Bang Bang

Remember when I promised to continue my thoughts "tomorrow"? Well, for argument's sake, let us pretend that I said that yesterday...good, moving on.

My third thought in the Trayvon Martin case is about guns. There has certainly been a lot written about the fact that Martin didn't have a gun, but I don't feel like I have seen enough coverage of the fact that George Zimmerman did have a gun. And I am going to do my best to piss off Aaron enough to make him comment by saying that this is just one more in a million cases of violence that would be much less likely to occur, or would be much less serious, if we had some reasonable gun laws.

George Zimmerman had a gun. George Zimmerman used his gun, not only to shoot Trayvon Martin, but he used it to embolden himself to cause the whole incident in the first place. Since I don't actually know him, I am going to make a gigantic, and probably unfair (but more fair than shooting an unarmed kid) leap, and say that George Zimmerman would have been much less likely to confront Martin had he not felt emboldened by him gun.

Do I know that Zimmerman was a wannabe cowboy who was slightly paranoid and openly looking for excuses to flex his machismo in a pretend game of Cops? No, I don't know that for sure. I also don't know for sure that he imagined himself vigilantly defending the innocent against the nefarious intentions of the evil black menace. Do I even know for sure that Zimmerman is probably a pretty big coward who delighted in finding a fight that was completely rigged in his favor, then used that fight as an excuse to play out his own pseudo-military fantasies, and then immediately turtled and concocted the most asinine story possible to avoid answer for his decisions? Of course not...I have never met the man.

What I do know is that it is easier for George Zimmerman to buy that gun in America than in almost every other country in the world. I know that people like George Zimmerman are more dangerous in America than anywhere else in the world because it is so easy for them to buy guns. Every half-assed phony is a tough guy when he is holding a gun.

Yes, I know that a huge portion of gun owners are responsible and cause no harm to anyone. I have no moral obligation to hunting. I completely understand why target shooting could be challenging and fun. But we have no capacity to, no willingness to, and even a disdain for the idea that we might do something to try and keep gun away from people who just love the idea of being a heat-packing tough guy. Wanna know what I mean? George Zimmerman could buy a gun in almost every state in the country today...and whether or not you think he committed a crime, you would be a fool to think that he constitutes a "responsible gun owner."

Alright, so this isn't my most eloquent blog post ever, or even the best I have written about guns. But I will say it until I am blue in the face: Guns don't protect people. Guns embolden criminals.

Outrage

First things first, Munchkin is home safely and had a fantastic trip...another whole week with Frenchie, and another whole week in Paris, this time with one of her very best friends along for the trip. Not a bad spring break:-) I am fairly certain that she has decided to go ahead and jump ahead a year to graduate in 2013, but we are going to finalize her decision later this week...a senior in High School...holy shit...

Speaking of kids her age...I am gonna get serious here for a bit...Trayvon Martin. I will skip the details of the case, because I am sure you have all heard them, and I will skip the outrage over George Zimmerman's actions because that has been covered pretty completely. I wanna talk about three other things...one I have been over before (and we will find out if Aaron still reads!) one is really bad, and one really sad.

First, the very bad. This situation is going to get worse before it is going to get better, because George Zimmerman is not going to go to jail, at least not for murder. There are a bunch of reasons he hasn't been arrested yet, and at least one of them is that he has a good claim that he didn't commit a crime.

Just to clarify, I am not talking about the "common sense" reasonableness of his actions. Make no mistake, emboldened by a gun, he stalked and confronted a much-smaller man who had had no reason to believe was armed and had no reason to believe was doing anything wrong, dangerous or illegal. Further, he did this after he was specifically told by the police that they were on their way and that he should not confront the "suspect". Zimmerman picked this fight, he picked it on his own terms, and he used it as an excuse to kill someone.

Unfortunately, people don't get life in prison for the breaking of "common sense" laws. They get convicted of murder by breaking the letter of the law, and based on all that has been said so far this week, the letter of the law in Florida doesn't seem to care whether or not you are wholly responsible for the altercation. All that seems to matter is whether or not there was a physical confrontation. So, all of the outrage that we have seen over Zimmerman not being arrested yet? Unless there is a really outstanding prosecutor who can sell the jury on the intent of lawmakers and get a conviction (and it won't be for murder, it will be for something less), I fear that the outrage is going to get a lot louder, and likely less peaceful.

Second, let's talk about that outrage...demonstrations and marches and protests all over the country. I have kinda mixed feelings about them, and this is probably not gonna come out right (which is fine, none of you know where I live:-P). On the one hand...great: it is good that people are paying attention and voicing their displeasure over what they perceive as an injustice. Our elected officials ultimately react to votes, and if they think something matters to the voters, they will treat it as if it does. Standing in a big crowd around a single issue says that like very little else.

And I don't wanna sound preachy (because really, no one is obligated to protest anything they don't feel like showing up for)...but where were these protests for the 15 or 20 other young black males who were shot in Orlando last year? Where was the outrage over probably half of those cases going unsolved, and no one serving a day in jail for? There was a march in Boston on Friday...but not a single peep about the unknown male who was shot in Roxbury that very same weekend? Never mind not arresting someone...police haven't even figured out who the dead guy is yet!

Where were the athletes and entertainers in 2000 when my friend Nikia got shot for no crime other than drinking coffee? Why no rally for her and the 625 other murder victims in Chicago that year, and a demand that the police take action against someone for her death? They knew who shot her, or at least they knew the people who were fighting when a gun went off and shot her.

Where were the media and the socially conscious celebrities when my friend Ty got executed for the dangerous act of "looking like the person they really meant to kill from behind in the dark"? The people that shot him? They leave a fucking calling card every time they do this let everyone know it was them!!! How hard can it be to find them? Where were the great crusaders for equality and justice that day? Oh, that's right, they were probably all busy spreading the "Stop Snitching" gospel and using their influence to actually encourage witnesses to NOT help put the killers in jail...

So yes, be angry, and protest. Because Trayvon Martin was nothing worse than a kid who wanted some candy, and he and his family will pay an ungodly price for what will turn out to be a dreadfully under-punished atrocity. But if you really want to have an impact, don't only protest when it is trendy and gets on the news...protest and direct your anger to the areas where it has the most difference. Ranting about a single guy in Florida with a paranoid outlook and a cowboy machismo is leaving out entirely too much of the tragedy.


Now I have ranted for too long, so I am gonna leave point #3 until tomorrow.

Scattershot...how many topics can I cover in one post?

The more I talk (and blog) about it, the more I realize that I am hyper-ventilating over nothing as it relates to Frenchie and his college plans. Still, I am not going to let that stop my from hyper-ventilating:-) The good news is that I likely have nothing to worry about...I am pretty sure that his parents feel kind of the same way, and they obviously do get a vote. Frankly, it makes more sense for them to be worried, as they are the ones who would worry about him making a major life decision for the wrong reason.

So, for now, my plan is to ignore it and hope that it works out how I hope...good plan, right? I think so...

Let's move on and talk about the abso-fucking-lutely gorgeous weather around here. It is MARCH, and today it is going to be in the mid 80's. Those are temperatures that we usually don't see until at least mid-May, and sometimes later. The whole week has been spectacular, and the next few days are supposed to be sort of the same. We will get back to something more seasonable next week, but by then it will be basically April, and we can pretty much kiss winter good-bye (you know, unless we get a massive snow storm)...

The weather has given me a really strong urge to buy a lot of new clothes:-) That, combined with my having taken very little vacation so far this year, has led me to the extremely important decision to play hooky this afternoon with Smoking Hot Roommate...lunch, maybe some cocktails, shopping and enjoying the weather. Sounds like an awfully nice idea to me...no?

Moving on yet again...it has been kind of a whole new experience having Munchkin gone for the week. Not totally new, obviously, because she has been away pretty recently...but for some reason I have never before enjoyed her being away from the perspective of having a brief fling as a "normal" family. And by that, I mean only the un-publishable things that can go on after the children go to sleep:-P

(Do we see how much more demure I have gotten? Three years ago, I'd have written that like it was a scene from a romance novel! Age and motherhood have taken my rough edges off:-P)

More on the Love birds

I love you guys:-) Really, really, I do...I still get excited every time I log in and see that there is a new comment to read. Because I am a dork like that!

But mostly, I love you guys because you are all totally different and have different perspectives on things and think about things differently than I do. So, sometimes, things that seem so obvious to me are, in fact, not at all obvious to you guys...(in fact, I wish that people would call bullshit more often, because I know there are times you disagree with some of my nonsense and keep quiet about it!)

We seem to have found one of those instances: on Wednesday (yikes, blog much?) I mentioned that I don't love the idea of Frenchie coming to school in Boston (or Cambridge) in a year. Honestly, that seemed sort of self-explanatory to me, but I guess it really isn't. And when I think about it...I have a hard time really explaining what bothers be about it, which is maybe a sign that I should rethink it.

First off, responses to some of your specific comments: Munchkin already knows exactly where she is going to college, regardless of whether it is in one year or two. It is the only place she has wanted to go since she really found out what college is...and she may or may not have also been the recipient of a lot of lobbying from a pretend sister and a pretend father/grandfather that are proud alums. It also may or may not be a school that The Boy and/or I attended during our undergraduate or graduate educations. But it is very local, which I am happy about. And frankly, she has NO interest in going far away from me, which could well be a lingering psychological effect from having so much upheaval during the earlier years of her life.

So I know where she will be, and both she and Frenchie know where she will be. The variable is, therefore, where he chooses to go...and I am fairly certain that he will come to college somewhere in the States, although the final location remains to be determined (he is also an excellent student, so he will presumably have his pick of schools as well.)

As a basic rule, anything that makes my sister happy makes me happy. And she would be very excited if he took up residence a mile or two away...or, possibly even closer if he ended up at the same exact school. So why then, does the idea bother me?

So here goes. I guess what I don't like is the idea that he is coming all the way for the specific reason of being near her. As weird as their relationship is, that brings with it a whole lever of pressure that I would rather she not be under. What happens if, after a month of seeing each other four days a week, she wants to break up with him? Is she going to be buried with guilt over him making such a huge life decision for her?

I think about what would happen if the roles were reversed...what if she decided to go to Paris. It is a little different because she would be doing that only to be near him, and he may well have come to the States anyway. But still...I don't like the idea of 18 year old kids making those huge decisions to chase a relationship that, statistically, has little chance of lasting.

I would also rather not deal with a sudden overdosing on each other...if she is a senior in High School still, I don't want her spending every waking hour across the river where he has his own room that comes with a lock and key.

I will acknowledge that this last one is a totally irrational fear: she is going to be in college really soon, at which point she will be able to do whatever she wants with whoever she wants. And there is no way on earth that she will do even half of the the stuff that I did;-) But she is my little baby still, and I reserve the right to be irrational.

Were I to pick an actual outcome, I would love for him to end up in New York or DC...close enough that she could see him much more often, but not so close that she is his primary reason for being there. I would feel like he is making a much more balanced decision if he chose a school a little further away (which is stupid of me...what if his ideal school just happens to be in Cambridge? For lots of people it is.) Fortunately for me, I think his parents feel the same way...I think they would be hesitant to sign off on him coming to Boston. So, this may turn out how I want it too regardless of my input:-)

And, as long as I am making wishes...if his little sister came to school in Boston? I would do a happy dance:-)

Where in the parenting books do I find this?

If I have never mentioned it here before, I don't read baby books. Which is not to say that I never have or that I don't have any of them (although, honestly, I don't think that I do)...just that I have never found them that useful. I feel like they are written from the perspective of one person after observing a small number of children, or that they represent some kind of "average" child. The problem being that there are no "average" children.

[Side note: One of the few times in my life that I have actually laughed in a meeting...someone was presenting a business plan to us and had all kinds of demographic data to back up their new strategic plan. The problem was that Boss Foxy wasn't buying their plan, and thought that the data was irrelevant, which caused her to tell the people "The average person has one breast and one testicle. What the fuck does that tell us about anything?"]

I definitely consult baby health-related websites on occasion for specific questions..."Is this chicken pox?" "Can she take cough medicine?", etc...but I never use those kinds of resources as a standard guidepost for parenting. And I really don't want to imply that others shouldn't read those books, even if I sometimes tell people to read them less. There is usually nothing bad that comes from getting extra opinions or different thought processes on particular subjects.

This isn't really new for me. I was encouraged to read parenting books the first time around...and while I opened several, I never found them particularly useful. I have always just done things based on my own perception of what would work, or based on the advice of people whose opinions I valued. I was certainly blessed with a abnormally mature and easy-to-care-for kid the first time around...and that has helped me to gain confidence in my own ability to just figure stuff out.

All of which is good...because I am pretty sure there is no parenting book anywhere that deals with my next parenting issue: How do you discourage your (daughter's) foreign boyfriend from deciding to go to college in the same city in which you live?

Yea...any ideas on that would be really help. I adore him, on his own and with her. I love how he makes Munchkin feel. She is a better person for having met and known him. I am even good with the idea of him coming to school in the States. But living across the river from us? Or even on the same campus? Yea, that I am not really on board with...

More mish-mash

Spring seems to have sprung a little early around here, and I am totally OK with that. The weather folks are telling us that we are in for pretty consistent 60's all week, with only maybe a very little bit of rain and a couple of clouds. Coming on the heels of our absurdly mild winter, that is more good news! (Note: this does not at all preclude the arrival of a massive April snowstorm...)

I don't have a whole lot today, but I felt like blogging (just like old times!). We did a little house hunting yesterday without much success...the good news is that it is a busy time of year, so a lot of stuff is coming onto the market. The bad news is that it all remains way too expensive. ("Oh, but AM, you could get such an awesome house in [insert leafy suburb]!" you say. "Yea? Shut it!")

Ever seen a baby bloody nose? I have! You really shouldn't let them play in places where they are likely to fall on their face:-) I would post pictures, but it would likely get me a call from DSS...

(Moving right along...)

The Boy and I are going to see Les Miserables on Friday night, which I am pretty excited about...the tickets were a Christmas present from his parents. His sister (who appears to have been in cahoots with his Mom) gave us a gift card to this place, which I haven't been to, and which should make for a good night. Babysitting services were included as a part of the gift:-).

Munchkin and her friend leave for Paris on Friday evening, too. I definitely wish I was going with her. Because really, who doesn't? I still feel like I need to spend a lot more time in Paris...despite having been there a couple of times, I haven't really seen much.

Before that, though, we have more primaries tomorrow and...oh, crap...you know what? I just can't bring myself to care that much. Santorum may win tomorrow, which may make Gingrich drop out, which still won't have much of an effect on the race. I honestly want to grab the collective GOP by the shoulders, shake them and shout "Rick fucking Santorum?!?!?!"

I still haven't heard anyone come up with a parallel to his status as a legitimate GOP candidate at this stage...

My blogger of the week

So, if I wasn't so lazy, I would have done this five days ago...and in fact should have. I think most of my readers also read Nilsa at Somi Speaks, but if you don't...go and visit her today while you still have a chance.

She has been running a contest all week in celebration of her blogiversary, soliciting suggestions for charitable organizations to which she will make some donation (out of her own pocket) based on the level of participation. Now, this is not an invitation to bombard her with ideas and send her to the poor house:-) (I suppose there is an off chance that this ends up with me writing her an "apology check") but it is worth stopping by to check it out.

Obviously, it is quite generous of her, and she should be applauded...despite not asking for any applause. It is a wonderful, selfless idea, and I may very well steal it from her later this year:-)

The other Decision 2012

Today is Super Tuesday, including the primary here in Massachusetts. It is nice to be able to go back to 2008 and see what I wrote about that day...and to see how much more I wrote about Politics as a whole that year. Really, it is kind of interesting how much more discussion there seemed to be in 2008 across the whole of the blogosphere, which is probably due to a couple of obvious things (bloggers on average are pretty liberal, and therefore don't care about the Republican primaries as much; the 2008 Democratic fight was a pretty unusually big one, etc.)

But I did promise to tell you who I am going to vote for, and LaurWilk hit my rationale pretty soundly in her comment last week...I am gonna vote for Ron Paul (disclaimer: Romney will win the state by a mile, and whoever wins today will lose by a mile in November. Ergo, my vote is not really cast with the idea that it has some input into the outcome.

So let's start with Romney, who Republicans seem to very begrudgingly choosing as their nominee. He just seems like a guy who's whole is less than the sum of his parts. Because on the surface, the resume is all there: he is unquestionably smart and hardworking and successful at a bunch of things. His private sector background is outstanding (despite the nonsense that his opponents have tried to play in the last couple of months). His quasi-government role at the Olympics earned raves from everyone who was involved on any level, and his time as the Governor here was basically successful as well (the one BIG mark against him is that he really only did it for about three years...he didn't seek re-election and largely disengaged for at least the last year of his term).

Yet for some reason, he seems to constantly want to apologize for who he is, and he has a very long (and disconcerting) habit of saying what it seems like people want to hear. I almost feel like his campaign advisers told him early on that he needs to come across as likeable, and he has been vainly trying and looking incredibly phony in the process. You know what, Mitt? You are rich and smart and handsome and successful...just go ahead and be arrogant about it! Most of us will never be able to identify with someone like you, so stop apologizing for it and just embrace who you are. We don't want to hire you because you are just like us...we want to hire you because you are capable.

Then, of course, there is Rick Santorum...oy. It is one of the great marvels of my memory that he is considered a contender in this race. He comes from a key swing state where, six years ago, voters took the really unusual step of throwing him out as a very powerful incumbent, and doing it by SEVENTEEN PERCENTAGE POINTS!!! If that has ever happened before, I have never heard of it. And yet here, six years later, preaching the same message, the national party thinks he might be a good candidate for President? How on Earth did that happen? (Actually, that is an easy question to answer...have you seen his opponents?)

More specifically, my problem with Santorum is that he is the natural successor to George W. Bush. It was never McCain, and it won't be Romney, and it's not even Jeb Bush...but Santorum is the exact kind of "compassionate Conservative" that Bush was. Socially, he seems to be stuck somewhere between 1885 and 1902...forget about abortion, he wants to talk about contraception. Really? What fucking planet are we on? And he is from the very worst school of unsustainable spenders that Bush is from...huge tax cuts for everyone and huge benefits for everyone and let the children pay for it in 40 years when the bill comes due. We are all blessed that he is such a colossal idiot, because he is unquestionably the most dangerous person in this race.

Newt Gingrich is just too much of an asshole to be President, and while Romney takes the blame (because he runs most of the ads), Gingrich is really the one most responsible for the tone of this race. He is the one who started on the intellectually dishonest attack ads, and the rest simply reacted...or over-reacted if you think so. Newt's legislative record as Speaker of the House was actually not that bad...he and Bill Clinton ran a fiscally sound state (or, at least as sound as anyone else has...but for the love of God, can we learn what it means to actually balance a budget? Because they didn't do it, despite claiming it incessantly for 15 years), and they put together at least one signature achievement: welfare reform. But then he got off track on a blow job infused witch hunt and destroyed himself and a lot more else in the process.

Which brings us to Ron Paul, who for some reason never gets treated like a "real" candidate. Which makes no sense...he raises tons of money, has a huge organization and draws the biggest crowds. He is also the spiritual father of so many of the current deficit hawks... And unquestionably the most intellectually consistent and honest of the bunch.

I think he is off base with his insistence on the gold standard, which wouldn't really accomplish anything near the trouble it would cause, and he is probably overly isolationist. He also remains a pretty staunch social conservative (although I will give him this: I disagree with him, but he makes one of the most eloquent pro-Life arguments I have heard), and I think he underestimates the need to maintain an energy policy as a part of foreign policy.

But he is just so right about so much else...he is the only one of the bunch (including the President) who is even remotely serious about deficit reduction, let alone balancing the budget. He is the only one who talks sincerely about shrinking Government (the others say so, but don't actually propose to do it). And he is alone among Republicans...and, this week, Democrats, too...in acknowledging the lives, money and resources that we are wasting overseas.

So, I am going to vote for him and feel pretty good about it. I expect Romney to win the nomination, and unless something really dramatic changes, I will vote for Obama in November (and expect him to win handily). He may be a crappy President, but save for actually starting a war with Iran, it is hard to see what he could do to make me think one of the other guys would be better at it.

Decision 2012

No, not the election, which I will try to write about tomorrow, but a big decision for Munchkin that she has to make after she gets back from France in a couple of weeks.

First, some back story, which I have written about before but which you may not recall. When Munchkin moved here, she repeated fourth grade. She was coming from a not-great public school to a super-advanced private school and was also dealing with the loss of her second parent, moving to a new city, etc. It seemed like an awful lot to throw at a kid who might also be trying to catch up in school, so the administrators and I agreed that it made sense for her to just do fourth grade a second time. That made her one of the oldest kids in her class, but that seemed OK.

In hindsight, it was unnecessary. Academically, she thrived from day one, and she has always been socially much more developed than her classmates. Most of her best friends have always been older than her, although she has plenty of friends in her own class, too. So, starting a couple of years ago, her counselors began to ask if she wanted to skip a grade to get back on to her original schedule. And while it always seemed intriguing, she never officially committed to it...but always sort of left the option open.

She did this by doubling up subjects at times...so, for example in seventh grade, she would take both seventh and eighth grade English. Then in eighth grade, she would take ninth grade English, along with eighth and ninth grade Math, etc. Combined with her two languages, that made for a very heavy workload...but she still tore through it with very, very few marks below an A. I think she has had like three A-'s.

Which gets her to now...her sophomore year of high school. She now has to decide definitively whether she wants to graduate in 2013 or 2014. To finish next year, she would need to take two double classes, which would get her through her Senior year in everything she needs to. But if she wants to continue with the grade she has always been in, she would end up taking a handful of college-level classes that would probably get her done with some of her credits when she finally starts college.

It is completely up to her...she already basically knows where she wants to go to college and should have no trouble getting in. She already took the PSAT last fall (and killed it, of course) and would need to register for the Spring SAT by sometime in April, I think. So, I think that my first inclination is that she should do it, and that I should immediately prepare for the absolutely ridiculous idea that I will have a SENIOR IN HIGH SCHOOL in the house, and then very shortly a college student. But, she loves school, and loves her friends and she may just not feel the need to rush anything.

There are a couple of social factors, too - one that pulls her towards 2014, and one towards 2013. First, her best friend is in her class, and this would mean skipping ahead and graduating a year ahead of her. Given the timing of the decision, I am not sure that Munchkin wants to do that (even if her friend should be completely better by then). Second, there is the ever-present Frenchie factor...he will finish high school in 2013 and I would be pretty surprised if he didn't come to college in the States. I will have much more on this later on, but the appeal of being on the same timeline as him has to be appealing as well.

So, I don't really know what she will decide. I can be pretty sure that she will sit down at least me and Smoking Hot Roommate, and probably Big Sis and The Boy and Papa Bear as well, and talk about it in great detail. That is how she makes big decisions...she assembles her advisers and talks our ears off:-)

Odds and Ends

Three weeks in a row now, Modern Family has totally killed me...it's like they are pulling plot lines out of my old diaries (that I never wrote, but still).
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We actually got a little bit of snow yesterday, which should be a non-story, but it stands as the only snow we have seen here since...oh, October? And even that was questionable (at least around here, further west it was a real storm.) The snow is gone, which leaves us today with just a really cold, rainy day, reminding us that our pleasant winter still has a LONG way to go.
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Tuesday election recap: good night for Romney, obviously. I know there have been stories about Democrats voting for Santorum, but I always question how much things like that really impact an election. However, it is a good thing that Santorum didn't win by less than 1% or else there would have been a revolt. Now we look forward to next Tuesday...although right now it doesn't look like that is going to solve anything definitively. Romney will win a couple, Santorum will win a couple, Gingrich will win Georgia (maybe Tennessee?) and they will all probably live to fight another day...except maybe Newt, this may be it for him.

Watch Ohio, which is a big delegate prize (other than Georgia, which is Newt's home state), and a tremendously important November state. It is also unclear who is going to win, I think Romney is up in some polls, but it is really close...and Santorum's brand of conservatism (I love Jesus and I love labor unions!) may resonate with the GOP voters there.

Also, I get to vote Tuesday...I can almost promise you that I will vote for someone else in November...but I am still voting now. Would anyone care to take a guess...? I will tell you Tuesday if you care...
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Spring break is in a couple of weeks, and Munchkin is headed to Paris. Poor kid, huh? She and a friend are headed to visit Frenchie, which I am once again jealous of. If I stop and think about it, the whole thing remains as completely absurd as ever...but I stopped worrying about that years ago.
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Poor LK got sick while she was asleep last night and didn't really even wake up:-( She threw up just a little bit, but it was only on her blanket, so I didn't have to change her. But a little bit got in her hair, and my efforts to clean it without waking her up didn't quite prevent it from kinda smelling this morning.
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Seems like very little shows up in my Reader these days...do I need some new blogs to put in the rotation? Or is this just a temporary slowdown?
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Holy shit, when did March happen?!?!?