A Wild Idea

I'm sitting in the sun in the backyard, doing my summer reading and thinking about pedagogy, so obviously I'm doing some heavy "in a perfect world" daydreaming.

People can't just go get married willy-nilly without a license. (In fact, many churches won't marry you unless you've taken a pre-marriage course together, called a Pre-Cana)
They can't just go driving down the street or motorcycling without some training and a license.
In Massachusetts, they can't get some of the better mortgage deals without a first-time-homebuyer lecture course.
They can't fly a plane without serious training and a license.

So why are birth certificates required by the state governments, but only as an afterthought? It is just as reckless to bring another person into the world when you are unprepared as any of the items listed above. Marriage and divorce clearly aren't basic human rights allowed without some paperwork and certification, so why is getting pregnant? Pregnancy only leads to two possible outcomes: baby in need of certification, or dead fetus, whether intentional or accidental. The government clearly has their foot in the door on the subject, but in a really sloppy, broken-ankle sort of way.

I'm still somewhat horrified at the story of the woman who uses abortions as her preferred form of birth control, and also by the woman in the very recent New York Times article who got one of her twin fetuses aborted because she knew she couldn't afford to raise both. And to be clear, I don't think abortion should be illegal in the slightest, but I think it is overused/abused as an option.

Happy Birthday, America

Terribleness

Things that affect me emotionally long after the incident has passed:

1. Leaving the ice cream on the kitchen counter having forgotten to scoop myself a bowl, first.

2. Shouting something obnoxious at someone far away because you think you know them, but you don't.

3. Oversimplification and/or bad analogies to the point of completely killing the original lesson. Really, nothing is that simple. Specialization is not just for ants.

4. When someone turns a corner and screams and brings their knee up to guard him/herself from my dog for the sole reason that she is a dog, causing the dog to bark in surprise/fear and look like she's trying to attack them.

Drawing Lines

I went to the pet store the other day to grab a refill on food and treats for Maisy, and since she's welcome in the store I always take her with me and let her pick out a new toy and play with all the other dogs and owners, like a nice puppymom. This usually makes trips to the store fairly chaotic and so when I accidentally buy an already open bag of cookies, I don't notice until I'm home.

When I saw the bag had been ripped open, I thought for a second and the "poison dog food from China" incident came to mind. And who knows what kind of psychos could be rolling through the pet store spraying cyanide on my baby's cookies. So I decided to take them back the next day to try to explain to the store that I wanted to exchange the bag of pre-opened dog treats.

Then I took my baby, who is actually a dog, for a long walk now that all the snow has melted and she tried to eat every piece of garbage we came across. After that I decided it would truly have to be a psycho to put something on dog treats that would be worse than she'd probably try to eat off the ground anyway. So I'm keeping them.

Bedtime at the Fex House


Somebody's all tucked in with her sock monkey and blankie.

Also, I decided it's ok for me to post just photos on the blog-blog instead of the photo-blog as a way for me to keep the photo-blog aesthetically focused. Because while this is totally adorbs, it is not a good photo.

Public Service Announcement: The Internet

Random, undirected clicking can lead to terrible, terrible discoveries.

First Lessons of 2011

1. Pick up the dog poop in the back yard BEFORE it starts snowing.

2. Never use sugar free Jell-O for jello shots.

3. Keep water:booze 1:1 in jello shots.

4. Make sure your gelatin is FULLY dissolved.

Happy New Year!