Last night while walking home from the playground, I heard a strange squeaking noise. It didn’t take me long to discover that the front tire of the jogging stroller was completely flat.

M took the car today. The other stroller, which I don’t really like anyway, is in the trunk. I don’t have a suitable pump with which to fill the stroller tire.

I’m stuck at home and I’m going crazy. Never mind that it’s the sort of hot, lazy day where I’d normally be finding excuses to put off going out. It’s the fact that I can’t get out which leaves me longing to get moving.

It’s not even one in the afternoon, and already I’m going stir crazy. Help!

test yet again

test

I recently came across queerditch_pub via gehayi. Basically, every Sunday there are two sessions (afternoon and evening) where people chat while drabbling in response to a pairing and a prompt (HP fandom). After watching it for a bit, I participated in the evening session Sunday two days ago, and it was great fun (so thanks, gehayi).

I pulled it out again today and started editing them a bit, cleaning them up a little. Now I think I’ll post them here.

(  )

I’m already looking forward to next Sunday

this is a test

blah blah blah

blah blah blah2

Ugh.

I installed Wordpress 5.1 and basically got rid of all my skins so I could start using themes. I think I hate them!

I’m going to try messing around with them a bit longer to see if I can get them to do what I want. If not, back to skins.

Sorry for the mess in the meantime. Most of the links aren’t working at the moment.

I am twenty-seven years old, and I still havn’t learned how to tell if a melon is ripe or not.

There goes another honeydew to waste.

Help?

It’s both fascinating and terrifying to explore how other cultures view children and family. It’s hard to understand sometimes. But then, it’s hard to understand how little our value our own society places on children in general as opposed to our own.

Following a link from Dawn’s weblog, I found this interesting explanation (it’s in four parts; follow the links to previous entries at the left top of the page to read them – or go to the main page right now since at the moment they are still on the top) of Chinese adoption and the one child rule and how little girls come to be viewed as garbage.

(  )

Let’s just pretend for a moment…

I’ll be a judgmental pharmacist with a God complex…

You be a very young and very much unwed pregnant woman who really wants her baby.

Our scenario:

You’ve been having cramps and spotting and went to the doctor fearing a miscarriage. The doctor gave you a prescription for something which can greatly reduce your chance of miscarrying and sent you home again. On your way home, you stop by the only pharmacy open that late and step up to the only person working there. That’s me.

In this twisted scenario, I take one look at your young face and your piercings and your bare ring finger and decide that you would be an unfit mother, that it would be wrong to bring a child into this world the way you are doing and so that the threatened miscarriage much be part of God’s plans to fix your mistake. Thwarting God’s will would be wrong, right? And I believe this completely, so instead of filling your prescription I take it and rip it up, calling you a slut all the while.

Or maybe you’re not young and unwed, and it’s just that a miscarriage must be God’s plan and we shouldn’t mess with that. Whatever the case, you don’t get your drug, and as you walk out you’re crying because you don’t have any place else to go. I know of another place close by where someone would willingly fill your prescription, but I won’t tell you when you ask, and I’ve already ripped it up anyway, remember?

You’re probably going to lose the pregnancy now, thanks to me.

Do I have a right to do this?

According to the logic of Pharmacists for Life, I would be able to. Because I believe it is wrong, and I am the one with access to the drugs and the power, so my moral beliefs triumph over that of the patient, so I get to make the choice for you.

Hey – perhaps I believe that any sort of drugs or medical care is interfering with God’s plans and that prayer and faith are the only moral ways to deal with that. There are plenty of people who believe that, and it’s their right to decide for themselves. But since I believe that now, I get to decide for you, because I can’t be made to do anything that I think is illegal. Since my conversion – I assume I didn’t believe this when I started working as a pharmacist in this scenario because who would have hired me otherwise? – I get to stand around all day and my employer must pay me to not hand out any drugs at all.

That logic burns both ways, baby.

I do have sympathy for those asked to do something that they believe is wrong, but perhaps in this case they should find another line of work if they are not willing to fulfill all of their duties. When right’s clash, the power of the choice must go to the one whose body it is, the one who has to live with it, not the one who merely hands a bottle over the counter.

I used to work in a grocery store. I left it because, as a vegetarian, I found handling dead animal parts in the checkout lane to be too disturbing. Perhaps I should have kept my job and just refused to sell food to which I objected.

Inspired by Walgreens. They do require their pharmacists to pass on the prescription so that it may be filled by someone else, but it is still frightening when an individual doesn’t get the final say in decisions regarding their own health.

Dear so-called newspapers and shows,

Could you please go fifteen minutes without mentioning that runaway bride woman? Is there really nothing more important going on in the world? Jeez.

Thanks,
Sick and tired of the fuss

We went for our walk later than usual tonight. Walking in the evening when there is just a hint of rain is a wonderful thing. We were on Sauvie’s Island amidst the sort of scenery that always makes me think I should be in a movie or a book because such beauty couldn’t possibly exist in real life. The oak trees were perfect and once we’d crossed the gate and left the gravel, the old grassy dirt lane came straight from the pages of history.

We walked out maybe two miles before Munchkin grew tired of her stroller and began to fuss. We turned back then and let her out to walk. She had a great time at first and made it quite a ways on her own two feet, but then she grew tired of that as well.

It was probably 8:30 by then. She was a poor, tired little girl. She didn’t want to ride and she didn’t want to walk, but fortunately I had the sling along, so it wasn’t too much trouble to carry her. Eventually even that wasn’t enough for my poor girl. I let her nurse for the last mile or so back to the car, and that at least made her happy.

She’s getting heavy, so my back was a bit sore by the end of the walk. Traveling over a mile by foot with a tantruming toddler would have been much less fun though. Aren’t slings the greatest things? That’s twice in two days that mine has come to the rescue.