Kathryn
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Kathryn" journal:[<< Previous 20 entries]
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02:11 pm
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When book covers invite judging!
AKA worst title ever:
http://awfullibrarybooks.wordpress.com/2009/06/02/a-great-choice-for-a-parenting-collection/
Read the comments to find out why this book is not actually as awful as it seems. But jesus haploid christ, what a bad title.
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07:50 pm
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Good thing we live in a post-racial America!
http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/Pool-Boots-Kids-Who-Might-Change-the-Complexion.html?corder=&pg=8
For the link-averse -- though really, you should read the article anyway to see just how profoundly I am not making this up -- a kids' day camp paid just shy of two grand for memberships for all their campers at a private swim club in Philly. But when they got there and started swimming, everyone else got out of the pool and the day campers were thrown out. The problem? Well, the kids are all black, see. And, as the president of the swim club explained, there were worries that they might "change the complexion" of the club.
Yes, really. That's a quote.
Fortunately, there's no more racism in America now that we have a black president!
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12:23 pm
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Oh my goodness
Verizon now has a much, much broader range of classical music available as ringtones than they did the last time I looked. You can now get Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima as a ringtone. WORST. RINGTONE. EVER. Can you imagine? If every time someone called you were alerted to their presence by that violin sting that sounds like a swarm of radioactive bees coming out of Hell?
Seriously, that's probably what Satan has as a ringtone.
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09:47 pm
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Balsamic Vinaigrette: skills everyone should have
Balsamic vinaigrette, at its core, contains only four ingredients -- olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt, and pepper. Despite this fact, you will never find a balsamic vinaigrette dressing at the store that has only those four ingredients, nor will you ever find one that comes even close to the dressing you can make yourself at home. It is so easy to make and SO superior, everyone should know how to do it. You probably already do, but just in case, I will tell you here.
Behold, the secret! You mix olive oil and balsamic vinegar in a 2:1 ratio, and add salt and pepper to taste. Whisk it with a fork until it's temporarily blended, or shake the hell out of it in a jar. Then dump it over your salad. For salad for two, you want roughly three tablespoons of dressing, so: 2 Tbsp of oil, 1 Tbsp of vinegar, maybe an eighth of a teaspoon of salt, and a couple of grindings of black pepper. The ratios are good but need not be exact; I usually eyeball it in the bottom of a coffee cup.
If you look online, you can find variations involving strawberries or mustard or garlic or chopped onions or brown sugar or what have you, and I'm sure they're all delicious. But this 4-ingredient wonder is the one I make all the time. I frankly don't even use particularly high quality oil or vinegar; my oil is whatever is the fruitiest stuff I can afford at the grocery store, which is to say "not very," and my vinegar came from CostCo. And yet, this dressing is so, so, so good. I basically never have salad at home with anything else any more.
Current Mood: cooking, food
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09:26 am
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House for Sale
http://www.palmspringsproperty.org/flaherty/21269257.html
Being sold furnished and as-is. YOU MUST WATCH THE SLIDESHOW.
I. . . I don't even know what to say. What's the emotion where disgust goes all the way around the spectrum and becomes delight? I mean, sure, it's a bit shocking, but 1) kudos to them for not half-assing it and 2) even bigger kudos to them for recognizing that this is SOMEONE'S dream home and leaving it intact to sell.
ETA the listing link, because -- and this is hard to believe -- the colors on the slideshow are too muted. http://www.redfin.com/CA/Palm-Springs/1240-S-Manzanita-Ave-92264/home/5695109
ETA mark II: The more I look at this, the more impressed I am. This house is BEAUTIFULLY laid out to host swanky parties. A lot of thought went into this; no expense was spared. As strange as it is to say, this isn't the work of someone with no taste; it was clearly very carefully laid out and decorated to achieve exactly this effect. There's very little pointless whatthefuckery involved.
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06:04 pm
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*facepalm*
The scene: it is six PM, and Lillian wants a piece of candy.
Lillian: Mommy, can I have a tasty treat please?
Me: No, darling, you'll ruin your appetite. It's not time for tasty treats.
Lillian: Why not?
Me: Well, it's nearly dinner time, and you need to eat lots of dinner to grow up big and strong! Also, because I say so.
Lillian, contemplatively: Well, shit.
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01:33 pm
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Pickle journal
Kohlrabi with peppercorns, lemon zest, ginger, and hot peppers: five pints.
It's a slow start, but it's good to start slow. . .
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01:19 pm
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The time has come.
*sigh*
I'm turning into Mean Mommy. "Do what I say, no excuses" mommy. "Time out for shrieking" mommy. "Do not say no" mommy. "Work with me or go to your room" mommy. "No second chances -- you have lost your chance" mommy.
I don't like Mean Mommy. But I like being led around by the nose by a two year old even less.
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10:52 am
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Breaking news!
Telling men not to rape is meeeeeean! Telling women that they don't deserve to get assaulted is anti-feminist and unrealistic! Women get raped because they make stupid and immoral decisions, not because rapists decide to abrogate their consent.
Of course she doesn't mean ME, oh no. *I* wasn't stupid or immoral. My only mistake was in not taking a gun to go hang out with a trusted friend. Because only the threat of deadly force will stop men from raping -- but THAT isn't maligning all men, that's just stating reality.
I haven't cried about my rapes in years, but apparently this is the attitude that brings all this back up for me. This idea that rape is just a Thing that Happens, and that it's women's responsibility both to avoid it and avoid being traumatized by it. In college, I was told -- by the Dean -- to APOLOGIZE to my rapist for hurting his feelings by calling his actions rape. Because after all, since I did say yes eventually, and he was obviously really sickened and upset by the idea that I'd consider it rape, the problem was mine to handle. They did offer to move me out of the dorm that we both shared along with all our mutual friends as soon as space became available elsewhere, though. (That he got to stay goes without saying.)
Current Mood: Pissed off and miserable
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11:02 am
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A story of unexpectedly getting it right
This is reposted from a comment I left in ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) cereta's excellent post here: http://cereta.livejournal.com/652008.html. I need to spend more time thinking on this, now that I'm raising a daughter.
Argh, I have a story I just remembered. This is the story of Mopey Rob, a late-twenties / early-thirties guy who was part of the crowd when I was 19 or 20. I was at his apartment one night getting drunk, and it became apparent that I wasn't going to go home that night because I was just too intoxicated to navigate the public transit system, and Rob said that I could crash with him in his bed, that he'd be a perfect gentleman.
Yeah, apparently being a perfect gentleman involves putting your hands all over someone despite being elbowed and shied away from and literally verbally told to stop it. I finally got up and walked home at about four in the morning because I was just so sick of it, and as I left his building, he hollered out his window at me at how badly I was hurting his feelings for not trusting him. I honestly can't remember what I said back to him, but I do know that 1) I was pissed as hell and 2) I never exchanged so much as two words with him ever again.
As I've read other stories of the same thing happening, I'm trying to sort out my feelings on this incident. By this time in my life, I'd been assaulted twice, once of the "hold you down and rip your clothes off" variety at age 11 and once of the "listen, I am going to keep asking for your consent until I get it, and if it doesn't happen today then I will ask tomorrow, and if it doesn't happen tomorrow I will ask for the whole week, and we both know that eventually you'll give in so you had better just do it now while I'm asking nicely" variety at age 18. (That one is a direct quote btw.) Both of those events left me badly victimized and traumatized, requiring years of therapy to get over.
But Mopey Rob's handsiness? It didn't, really. It pissed me off _mightily_ that he would be such an asshole when he had promised not to be. I felt violated, but in exactly the same way as when a girlfriend of my boyfriend's roommate stole something of mine that I'd left out in the apartment. I never internalized nor accepted even a shred of blame for the incident, never considered that I had the remotest sense of agency in the events, never gave any thought to what he "deserved" or was "owed" or what his "expectations" were. I just got fed up and walked out of his home and his life.
So my question to myself is: what lessons had I learned that allowed me to so precisely and accurately affix blame exactly where it belonged in this instance? What realizations, what epiphanies, what support had I had to let me escape this situation not just without getting full-on raped but without feeling guilty or ashamed at all?
And how can I teach them to my daughter now, when she is two? Before she gets hornswaggled by the rape culture she's unfortunately growing up in?
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10:50 pm
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Followup to previous post
What definition of "publish" meets the standard to extend the Erdos-number-network?
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01:36 am
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In which we see how well I know my friends
Poll #1418473 of COURSE inspired by xkcd
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: AllIf you could manipulate circumstances so that you could acheive ONE of these events, which would it be?
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06:39 pm
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Team Ramrod finally has their photos up
Remember when my brother drove to Mongolia? Yeah, that was AWESOME. They finally have all their photos up and captioned, here: http://picasaweb.google.com/ptewson/BestOfMongolRally2006?feat=embedwebsite
You should check them out. There are so many aspects of this trip (like those SHEETS, my GOD) that I didn't really comprehend the scope of until I saw these pictures.
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12:05 pm
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I swear to god
Someday I am going to just transcribe everything Lillian says in her pre-nap fury while she tries to convince us that a nap is not in the cards. Because then the rest of you can be bad people too, snickering at my sweet daughter's rage.
"Let me out! Let me OUT! I don't want to take a nap, I don't WANT to take a nap, I WILL NOT TAKE A NAP. Daddy I want this pillow. DADDY GET ME THIS PILLOW. I want my mommy, I want to get out of here! Open this door! MOMMY DADDY OPEN THIS DOOR RIGHT NOW I want my bla-ha-ha-ha-hankie waaaaaaaah!
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03:07 pm
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Nipple meat redux!! ANSWERS INCLUDED!!
It's cubed ham. Why is cubed ham nipple meat? I have no idea. But Lillian saw the cubed ham and screeched NIPPLE MEAT!!!!!! so that must be it.
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04:48 pm
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Translation help needed
Lillian is hungry. She is asking, specifically, for "nipple meat." She's become very frustrated in our refusal to give her any nipple meat -- she has said "I want meat. I want nipples. I want nipple meat!!" while gesturing to her own nipples for emphasis. We've tried sausages, which we had on hand, on the thought that maybe she was looking at the end of the casing? but she rejected them.
Any thoughts?
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05:35 pm
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Paraphrased from mangojellytoast
Funny, I don't remember anyone having trouble pronouncing "Alito."
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12:59 pm
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+0.75
Jesus these glasses make computer work more pleasant.
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06:09 pm
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Dr. Tiller, RIP
All over Internet Crazyland I hear people avowing how not-sorry they are that Dr. Tiller is dead -- not that they would EVAR advocate such a thing, oh heavens no, that would be wrong, just that they'll be dancing on his grave in a red dress. Mixed in with these I hear reactions of shock and disgust to the fact that Dr. Tiller provided his patients with the opportunity to hold their dead child and grieve, including having baptism and photographic services available. "Why would you want a picture taken with your aborted baby?" people ask. "What kind of sickness is that?"
Do these people really not understand that abortions after 24 weeks are abortions of wanted, cherished pregnancies that have gone horrifyingly wrong? Where the child has defects that are incompatible with life and the mother cannot bear either the risks of of remaining pregnant or the emotional consequence of acting as both NICU and morgue for her child? (Interesting side note: pregnancies in which there are profound fetal abnormalities are much, much more dangerous for the mother.) Or where the mother is facing grave, grave health and life consequences towards remaining pregnant -- kidney transplant, blindness, limb amputation, stroke, or worse? That these women name their children and grieve them horribly?
Is there ignorance in these comments, or malice?
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01:16 pm
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Depressing
We have a couple of different grocery stores in my immediate area. There's the QFC, which is your basic grocery store; there's the Big QFC, which has fancy things like live lobster and fancy fancy cheese; and there's the Safeway, which is the down-market store. No fresh bakery, no pharmacy, no deli, extremely brightly lit and kind of depressing.
All grocery stores have stuff that is kept in a locked cabinet to control access and prevent theft. At our local QFC, it's the cigarettes and the fancy wine, plus Nicorette and pseudoephedrine at the pharmacy. At the Safeway? Cigarettes and Nicorette, sure, but also pregnancy tests, infant formula, and Prilosec. I don't know what it says that baby formula and acid-reflux medication are high-theft items, but I'm pretty sure it's nothing good.
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