Random Bits

Mom: "Whichever girl's turn it is to scoop the litter box, needs to do it."

Dancer: "I can't remember whose turn it is. It's hard to keep track."

Mom: "That's why I put up the chore chart months ago, with all the days and the chores."

Dancer: "But we never use it."

Mom: face-palm

That look a cat gives you when she is rolling around in some sort of almost-catnip-fueled type abandon and sees you watching her. "Oh. Hai. Didn't see you there."

You know your best friend is your best friend when you give each other the same Christmas gift. And when you can't actually wait until Christmas to exchange gifts.

I'm really tired of having to put paragraph breaks in by hand because Blogger doesn't seem to recognize the return key anymore. Especially when I forget and then go to look at my blog post actually on my blog.

Kinda Sorta Here

In my effort to post more, I am here to bring you this short post of Nothing of Any Substance Whatsoever. You see, on Saturday, the Musician got sick. Every member of the family followed. I was the last to get sick, and am just starting to feel better today. I'm hoping we can get back to normal now. Between Christmas and the Musician's birthday, this is the craziest time of the year for me. And even though most of the chaos ends with the holiday season, I then have to prepare for the Dancer's birthday in early February.

Oh, and I also opened up a huge can of World War III with my inlaws over the weekend.

Waiting for the Lightning

Seems Jamie Foxx recently called Obama his "lord and savior." No, really, Yeah. He did. I wouldn't stand too close to him, in case the lighting bolt from above shows up.

If you ever read Ace of Spades, you are well familiar with the Let It Burn concept. The idea that this country is too far in debt and has too large of a lazy, self-centered populace that likes to be ignorant and plans on staying that way, means the country is at some point going to collapse. So, let's get the party started now. If you believe at some point this house of cards is all going to come down, then why delay the pain? And part of Letting It Burn is destroying the entertainment and media industries. If you were paying attention, you may have noticed that during the run-up to the election, an enormous majority of celebrities may not have been calling our current president their lord and savior, but they are certainly behind him, and quite happy to demonize anyone who isn't. If you're a reader who knows me from Martin Loopers, you probably don't watch much television already, and may not have cable. I'm trying to persuade Mr. BTEG to at least cancel our Sirius satellite radio subscription, if not our cable. I want us to avoid as many movies as possible, especially the ones where the more vocal Obama supporters are stars. Tell me why any of the liars, tramps, sluts and thieves in Hollywood deserve my family's money. Let them feel the economic depression/recession just like the rest of us.

Spelling Tip

Since the election, there has been a lot of discussion among people who still wish to live under the rules set out in our Constitution, and who suggest breaking away from the United States to form some new country. The only thing I am going to point out here, is that this would be a secession and not a succession. I've been really frustrated seeing the wrong word used over and over. That is all.

Cravings

The week or so of solid gray skies and steady rain that came as a result of Hurricane Sandy made one thing clear to me: I do have Seasonal Affective Disorder. By the end of the week I was barely functional. My brain worked well enough to click a computer mouse, and that was about it.

I've always suspected that I had SAD. After all, winter is the hardest time of the year for me, emotionally. February was the month when I reached an breaking point bad enough to land me in a mental hospital. But the bad weather last month compressing it all into a solid week really convinced me. I've been pretty good about upping my Vitamin D consumption in the winter, but since we are blessed enough to have very good health insurance coverage at the moment, my psychiatrist is supporting me in trying phototherapy. Mr. BTEG is working through the insurance channels/hoops to get a light box. I'll probably update when we get one, after I've used it for a while.

My other struggle, besides craving sunlight, is craving carbs. I haven't talked about it here, but late this summer, I started eating less, trying to cut back on carbs, cutting out as much high fructose corn syrup as possible, and walking. I did manage a little bit of weight loss. But now my ankle injury has messed up my walking habit, and as winter comes on I find myself craving carbs as I haven't in a long time. Mr. BTEG, who did some research on light boxes and SAD, tells me that craving carbs in the winter is nature's way of putting us into a sort of hibernation. Well, I was certainly in hibernation mode after that week of gray and rain. But I can't do that all winter. Maybe the phototherapy will help with the carb cravings.

Oh, and Mr. BTEG also discovered that light therapy can cause someone who is bipolar to go into a manic state, or a mixed state. Swell. My mixed states are the worst ones of all. I guess we'll have to play that one by ear as well. Happy Winter!

Confession Time

I am finally giving in to responding to this article. I really didn't want to, because I'm not going to get anywhere, or change anyone's mind, but I've been turning it over in my mind for awhile, so I'm writing it down here and moving on.

My name is Barb the Evil Genius, and I am a terrible parent. I homeschooled one daughter for five years, and the other for four years. The reason why the Musician was only homeschooled for four years was because she was fighting my attempts to homeschool her, and we put her into an online school for a year, rather than put her in a school district that we were planning on leaving in a year.

Now both daughters are in public school, happy and doing well. This obviously means that I am a poor parent, since even after many years of homeschooling, my daughters prefer being smothered and subjugated in a public school. They enjoy being around, and learning with, large groups of their peers, even though many of the peers are sometimes unkind, selfish, lying, thieving, have emotional issues, do drugs and sleep around. To be honest, my girls can be thoughtless, tactless, selfish, and lose their tempers. My youngest occasionally resists the urge to inflict bodily harm on her classmates when she finds their stupidity frustrating (what can I say, she's my little girl,) and yet she prefers public school to homeschooling. This makes me a terrible parent. They should prefer being at home with just the other sister, and having the one-on-one interaction with me as their teacher.

When my daughters were homeschooled, they were not intrigued to find out how birds built their nests, nor interested in becoming Mozart-like composers, learning open-heart surgery, or welding a scale-model Eiffel Tower in the garage. If given the opportunity, my daughters would spend a great deal of their time surfing My Little Pony memes on the internet and playing Super Paper Mario. This obviously makes me a poor parent.

My youngest daughter takes medication for her ADHD. This is to help her concentrate on her work, sit still and be quiet. Definitely I am in the poor mom category here. ADD and ADHD are just made up labels to force brainwashed children to mindlessly behave in a stifling system. My daughter would learn so much more if she was homeschooled. Talking non-stop and doing cartwheels through the backyard to work off her energy would serve her so much better. At least she could concentrate while she was playing Super Paper Mario.

So when you hear, "You can homeschool your kids too! Public school is always the worst choice!", just remember, that is only true if you are a good mom. My name is Barb the Evil Genius, and I am not a good mom.

Hobbling

My foot is still in pretty bad shape. It's been a week since I injured it, and new bruises are still appearing on it. I can drive, with some pain, and walk fairly well. Stairs are a little more difficult. I will try to update tomorrow; I have been doing some knitting and some deep thinking while I've been mostly laid up. :)

Curve Balls

All of us here in the Evil Genius household now have the cold that Mr. BTEG acquired at work last week. So the girls and I are hanging out here at home, me nagging the girls to do a little bit of housework in between My Little Pony episodes.

Not only that, but in an illness-induced haze the other night, I tripped badly getting out of bed and have barely been able to walk for the past few days, with rather impressive bruising and swelling on my left foot. To add insult to (literal) injury, having a left-foot injury and having a stick-shift car means I can't even drive, even if I could limp out to the car.

On a related note, one of my favorite catch-phrases has been: "That's part of the luxury of being a stay-at-home mom." Because being a stay-at-home mom is such a luxury, or at least that seems to be a popular opinion. I've also seen a couple of things lately that made me realize that lots of people think that non-automatic windows in cars are a thing of the past. Well, only for those who don't have the luxury of being a stay-at-home mom.

Yet Another Reason

to believe that Gaia worship is a religion: the LA City Council is encouraging its residents to avoid eating meat on Mondays. For some vague, feel-good ideas about saving the planet, contributing to health and avoiding illnesses. If we say the right things, do the right things, perhaps the Nature God will favor us with plentiful "plant-based" foods, good health and no natural calamities. In the end, it's all about what we do, though. Like so many other religions are.

You know, abstaining from random sex and not having a lot of sexual partners, whether hetero- or homosexual, would "reverse some of our nation's most common" diseases. I guess temple prostitutes are cool with Gaia.