Thursday, December 15, 2005

A lot of posts tonight

I want to let you know that I've written four (now five) posts tonight. I don't want you to miss them if you are interested.

So keep scrolling down.

mwz

Frances Update

I haven't posted about Frances for a while.

Today, we were rolling a ball back and forth (well she was bouncing it to me) and the ball rolled through her legs. She watched it go through and looked between her legs as it rolled away. She retrieved the ball and then proceeded to roll it between her legs again (like snapping a football) and watched it as it rolled. She did this several times. Arial said that this is a milestone of some sort. That made me proud.

Once a week, we go to this play group thing at a local elementary school. It is for kids five and younger. They have a lot of big toys there to play with like play houses and tricycles and small slides. It's kinda cool and nice to get Frances interacting with other kids. For the most part she is shy but she isn't mean and she is pretty good at sharing (except that she doesn't like to give up the drivers seat in a play van).


She normally has a pretty good time (if she isn't hungry or overly tired). This last time though was a little trying. Frances was playing in a little house and this older kid wanted in (we'll call him Jerkface because I couldn't call him that there and I need to get it out of my system before we go back again). Frances was by the door so Jerkface pushed her down.

His parent or guardian was no where to be seen. Frances cried and we carried her out for a little bit. She bounce back pretty quickly and seemed excited to go back in. We played happily for a while.

Later, she was playing in a different house. Jerkface and another older boy (his brother?) were chasing each other or something and they decided to crawl in the windows of the little house. Frances was just standing by the door (not really in his way this time) and he said something like "Get out" and pushed her in the back.

That made Arial and I angry. I yelled "Don't push her" and he seemed to realize that he had been caught. He said "sorry" and his mother/guardian (who happened to be near this time) seemed to think that he wasn't just sorry that he got caught.

We picked up Frances who was crying again after being senselessly pushed. I took her out and I could hear Arial telling the mother/guardian what had happened (both times). She pointed out that he wasn't being properly supervised. The mother/guardian explained that he had said that he was sorry. Arial told him that it was good of him to apologize (which was probably better than what I thought which was "Sorry doesn't unpush my daughter").

I was proud of Arial. She did a good job walking the line between stern and completely enraged. I'm sure she did a better job than I would have. I probably would have either just walked away giving an angry look as I walked by or yelled at the lady and Jerkface in a completely inappropriate way. I don't know which. But Arial did a great job of sounding like an adult.

So, I calmed Frances down some and when Arial got done with them, she helped too. We stayed out a little bit longer that time but eventually she did want to go back in. She played fairly happily for a while longer, although initially you could tell that she was looking around to see that Jerkface wasn't near.

It still makes me mad but Frances managed to get past it. I suppose, I should too.

mwz

Limon's a Boy

We found out a while ago and most of you probably already know but Limon is a boy. Which is good because I had already started referring to him as "he".

mwz

Taxes

I recently read this post by Rhymes With Right. The gist is that some anti-war people (hanguponwar.org) are refusing to pay an excise tax on their phone bills because it supports the military. Some phone companies are letting them do it and no one is being punished for tax evasion.

That's absurd. The thing that gets me is that a lot of the anti-war crowd is pretty well entwined with the political left. Those are the people who want government to give money to poor people. Or put another way, they want to force people into giving to charity.

What this looks like to me is that these people want to pick and choose what they fund. Well, I'm all for that.

I want to pick my charities and not be forced to give money to an oversized bureaucracy that does little except keep people dependent on it. I want to withhold money from various pork projects. I want to stop funding abortions. I want our garbage men to pick garbage off the curb instead of having fancy golf carts to drive down driveways. I want to keep my social security money. I want to withhold my funds from universities that use race as a factor in deciding who gets accepted. I don't want to pay for people who are in this country illegally to get drivers licenses. I want my governments to give back any money it has left over. They can get new money next year and if the people don't make as much, the government shouldn't have as much then either.

But if I try to withhold my tax money for any of those reasons, I'll be thrown in prison and my life is ruined. I guess the hanguponwar people are doing this for the "right" reason.

As a parting thought, remember that every time you vote for a levy or a tax increase, you are telling your neighbors, "I want you to pay for this or go to jail".

mwz

YMCA Showers

So I've been training for a triathlon lately. And that means that I've been working out at the local YMCA.

It isn't a very large Y but it's suitable for my purposes. However, there are two things that are really starting to bother me. One is that there is a very cold stair well between the locker room and the pool. The door to the outside is right next to the men's locker room door. It is winter and I walk in that stairwell wet. Not very comfortable.

The other thing is the shower. Well, not so much the shower itself but the smell of the shower. And not even the normal smell of the shower, I mean the smell that only arises when you turn the hot water on and the warmth awakens the scents trapped on the floor.

Most often, it smells like various body scents. Which can be a little disturbing, depending on what you think you're smelling. But Tuesday, it was surprisingly worse. It smelled like a sickeningly sweet strawberry sucker.

Now you might not think that would be that bad but the smell was so strong. It made me want a glass of milk to pour down my nose. It was like I had a mouthful of hard candy and I couldn't wash it down.

Why would a shower smell like that? I guess I should just be glad that whoever dropped their candy in the shower didn't pick it back up and eat it.

mwz

ps Thanks for reading my gripes.

Friday, December 02, 2005

Triathlete?

So, my brothers have convinced me to train (and presumably do) a triathlon. At first I thought it was a crazy idea but now I've sort of gotten into it.

We got a YMCA membership and everything... okay, I don't have a bike... or a racing swim suit... or goggles... or a swim cap... or a bike helmet... or good running shoes... but I do have a membership at the Y.

This morning, I was up at 7 am to go swimming. It wasn't actually as bad as it sounded. (Since I work at home I usually get up around 8:30.) Tomorrow, I'll get up at 8 to run in the snow. That should be fun.

I'm thinking about going to a spin class next Wednesday (I'm sort of hoping J-Funk will post some notes on what a beginner might expect in a spin class (either in the comments or on her own blog).

If you are interested, you can follow our training at triathlblog.blogspot.com.

mwz
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ps. I was surprised to learn just now that the Blogger.com spell checker doesn't know the word "blog" in it.
Odd.