What, It’s Friday Already?

1) PEOPLE’s favorite furry finalists from Westminster. Love the black and white, but what’s more interesting is some of the names these dogs have.

The winner is an Affenpinscher called Banana Joe. I meant dog show, he won the dog show, not the name game. He speaks German, Dutch, Spanish and English. I thought you should know, because I thought they all speak Dog.

It’s a big dog show, they must have ways of making sure it’s a dog.

–

–

But really, if you can’t dis evolution you can make up crazy names…

2) Or, you could just dis evolution.

Here the dis:

“Evolution accidentally dropped this leaf-nosed bat on the floor but was too embarrassed to say anything so just pretended it was actually supposed to look like that.”

Another:

Here the dis:

“You know that elephant seal I made? The one with the awesome floppy nose?”

“Yes, evolution, that was a pretty good nose.”

“And you know how it kept getting parasites up inside it?”

“I heard that was an issue.”

“I fixed it.”

“You fixed it? What did you do, give the elephant seal more protective mucus? A better immune system? Stronger nose hairs?”

“Nope! That all seemed too hard. I just made a nose-picking bird.”

“A nose-picking bird.”

“Works great!”

 –

–

3) Ok what’s dis?

Crayon Creatures!

4) Strangely, this one’s real:

22 weird and beautiful caterpillars. Rockstar’s pick (paisay, did I put this up before, why does that caterpillar look so familiar?). In fact I asked him to make a summary of his favorite Youtube recommendations so I could post for the hols but he’s procrastinating. (Since it’s because he just spent his CNY lai see on Star Wars Lego it’s gonna be awhile longer….)

–

–

5) Top marriage research findings of 2012. I didn’t get the one that says divorce risk decreases 20% if the husband is close to his inlaws, but increases 20% if the wife is close to her inlaws. 

6) The public shaming of Chrissie. Best Aussie Blog 2012 Eden Riley’s post. Caught my attention that her son Max, 11, was horrified Chrissie Swan smoked while pregnant, and then Eden told him she did too, and his reaction was

“Geez, mum. Lucky I don’t have asthma.” (I thought that was kinda cute and smart).

But what I wanted to say, as someone who has never even taken an experimental puff, is that there are people who are sorry they smoked/ did drugs/ whatever while pregnant, there are people who are sorry they got caught, and there are people who don’t get to be all judgmental because how come we hammer people who smoke while pregnant and yet allow countless people who tiger parent in the extreme to mess with their children’s heads, possibly to greater detriment of the child, to get away with it scott-free in the name of getting good grades/ instilling discipline/ family tradition/ whatever (EXTREME, I said). Ok, just maybe judgmental over the ones only sorry they got caught. (Like, do you have to have the kids right now?)

Think that pretty much covered everyone.

In Eden’s blog post she talked about guiltily rationing herself to a furtive cigarette a day while she was carrying Max. I read it and remembered the time I’d read Max wanted as a treat for him and his friends to sling pies at each other so she made him some. It would not even have occurred to me to do that.

There are just too many grey areas and things that make up a good parent, and focussing on just one thing is not seeing the whole picture (great shades of investment products here sorry). In fact I think it distracts from other “parenting bads” because people are such sheep.

Does a parent who has struggled with addiction all her life and has pretty much cleaned up now (except for the odd cigarette) love her child less than a parent who withholds love to the point of being almost cruel in order to manipulate a child to achieve?

Which child is more likely to grow up dysfunctional, the one with the asthma or the one with the string of As? (This not a witch hunt, I only ask to highlight what I thought was a large imbalance in the way some societies viewed certain parenting no-nos and not others, that I wanted to point out. Kinda like the debate they have in the States about mandatory minimums – there are much tougher fines/ jail terms for possession of certain narcotics and not others and some even argued legislation was influenced by which races (white/ black for e.g.) used which drugs.)

Besides, I might be squeaky clean and relatively disciplined anal about my own (non)smoking/ over-drinking/ whatever but I’ve come across Self Righteous Pharmacist. And I know a couple mums who once complained to a school principal about their child’s teacher smelling of cigarettes though he’d never let the kids see him smoke. One is a good friend of mine who also reads this blog 😀 She’s smoked recreationally before. I have not. We can talk about these things and why we feel the way we do. I’m friends with people who sincerely believe in what they say (and are open to debate).

(And no, I don’t like people to smoke around my kids or me.)

Ok random pic of this kids time:

The Memsahib would not sleep all morning because then the Memsahib’s servants would be off to spend Lego money or attend music class and so the Memsahib settled on a bath with constantly running shower whereby one servant would hold the shower poised over the Memsahib while the other would constantly scoop out the excess water.

And so finally the Memsahib is asleep.

Have a good weekend…