RedHead Confetti

Tomorrow is Mother's Day. The second Sunday in May is a day set aside to honour your mother; to show her how much you appreciate all the sacrifices she made, everything she taught you, how much you were loved! It's a day to celebrate the perfect mother you were blessed with-- or have to pretend you had in order to fulfil said holiday. The perfect Mother's Day mother is sweet, kind, always happy, able to cook anything at a moment's notice, always there, listens, never scolds. The perfect mother is Betty Crocker, crossed with June Cleaver, with a dash of the perfectly styled Claudia Schiffer thrown in. She's never late, never forgets appointments and is never frazzled. She's a consummate juggler of children, spouse, time, pets and activities. She does not exist! But we have to pretend she does, in order to fulfil out kidly duties for this Hallmark holiday. We have to swallow the knowledge that every mother, no matter how wonderful she is, is a deeply ...

I've been kicking this one around for years, in one form or another, and decided that in this week of birthdays and new births, and Mother's Day, I'd unpack it. This week is full! I'll get to Mother's Day later, I promise. I read an article on Slate.com last week, and it really got me thinking; it asked “will humans be marrying robots by 2050?” Funny enough, I watched a documentary the same day called Guys and Dolls . [You can see it at Top Documentary Films , and I highly suggest you see it! It was really well done.] Those two things together got my mind spinning again on this topic, but this isn't the first time I've thought about it. I've thought about the idea of humanity/person-ness many times over the years; what makes us so special-- what makes us people? This is something that humanity has wrestled with for millenia-- and probably will continue to deal with until our species goes extinct. It's been discussed in the various med...

Just a note of congratulations to my dear friends Chris and Niki. They welcomed a gorgeous little girl, Sadie, into their family early this morning, making their daughter, Moira a proud, big sister. Mummy and baby are doing great! Daddy is so proud he's glowing, and I'm thrilled to heaven for them all! I love you guys! I know I'm not alone in hoping for the best and brightest future for little Miss Sadie, and for blessings and love for the entire family.

Today my oldest son turns 15! He was born 12 weeks early; yes, three months! He weighed 3 pounds, 4 ounces, and was 15 inches/40cm long. The doctors and I were never able to work out why he was so early; he just decided that he was ready! I wasn't ready. Not ready at all! He was med-evaced to Lackland Air Base; they had the best neonatal ICU in the area at the Wilford Hall Medical Ctr. It was terrible, being two hours away from him; I didn't have a car, so I was busy pulling together another way to get down there. [I'll talk about the trip down there another time. It's not relevant to my celebration of Bird's birthday.] The doctors put my poor little Bird through so many tests. Vision, hearing, GI tract; cognitive [yeah, it's pretty rudimentary at that age, but it was something with eye movements]. He was fed with a tube for four weeks, and we taught him how to suckle. That was wild! But now, looking at him, you'd never know he was in hospital for ...

Today is my Dad's birthday; he is 55 years old. He is my hero, my Superman, if you will. Always has been. I admire the hell out of my Dad. I always have. He has earned my respect a million times over, and if I'm half the man he is, I'll be a damned good person. This blog is about my Dad, to give you a snapshot of him. I lost the other one I wrote, a few years ago. So I started this one from scratch. It will ramble, a bit. It's hard to discuss a person, we're not flat, or two-dimensional. Humans are weirdly 8 or 9 dimensional, and my Dad is no exception. My Dad doesn't spend much time on the internet. If he is online he's reading the news over on Yahoo! This is a boon for me, because that means I can be completely frank and he won't be embarrassed or uncomfortable about this blog. He is very humble, and people paying attention to him, being the centre of attention is something he's not happy with-- ever! Now, he's not bad with computers at a...

Remember when I posted my sexy story, and talked about how I'd submitted it to a website that specialised in publishing them? I finally heard back from them on Monday. They said no. And they said it pretty lamely, if I do say so, myself. "Thank you very much for submitting your short story, "Strangest Dream?" to Oysters & Chocolate. Unfortunately, we have decided to pass on it at this time. Please keep us in mind in the future when sending out your work and good luck with your writing."   It took almost six months to get a no. I'd just about forgotten about the submission; there has been a lot going on since then. I mean, there was Thanksgiving and Yule, and New Years, and then St, Patrick's Day, and the Vernal Equinox! Then of course the kids are in school, and spring break, and now Beltaine. So yeah, I was kinda surprised to see that email show up in my email box.   I wasn't disappointed. Surprisingly. I thought I'd be a lit...

Trigger Warning: More ranting about christians and their requisite hypocrisy. I ranted a little, got a little annoyed, and demanded information... which I didn't get. I have this thing about hypocrisy... rarely will anything piss me off faster, so I decided to rant and rave. I do that. As per usual, if profanity, calling out christians and generally being demanding and calling people to account offends you-- well, honestly you'd be better off finding another blog to follow, probably. First, the background, and then I'll discuss it. I end up in these kinds of conversations all the time. Yes, some times I'm a little shit about it, and some times I  am nicer. In this case I was nicer and didn't get smarty-pants pissy until this morning (Monday, April 30). A woman I went to high school with friended me on Facebook a couple years ago. She was awesome back in high school; however since then (and yes, in all fairness it's been almost 20 years) she married a man fr...