I know I already said this...

...but I really abhor Sarah Palin.

I just watched the Katie Couric interview, again, and I am in a state of shock, again.

Jibberish.

Sweet Calcimine

Ah, the joys of an old house.

B and I began a rather large project over the weekend. Our living room ceiling had a series of cracks that had begun to alarm me-visions of massive chunks of old horsehair plaster falling on my children's heads began consuming my every waking thought-so I did my research and came up with two possible fixes. The first option was to tear out the entire ceiling and install new drywall, the second was to try and repair the plaster using Big Wally's Plaster Magic (sounds awesome, right?). This second option would allow us to re-glue the plaster to the lathe using a super special adhesive without removing any of the original plaster-so I decided that Big Wally's it was.

The first day consisted of drilling a bunch of holes into the ceiling, shooting them full of goo and screwing temporary supports into the lathe until the adhesive fixed. This was surprisingly easy-very little mess, very little hassle, just a lot of time.

Second day consisted of the same, but done with a slight hangover (unrelated to the project itself).

The third day I rested.

Today is the fourth day and time to remove the temporary supports. No problem, no worries, that is until I attempt to scrape the excess glue from the ceiling and discover that the paint is coming off the ceiling in sheets, big sheets and little flakes.

I'm alarmed, I keep scraping, the paint just keeps coming off, I'm even more alarmed...I run to my computer and do a Google search.

Here's the issue: In the olden days, when this house was built, after the walls were plastered it took between 6 months and a year for the plaster to cure. Walls and ceilings couldn't be painted until the plaster cured; clearly this was too long to wait and so Calcimine was applied over the uncured plaster. But what in the hell is Calcimine? Calcimine is a water-base paint containing zinc oxide and glue and coloring (I don't know this to be a fact, I got this info online).

This is all fine and well, but it seems that nothing will bond with the Calcimine except more Calcimine, which is sort of like liquid chalk dust, not really permanent (remember all those Laura Ingalls Wilder/Huck Finn-type stories where everyone was always whitewashing the house or the barn or whatever the hell it was they lived in? Same concept). Of course, eventually modern people painted over this crap with latex or oil based paints. On a ceiling it isn't such a problem unless you get moisture between the Calcimine and the paint or you start scraping at the paint as I did, and then you will find yourself in the state of mind I currently find myself in...pissed off.


The only way to properly address this issue is to wash all this crap off the ceiling, wash again, and repeat and repeat and repeat. Then let the ceiling dry. Then skimcoat the areas you damaged while scraping. Then let that dry. Then skimcoat again. Then let that dry. Then sand. Then prime. Then paint.

Wait, did I mention that this is in the living room? Where we live?

Or I could just pretend that I didn't know better and paint over it directly.

Hmm.

My toddler will have the venti latte

New Baby LOVES coffee, I've discovered.

I can no longer leave my partially finished cups laying about willy nilly as I once did, as she will find and consume them in no time.

"Mmmm", she says, "Nuk!"

In an interesting twist, this morning I found her dipping her barrettes into a cup and licking them clean.

I am tired of people, especially during this campaign

I just saw on the news that Barack Obama needs to defend himself against allegations that he uttered a sexist remark directed at Sarah Palin. The remark was in reference to John McCain's economic policies, and Obama stated that "You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig".

Really, people? This makes you angry? This is a sexist remark?

I also caught a segment where some roving reporter was interviewing women voters in Park Ridge, Illinois. When asked how they felt about Governor Palin, several responded; "Well, I like that she's a mom! I am definitely going to vote for her!" ,when these same women were asked if they knew anything about where she stands on "the issues", they said "No, not really."

Hey Gals! I'm a mom, too!!! Perhaps I should run for VP, 'cause I've put the old uterus to work a couple of times! Yay! The sisterhood is strong!

It isn't that I hate Palin personally, I don't care about her personally,she seems like an interesting person, I have no doubt that she's tough, but I have learned enough about her to say that I strongly disagree with many of her views. So, I won't vote for McCain/Palin (or as Brent said yesterday "McCalin") I think men and women both would be well advised to vote for someone who supports the things that will advance our country, and respect the best parts of our nation.

Like freedom of speech, for example.

There are many things I find objectionable about Palin's views, but what I can't get my head around is her inclination to ban books at the library of Wasilla while she was mayor. I don't care WHICH books, I don't care WHY she wanted to ban books, I'm just not having it. Should someone happen upon a bit of literature that they find objectionable, there is no reason they cannot simply stop reading. If a child brings home something that the parents find offensive, there is no reason they should not exercise their parental rights and take the material away from the child, or maybe explain to the child what it is about that material that offends them.

Information is not harmful. Ideas are not harmful. Ignorance IS harmful, and I see so much ignorance on the part of Palin: global warming is NOT the result of human activity, creationism IS a valid explanation for how the world came to be, and should be taught in schools, the war in Iraq is "a task that is from God", blah blah blah.

I don't care how many kids this woman has... She's bonkers.

Hoard the Cord

I have spent the last three days attempting to organize our office space and de-clutter the house. I was on a roll, things were bagged and driven to the donation box, I found that I could bear to give up several dozen pairs of shoes, old handbags, clothes that didn't fit right, old books, small electronics, etc. Things that I imagined I would one day require were easily and readily cast aside for the sake of simplifying life. I felt good, I felt productive, I felt invincible.

Last night, however, I hit upon a monumental snag. The snag's name is Brent, and he is my husband, and he has a disease. The disease probably doesn't have a name, only a description: the irrational need to keep each and every cord, cable, ac adapter, splitter, what have you, that has ever passed into our house. If it has a prong or a plug and is attached to a cord then it can never NEVER be thrown away. Ever. Period.

Never mind that the adapter is very clearly marked as belonging to a set of speakers long ago disposed of, forget the fact that most items such as scanners or printers come with their own adapters and cables ,etc. and that all the scanners and printers we own are currently connected to their respective cords and functioning correctly. All of that most be disregarded because someday we will find ourselves in need of this very THING that I proposed might be disposed of.

"Uh, what are doing?"

"I'm getting rid of these cords that were all jumbled up together in this box that has been sitting untouched since we moved in 4 months ago, and before that sat untouched in our office at the last house for 5 years."

"No, I need to keep those."

"Why?"

"Because I ALWAYS need adapters just like that one."

" But clearly you don't because they've been in this box for our eldest child's entire lifetime and you haven't used them."

"I was looking for them, but you keep getting rid of things."

"But I didn't get rid of these, here they are."

"Just let me take care of it, I'll take care of all of this"

"You've been saying that for half a decade"

And on it went until I agreed to untangle all of them and neatly store them in an enormous plastic bin which I placed in the attic and which I will probably lay eyes on again several years from now when we move them to the next house.

Is this some sort of a joke?

So, it is now established without a doubt that the elder of my two girls was the easy one and that the younger will challenge me to the end of my patience and beyond.

She is an escape artist. She has gotten away 3 times in the past week and to be honest I am considering the need for round the clock security guards as I clearly cannot keep track of her on my own. Twice she crossed the street and was discovered on the neighbors front porch, once by my neighbor (this time the police weren't involved). New Baby now knows how to push the screen door just right, so that she can squeeze her way out of the house, unbeknownst to me, when I'm doing something irresponsible like going to the bathroom or putting laundry away and thus not giving her my COMPLETE and UNDIVIDED attention. We have also found that the cat door in the kitchen is just the right size for a small creature like a cat, small dog or 19-month-old human to pass through-this we probably could have figured out had we thought to think of it...and don't get me started on her older sister's habit of flying out the door without noticing baby following at her heels.

The problem I have, aside from the safety issues, is that I feel like a bad mother who is failing repeatedly to keep her child safe. As soon as I think I have the solution, she finds a way around it, and to these actions I have begun to ascribe devious intent. In the same vein, New Baby will do something like, say, climb atop the computer desk and start dancing. She is immediately removed from this surface and put on the floor, and she looks up at me *winks* and climbs right back up as if to say "You and I both know that you can't keep me from dancing on the keyboard, why do you try?". Or she'll hit her sister, or the cat, or me, and give me the same *wink*. I assume that this has to be hardwired, Old Baby hasn't ever demonstrated such obstinacy

How does one effectively disciple a child who is not yet 2 years old? Redirection? Forget it-this child has one single purpose in life and that is to do whatever it is you are directing her from at the moment. Time outs are clearly not an option. Attempting to show her a better way or demonstrating another options are met with *winks*, and the occasional slap.

.

(By the way, I'm really not asking for advice, so don't bother...sigh...this is my cross to bear...)

Labor Day

Today we attended the Labor Day parade here in our little town, and once again I am amazed at the people one encounters at a parade.

In addition to the scheduled groups like the fire department, Shriners, Amvets, etc. there were the ever popular parade of teenaged mothers, the overweight girls in hot pants and half shirts, the young men with pit bulls (and two with snakes), the old men in stained wife beater t's and my personal favorite: mothers who let their children run wild and then get pissed when someone says something about it.

As with most parade, there was a lot of candy being thrown from the floats into the crowd, and Old Baby and friend would scramble to pick up every piece they could in "our area" in front of our chairs. One slightly older girl kept coming over and fighting with my kid and her friend over these various crappy candies (mostly Tootsie Rolls-ew!) I was, truthfully, getting annoyed with this little girl because it seems that there is an unspoken rule during these events that you stay within your own boundaries and don't infringe on the candy grubbing of others.

After about 45 minutes of this, Old Baby approaches me in tears because she says the girl in question pushed her. I approach this little girl and ask her where her mommy is, and suggest that she stay closer to mommy because it wasn't fair to the other kids that they weren't getting a chance at the candy and that it seemed things were getting too rough...and that's when her lovely mother starts yelling at me from behind. She claims that her daughter wasn't "doin'nothin'" and on and on and she was sitting "right there" and gestures to a spot about 1/2 a block down.

I'm thinking that she has just proven my point, that she was too far away to see what was going on and why wasn't she telling her daughter to stop being a candy bully, and besides-if my daughter says that someone pushed her it's my job to believe her and make sure that it doesn't continue...but at the same time I'm thinking that this is about the most stupid arguement that an adult can have and maybe I shouldn't have said anything because now it has become a spectacle.

I try to calmly explain that my daughter claims that she was pushed, and that I simply felt that her daughter should stay closer to her...and she continues to yell but finally walks away, picks up one of her other younger children, a baby, sits down and lights a cigarette, blows smoke in baby's face.

Ah, parenting at it's finest.