I haven’t posted in over a week. It’s not that I haven’t had anything to write about - I have plenty and then plenty more - it’s that I can’t seem to get near the computer for more than two seconds together.

M. had two wisdom teeth pulled the Friday before last. They then got infected. Between him feeling pretty crappy (better now, thank you antibiotics) and how busy he has been, I’ve been trying not to ask him to help with Munchkin girl any more than I can help it.

She takes short naps. She’s too young to play for long on her own, and there are certain things that I just can’t do when she is around, such as loading the diswasher. If I open it, she tries to climb in.

I love my daughter. I love spending time with her, and I can’t stand to be apart from her for long. But I’m starting to get the feeling that if I don’t get a solid hour away from her soon, I’m going to start tearing my hair out and climbing up the walls.

It just would be nice to relax for a bit without interuption.

I have no idea how single parents manage.

I made a new image for my signature file for some of the parenting forums I post in, so I thought that I would share it with all of you as well.

There are three images. I have it set up to rotate which one appears in my signature on the forums.

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Diane blogged most interesting today. Or yesterday, I guess. In any case, go read it now. Then come back and see my thoughts.

Not that my thoughts are many or coherent at this time of night.

I remember several years ago being rather angry as the DJ’s on one of the morning shows defended their right to drive SUVs with the fact that they were protecting the environment because they always made sure to buy dolphin safe tuna, after all. As if the two had anything to do with each other.

I mean, I’m happy for the dolphins and all. I’m sure the tuna don’t care much and would prefer that people bought tuna safe dolphin, but then I am fonder than dolphins than I am of tuna, so there you go. I’m glad that perhaps the dolphins will still be around for my grandchildren to see, but that does’t do much to lower the prices I pay to fill my fuel efficient civic or keep the air my daughter breathes clean or, well, you know all the other bad things that come with oil.

Helping the dolphins is great. It doesn’t excuse harming people though.

In particular, it doesn’t excuse harming my children or grandchildren or the next generation in general.

So no, I don’t want lower gas prices that can be brought about by petition either, unless the petition is for things that will lower gas prices by allowing/getting people to drive less and choose more fuel efficient cars or on a larger scale, finding better sources of power.

Artificially lowering them now just allows people to pretend there isn’t a problem while they shoulder it off to the next generation. We need urgency before there will be change.

As for my own walking, there is just one nasty street I have to cross to get to the store. It wouldn’t be bad if it weren’t for that one though. I hate standing on the corner watching the cars whiz by as I wait for the light to change. I hate dashing across it watching anxiously to make sure that some driver intent on making a left turn while the space is clear of cars doesn’t see us. My little girl seems so unprotected in her stroller.

It doesn’t help that just a few intersections down on the same street a wreath and a cross hang on a corner lamp post. We all know what those mean.

I like to walk, but I also like to feel safe. Being surrounded by steal helps sometimes.

I do walk to the grocery store most of the time though. We have only one car, and we don’t drive it every day or even every other day. Mostly it just sits around getting damaged by hail to the tune of six grand..

I’d love to have no car, but alas, that just won’t work where we live. I won’t be able to give up the car entirely either. And since we do have a car, it is too expensive not to drive it sometimes. I don’t have a monthly bus pass (M pays fifty bucks for his) and bus fare is two dollars each way - four dollars round trip - here.

It doesn’t cost me nearly that in gas to make a quick run out to any of the many places I go that are on bus routes, and so I generally choose to drive and forgo the bus. How much would it cost us in taxes though to lower the fares enough that I and others would be able to take the bus more frequently? How much would it save in reduced wear and tear on roads, reduced demand for gas, reduced traffic, reduced number of accidents resulting from fewer cars on the road leading to lower insurance premiums…

(Sidenote: Munchkin Girl - whose wakeful state is the reason that I am still up at this hour - just figured out how to press the button to open the CD drive on my compuer and took the CD out. Oh dear.)

Anyway, follow the link and read. As a result, I now have three new books on my to read list. And it would appear that I was only half right. My thoughts did indeed lack coherency, but they were many after all.

Last night at dinner, I leaned down over the tray of her highchair so that I could talk to her on her own level. Suddenly a cheerio was stuck in my mouth. This was followed by wild giggling from a littel girl.

My how the tables have turned around here.

The appointment to have the insurance adjusters look at the car was today.

$6000 in hail damage.

Ouch.

Our deductable is only $250, but we also have to pay about $300 to have a dent fixed that was obviously not from hail (we think it was from one of the kids scateboarding along the sidewalk next to where we used to park). Insurance will also pay for a rental car and our rates won’t go up, thank goodness.

Still $6000. It seems like such a waste for something that is merely cosmetic. I’d be willing to save everyone the money and just drive slighty dented car for a while if it weren’t for the issue of probaby wanting to trade it in someday. I do wish we could just get the money - or even get it when we go to purchase our next car and trade this one in.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I was getting well and truly sick of my weblog design.

Now I don’t have to look at it anymore, though you still can if you want to. I’ve brought skins back. So there are only two of them now, one of them being the desing I am sick of and the other being an old one redone, but it’s better than it was.

My goal is to add one a month until I am back to a dozen or so.

Change is good. Though annoying when it slips through a hole in a pocket. But then pockets are a bit annoying themselves because I rarely remember to check them before throwing my pants in the wash. And the wash itself is annoying because it is building up to scary mountains worth. Yes, this would be stream of consciousness writing. It doesn’t seem to be working as well as I had hoped.

Anyway, those of you reading this synched in the livejournal won’t be seeing it, but click over to my weblog to see my pretty new (well, redone old) design.

You can change skins from this page.

Want to have a baby? Don’t have a man around to do his part? Live in the Netherlands? You’re in luck; reality television is coming to give you a hand.

But the second show, Make me a mum — which Endemol is discussing with British and US television stations — will go a step further, newspaper De Telegraaf reported on Tuesday.

This six-part series involves men battling it out for the main prize: being given the opportunity to make several women pregnant. The artificial insemination will even be televised live.

full article

Oh, those poor babies if they actually do this. Can you imagine them asking how hey came to be? How would you explain something like that?

As for the other show discussed, I’m sure the men will be showing up in droves ready to prove that their’s is the best.

Want to have a baby? Don’t have a man around to do his part? Live in the Netherlands? You’re in luck; reality television is coming to give you a hand.

But the second show, Make me a mum — which Endemol is discussing with British and US television stations — will go a step further, newspaper De Telegraaf reported on Tuesday.

This six-part series involves men battling it out for the main prize: being given the opportunity to make several women pregnant. The artificial insemination will even be televised live.

Oh, those poor babies if they actually do this. Can you imagine them asking how hey came to be? How would you explain something like that?

As for the other show discussed, I’m sure the men will be showing up in droves ready to prove that their’s is the best.

I’ther show in the

Guess who has learned how to flush the toilet?

Guess who thinks that flushing the toilet is a fun game?

Guess who thinks that flushing the toilet is especially fun when Mommy is in the shower?

Ouch.

In other related news, it seems that I will be joining the legions of the unwashed. I will no longer be showering when Munchkin is awake and M is not home to wrangle her, and that leaves precious few hours which already have too much stuffed into them.

Munchkin girl will be going to a traditional school. Just recently I’ve really started to see the appeal of homsechooling though. I’m not organized enough in the normal course of things that I would want to attempt it when there is a perfectly good school so close by, but if there was something like bullying or problems with a teacher that couldn’t be resolved through the normal channels, I would indeed have her back home doing her lessons in a flash.

Today I came across an article on a new study that just came out about homeschooling.

Yahoo! News - Home Schooling Is on the Rise

This one quote in particular has me sitting back and waiting for the bloodshed to start when the homeschooling mommies get wind of it..

“At some point, children are going to have to interact with the rest of the world,” he said. “If they haven’t had the opportunity to build their emotional muscles so they have that capacity to interact, how effective are they going to be outside their cloistered environment?”

Yahoo! News - Study: Low Wal-Mart Wages Cost Calif. $86 Million

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - California paid an estimated $86 million in pubic assistance in 2001 because workers at Wal-Mart Stores Inc. earn such low wages, researchers said on Tuesday.

“Wal-Mart workers’ reliance on public assistance due to substandard wages and benefits has become a form of indirect public subsidy to the company,” said the report issued by the University of California, Berkeley Labor Center.

“Reliance by Wal-Mart workers on public assistance programs in California comes at a cost to the taxpayers of an estimated $86 million annually; this is comprised of $32 million in health related expenses and $54 million in other assistance.”

The report said many of Wal-Mart’s 44,000 California employees in 2001 relied on food stamps, Medicare and subsidized housing to make ends meet and also need more public health care than typical retail workers.

I don’t live in California, but still. We end up paying for it one way or another, so I’d rather my money went more directly through companies that treat their employees decently than letting even a penny of it linger in Walmart’s coffers and suporting the employees anyway through taxes.

It always makes me sad shopping at Costco and Superstore and such because I hate to be surrounded by carts full of crap. I shudder at what most of the people are buying.

That’s not to say that I am not fond of my own share of crap myself, but at least there is always a good variety of healthy things in my cart as well. I shop at such stores because it is cheaper, but those families with carts full of Cheetos and sugar-filled-cereal and frozen dinners must be paying more than I do.

It makes me sad shopping at the organic stores and better supermarkets too. There the sadness lies in the knowledge of the shocking total that will soon appear on a receipt and the damage thus done to my bank account. I love to look over the vast arrays of beautiful produce and healthy, yummy options though.

Today I bought a jar of pumpkin seed butter. It was twelve dollars, and much smaller than the normal peanut butter I buy for much less. It’s just so addictive though. And it’s good for me.

Why does the healthy choice generally turn out to be the expensive choice?

This, o best beloved, is yet another test.