Monday Morning Assorted Ramblings…

Miscellaneous thoughts from the weekend…

Well, we had one of those days on Friday that I would mark near the top of some of the “best family days ever” – I took the kids to Dairy Queen for dogs and ice cream.  Sounds simple, doesn’t it?  But it was – and it was great.  After we ate inside, we got our blizzards and cones and sundaes and sat outside the restaurant and shared bites of each others treats and laughed and got messy and tickled each other with grass and had the perfect, absolutely fantastic time.  Something so easy, yet so many families fail to do.  Not necessarily Dairy Queen – heaven knows if you were to do that a lot you’d be taking up much more room on the grass than before – but just do ANYTHING that takes you away from “life” for a couple of hours.  Wonderful.

I took them out to celebrate because it seems like my client base is beginning to really grow! I’m getting a HUGE increase in inquiries for a shoot, I’m thrilled. I’m enjoying this so much – it’s nice to say, after two decades, that I love my job!

 

Hm.  Oh yeah, I chopped my hair off.  And highlighted it.  I feel like a different person!  I don’t think my hair has been this short, at least since I was about 10.  Yeah, not a big deal to most, but I always had dreams of winding my hair up in a huge braid like Aunt Bea before bed every night.  Maybe not.  Anyways, I like it.  With the success of my career, I may even go more “artist-funky” one day and put some big chunky streaks or something in it.  Just to be fun.  My midlife crisis.

I think hubby likes it, but he’d lie to me, saying it doesn’t matter what my hair looks like.  Sorta like asking him if “I look fat in this outfit” – you know they’re never honest!  Sigh.  😉

  

Read a great article in Reader’s Digest over the weekend that delved into the stranger paranoia again – similar to my blog on Stranger Danger.  As a matter of fact, the woman that wrote the article was featured on Bullshit! because she let her (gasp) nine-year old ride home alone on a NYC subway.  It’s funny because, like she says, it was such a NON-event, that it’s become a worldwide event.

It’s a fact that we are safer than we have been since the early 70’s.  She quoted a stat in her article that she’s safer in NYC than she’s been since 1963.   BUT – the media would lead you to believe that every neighboring home holds a molester, behind every bush hides a rapist, driving by every school ground is a murderer.  It simply IS.  NOT.  SO.    Here’s a great quote from it:

Fear is hardly a new parental emotion, of course….. but the fear of letting your children out of sight for even a second – that’s new.  And it feeds not only on legitimate angst but on a steady diet of peer pressure….  “Parents regard every childhood experience from the standpoint of the worst possible outcome,” says Paranoid Parenting author Frank Furedi.  “To do otherwise is to be seen as an ‘irresponsible parent’.”

That’s too bad.  There’s people out there that don’t let their children play in their own driveway.  12 year olds not being allowed to walk 5 houses down to see their best friend.  Yet, the odds of your own family doctor hurting or killing your child is so much greater than some stranger.  Hell, your odds of your child dying in a car accident are 40 times greater than stranger abduction!  I know, I know, you say you can’t avoid taking your child somewhere in the car.  Well, yes you can.  Your child never has to get inside of a car.  Bikes, feet, horses, whatever.  If you must protect them, it seems like the automobile would be a much bigger scare if I were a paranoid parent.  But I digressed – anyways, it was an interesting read.  I wish people would lighten up and turn off the news, keeping in mind it’s a billion dollar industry that feeds on your fears.  It’s not a scary world.  It’s a beautiful, safe one that needs exploring.

 

 

Hm.

Okay, where is Ruby’s parents?  She is only seven years old, taking care of Max all by herself.  And the fact that she has to say his name at the beginning, middle, or end of virtually every sentence she says leads me to believe perhaps she doesn’t have the mental capacity to take care of a toddler all by herself. 

And where are Dora’s parents while she’s galavanting all over the world?

And the woman that does the voice on that danged Wow Wow Wubbzy… is the same one that does the annoying southern chit Sandy the Squirrel on Spongebob.  Someone please put her out of my misery.

And is it really a good idea to have a lisping duck teaching children to talk?  Really?

Okay, I think I’m done now.