Thursday, September 20, 2012

Gender Bias

I just noticed that whenever my neighbors fight in the street, I always assume it's the guy's fault.  I wonder why that is?  True, he does look like a total douche, what with all his neck tattoos and all, and his ghetto-lookin' friends.  But she's no lovely, either.  I just realized 2 days ago that they have a baby.  Today he was yelling at her about who takes their child more places (or something), and then he left with the baby.  Which made me suddenly realize that I'm totally biased against the man whenever there's a domestic squabble.  I guess it's hard for me to understand a woman not being the one to take the main interest in her child, but there are definitely women out there that aren't cut out to be mothers.  And there are definitely men out there who would do anything, including give their lives, for the welfare and happiness of their children. 

Is my bias socially learned?  Based on 100 movies, books and live scenarios where the man is the abuser?  The unreasonable one?  Or is it simply biological sympathy for another mother?  Now, this particular situation may indeed be a case of he's a jerk and she should leave him.  But maybe not.  This is one bias I'm going to have to unlearn.

Thursday, September 6, 2012

Photo Book

Click here to view this photo book larger

Shutterfly baby photo books are the perfect way to preserve your baby's precious moments.

Thursday, August 16, 2012

Quote of the day, courtesy of the 10-year-old in the backseat: So, mom, It's sortof like a gang isn't it? The PTA? Once you get in, you can never get out.

(2011)
To yell or not to yell: That is the question.

Whether ‘tis nobler to simply put away the bowls, cereal, milk, frozen foods…to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous messiness and waste,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles and chores undone, requests unheard and commands unheeded and by opposing end them?

The heartache and the thousand natural shocks a mother must suffer to scre
am and punish,

Only to mold them into caring, conscientious, tidy creatures,

Devoutly to be wished.

Perchance to be heard and heeded, that is my dream.

Ay, there’s the rub.
 
(original post Facebook, March 8, 2012)

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Never Upgrade


Ack.

So I kept trying all week to upgrade to the new iOS, but never had my phone plugged in long enough.  Today I finally accomplished it, but I couldn’t figure out my apple id.  So I went to the apple store, and the girl there helped me.  But she was suggesting I get icloud, so I can synch constantly with the cloud (and give apple all my personal life), which I didn’t want to do.  She said that if I didn’t, that’s ok, but the explanation about how it all works and how I would be able to synch my phone in the future with Outlook and everything didn’t make any sense (as in: Outlook isn’t connected to the internet, so how can it synch with anything as she suggested?).  End result now is that I do have everything on my phone, but if I plug in to my computer, it will erase everything.

Fine, ok.  But then I’m supposed to select “restore from backup” which will take around 3 hours (during which time I am supposed to sit at my computer and do things so that my computer doesn't fall asleep), and then all my data won’t go missing.  Fine, ok.  But when I plugged in, I got an error message that says  “iTunes could not connect to the iPhone “sunshinecowgill’s iPhone” because the pairing record is missing.”  So now I don’t know what to do.

NEVER UPGRADE.  EVER.  Ack!

I have pictures on my phone that I don’t want to lose, and I don’t really want to email them all separately, either.  Everything else is on my computer.  I explained that I never upgrade because it’s always been such a hassle, I always lose things, and she said, “That’s too bad – it’s supposed to make your life easier.”  Well, it never does, and today is no exception.  I was really confused, and really almost started to cry (I don’t even know why, I mean, I like the photos, but who cares?), because why does it have to be so difficult?  I left feeling ok about it, that I would just go home and do the restore from backup thing and get back to my life.  Well, after I got the error message, I panicked and signed up for the evil icloud.  Now apple has my personal life AND IT STILL DIDN’T SYNCH.  All it has is a tracking device on my phone and no appointments or contacts, no music, no nothing.  It’s just creepy.  Right now, it says I still need to set it up on the phone, so maybe there's hope about staying unmarried to apple.  But I'm not that hopeful.

Lame.

Monday, February 20, 2012

You Have a Choice by Leanne Ely, CNC


You Have a Choice

by Leanne Ely, C.N.C

Dear Friends,

In the everyday scheme of things, your quality of life is dependent on the choices you make. Really understanding the muscle of your own choices is totally empowering and has the capacity for realigning your life direction. Knowing who is in control and realizing that you don't have to take your marching orders from a bag of M & M's or a two year old can be revolutionary. Let me explain.

We are almost trained by this culture to take on the mantle of victim. A famous lawsuit over spilled hot coffee from a fast food establishment is a good example. Rather than take responsibility for the fact that the coffee was hot (as coffee should be), this individual blamed the company for not providing a warning and consequently, this individual won a substantial lawsuit and profited off this phenomenon of "victimization".
[Sunshine's interjection:  This is a famous case, and while I worked in the restaurant industry, I found out more about it.  The other side of the story is actually very interesting.  The McDonald's in question was serving coffee at near-boiling temperatures and hotter than you need coffee to ever be!  They had been asked to turn down their coffee formally at least three times, and failed to comply.  They had already burned other patrons.  The poor old lady who got the coffee in her lap suffered 3rd degree burns from the boiling stuff, causing pain and disfigurement.  She was parked and very carefully opened the coffee.  So there's more to the story than "dur, coffee's hot, don't spill it."  You can read more here:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald%27s_Restaurants, and it's actually fairly interesting.  Nonetheless, there are lots of "victim" stories in our news, and people really do need to take control of and responsibility for our own choices.]

That's a rather dramatic example, but we place ourselves in the victim role everyday. I am going to bet somewhat unaware of it, too. The examples I used from the first paragraph are good ones. Did you know that no matter what, a bag of M & M's will never hug you, never say an encouraging word to you, and can never love you like a real live human can?

Did you also know that 2 year old children don't have the brain skills yet for abstract thinking? Therefore, their attempts at absolute tyranny are (or should be!) ineffective and leaves YOU in charge. You don't have to be pushed around anymore by the whim of a 2 year old if you decide you're ready to be the boss (that doesn't mean you have to be unpleasant; just FIRM. Smile when you say no or redirect your little one!).

You have control over what goes in your child's cereal bowl every morning, too. You're the one buying the groceries; you're the one who should decide which cereal you'll spend your hard earned money on. Which is a better nutritional investment for your child-- artificially flavored and colored sugary, tooth decaying fake food or a lesser known brand of whole grain cereal without added sugars, artificial sweeteners, colorings, etc.?

Food is fuel for the human vehicle. The better the quality of the fuel, the better we feel and the more we enjoy our lives. Our bodies house our souls and it's the only "soul vehicles" we will ever be given. Treat yourself better than you do your car. That vehicle can be replaced-you cannot.


Love,

Leanne Ely
Your Dinner Diva since 2001
http://savingdinner.com for a Free Menu-Mailer when you get a our Daily Dish


Republished from Leanne's newsletter.  Find out more about Leanne and how you can SAVE dinner by visiting her website above.