Dear Air Canada,

When the fasten seatbelt sign is on, passengers are actually required to use their seatbelt, right? I mean, they can’t just hold on to the arm rests as tight as they can and be considered in compliance. To allow such a thing would be ridiculous as there is no possible way that a person could hold themselves in place in a really bad (but survivable by those properly restrained) landing or if the plain was to suddenly drop a hundred feet during bad turbulance.

So why are infants granted the same protections instead of being allowed to serve as airbags for the adult holding them?

Just wondering.

And yes, I know that no airline actually requires infants to be strapped in, but Alaskan Airlines at least encourages it by halving the price of a ticket for an infant under two. You charge full fare.

Any guesses as to which airline I’ll be flying next month when we go to visit my parents?

Confession time: while I usually do buy her a seat, due to some strange and inconvenient circumstances, I didn’t this time. Instead I’m gambling that since I’m flying at odd times, there will be an extra seat available for her to use. And yes, I’m already feeling guilty for my choice and considering changing it, and yes the flight will be hell if she isn’t in her own seat as she’s going to want to climb under the seat in front of me and will throw a temper tantrum when this isn’t allowed, but that’s just the way it goes.

I am a terrible mother.

I’m still not considering flying on you though. Just because.

And while I fell that the risk of something actually happening this one time when I’m not being perfectly safe is infintesimal, considering all the babies in laps on all the many flights, the worst is going to happen to some of them. Rule of large numbers and all. So why not do what you can to prevent it?

~ Pers

I’m feel terrible for Terry Shiavo’s parents that they are hurting so. And I’m sad that she collapsed and in effect died fifteen years ago, that she experienced one year less life than I have lived now, that she went so young and missed so much. I can’t be sad that her body has finally joined her mind in death though. Life is more than just mindlessly breathing.

Terry’s parents weren’t the only ones at that hospice who weren’t able to attend the death of their loved one. Why do those protesters only care for Shiavo? Why don’t they have any concern for any of the other patients there and their families and what they are doing to them? Must their protests be at the actual site? Would they really be any less effective if they were to choose a place where they weren’t hurting the ill and the dying and the grieving who actually have business being in the hospice?

I’m sickened by the hypocrisy displayed by many members of the political right. I’m sick of hearing “err on the side of life” from people on whose lips it means nothing. President Bush wants us to build a culture of life. Where was this reverence for life when he refused to even review the case of Bettie Lou Beets, a sixty-three year old, mentally disabled grandmother who had been sexually and physically abused throughout her entire life. Sure, she was guilty, but she shouldn’t have been convicted of a capital crime, and doesn’t a human being in such a situation at least deserve to have her case looked at by someone who claims to revere life so much?

Where was this reverence for life when in an interview he mocked a woman he put to death?

And where do all these absurd statements come from? Like “”Terri’s will to live should serve as an inspiration and impetus for action,” Sensenbrenner said.” From this article.

Terri had no will to live. She had no will. To have a will, one must have a mind.

Her death is indeed a tragedy because it is always a tragedy when someone is cut down so young. The tragedy occurred fifteen years ago though. It’s now time for her body to be put to rest.

So rest in peace, Terry Shiavo.

A certain young bugaboo just stole my deodorant off the bathroom counter and started gesturing with it at her armpits as if rubbing it there, just not touching.

Hee.

I know she watches me, and I know she imitates me, but it was just so unexpected that she’d know what to do with it that it made me laugh. Then there was the cute little grin on her face. Someone was quite pleased with herself for being a smart girl.

Much less amusing is the reason she was in there in the first place. She gets into and onto everything these days. I used to bemoan the fact that I couldn’t have any privacy in the bathroom anymore because when it was just the two of us at home I had to leave the bathroom door open so she could come in. Now I have to bring her in with me and shut the door just to keep her out of trouble elsewhere.

Just today she pushed an overturned laundry basket over to the entertainment center and climbed up on it and sat next to the TV. I’m constantly pulling her down off the dining room chairs, but if I don’t get to her fast enough, she climbs right up on the table. The other day she dragged a chair over to the gate at the top of the stairs and tried to climb over it.

This monkey business is going to be the death of me, or the death of my sanity at least.

But she knows what to do with my deodorant. Hee. Oh God, she’s going to be a teenager someday.

There’s this bicycle in the field, and it’s really bothering me.

I noticed it first the day before yesterday when we were out for our walk. It lay on it’s side in the grass all sad and lonely and lost just off the path right in the middle of the field. It’s an old bike, a beat up bike, and nothing of value, but the chain is still on and the pedals both there and the wheels and the seat. I saw it there today, now halfway buried in snow because it snowed yesterday.

I thought maybe some kid forgot it, but while it’s not unheard of to see a bike leaning against a tree or a wall near a playground and forgotten, who leaves there bike in the middle of the field? Even if it breaks and can’t be ridden further, doesn’t one walk it home if he’s reduced to walking anyway? Walk it home and try and fix it?

Was someone hurt? Did it’s owner fall off it and injure himself so badly that he couldn’t get both himself and the bike home? Did someone steal it and leave it there on a lark? Is something on it broken that I just didn’t notice, and it’s owner grow so disgusted with it that he just dropped it there and left it as he walked off?

I’m left wondering who will pick it up in the end, for it can’t stay there forever. Will it’s owner come back and reclaim it at last? Some kid without a bike who thinks they can make it work? Some employee of one of the nearby schools come to throw it in the trash (and why haven’t they yet?) Some special trash man? Are there people paid to go around collecting abandoned bikes from the park?

It’s just this stupid bicycle in the field, but it’s really bothering me, and I don’t know why.

this morning, my alarm failed to go off.

Now at 9:30 at night, there it goes.

Will I ever learn? Probably not. Good thing the phone rang this morning.

And yes, Munchkin did sleep well past then. This most likely due to going to bed at nine last night, going to sleep shortly thereafter, and waking up ten minutes after that feeling that she’d had a good nap and was ready to go for another four hours.

Off to bed with her now. We’ll see how it goes tonight.

SAN FRANCISCO - A judge ruled Monday that California’s ban on gay marriage is unconstitutional — a legal milestone that, if upheld on appeal, would open the way for the most populous state to follow Massachusetts in allowing same-sex couples to wed.

Judge Richard Kramer of San Francisco County’s trial-level Superior Court likened the ban to laws requiring racial segregation in schools, and said there appears to be “no rational purpose” for denying marriage to gay couples.

From this article‘

Can’t wait for the Right to jump in screaming about courts making legislation again. Just what do they think is the purpose of the courts, anyway?

Also:

Gay marriage supporters hailed the ruling as a historic development akin to the 1948 state Supreme Court decision that made California the first state to legalize interracial marriage.

I didn’t know that about California. They have earthquakes, energy issues, and Arnold, but still in spite of all that I find myself liking the state more every day.

I’m up to twenty-one-thousand words on that Harry Potter fic I mentioned starting last week. I just finally go the gang back to Hogwarts. I’m hoping to bring the pre-Hogwarts period down to 10,000 to 15,000 words in the next draft.

Already, I have a list of things that need to be changed for the next draft. As I’m writing, I’ll realize that something that made sense in my outline just doesn’t work in the story, or I’ll find that something needs to have already been mentioned previously so as not to seem shoved into the story like a plug, or I’ll just plain have a better idea that requires some changes to the current storyline. Any time these things happen, I add another line to my list of change.

I’m in awe of people who can post WIPs without even having a first draft finalized and manage to make it all work. Even with my outlines and character notes, I can’t imagine being at twenty-thousand words and not being able to go back and change something in the first chapter, much less being at fifty-thousand or more. Everything would just fall apart.

So how do they do it? Do I just suck or something?

Killing the economy by driving competitors out of business by paying such low wages that many of their employees require welfare to make ends meet using anti-union activity to make sure they can’t fight for better isn’t enough for Wal-Mart. Now they are making a more direct attack on our actual lives by supporting legislation which will result in more of us becoming road-kill.

Retailers want 16-hour trucker workday

Wal-Mart and other retailers are lobbying Congress to extend the workday for truckers to 16 hours, something labor unions and safety advocates say would make roadways more dangerous for all drivers.

and from the same article..

“This is a sweatshop-on-wheels amendment,” Claybrook said. “The last thing we need is for tired truckers to become even more fatigued and threaten the safety of those around them on the roads.”
…
Nearly 5,000 people were killed in large truck crashes in 2003, and those vehicles were three times more likely to be involved in fatal crashes than passenger cars, according to the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration.

Grrrr.

and yes, I am just heading out the door with my daughter, and she is wearing mismatched socks.

It’s been one of those days, okay?

I love many things about this post, but in particular I love this line:

Remember: You can hold out longer than they can. I promise. Your sex toys are better,* your self-control is superior, and your stakes are higher.

and its footnote:

* And illegal in some states. Coincidence? I think not.

I’ve never considered the issue quite that way before, but it makes sense and it explains a lot. Now someone just needs to invent better toys for men so that certain males out there will

1) stop considering women to be their personal toys
2) stop having hissyfits about sex toys in general which leads to them being banned

Saturday and Sunday were lovely, lovely days. The sun stayed out the whole of them, and anywhere out of doors the sounds of running water were inescapable as the melt turned the streets and sidewalks into rivers.

I passed two men heading the opposite direction just before I hit one of the lowest stretches of the path on my walk Sunday evening.

“Turn back and get your swimming trunks on if you’re going that way,” one of them suggested.

My boots are waterproof though, so I forged ahead, stepping up on the packed snow along the sides of the path on occasions when the water deepened to the point where it could have crept in the holes for the laces. The wheels on the jogging stroller are large and the stroller itself sits high, so Munchkin stayed nice and dry.

Yesterday I awoke expecting more of the same only to be met by grey skies and snow instead. The snow was very pretty though the window though as it fell in thick wet clumps and gathered in delicate drifts on the branches of our crabapple tree.

Unfortunately, with the snow came the cold. It wasn’t very cold, but it was cold enough that the melt began to refreeze. All those places that had been ankle deep with water turned to mixes of water and slush and ice.

I went out for a walk in the evening when the snow had stopped falling. About forty minutes out, I hit one of the deepest puddles, slick with ice on the bottom, and my feet slid out to the right. I fell to the left.

I walked the last kilometer or so home with the left leg of my pants completely soaked with icy water and the lower half of the right as well. My socks were wet within my boots where the water had come in the top, and even the left side of my underwear was cold and wet, and my gloves were dripping and un-wearable.

Discomfort such as that is almost worth it though for the pleasure that comes a kilometer later in the form of a warm house and dry clothes. It forces one to really appreciate them. My heart goes out to those separated from such common comforts by much more than a mere kilometer. I wish I could do more to help.

Cover art for Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince is up at The Leaky Cauldron.

Ameican version
British child version
British adult version

I waited to buy book five until I was down in the States because I wanted it to go with books 1-4, but I love the adult British version so much this time that I might just have to buy it instead.

Two years ago at about this time, I was cursing myself for not having tried to reserve book five at the library earlier as there were something like five-hundred holds ahead of me. The publication date has been out for so long that you’d think I would have tried reserving it before now this time around, but I didn’t, and now my position in the holds queue is 495. Stupid.

Not that it really matters if I’m not going to wait until I’m down in the states to buy my own copy anyway.

I should be doing Nanoedmo this month and cleaning up/finishing my Nanowrimo novel from last November. I’m not.

Instead I’m writing fanfic. Harry Potter fanfic.

I don’t talk about fan fiction much in this journal, so those of you who know me from someplace other than one of the fan fiction communities I participate in might not realize just how addicted to the stuff I am. Those of you who do know me from the fanfic communities also know that I am generally in the middle of some extensive story that I eventually tire of and abandon half written. As I loathe abandoned WIPs and I can’t trust myself to finish a WIP were I to start posting one, I never post anything that I’m not finished with, which means that I very rarely post anything at all.

I feel like I’m starting over now, starting clean. Most of my in progress stories were stored on my old laptop, and I can’t find the backup disks. My 25,000 quarter finished story about Tara’s past? Gone. My twenty or so pages of notes for the story I planned to write about Faith’s past? Gone. The ten-thousand or so words plus notes for my Dawn-centric story set in sixth year? You guessed it: gone.

All I have left are a couple of short stories I had stored online on my draft site.

I’m sad for my lost effort and the Tara story in particular which I really did love even if I hadn’t added a word to it in two years. At the same time, I feel a strange sense of freedom and lightness having lost the weight of all that unfinished work.

So I’ve left BtVS and abandoned my solemn oath that I’d never write in the Harry Potter fandom because it was all so silly. I guess inspiration beats a solemn oath any day.

I’m really confident that I will finish this one. I’ve never done anywhere near this level of plotting and planning for a story before I began writing it before. Usually I just start writing and then about halfway in I really work out the plot and characters and then I have to go back and start over which is where I always run into trouble. Not this time.

It’s a sixth year story set out in the same format as the books. I’m starting to worry a little as to just how long it is going to be. I’m seven-thousand words in, and I just finally managed to get him away from Privet drive. My goal is to finish this by May or so because I can’t imagine being inspired to write about the sixth year once I know how the real sixth year is supposed to go.

Wish me luck and fortitude.

I left a certain very small someone’s coat out yesterday. Today she brought it over to me and insisted I put it on her. Once it was zipped to her satisfaction, she ran over to the door and waved at me and said “bye bye.”

Looks like we’re headed out for a walk just as soon as I can get myself ready.

Wasn’t she just a little newborn who slept in my arms all the time? Just the day before yesterday?

She’ll be eighteen months next week.

So I gave up on trying to get my printer to work and called M at work and got him to print out the coupon and meet me at the mall. I’ve now had my free scoop of espresso-cream, so I am very happy.

That’s all.

Yahoo is giving away free Baskin and Robbins ice cream in celebration of it’s tenth birthday. The coupons are only good today.
Now, if only I had a printer that worked *sob*