Modern Lives

There is a disturbing trend among parents that has been permeating popular culture for a couple of decades now: the objectification of young children. One need only witness the horrors that are toddler beauty pageants (and the reality TV shows, books, and movies that spawned from such) to know what I mean. Girls too young to even grasp basic arithmetic are gussied up, given dental veneers, bikinis, enough makeup to give Tammy Faye pause, hairstyles to rival the stature of any found in small-town Texas, and paraded around like tiny objectified dolls for the aesthetic enjoyment of the creepy old men and women who judge the degree to which these 4–6 year-old children successfully emulate adult sexiness. Increasingly, this behavior has become a mainstream oddity that most sensible Americans are morbidly fascinated by, but publicly dismiss with a tsk-tsk and solemn head shake while secretly DVRing the latest episode of "Toddlers and Tiaras." Every now and then, someone will take

Wow. Has it really been over four years since I last posted to this thing? Does anyone ever actually read this? *tap-tap-tap* This thing on? A lot has happened since my last post. We lost Ezry almost exactly a year to the day after the last post. Shortly after publishing that post, she had gone back to her old ways and we had to exile her to the backyard again. Then, in the Spring of 2009, we remodeled the front living room and dining room with fresh paint, new furniture, and shiny new laminate floors. Having finally exorcised the ghost of little puppy peesalot, we allowed Ezry her place back in the house. All went extraordinarily well. We finally had our little girl back and she was happy to be allowed inside again. Ezry still went outside whenever she wanted, but usually came in before bedtime. One night early that summer, she didn't come back in. It wasn't the first time she had opted to stay out all night when the weather was nice, so we didn't think much of it.

We call her the bitchpuss for a reason. But before I get to that, a little early biography . . . She came to use a few weeks after our first anniversary at our first apartment, way back in 1999, when Clinton was still president, gas was 99 cents a gallon, and I had just turned 21 and finished my first semester at college. This tiny voice in the bushes outside our apartment building started mewing at me as I headed off to class. Stooping to peer through the bushes, I discovered the tiny furry black source—and she discovered me! About six-weeks-old and all black except for a white star on her chest, she came tottering out of the bushes and straight toward me. I picked her up and gave a little rub on the head, but being that I was running late, I quickly put her back down under the bushes and convinced myself that she must belong to the people in the apartment behind the bushes (never mind that it was vacant). When I returned from class I didn't see or hear her, so I figured her own

I just wanted to share some videos of Xander and Joxer. Enjoy!

Ever feel like a bat trapped in a bra ? Suffocating in your warm coziness? Or maybe you feel like a headless bunny sometimes. It's that feeling of contentment mixed with frustration with a just a dash of insanity (or maybe a dollop if your insanity comes in a thick, cream-based form). Usually, you're content except for some extremely frustrating and difficult circumstances. Maybe it's one or two things, or it could be a multitude of things, but everyone's dealt with this at some point. For me, it's several things. Tim's job, my difficulty in making time to write, gas prices, and our debt. But it's that last one that is a constant weight whispering raspy discontents in my ear. So if everyone in Americaland could just send one dollar to my PayPal account, we could beat that motherfucker down, right off the ba— No? Well, it was worth a shot. Seriously, though . . . the last four things are so inextricably intertwined, it becomes a tenuous balancing act. If any

Wow. Long time, huh? It has been almost exactly 18 months since my last post. I almost could've had a couple a kids since I last wrote. And actually, I guess I have. You see, we've adopted two dogs in the past 12 months, Joxer and Xander. But I digress . . . Remember way back when, when I said it had been a crazy seven months? No? You've never read my blog before and all the people who used to read it have died or moved on, you say? Oh. Well scroll down a bit and read the previous post or two. Go on . . . I'll wait. . . . All done? Excellent. You see, in September 2006, Timmy was laid off. Nice, huh? For his company to lay him off nine months after buying a house was quite the crap on the head. That was followed by three depressing months of frantic job-searching and straining to make ends meet with my meager salary and his tiny unemployment checks. He finally landed a job near home, luckily (or so we thought). That job quickly revealed itself to be a Pandora&#