flightless hag

A chronicle of the adventures of birdwoman: a lonely, talentless freak who wanders the internet in search of entertainment.

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Location: Philly

I'm a 40-something married white female, survivor of weight watchers, avid reader of pulp. Dogs (not cats), extreme right (handed, not politics), ENTJ, alto, wanna-be knitter.

March 28, 2014

Environmental waste

So, we have a guest speaker coming in today. She's going to talk to the kids about environmental conservation and her research in Antarctica.

I find this dichotomy disturbing. If you truly wish to perform environmental conservation, stay the heck away from the last pristine biome in the world.

But there's recently been a tendency among us middle class ed-u-ma-cated folk to worship the "environmental" solutions, when common sense tells you: that's worse than what we were doing!

case 1:  my "green" dishwasher. If I use the "saver" cycle, I must completely wash my dishes first, and they don't go through a sanitization cycle. Then, they don't dry, so water just stands in the dishwasher. Talk about a "green" cycle. In order to actually get clean dishes, we have to use the "high heat" setting. Which is no longer green. :(

case 2: the stupid CFL lightbulbs. Talk about a scam. GE and the rest couldn't compete with the Chinese when it came to making incandescent lightbulbs. Since their profit margin was dying, they decided to do what any honest American entrepreneur would do: legislate their problem away! They got congress to pass a law that all of us Yanks have to use CFL lightbulbs. You know them, the spiral bulbs that are supposed to last something like 5 years (NOT) and are full of TOXIC MERCURY SALTS. Nice. A bulb breaks, you need an EPA clean up kit. Additionally, they take for freaking EVER to warm up. God bless you if you put one of these crappy things outside. By the time the thing warms up enough to create light, it's morning. We've started buying LED lightbulbs, which are supposed to last 10 years (Right. Have they even had one for 10 years to test this?) but at least they're not toxic. And darn are they bright. I feel like the gestapo is questioning me when I turn one on in the morning.

I'm sure there are more. But thinking about the silliness and hypocrisy makes my teeth itch. Like that "Into the Wild" book. Just the idea of reading about some suburban kid who decided to "live off the land" and proceed to starve to death seems like an exercise in futility. I can't believe they made a movie out of that crap. I thought I was alone in this thinking, but apparently I am not. Perhaps all is not lost. Perhaps there are more voices in the not-wilderness who respect the wilderness enough to leave it be.

But meanwhile, I'm sitting in an assembly, encouraging my kids to think about visiting Antarctica. Whatever.

(*)>

March 15, 2014

Stages of juvenality

Juvenality. Is that even a word? It is now, suckas.

Down here in bird land, we're all suffering through different states of juvenality.

I believe that John and I are firmly entrenched in our stage - potty humor and, in my case, a sailor's mouth that increases exponentially as the school year goes on.

It'll be interesting to see where our children land.

The Moth is still in the land of "if you hear something you don't quite understand, make it make sense." This is quite humorous when it comes to song lyrics (the song "some nights" by fun., last spring's hit for Mothman, had the strange lyrics: "some nights I stay up crashing in my bathtub..." Actual words? "some nights I stay up cashing in my bad luck..."). So the other day, he was playing with his various lego/plastic/whatever dudes, and one of them got fatally shot. As he died, Tim mimicked him falling over and plassing flatus. I said, "yo, tim, what just happened to that guy?"

"Mom, that was his last gas."

I believe I remember reading that corpses are actually full of foul air as they decompose, so if you roll them, they do pass some horrendous gas. I do not, however, believe this was Tim's meaning. I think he heard/read the phrase "last gasp" and this is what he decided it was.

Stinky has finally taken up reading. I always knew he would, but he's been too impatient for it so far. He's into what you'd expect: Michael Crichton, Tom Clancy, Tess Tosterone, you get my drift. He's also gone back to drawing, though all his stuff is stick figures. They've come a long way. If they weren't all depicting battle (usually gruesome), I'd almost admire his cartooning ability.

It wasn't something to admire when he drew them on the back of the pew insert for the season's mass music, though. Oops. If only I had my eraser. But Stinks doesn't like my eraser anymore. Why not? Well, he brings it to me the other morning and says quietly, "Mom, why is this eraser covered with Trojans?"


Somehow, perhaps from the horrified look in his eye, I know he's moved on to the non-bellicose version of the Trojan in his mind. There's no gift horse here... just a teenaged boy's embarrassment. My answer was, "Well, you know in England they call erasers rubbers, right? Maybe that's the same in Germany."

I don't believe that helped him and his distaste for this eraser. He had, when I first purchased said rubber, looked upon it with avarice. No longer.

I had to prove to my employers that these children are mine, again, this year. Our budget crunch has lead to the completely logical step of hiring expen$ive consultants to check every recipient of school district insurance. If only those consultants would take one look at the Rogers boys? No question. From the crap hair to the crap attitude, they're mine.

And I couldn't be any happier about that.

(*)>