Daily Dose

Daily Dose of Blogs – Happy Blog Day 2005

Holidays, Memes and Quizzes /

Blogday
I’ve been thinking about Blog Day for almost a full month and everytime I thought I had found a blog that fit the criteria, I changed my mind. It was hard to find blogs by people who were really not like me. Seems odd, doesn’t it? I mean I’m a lesbian, I have six kids, I homeschool one and only one, I work from home in a job that very few people have, I hate sports and watch almost no television and I do not cook. Surely I could find lots of blogs that are not “like me”. Nope, it’s hard to find differences when you are really looking for them (which might be an lesson)

After a month long search, here’s what I’ve got for you. Visit them, let me know what you think and let them know you stopped by!

The Happy Catholic I found this blog via my friend Shelly’s blogroll and I peek in there every now and then to see what’s going on. The Happy Catholic is really nothing like me, except she has good taste in movies and TV. Other than that, we probably disagree. Still, I have always enjoyed going to her blog. What do you think?

PyroManiac I found this one a few weeks ago when surfing for something about comic books. I was surprised, to say the least. Interesting point of view here and interesting use of comic books.

Leylop’s Blog This one got tossed into a note pad on my desktop a long time ago, when Michelle was studying up on Thailand and Singapore and Malaysia after the Tsunami. I hadn’t visited in a very long time and I’m glad I noticed it in my notepad last week. Great pictures, nice look at her life.

Babalu Blog Again, thanks to Michelle and her Spanish class we found this one! Michelle was researching Cuba and stumbled into this interesting look at Cuban Americans and Cuban politics. Cool stuff.

Kathang Pinay I found this one today in my search for one last really PERFECT blog for today’s celebration. I clicked randomly into the archives and found interesting things with every click. Having lived in the Philippines (and giving birth to two American children there who like claiming dual citizenship), this one really touched home for me.

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Daily Dose of Change – New!

Daily Dose /

TW’s been fiddling with a new design so I would have three columns instead of the Blogger default two columns. I like having all of these great blogs in my blog roll but I didn’t like how LONG it was. Three columns helps, I think.

You can find my feeds at the top and I’ve added some new blogs to the blogroll on the top left. I’m going to try and create a fresh blogroll every week or two. We’ll see how it goes, good intentions and all that.

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Daily Dose of Blogher – Pheedo

Daily Dose /

Ages ago the Blog Herald decided to misinterpret the partnership between BlogHer and Pheedo. Yet another example of what I was talking about in my last post.

Yes, Pheedo and BlogHer teamed up to support women bloggers. They did not team up in order to discriminate against male bloggers. The only reason someone could be excluded is if he (or she) chooses not to support BlogHer. If you are excluded then it is your own fault and not the fault of either Pheedo or BlogHer or of men or women.

What is the problem? I mean really. If some ad group teams up with GLBT bloggers, I’m pretty sure they’d let the straight folks into the fun if they wanted to support the gay cause. If some ad group teams up with mommybloggers, I’m sure they’d be happy to let the childfree folks join if they wanted to support the mommyblogger cause. Creating new opportunities for groups is not exclusionary, the attitude of those who do not believe in the cause IS.

Go on, include yourself, we’re happy to have you join us and if you see a BlogHer ad on someone’s – site or feed click it!

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Daily Dose of Pet Peeves – Equality

Daily Dose /

Happy Belated Women’s Equality Day! I meant to post this on Friday but life is hectic and I’m still sick so we are celebrating a wee bit late on the Daily Dose of Denise. Better late than never, eh? (Speaking of celebrating, run over to Ms. Magazine and celebrate buy getting a reduced subscription rate!)
e·qual·i·ty n. pl. e·qual·i·ties
The state or quality of being equal.

Nowhere in that definition does it say “better than” so why is it that people hear “women’s equality” and think “Oh brother, there they go again with the male bashing.” I just do not understand why people hear “better than” when they hear the word equality used in conjunction with the words women, gay, black, minority etc…

Our radio station did this on Friday. In celebration of Women’s Equality Day they asked people to call in and give examples of how women are better than men. Why, Why, Why, Why!???? Don’t they know that this is the sort of thing that causes feminist bashing and makes the fight for equality for EVERYONE just that much more difficult? Why didn’t they ask people to call in and talk about how having the right to VOTE has made a difference in their lives? Wouldn’t that be a more useful celebration? How about asking women and men to call in and tell how much they make a year, so there could have been discussion about the inequality that remains? There are so many other ways to celebrate Women’s Equality Day. Grrrr!

My ex husband, my ex fil, my ex mil – all of them would hear the words “equal rights” for whatever minority group was clamoring for change and hear “better than” or “special rights”. They drove me nuts, they still drive me nuts. I’ve heard school children say that people asking for equality are asking for special rights to help make their lives better than other people’s. I’ve heard WOMEN bash feminists and feminism because they are uncomfortable saying they are better than men or deserve more rights than men. I have been known to yell “THEY AREN’T ASKING FOR SPECIAL RIGHTS! THEY AREN’T SAYING THEY ARE BETTER! PAY ATTENTION! GET A DICTIONARY!”

Come on folks, all together now, equality means being EQUAL, not being BETTER!

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Daily Dose of Life – Arghhh!

Holidays, Kid Talk, Pet Peeves, Pets /

It all started at 1am when I woke with a blinding sinus headache. I thought I was going to DIE. I don’t do well with OTC meds but I was in serious pain so I searched the bathroom for those little red death pills and came up empty. Settled for little pink benadryl and somehow fell asleep around 2am. Woke again at 5am still feeling the pain but dozed through it til the alarm went off.

Made it through the initial morning rounds – dogs, cats, coffee, morning posts, email, blogs. All was right with the world, even if my head felt like it was about to burst. Stopped at Starbucks for my fix, took TW to work and spent $30 to fill up the gas tank.

Came home and went into the bedroom to read my blog feeds on the laptop since I was ahead of schedule. Finished that and headed back to the office to get back to work. Uh oh. My computer screen was black. Power light was on but the pretty blue windows wallpaper and my cluttered desktop were nowhere to be seen. Just blackness.

I moved the mouse. Still blackness. I clicked the keyboard. Still blackness. I fiddled with the monitor settings. You guessed it, blackness. I turned off the power button, waited a minute and turned it back on. Blackness. Turned it off and fiddled with wires. Black, black, black. (insert profanity)

It’s an all in one that TW’s mom bought me a couple of years ago and I love it or I did until this happened. I had 3/4 of a report on that thing! I had my metrix for the report on that thing. I had work for next week half way completed so that TW and I can take the weekend off and hit the beach before Michelle comes home next week. All of that work and on a kid crazy, school pick up, little kid birthday day!

(insert a lot of profanity)

I went back to the laptop in the bedroom and struggled along. Recreated my report. Scraped up an old metrix spreadsheet and recreated. Struggled along some more. Wrote to Gateway about my poor black screen computer. Worked some more. Took a break to wrap birthday presents for E. Worked some more. Took a red pill of death that TW found this morning before she went to work. Struggle, struggle, struggle.

1:15, time to drive across town and pick up the girls from their school. Got disgusted with a woman who sought my white face out of a crowd of non-white faces to complain about the way folks triple parked during pick up. I love NYC, triple parking doesn’t faze me a bit but her assumption that another white face would agree with her – well that bugged me. (I hope it is not her son’s birthday party we are suppose to attend next weekend)

Got home at 2:30 and struggled through work for another 45 minutes while assisting RJ with homework, fixing snack for both girls, talking to E about her birthday presents and just general life with kid stuff.

Drove to the other side of town to pick up J from school and from there picked up TW at work so she could come home and make E’s birthday cookie with her. Ha. We hadn’t been home long when E discovered the evil dog who ate the cuties earlier in the week had EATEN HER BRAND NEW BACKPACK! sigh

I shut down the work I had been trying to do and jumped in the car. “I think we got that backpack at Target, or maybe Walmart” says RJ. I figure Target. I figured wrong. Luckily Walmart is in the same vicinity as Target so I head there. Target was empty. Walmart was PACKED. No Lisa Frank backpacks! No cutie backpacks at all! They couldn’t have gone to Kmart, it’s not their style! Where did they get that thing???? I was about to give up and head to Kmart when I saw a huge bin of backpacks near the electronics with some bright pink and bright blue in the middle. Paydirt. Lisa Frank – but no pink ones with some funky looking girl and a poodle. I grabbed a light blue one with a CUTIEEEEEEEEEEEE dog on it and hoped for the best.

Drove home, showed it to E, apologizing profusely when she said “I like this one better!” Yea! Crisis averted. So I’m repacking the new backpack and say “Where’s your lunchbox.” Silence. He didn’t. Yes, he did. He ate that too.

Back in the car I go. Back to Walmart. By now it’s 6pm and traffic is umm bad. Walmart is even more crowded than before and again, no Lisa Frank lunchboxes! grrrr! No cutie lunchboxes AT ALL. I’m thinking I’m going to have to drive in the other direction across town and try the other Walmart when I see a wee bit of pink underneath the Spidey lunchboxes. Ha! A Lisa Frank lunchbox just like the backpack Jake ate! It’s not the ugly purple Lisa Frank but surely she will like this since it is the same design as the original backpack, right???

I pay. I drive home. She giggles. Funny. Oh yea, I’m laughing my rear off here as my head threatens to explode some more.

We light the candles on the birthday cookie. We eat. I make a wish that she really was still 4 as she blows out her candles. I don’t know what she wished for but it had better not be another Lisa Frank backpack or lunchbox. I don’t think I can handle that.

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Daily Dose of Health – Podcast

Health and Wellness /

Kerry and Jackie launched Crohn’s Talk #2 yesterday! Kerry tallks about going back on Methotrexate, the differences between Crohn’s & Colitis and more! Jackie talked to us about STRESS, (a huge topic for folks and families living with Crohn’s and Colitis).

Again, my favorite part is when the scripts were put down and they talked about recent news articles and such. Keep up the great work, you two! I’ve enjoyed both shows and look forward to the next one.

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Daily Dose of Education – New Schools

Community Chest, Kid Talk, News and Politics /

All three of the small children started new schools on Monday. All three are attending “magnet” schools that are rather far away. His highness attends a middle school about 15 minutes from here and the girls attend an elementary school that is 20 minutes from here. The middle school has a pretty wide range of kids, in terms of economic and social status but the girls’ elementary school is, well, it is in a minority neighborhood and the majority of students are minority. The magnet students have classes in one building, not in the same building with the “neighborhood kids”. Some of the magnet classes do join the “neighborhood” for specials like PE, Music, etc… There are soooo many things to say about this that I just can’t even start. So instead, I’ll tell you two little stories that were shared by the girls after day one.

RJ is in 4th grade and when TW said “what happened in school today,” RJ said “There was a crime scene at school and there was an outline of a dead body!” It’s hard to know what the right thing to say is when your child makes this announcement on day one at her new school, ya know? TW seemed to manage ok because after a bit more of RJ rambling about this, it turns out this was an actual school activity. No, they didn’t kill anyone in the name of education. It was an observation/detective work type activity of some sort. No real crime, that we know of, was committed. Although, I personally find it troubling that they chose this particular activity for this particular group of kids in this particular school. I am afraid I’m going to have some difficulty keeping my social and class issues to myself…

Then, on the way to school this morning, E (who is in 2nd grade) said that her teacher told her that one year she had a student who would scream and yell and cry and crawl under the tables when she did not get her way. And the teachers finally figured out how to handle that. They discovered that if they quickly shoved something in her mouth, she would stop pitching a fit. Ummm, huh? TW and I were both quiet for a moment. Again, what to say… I asked, “what exactly did they shove into her mouth?” E said, “food!” Oh thank goodness, the light bulb went off and I said BLOOD SUGAR, it was her BLOOD SUGAR. Sheesh.

These kids, I swear they will be the death of me. Or maybe it is this school. We didn’t have these issues with Mrs F…

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Mass Murderers & Teen Sleuths

2005, Books in Bed, Favorites, GLBT, Mystery /

It was a slow reading week for me but would have been slower if it hadn’t been for the car service fiasco. Work has been a little busy, moderators on vacation and such, and blogging has been even busier.

I skipped over a large stack of books that TW has already read in favor of Dearly Devoted Dexter. I was more excited about the release of the second Dexter than I was about Harry Potter and it did not let me down.

We discovered Darkly Dreaming Dexter last year, right before we headed to Miami for a cruise. It was amusing to drive down along the docks of Miami and see all of those metal storage containers that played such a large role in Darkly Dreaming.

Dexter is a bad bad guy. He’s not even really human. But he looks human and most people find him pretty charming. Women seem to fall at his feet and he’s not sure what to do about that. What he’d rather do is let his “dark passenger” take over and just KILL. But, he doesn’t…unless a really really BAD person comes along. Preferably one who is not nice to children, that’s Dexter’s preferred victim.

The Dexter books manage to be funny and gruesome at the same time, but not in the way a Christopher Moore slasher novel would be. It’s hard to explain, you just have to read it for yourself and find out.


After Dexter, I grabbed the next book from the library stack with a quickly approaching return date and that just happened to be Confessions of a Teen Sleuth. What a switch from Dexter to a grown up Nancy Drew! Ha!

I was a huge Nancy Drew fan as a kid. I’d use my allowance every weekend to buy a new Nancy Drew book and finish it within a couple of hours. Then I’d beg my mom or dad to take me to Sam Solomon’s (which was closer than the bookstore and a place my parents seem to like pretty well so it seemed like a good shot…) and get them to buy me another one – because I was bored and I neeeeeeded to read another and another and another. I didn’t read them all, I got sidetracked by adult novels or something – I’m blaming The Female Eunuch because I know I read that around the same time as I was reading the last of my Nancy Drews. Germaine Greer, DAMN YOU!

OK back to this little “parody”, it was ok. Not great. I like the gay girl version better but it had it’s amusing moments. Nancy and Frank Hardy and their love child that grew up thinking he was Ned’s child. Ha! Very amusing, indeed.

I’m about to pick up a book by another of my favorite authors but I’ll tell you about that in a couple of days…

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