Fun Visit

I hadn't seen Elle in over a year. Now that she's living closer to us, I packed the boys up and we headed her way over the weekend. And, if it hadn't been for the fact that The Kid has grown like a weed and is a young man now instead of the little boy I remember, you wouldn't have been able to tell that we'd been away at all.

In college, as roommates, Elle and I often had this problem of talking about any and everything late into the night. We'd both be in our beds with the lights off, just chatting away. We did the same thing over the weekend. Of-course, it's 12 years after college, so I'm feeling the lack of sleep more than I did back in the day!

At any rate, we had a blast! Thanks Elle!

From the mouth's of babes

I have a 5 year old and a 1 year old. Two boys. When I was pregnant with the baby, my oldest became pretty curious about how the baby would come out and of-course where it came from. I explained as much as I could to my then 3 year old in easy terms. He thought God put the baby in my belly, and [in his own thinking] was even convinced the baby would come out through my mouth. I remember teasing him on time and saying the baby would come out of my bellybutton and he looked at me like I was the dumbest person on the planet and said "No! You will go to the doctor and throw up the baby and the doctor will catch it!" Now, at 5, he's a little more sophisticated in his knowledge.

We've visited the Health Museum here and they had a display of the human body. You could walk through the brain and the ears, etc. They had a little movie for kids that showed how babies grow in the womb. So he now knows that babies come from eggs in the mother's belly.

So.......He's in the country at his Big Mama's house this week (my mother-in-law). One of my sister-in-laws drove the boys up there with her two older boys. When they got there, my son says to her,"Auntie O, you're my daddy's sister, so you're my auntie." She said yes. He said "K1 and K2 are your sons, so they are my cousins." She said yes. Then he looked at a new picture hanging on Big Mama's wall over the TV of all 10 (yes 10!) of her grown children (hubby is the youngest) taken last year. He counted everyone and said, "Daddy has 10 brothers and sisters." She said yes (yes I know it's 9, but why get technical). So he says, "Big Mama must have had a REALLY big egg!"

Heavy Heart

My brother's best friend died last week (http://www.fwbusinesspress.com/display.php?id=7661). He was 34 years old, was driving home at 3:50 in the morning a few weeks ago and slammed his car into a building. How that happened has been largely unspoken.

I didn't know him very well. My brother and I haved lived in different cities since we ventured off to college. What I do remember of Greg was an inviting, warm, friendly face. He's clearly done a lot for his community in Ft. Worth, and for students at TCU. He touched so many people's lives and he was someone that students at TCU as well as his friends, like my brother, depended on. It is so sad to see his life cut short.

It makes me think of my own mortality and whether I will have left such an indelible mark on the world around me. It's a scary thought to think of leaving my family behind. Scarier even more to think of how easily such a thing could happen.

Please say a quick prayer for Greg's family and friends and for my brother. And let your loved ones know you love them. Our time is short.

What the Hell?

Okay, I'm a little irked.

Last week, BfP noted she'd been having problems posting on this blog. "Hmm," I thought, but it slipped my mind.

Last night, I tried three times to post at Rick's place and got an error message.

Then today, I posted a reply to Moksha on the globalization post and to nubian on the blacks and suicide post. They were there and now they're gone. I remember seeing them. I know I double checked the word verification. And I'm way too lazy to type them up again at this moment.

But I'm pissed. Damn!

If You Can't Tell...

...I have a million things on my mind right now.

A million things I want to post about, a couple of memes I want to do, another dissertation related question I want to ask, a story about my mother's life in which I have to look at her outside the context of being my mom (which is written but I want to re-read).

But first, gotta fine tune my intro for the new chapter.

Grrrr.

A Bunch of Stuff

First of all, thanks to everyone who expressed their sympathy and/or shared stories in the post below. Made me feel not so alone.

Rebecca, I laughed over your lunch invitation because for some reason it made me think of this scene in one of Tyler Perry's plays:
Cora, who's plus-sized, tells Brown that a nice man had invited her to lunch.
Brown, who's suspicious of the man's interest says, "Cora, that's how them mens get you."
Cora: "How?"
Brown: "They know you like lunch!"
I know, I know, reinforces stereotypes, but yeah, you can't miss me with a lunch offer. :-p

Is there any reason for there to be bumper-to-bumper traffic in the middle of the day? Good grief.

Initial (b/c I know there will be more to come) revisions are virtually done--just need to tighten one section. And, b/c I'd been working on the next chapter while stalling on this one, I promised advisor a very rough draft by the end of next week. Even if I chicken out and don't finish until the 16th, I'll be back on track.

Happy Hallowe'en and Happy Birthday to Cousin T! I wasn't going to take the kids trick-or-treating, because my neighborhood's not big on it and I was wary of taking them to the neighborhood where their school is. Why? Because it is predominantly white and I was afraid... well you can imagine what I was afraid of. And then I said to myself, "Self," I said, "Could you, for once in your life, get past lessons previously learned and your own biases and give people the benefit of the doubt? Maybe, just maybe they're not going to greet you with evil looks and slamming doors (See how ridiculous that is when I say it out loud?). It's just Hallowe'en!" And you know what?

They had a blast! They racked up. One elderly lady asked me if she could hug them because they were the only trick-or-treaters she'd had.


My favorite Jack o'Lantern this year:

**picture removed**

And the best web-shooter ever:

**picture removed**

Sorry, no pics of my crew. They went as Batman and Superman. Or, as one guy imagined, Batman and Robin-disguised-as-Superman.

A Short Break

I wrote this really long post on how I've constructed poverty and how I agreed with Zan on the relative nature and how I may be a bit of a "classist." Then, I realized this blog was becoming a series of long posts. I read somewhere that you should keep blog posts brief--it is a norm, apparently. One to which I have a sneaking suspicion Ms. Bitch would say

resist dominant blogging norms. Remember: the oppression is always seen in the norm. Question them and ask how they fuck with us! Subvert! Resist! Change them!

Anyway, this is a short post to break up the monotony. Diatribes will resume shortly.

I'm off to the library!

Canada troops battle 10-ft Afghan marijuana plants

I wasn't going to post anymore today (seeing as how I'm on a reading-and-writing mission and all), but then my co-worker showed me this story.

So now I'm picturing all my blunt-smoking friends, mouths watering, reconsidering their opposition to military service (an opposition wholly supported by the problems they'd encounter with urinalysis). Especially given this astute observation of the burn-the-plants-down strategy:

A couple of brown plants on the edges of some of those (forests) did catch on fire. But a section of soldiers that was downwind from that had some ill effects and decided that was probably not the right course of action.

"Ill" effects? I'm thinking that's not the right adjective.

Blogroll

And no, I don't know what the hell is going on. I don't think it's my new template, though, as each time I go to the blogrolling site, I get a fatal or permanent or some other error message.

Does fatal or permanent mean they died?

Is Elle, the techno-travesty, going to have to go into the template and add all my blog friends?

Does anyone else have a clue?

A Change Done Come!

I heart Miss Zoot.

Thank you!

Scratch My Earlier Confusion...

I totally get the TX ban on sex toys now. Via Feministe:

The study said women were more likely to reach orgasm if they used sex toys... Use of sex toys and orgasm in women may indicate a link between orgasm and sexual interest or adventurousness.

Cuz women pleasing themselves? Totally unacceptable.

Toys for Hots

Um, had I not read here, here, and here, I may have missed the important fact that the great state of Texas has a ban on sex toys.

WTF?

I am in a mild state of shock because I have been to novelty, specialty, sex or whatever you want to call them, shops in Texas, and they don't seem to lack inventory. In fact, I was much more impressed by the shops here than by the ones in Louisiana, where a similar ban was struck down. Two questions are bubbling in my mind...

1) How the hell are shop owners getting away with it? What do they say? How do they advertise their products? And thank goodness for spin doctors. :-)

2) Are there really such paranoid, hateful, little people out there who believe their calling in life is to assure a) that sex can be cast perpetually as a dark, dirty-but-necessary secret b) that the ones of us "permitted" to have sex (married heterosexuals) remember it's for procreation not pleasure and c) that it is their job to determine the context of and discourse surrounding sex for each and every human being?

So, okay, that second question is rhetorical.

But really, you should visit a novelty store in Texas--as long as you're shopping for educational purposes only, of course.

Wednesday Morning Humor

For the WTF? Files.

I don't know why fellow TA and I found this so funny: Panda bites man, man bites him back, but we're laughing like idiots. Of course, the man says

"No one ever said they would bite people," Zhang said. "I just wanted to touch it. I was so dizzy from the beer. I don't remember much."

Fellow TA and I are trying to calculate exactly how much beer you have to drink to get to a point that touching any kind of bear seems like a good idea.

**update--Yes, I realize that it is Wednesday, now. Thank you very much. And if you don't know why I typed that, don't worry about it!**

Terrence's Take on Whitney and Bobby...

Cute and clever, though I imagine the underlying circumstances are neither:
Terrence Says: Whitney Houston's Divorce Letter