fantastically boring but at least you have some common sense about you. Us fat girls have to have brains in our head to get by since we can’t rely on our Hawtness as gauged by mouth-breathing frat boys.
Speaking of fat girls, this tripe over at Spike.com has been getting a lot of attention: The Top 7 Butterbodies. Written by perhaps the biggest asshole I’ve encountered in the blogosphere so far this year, this guy picks apart seven female celebrities whom he can’t BELIEVE had the gall to gain weight (or merely appear to) because it threatens his asinine assumption that women should be ‘sexy’ for men and that any woman’s appearance (especially a celebrity’s) is up for criticism and jugment if she is found to be lacking.
The only thing that made me smile about this article was the large number of comments made by other males telling the author what a douchebag he is. We need to see more of this, both in the blogosphere and in real life. We don’t have a chance of stopping these misogynistic rants if men don’t call each other out for it. So speak up, fellas!
NS January 26th, 2009
The Noble Baby, the one who has slept like a dream since he was born, has decided that shrieking all night is fun and that the only thing he wants is to lounge on my shoulder while I walk around the house. Laying in bed next to your mother in a peaceful slumber is for pansies, apparently. TNH had the gall to complain about the noise and ask for earplugs at 5.15am when I came into the spare room where he was sleeping, asking for help. I’ve had about six hours sleep over two nights, broken into god-knows-how-many-dozen segments. Needless to say, I lost the plot. A pack of baby wipes ended up the target of my fury and are now spilled all over the floor, having been beaten mercilessly from their packaging. The filing cabinet became an unsuspecting victim as well, an innocent bystander hurt by cross-fire, when slamming the baby wipes repeatedly down on the top somehow dislodged a ragged chunk of the cheap wood and exposed a screw holding the drawer on. The noise scared the bejeesus out of my poor, innocent boy and his face was one of wide-eyed shock before he wailed again and burst into tears. I slumped onto the bed, hair clenched in my fists, and joined him in crying.
Sleep deprivation does twisted, messed up, horrible things to a person.
NS January 25th, 2009
Last night, after we’d gotten the kids to bed and sat down to dinner, The Noble Husband and I got onto that age-old topic of quasi-philosophical conversation: what would you do if you won the lottery? Somehow, in our decade together, we’d never discussed what we would do with our imagined millions. As the more idealistic and (I like to think) altruistic one, I was completely confident that I would want to give more away than he would. I imagined he’d want to buy a big, modern house and all the latest gadgets, go traveling, put a shitload of cash into a trust fund for the kids, treat his parents and closest friends to a nice holiday and quit his job to enjoy himself. Instead, he said he’d give a third of it to charity (commendable), pay off the mortgage on our existing house but not move for awhile (unexpected), put £100,000 into a trust fund for each of the children so they would have enough to pay for higher education and get themselves on the property ladder but not be spoiled (sensible), buy the latest gadgets and take his family on holiday (predictable), take a few months off work but not quit (surprising), and give his closest friends £100,000 each. Hold on, WHAT? Did he just say what I think he said? Yep, £100,000, he confirmed. EACH. £100,000. Did I mention each?
Stir-fry stuck in my throat and my jaw hit the table. I was completely dumbstruck. When I asked him why he would give them so much he just shrugged and said “Why not?.” I couldn’t stop spluttering. Not because I thought it was outrageous or foolish but because I felt ashamed that I would’ve expected anything less than that from him. In my own estimates of what I would give friends, I had imagined a big group holiday and then maybe £5k gifts to a few very close friends, all the while dreaming of the millions I would give various charitable organizations. A small, selfish, vain part of me thought I was the only one who wanted to save the world and that this was noble. But I see now that his charity extends not only to those far away in African villages, cancer wards and domestic violence shelters, but those he sees and knows in his everyday life. People who have helped shape him over the years — those who have helped deepen the laugh lines around his mouth, know his secrets, attend his birthday parties and bounce his children on their knees. Friends who always bring wine to dinner and treat us to coffee when we examine our wallets and say we’ll just have tap water.
This man I married…he may not be capable of hanging up a wet towel properly and he’s a bugger to get out of bed in the mornings but he sure as hell is generous. I think I’ll keep him.
