RedHead Confetti

Today is my beloved Husband's birthday. I made a "Bumpy cake" for him, and will be making ravioli caprese later. But right now, I want to talk about this man, that I married. This one shouldn't get me into too much trouble! He's probably going to be red as a beet if/when he sees this; he's kinda self-effacing, after all. Now, don't get me wrong, he knows he's a good person, and he can get just as arrogant as anyone else-- humanity does often equal arrogance after all. But for the most part, my husband is the kind of man who doesn't consider himself to be all that important. He just is himself, and "what's so great about that?" Isn't that how we're supposed to be? I think so, and that streak of humility drew me to him. Finding someone so smart and yet so lacking in self-importance was refreshing-- it still is! My husband is smart, too. His intelligence is so sexy to me! When he's excited his eyes (normally a g...

My husband presented me a situation the other night, as we were getting ready for bed. He'd seen a link on his car forum about a restaurant in Lancaster county Pennsylvania that was in trouble with the law for discriminatory discounts. He, like many others whose comments on this story I've now read, didn't get why that one was not OK, but “kids eat free” or “senior citizen” discounts were OK. He's not alone in this confusion, and it's an unfortunate thing; I was able to explain it to him, though, so now he knows. But that got me to thinking. Too many Americans have no idea what their laws say, or what they mean, except that they have “freedom of religion, so fuck y'all!” [I will explain why they are acting in an illegal manner shortly.] The article he sent me is from Fox News. I went digging and found the Lancaster paper online, and the comments are almost as bad as the Faux Noise ones are! Wow! Talk about self-righteousness on display. Anyway,...

I originally "translated" the Declaration in 2006 as a lark. I made a joke that it was our divorce papers from Britain, and my professor told me I should run with that, and write about it. I thought and thought, and here's the end result. I've updated it as little, done some tweaking, but it's pretty much the way it was when I did it. This is a joke, but it's also a decent explanation of precisely what the Declaration really was: it was justification to the world for turning our backs on our "Mother Country." We had to make it look good, had to have "good" reasons, acceptable ones, for something to horrific and egregious as treason on the grand scale we embarked upon, when we, the Colonies, dubbed ourselves the United States of America.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it. The Declaration of Independence, in the language of America, 2012: From Congress on July 4, 1776 We all decided, all thirteen of us...

Happy Birthday United States Of America! Today is the birthday of the United States. We're 236... and not looking too good, if I'm honest. I'm going to be hopeful, though, that this is merely another growing pain in the scheme of our growth into adulthood. I'm sharing the Declaration of Independence, and tomorrow I'll post my "Declaration in today's English" a tongue-in-cheek revisiting of the Declaration that I "translated" for fun.   Be safe, partying this week, especially as it's so hot and the weather is dangerous. Stay cool, drink lots of water and be careful of fires-- we don't want more wildfires like the ones ravaging the US West. The link below is pretty cool, if you're a political science junkie like me, and also includes the Constitution.  Declaration of Independence: In Congress, July 4, 1776 The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America When in the Course of human events, it becom...

“Most parents today were brought up in a culture that put a strong emphasis on being special,” [Madeline Levine] observes. “Being special takes hard work and can’t be trusted to children. Hence the exhausting cycle of constantly monitoring their work and performance, which in turn makes children feel less competent and confident, so that they need even more oversight.” ( page 2 , emphasis added) I saw a little blurb at Slate on Monday, and then Wednesday- another one at Jezebel. So I got off my ass and went over to the New Yorker to read this article, “ Spoiled Rotten, Why do children rule the roost?” I've said before that I'm not the best parent. I don't helicopter, I don't over-play or schedule; I don't ask, actually. I tell. I don't look at my children as friends of mine. In fact, not one of them would be someone I would choose to be friends with. They're too young, to immature, and their world-views, while larger than their peers, is ...

Friday night, about ten pm for you on the East Coast, the jury came back with a verdict in the trial of The People versus Jerry Sandusky [I'm not sure if Pennsylvania lists their cases as The People of <insert county here>, so bear with me.] You can see a breakdown of the charges and verdicts, here . CNN did an excellent job of covering the story. I followed that trial so closely, that I dreamed about it! I know I'm not the only person so involved in it; I'd venture to say the world was riveted at times. Such is the nature of sexual assault cases involving children-- look at the fall out from the repeated, institutionalised rape and abuse of children by the Roman Catholic clergy-- we want to protect children from such evils, and when they're abused anyway, we all feel like we're watching a train crash... we just can't look away, no matter how revolted, angered and sick we feel. This might have been different than the “usual” sensational tri...

Quick note: I recently stumbled across a blog by a gent in the UK who was raised fundie-- he's writing about what he learned, lived through and what fundies believe. You might, if you're interested, take a peek. I have enjoyed reading his blog ( Leaving Fundamentalism ) so far, and his upcoming book (that I don't know the name of) is on my list of Books To Get! He doesn't know I'm linking back to him, so this isn't a link-for-link thing. I just wanted to share a good read. He's done an excellent job of explaining the weird craziness that fundies put themselves and their brains through-- far better than I could do, I think. Anyway, on to the blog. Last week I read an article on Jezebel that linked back to Good As You and mentioned Focus on the Family. I don't like FotF, for many many reasons. I grew up listening to their radio programs. They were on the Christian Radio channel my mother's radio was glued to, 24/7. For a time, FotF ...