Out of the Closet, and Into the Blue...

Well, the person behind KT has finally admitted to it, so I can now link over to my real blog. It means I can also finally add the links I've had on this blogroll to my blogroll over there. I've written quite a bit about this little anonymous blog on today's post. That other blog is more of a journal, where I talk about my life. Not everyone's cup of tea, I know, but I don't write it for my readers - I write it for myself. That I have a couple of people who aren't related to me who find it enjoyable to read just makes it that much more rewarding.

This little blog, on the other hand, is done. I will likely see what I can do about just moving these posts over into another section on my site to keep them for posterity, but I won't be adding more to it.

Thanks for reading!

WriterGirlBlue / RaynDragon

Still around, but busy and stuff

Well, KT is either dead, in prison, on the run, or whatever. We've seen no posts from him in a long, long while. Not that I'm concerned. Although if it meant finding out that he was further away from where I live, then I'd be glad to see a post I guess. Whatever.

My own lack of posts is mainly due to the fact that I have a regular blog I post to daily. There's actually not a whole hell of a lot that I might say here that I can't say there. I normally don't worry about the anonymity thing, but in KT's case I wasn't about to take the risk considering the location he says he's from is within a couple hours driving time of my house. Not that I believe everything I read on the internet, mind you, but I do believe in the whole "better safe than sorry" concept on certain things. Especially being a mom and all.

I dunno. Maybe after a year has gone by without any posts from KT I'll consider just posting a link to my normal blog here on this one. We'll see. No guarantees. If I do, I may also import the entries from this one into the regular one as well. Not to mention combining the blogrolls. It can get tricky to keep up with blogs on two blogrolls. I prefer to just use the RSS feeds whenever possible.

Anyway. I just thought I'd check in as it's been a while since I posted anything over here. Enough for now.

I guess he "beat it" after all...

The Jackson Trial is over. Thank goodness. Now maybe I can watch the news again without quite so much angst.

I don't know if I'm relieved or pissed that he was acquitted. There's obviously bad things going on in Neverland. Far too many people had that much to say at the very least to have me disbelieve them all. It irks me to no end that he'll walk away without being made to realize he's in need of some serious therapy and a restraining order to keep him from "playing" with kids anymore. Damnit.

On the other hand, if he had been found guilty, the gossip suggests he'd probably have committed suicide. Which would have left him with some measure of infamous popularity just from the act of killing himself. Some people would have jumped on the bandwagon of saying how "misunderstood" he really was and pumped up his image to "dead idol" status. Eeesh. That would have filled the news for at least a couple more weeks too. Major disasters would lose the limelight to the live "Jackson Funeral" coverage.

I just feel for those poor kids. No matter what they're the ones that have gotten the raw end of the deal.

The Dying Bonds of Motherly Love

The latest new that has been brewing in the back of my mind is this story:

http://www.wpbfnews.com/news/4431073/detail.html
http://www.wpbfnews.com/news/4427081/detail.html
http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-stab03.html

Oh, and this one too:

http://courttv.com/news/2005/0505/son_ap.html
http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2005/5/5E7043EB-DC81-4530-A720-8752CFE69BB6.html

Both of these stories are of children killed in suburbs not far from where I live. One of these suburbs I have actually lived in at one point in my life, back when I was still in an apartment.

In the first story, brought to my attention by a friend of mine, it talks of a woman who stabbed both of her children. Repeatedly. One story I read says she stabbed each of them more than 200 times, using several knives they found throughout the house. There was mention that the older child saw what his mother was doing to his sister and tried to run and call for help, but she grabbed him then instead. Apparently she went back and forth between them, stabbing them to death.

My question is why??? What could possibly have made the woman snap like that? I guess she said she was trying to "protect" them from someone in their new church that she thought was going to molest them... ummm...? huh? I'm sorry but I guess those kids needed protecting from HER instead! Oh. my. (insert appropriate diety here).

How could she do it? Unlike the second story, of a woman who smacked her adopted Russian child around so hard she killed him, this woman who stabbed her children was the birth mother! Where was the emotional bond that mother's are supposed to have to their children? This does not sound like the nurturing, "godly" woman that is described by friends and family to the interviewers. What the hell happened that the bond between her and her children could disappear like that? Or was it never really there to begin with? I wonder if we will ever know. I guess that's part of my morbid fascination with the story - I want to know why!?! Just hearing about it makes my blood run cold and my eyes wander towards my son to be sure he is safe and secure.

The second story is just disappointing. There are perfectly wonderful people out there just waiting for a chance to have a child of their own to love and cherish and provide a good home to, and yet now there are statistics on how many Russian orphans have died after being adopted into American homes. I haven't looked to see what happened in the other cases. I'm not sure I should. Any child - Russian, American, or otherwise - dying at someone's hands is just an awful, gut-wrenching thing for me to hear or read about. It upsets me to no end. Children are so innocent and beautiful, even (and sometimes especially) when they are born with medical problems. It's not their fault! If you haven't got the patience to take on the challenge of raising children, then you shouldn't be allowed to adopt. Hell, if I had my way, you wouldn't be allowed to conceive them until you'd passed some test to prove you were ready! Damnit! Children are the future of this world. If we wish to leave it in good hands then we'd damned well better pick up the slack and raise them to know love and compassion!

AAARRRRGH!!

The Working Mom

I know, I know. I post inconsistently at best. I'm busy. I work from home and I'm a mom. And thus begins a little bit of a rant for today - those total morons who seem to think that being a "mom" isn't a job in and of itself. That is my job. The other stuff I do that brings in "money" is just moonlighting to help bring in that little bit of extra. My hubby keeps us afloat financially, as best he can, and I, work my ass off taking care of the home.

Now, no - that doesn't mean my house is spotless. Far from it, I'm afraid. What it means is that I take care of the errands that need running, most of the cooking, the laundry, and the important cleaning. Dishes, for example, are important. The dust collecting on the shelves with the knick-knacks on them is not. Sorry, but it drops down on the old priority list. Don't like that? Tough shit. I've got more important things to land my attention on.

Like my son.

Number one on my priority list, nearly 24 hours per day (no sick days, no personal days, and no vacation days without a huge hassle in preparing for them and booking the in-laws to "temp" my job while I'm away), is my kid. He requires food, clothes, regular changing of wet or poopy diapers, some level of routine in his life, and - most importantly - my attention. I take him places. I teach him things. I hug and snuggle him. I clean and kiss his bumps and bruises, and I rock him to sleep when he's sick. No matter where I am or what I'm doing he's not far from my thoughts, and usually not far from my side either. He's my little shadow, my mimic, and my pride and joy. I love him more than I ever imagined I would.

But that sure as hell doesn't mean he isn't a lot of work to keep up with!

He's only two, which means he doesn't yet have the run of the house. I've got gates up in strategic places to keep him where I know he's safe if I need to be looking elsewhere. But now he's learning to climb up onto taller stuff. It seems that every few months I look around the room with a totally new eye - seeing all the new stuff he could manage to get into or hurt himself on. And he love to explore. Although he is rather well-behaved for a two-year-old (in my not-so-unbiased opinion), he still isn't content to always hold my hand and look from a distance. He'll take off running on me to go check something out, proving to me each time that I need to get into better shape before he does! He's little and quick and just bursting full of the kind of energy that one can only have with youth.

There's also the "terrible twos" stage right now, where he sometimes thinks that wailing and carrying on will get him what he wants. I get to play "bad cop" with him a lot, seeing as how I'm the primary caregiver, and so I get to deal with a few more of these each day than I'd like. The kicking his feet on the floor is a nice touch, but it doesn't work on mommy. Mommy's gotta have nerves of steel. Or thick bedroom doors to hide behind when she get's frazzled. I have neither, so I just do my best to pretend I do instead.

He's also in a huge brain development stage. He was a little slower than his peers on the talking thing, although he seemed to get some other things quicker instead so I'm not concerned. However, now that he's discovering that words are useful things - he wants to know all of them. This kid sure knows where his index finger is, and uses it to point at pretty much anything he sees, knowing his mommy is nearby to fill him in on what its name is.

All I'm saying is that the next person that tries to ask me what I do, and then proceeds to say something like "oh, so you don't have a job" is likely to get smacked or ripped a new one. Well, okay, probably not. Because I'm really too nice to actually rip anyone a new one. But I'll think it in my head. And I'll probably glare really, really hard. Being the one staying home with the kid or kids is a really tough job sometimes. It may be more rewarding than most, but that doesn't make it any less difficult than any other job. In fact, if you screw it up - the consequences are far, far worse!

So forgive me if I forget to blog here on a more frequent basis. I'm busy working. And I'm moonlighting during naptimes too.

In Cash We Trust

I haven't been able to give this blog as much attention as I had hoped. Sorry about that - to the few of you that check in on it from time to time. My life has been super busy as of late, and real life always takes priority over blogs. That's as it should be.

I have to say that this is one of the things I'm finding disturbing at the moment. The whole Michael Jackson trial thing. I have a distinct feeling that this whole case will come down to it being nothing but circumstancial evidence and prove nothing. I'm not reading a lot about it, but what I am suggests that it's just a whole lot of people pointing fingers at each other saying "he/she did that bad thing!" Whether or not Michael Jackson showed kids porn, gave them alcohol, and molested them? We may never know the truth. Lawyers are involved now, which tends to send truth scurrying back to the darkest corners it can find, and brings forth half-truths and little white lies.

Which brings another interesting point to my mind - why do they have you swear on the bible? "I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so help me God" is what they say, isn't it? What if you are agnostic or hold a different belief than what is written in the bible? I know it's a crime to commit perjury, but for some people that only matters if they get caught in the lie. And, if they don't consider it a "sin" because they don't believe in the "God" they are swearing to... hmmm.

Maybe we should have people swear on something more important to them? Like their wallets.

Paper or Plastic?

I like to recycle. I pride myself on the fact that I use cloth diapers (most of the time) on my kid, and that when we put the trash out each week we have two big overflowing bins of recycling, and only one garbage can that's often only about half-full. For the most part, I toss every little scrap of paper, plastic, aluminum, or styrafoam that I don't want anymore into the bin. And I have bins all over the house for recycling, so there's not much excuse for anyone to toss it in the trash instead. I like the thought that I'm contributing to this world having a better future. It's not much, but it's a little thing I can do. I also know that my area actually does take it to a recycle center. I've heard that some of the other collection services have you sort it all out, get picky about what they'll even take, and then just take it to the dumpster anyway. Bastards.

But what's starting to really annoy me is how much stuff I am recycling that is plastic or styrafoam. Plastic especially. I see a lot of plastic. My groceries come in plastic bags, which we use as liners for our smaller trash bins. We get way more than we need for that purpose though, so every so often I have a huge bunch of them that I don't have a use for. Fortunately, the store I buy from has a bin where I can bring them to, since that's one thing my recycle collectors won't take. Mind you, I don't even see a stack of paper bags at the grocers anymore. Not that I'd trust the baggers to bag them right anymore anyway, but that's another rant altogether.

But there's all the other crap that I do put in the recycle bin. Cookies come in plastic tubs that keep them all lined up. And then those tubs are wrapped in plastic to keep them "fresh", and that plastic isn't recycleable. Soda comes in cans or plastic containers for the most part. I almost feel more responsible drinking my beer which at least comes in glass bottles!

Is melting down this plastic to make other stuff out of it actually better than some of the stuff we were using say, fifty years ago? Or is it just that plastic is cheap and the saving the environment just isn't good for a company's profit margin? Oh, and planting a few trees doesn't actually make up for putting extra pollutants into the air. No matter how nice it might look in the annual report.

I'm getting really sick and tired of people who think time is money and don't give a damned about anything that doesn't affect them right now. Does no one care anymore? What kind of a world will this be for my son? Or his children, for that matter?