So, I'm looking through the latest Justice catalog with the Dancer, and lo and behold, it seems as though some of the fashions are moving someplace besides the 80s/90s! With metal tables and chairs, mini jukeboxes on the tables, and the back of a vintage turquoise "car" used as props, it seems like there is some inspiration from the 50s. This dress seems like a definite nod to the 50s to me:
I already know that I am violently allergic to codeine. Why the nurses never figured out that my vomiting and nausea after my deliveries might possibly be related to the pain medication I received is totally beyond me, but I finally figured out that my body doesn't like it. Then I was prescribed oxycodone after a tonsillectomy and work on my soft palate and a deviated septum. It made me loopy. I knew I was loopy, but I couldn't get my mind under control to stop being loopy. I hated it. Yesterday, I got vicodine. Today, I've felt tired and nauseous, and my brain isn't functioning properly. It's a mess. I pray I am never in a situation where I am in serious pain on a long-term basis.
In a world of dire predictions, what Mr. BTEG does for me is be his usually optimistic self. Not that he thinks our country is in a good place; he actually thinks our country has been headed in the wrong direction for decades. What he does is provide his own analysis, which while not full of sunshine and rainbows, is also not apocalyptic and full of zombies and wastelands either. That while the future is not bright, and our children will face economic problems that we parents didn't, we may not end up behind the barricades either. I'm still trying to make sure our family is prepared for whatever comes, but Mr. BTEG helps me to worry less in the now.
The box proclaimed it to be both retro and trendy. I mean, I guess retro is currently trendy, but then the "style" has been to recycle stuff from both the seventies and the eighties for quite a while now, years actually. Behold this preppy folder from 2006, with adorable little whales all over it. Currently, day-glo is back in style. When will they start recycling stuff that has been recycled from the seventies and eighties, tweaking it just the slightest bit again?
Here's a picture of one of the nice gifts that I received, a new bicycle, in pretty blues and pinks. Come spring, I can be walking or bicycling!
Anyway, a very interesting night. There was classical music, and a trio singing Christmas carols (the bass was sick), all from the Cleveland Institute of Music. I think I'd like to try it when a different music genre was there. I guess I'm totally uncool, but most of the modern classical stuff didn't really cut it for me. Especially one piece where either the piano was wildly out of tune, or there were notes that deliberately sounded grating to the ear. Physically painful, even.
We had a chance to see hipsters in their natural habitat. Lots of them. I took anthropological notes. :D
For some reason, I really found it funny that atop the upright piano, was a bust lamp of Elvis. A very large bust of Elvis. In blues. The lampshade shook when the modern classical musicians were pounding on the piano keys, but Elvis stayed solid.
This bar serves hot dogs, tater tots and french fries, and beer. However, you can get about thirty different toppings for your hot dogs and tater tots. Including mole, the Mexican chocolatey stuff. Which, no.
I found it interesting that the cellist, who looked very Korean, was named Carlos.
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.
Oh, and I also opened up a huge can of World War III with my inlaws over the weekend.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
There has been damage in the area, mostly due to downed trees and the inevitable flooded basements. I don't see any reports of loss of life in this area, which is a blessing. Areas south of us got snow. I think Lake Erie is still too warm for us to get any snow -- yet.
Halloween trick-or-treating has been moved to Sunday evening, which is also a good thing. Otherwise, all the girls, at least, could have been dressed like Mary Poppins: carrying umbrellas and being blown by the wind down the street.
Having no power all day, we went out to dinner last night. The restaurant we chose was totally slammed, but considering that the biggest shopping metropolis in the area, Crocker Park, was without power, I doubt we could have avoided a crowd anywhere else. We did get a free appetizer and an extra salad out of the deal due to confusion. I hope the servers raked in a higher than usual amount of money for a Tuesday night.
