Can I sleep now?

Knitting has suffered due to a small child who thinks she needs to come and crawl in with me at four a.m. every morning and lay on me with her shoulder in my voice box. Not very conductive to sleeping. Also, the Addison's is still not under control with Apollo since he is still drinking a lot which means he is peeing a lot which means I am getting up in the middle of the night to let him out and very early in the morning to clean up the pee spots before the children get here. I need a nap and also a pot or six of coffee.

The sun has decided to make an appearance so Invested is blocking outside. Not at night, but I'm going to put it back out in an hour once the sun warms things up again.

"Push me higher Momma!"


My answers to yesterday's questions:

1. I do my best to teach the children that violence is not tolerated in our house and that it hurts other people's bodies and feelings. The problem is that they still see so much of it everywhere. I am very glad that people are starting to think about what they do and what their children see. I am also glad that people are using discipline with the children again (not hitting/spanking though). I've met so many spoiled people with an entitlement attitude that it is worrying about what kind of countries we are going to be living in when they are running the show and we are too old to do much about it. Do you know something though? There are some acts of violence that are on the rise and most people don't think of as violent.

Violence - an act of aggression. That would include many bad habits behind the steering wheel. Speeding (almost all "accidents" are directly related to one or more speeding drivers), weaving in and out of traffic, tailgating, honking the horn the second the light turns green, waving a fist, flipping a finger, yelling, cutting people off, swearing at people who pull you over or hand you parking tickets and of course the most violent act behind the wheel, drinking and driving. The list of offenses people commit while driving is long and far too often there are children in the vehicles. Either the one committing the acts or the one the acts are against.

I put accidents in quotes because the true definition of accident doesn't fit the majority of car crashes on the road. Definition of the word accident.
If you are breaking the laws of the road, a crash in not unprovoked, unavoidable, unexpected or unforeseen. If everyone on the road obeyed the laws, there would be a lot more people walking around this planet right now.


2. I do try to do small things for people when I have the chance. Our society puts so little value on humanity that people often don't feel their true worth or even that they are visible. We place too much emphasis on how well-behaved our children are, what we have, wear or look like and too little on how we behave toward others. If everyone helped someone just a little the changes that would happen in this world would be phenomenal. You don't have to do big things or even donate a ton of money to have an impact. Sometimes a little understanding makes the biggest changes. Telemarketers/charity solicitors calling you at all hours? Be nice. They are just doing their jobs and trying to earn an honest dollar. You don't have to listen to their spiel, but you don't have to swear at them and slam the phone down either. Telemarketers - politely but firmly tell them you are not interested, wish them a good day, then quietly hang up. Charity solicitors - ask for their website address, tell them when you have funds available you will go to their website and read what kind of work they are doing, then consider whether or not you will donate your hard earned money to them, wish them a good day and quietly hang up. A smile can do a world of good too. Especially for the tired, embarrassed, frustrated mother just trying to get a few things done while the children go nuts. Trust me, she already feels like she is failing. She really doesn't need your recriminations or "advice" on how to fix herself. Sometimes an understanding smile and a pat on the back for her patience can help to ease her day a little. It may be the only positive thing that's happened to her all day.

3. No, I don't think that electric cars are green. The majority of hydro power is either completely nuclear or supplemented by nuclear power. Some plants are nearing the end of their operating lives and the waste products are not only toxic to humans, but it takes them a long time to break down and that's if they break down enough to be considered safe. If we don't stop producing toxic waste (yes, the oil industry is part of that) how much of it is going to buried under the ground? When are the barrels containing it going to break down? Will our future generations be living in toxic waste dumps because of all those barrels of the stuff we buried? It doesn't matter how clean the air is if the earth itself is hostile to life. Before we start patting ourselves on the back for using electric cars, we need to be actively finding ways to change how we produce hydro and pressuring our hydro suppliers to make the changes as well as weaning ourselves off oil and fossil fuels. In the end, cleaning up our habits as well as our earth is the kindest thing we can do for our future generations. The only thing that is going to last into the next millennium is our planet. Our buildings, our cars, our technologies will all be broken, gone or useless by the year 3000. The earth still needs to be here though. Hopefully humans, plants and animals will still be here then too. Let's let our footnote in the history books be known more for the clean up we did than for the stuff we had.