A few thoughts on being an adult

I was reading another blog, and I tried to leave a comment, cause I disagreed with the author. Most of the other thought out comments also disagreed with the author, but I didn't think that they went far enough, so I proceeded to write this really long comment.

And then there were technical difficulties, and my comment was eaten.

So rather than have that happen again, I will write some things here, and then maybe later I will go back to copy some of it there.

The author of the blog sometimes gets letters from other readers, asking for advice. This week's letter was from a girl who was twenty-two years old, still living with her parents, and in her last year of college. She complained that her mother treats her like a child and wants to know where she is and what she is doing at all times.

There was no mention of the college student paying rent, just that she still lived with her parents and didn't like that they weren't treating her like an adult.

I don't think the college student is an adult. She has lived a certain number of years, and the law says that she's old enough to know better and follow the rules and such, and that she is old enough to vote and old enough to drink if she chooses. But that is about it. If she has in anyway earned adulthood, it wasn't mentioned.

Our civilization doesn't require an adulthood test, just that we reach a certain age, and if we reach that certain age, that probably isn't something we can take much credit for either. If we didn't die when we were younger, it was probably due to our parents, or some other family member, or maybe a teacher, or maybe a doctor or a cop or someone else in emergency services. But you probably didn't get to the magic age of eighteen or twenty-one because of anything brilliant you did. If left to your own devices, you would have done something really stupid before then, you would be a face on a milk carton, you would have died in a car wreck, you would have drank yourself to death or overdosed on some other drug, ended up in jail with some of your buddies, etc....

In other cultures, it is different. You don't just magically become an adult just because you have lived long enough. You have to do something to earn it. You have to get married or become a good parent. You might be expected to safely bungee jump or dive off of a cliff. You might have to prove that you can hunt for food or kill a dangerous predator. You might have to join the military. You might have to mutilate your body without anesthesia.

But we don't do any of that. We don't even have a test. You don't even have to graduate from high school. You don't even have to prove you can balance a checkbook.

So eighteen year olds and people in college complain when some of us don't treat them like adults, but what have they done to be an adult?

Are they married? Are they good parents? Do they take care of children or elderly people? Do they have jobs and pay their own bills? Or do they spend all their money on going out and having a good time? Did they pay for college or earn a scholarship, or did mommy and daddy pay for that?

The complaining college student probably isn't a bad person, or even a lazy person. She at least is going to college, which is what we want most people her age to do. Other people who think that they are adults didn't even graduate from high school. But she probably is not an adult yet. Probably if she were really even that close to being an adult, she would not be whining about all this stuff, most of which was probably done for her own safety.

At the other end of the spectrum, those of us who have actually been adults for a long time and have done something to be called an adult other than just living to be a certain age might have some life changing thing happen that takes away whatever it was that made us feel like adults. People who had bill paying jobs have lost them. People who were buying cars and houses have lost them. People who choose to cook and clean and otherwise take care of a spouse instead of pursuing a career might not have their spouses anymore. Stay at home parents might not have the child at home anymore or might have to go out and get a job. People who take care of elderly people or invalids eventually have to deal with the death of the person they cared for, and after that they aren't quite sure what to do with their time.

I don't guess that you stop being an adult after something like that happens, but losing that thing that was a major part of your life is hard, and sometimes you don't feel like an adult afterward. Even when it is something normal, like when you get old enough to retire or when your youngest child grows up and goes to college or moves away, it is still sometimes a difficult adjustment.

Adults have real problems to deal with. If you were really an adult, complaints about your mother wanting to know where you're going wouldn't even make the list.

Sort of bad news

Sleepless near Seattle came back once after the previous post but did not leave a comment. I think I have scared my new reader away.

Okay, that's not the sort of bad news.

The sort of bad news is that I was hoping to make an art sale before Christmas, but yesterday I learned that the person I was hoping to sell the art to is declaring bankruptcy or something. So I guess that I won't be selling anything to her.

I have written about trying to sell my art before. It just doesn't seem to work out. Not that I really want to sell most of it. Most of it I made for me (or specifically as a gift for a friend) and if I like it I want to keep it. If something went wrong with it and I don't like it, then probably no one else would want it either.

Once in a while someone will ask about buying something, and if it is something that I wouldn't mind parting with or something that I think I can mostly duplicate, I tell them how much I want for it. (That is, if I've kept up with time and expense and such to even answer the question I tell them how much I want for it. Otherwise, I have to do some math and get back to them.) I have to figure how much I spent on supplies, and then I have to figure how many hours I actually spent working on the thing, etc.... So if I've spent twenty dollars on supplies on something that it took me twelve hours to make, then I'm going to say maybe a hundred and fifty dollars. And that's only if I'm sure that I can make another one, or if it is something I can live without. If it is something that I really like and I don't think I can make another one, I won't sell it. But at this point I probably won't sell it anyway, because the person wanting to buy was probably thinking less than fifty. Less than fifty is not going to happen unless I really don't like the piece, and I can't picture anyone offering to buy a piece that I really don't like.

The hundred and fifty dollar price tag tends to shock some people. So either that person has never bought from an artist before, or else the person bought from an art student who just had to sell stuff either to get back the money for the supplies to pay for the next semester's supplies, or else the student has accumulated so much artwork that he has to start selling stuff at a huge discount just to get rid of it to make room for the next semester's stuff.

Non-artists just have no concept of what goes into making art. Either they don't have a clue how much art supplies cost, or they think that you make the art really fast and won't charge that much more than the cost of the art supplies. Or they think that since you are an artist that you enjoy making the art and that you shouldn't charge that much for your time.

This is a bit baffling. I don't think that they expect this of people doing other kinds of work. I'm sure that mechanics like cars, but most people don't expect mechanics to work all day to fix a car and then just charge ten or twenty dollars above the cost of the parts.

If someone is taking an art class and spending 150 hours a semester working on art projects, that's 150 hours that they didn't have to do other things, like getting a job. But, still, people wanting to by art don't get it that the art student would rather give all that hard work to his mother or donate it to charity rather than sell it at a price that would work out to a dollar an hour.

Anyway, it looks like I won't be selling that vase before Christmas. Which means that I've been working on the new leaf vase for no reason. And now the professor seems a bit unhappy that I am in the lab working on the thing anyway. The class I'm officially in ended a month ago, and all that we are supposed to be doing now is drying, firing, and glazing. Except for that, we're supposed to be done, and here I had started a new piece.

So, I wasted about fifteen hours on a piece that I really didn't need to make right now. And I didn't get it done in time for this semester's high fire anyway. And that and a few other things were distracting me when I maybe could have been out looking for a temp job or something.

It kind of sucks.

Monday Morons--You think that he's a good kid?

Well, Monday Morons used to be a regular feature around here, since there seems to be an endless supply of morons, and also Mondays seem to come around once a week or so. And then it became a matter of deciding which particular moron to write about that particular week, and sometimes saving a story til the next week when I had more time to write about it, or maybe writing about it on a different day entirely and just waiting til Monday to post it. And then for a while there were still morons, just that they were your average boring morons and not really worth writing about. And then sometimes a person gets busy with other things and doesn't really have the time to blog about much at all.

So I have been skipping over the Monday Morons for a long time. And then I wrote a few. And then I had several things that I wanted to write about, but I didn't write them down at the time, cause I was busy cleaning or something, and then they slipped my mind entirely. They seemed worth writing about at the time, but now I have forgotten them. And then last week there were three or four things that I thought I could write about, but they were minor things really. So when Saturday came and I heard about the violin a** woman, I had to write about that, because the violin a** woman pretty much trumps everything else except maybe the Homewrecking-Slut, so of course I had to write about the violin a** woman last week.

So those other things, whatever the were, have slipped my mind now. Like I said, mostly they were minor things. But there was this other thing, maybe not so minor, from a while back, so I'll post it today. And yes, I know that if you recognize which news story I'm referring to that it is a bit old as far as news stories go, but rest of it I only heard about a couple of weeks back.

Maybe a month or two ago, a couple of teenagers (or maybe guys in their early twenties) broke into someone's home. The couple that lived there had children, two boys I think. And the woman woke up while the teenagers were robbing them, and she fought with them, and then that woke up her husband, who also came into the room and fought with them. One of the teenagers had a gun, and the husband got the gun away from the teenagers and shot them. One of the teenagers died at the scene, and I can't remember if the other teenager died later or lived.

Now, maybe you're not supposed to do a dance when you hear that someone has died, but really, that's what most of us are thinking, isn't it? They got what they deserved. And there are two less thugs that we had to worry about breaking into our homes. And maybe the other little thugs will get a clue and stay in school and get real jobs, etc....

I think that the main downside to a father killing two thugs that broke into his home is that the man will have to deal with the police and the courts and such for a while before it is official that the father shot the teenagers in self-defense, and that maybe he will have nightmares and such, and his wife was there and she'll have nightmares and such, and if the kids were awake they might have seen it and even if they didn't they will probably have nightmares and such. So maybe the whole family will be in therapy for a while, and they might lose some time at work and so forth. In some ways it might be easier on the family if the thugs had gotten away.

But I don't feel much sympathy for the teenagers who were shot. They got what they deserved. They broke into someone else's home to steal a television and such, and they could have just gotten regular jobs and bought their own televisions and such. And not only did they plan to steal someone else's television, they came prepared to shoot someone to get it. The gene pool is better off without them.

Now I know that everyone has a mom and dad, and that the little thugs both had moms and dads, and the moms and dads are hurting. I don't know if these were bad kids because they had bad parents, or if the parents were near perfect people and the boys were total mutations. But the boys did something bad, and they got shot, and you don't really feel for their families the way that you do for families of soldiers killed in Iraq and people who get shot minding their own business at a convenience store that gets robbed, etc....

Somebody feels for these people. Somebody went to the funeral and held mom's hand and said sorry for your loss and all of that. Somebody did all the things that you would do if it were someone who got shot while fighting in Iraq or minding their own business and shot by a robber. Somebody took the family ham and potato salad and listened to them cry, etc....

So maybe it was the parents fault, and maybe it wasn't. But it was definitely the teenagers own fault that they were killed. If you break into someone's home, you are supposed to get shot, or you are supposed to get caught and spend years in jail. That doesn't usually happen, but that is what is supposed to happen.

My husband the photographer is not the perfect person, but I am really surprised at some of the people who are hired to work with him. Once in a while, someone asks him if he wants to go have a beer after work. My husband doesn't drink, I'll say that much for him. But I'm really surprised that there are all these people who get hired to do this job, and then they want to go hang out at bars after work. It just doesn't seem like some of them would have a good image and would make the company look bad to the potential customers, though sometimes I suppose that they end up going to the bars and such with the potential customers. But for the most part, I am surprised to hear some of the details of these people's personal lives. Still, if you keep that sort of thing to yourself, and don't openly present yourself as the sort of person who hangs out at a bar, and you wear the dress code and don't talk about hanging out at bars to people who don't bring up the subject themselves, then it might work out okay.

Anyway, one of the sales staff knew one of the teenagers who was shot and killed while trying to rob from this family. And so she's a salesperson, and she works on commission, and my husband also works on commission, but it is up to her to actually get the sales. So part of the job is to have pleasant small talk with people and act like one of them and act like you're a person who deserves a paycheck so that the customers will spend some of their hard earned money. If you act like a low-life and talk about inappropriate things and such, people spend less money. And right now, they are not spending a lot of money to begin with.

So this salesperson has to tell absolutely everyone she sees that she knew one of the little thugs who was killed. But she goes on and on about how he was a good boy and he didn't deserve to get killed, and that he was friends with her boy, and it just isn't right that he's dead. So no one wants to talk to this salesperson, and if they were going to buy anything they don't want to buy anything from her. And for all I know she is telling this nonsense to people who have lost loved ones in Iraq or have known people shot in convenience stores or even people who were shot in their own homes buy little thugs stealing televisions.

Shut up already!

He was not a good boy. At least, at the time he was shot he wasn't. Either he was just a bad kid, or maybe the other one was just a bad kid and this one got talked into doing something he wasn't supposed to be doing. But unless he was an undercover cop or someone was making him do this by holding a gun to his girlfriend's head or something like that, he wasn't some innocent bystander and he deserved to get shot. For all I know he was just a bad kid, and the other kid was mostly a good guy until that night when he was persuaded to steal a television set. For all I know the other kid got shot only because he listened to this one.

She just doesn't seem to get it. I don't see how she doesn't get it in the first place, but what I really don't understand is why she keeps telling this to people after she saw what happened the first few times she told this story. So she doesn't have any sales to speak of, and my husband comes home with half a paycheck.

And the next day, she is still at it, telling everyone how this boy was friends with her boy, and that they are just the same, and it isn't fair that he got shot. So if the salesperson is right, and the boy who was shot was just the same as her boy, seems like her boy must be a little thug too. And no one really wants to be around the mother of a little thug. And she really doesn't seem to get it, that if her kid is not a little thug that he's probably hanging out with thugs and that if her boy wants to hang out with thugs that he'll eventually be doing this sort of thing himself if he isn't already.

So maybe she should quit telling this nonsense to everyone she meets and find out what is going on with her own kid. And if talking to people about this stuff is more important than earning a living, could she maybe just stay home and talk about it with someone else who shares her opinion and not screw up my husband's paycheck?

Yesterday

Yesterday I had this moment of panic when I saw that S from Fort Worth had left a comment on my blog. S from Fort Worth has found my blog! Yikes! But on closer inspection, I think that it is a different S from Fort Worth. There are many people named S, and I'm sure that there's a lot of them in Fort Worth. Still, my first thought was that out of all those people that it must be the S from Fort Worth that I knew. Silly of me to think that, and more so to think it was something to get upset over. It isn't. "--if I did not want it heard, I would not have said it--" and all of that. And I've never said anything bad about S anyway.

Still, I would rather keep things the way that they are.

Anyway, that was just a minor thing that happened yesterday after I came home. The major thing that happened yesterday was I went to see the baby. I had seen the baby before, but that was more than a month ago when he was still in the hospital.

I have not spent any considerable time around either babies or pregnant women since I was maybe ten or eleven. You wouldn't think it was possible for a forty year old woman to spend so little time around babies and/or pregnant women. You would think that while you may or may not have been around babies and pregnant women when you were younger, depending on chance and the size of your family and your family's social contacts, you would be more and more likely to be around them as you get older. You might have a baby yourself, or friends might have babies.

But I did not want a baby myself, and I have been lucky so far that I've not gotten pregnant. I do not have many of the romantic notions about it that most women do. Not that I don't have them at all, but my main thoughts on pregnancy tend to run towards it must be a lot like carrying a parasite from an Alien movie, only that it takes much longer to die from it and you get really fat while you are waiting to die.

Also, I've never been overly impressed with the babies themselves. It seems that most other women automatically think that all babies are really cute and at some point they will just be unable to go on with life if they don't have one. I don't share that feeling at all, and I fail to see what is so wonderful about a person who just happens to be very small and bald. They can't talk or really do anything cute. I don't really get it.

So you might think that the reason I've not been around babies or pregnant women is that I've deliberately avoided them. You wonder if maybe I'm going along in my life, hear that one of my friends is pregnant, and then avoid her for the next five years or so.

Perhaps it is the reverse. Perhaps the pregnant women are avoiding me. And maybe this is true in a few cases. As a teenager I would sometimes here that someone from school or even from church "had to get married", but this was something I usually heard after the fact from somebody else. None of them ever came to tell me that they were expecting. Well, I suppose that if they didn't feel comfortable telling me that they were having sex it shouldn't surprise me that they weren't comfortable telling me that they were pregnant. So that was probably part of it. But mostly in those cases it was just that the friend and I had drifted apart somewhat before all of that happened, and then after there was actually a baby to think about she had a whole different life that did not include school or whatever it was where we normally saw each other.

Similar things happened as I became an adult. It wasn't that I refused to be friends with them anymore, but people get older and get married, and sometimes the getting married part means that they move away. And even when they don't move away, they tend to make other friends, and those other friends also want babies, so by the time there's actually a baby in the picture we don't see each other that much cause they spend more time with their new friends.

So at some point I was a single person with other single friends who didn't have any babies, and then a bit after that I was a married person who didn't want any babies, and I mostly had friends that were married and didn't have any babies. It just sort of worked out that way. Later still, I ended up being friends with either people who didn't have children, or people who were older and did have children but the children had all grown up.

Now there's someone who I've drifted away from somewhat, but not entirely. And she did not move to a different state or even a different county after getting married. Sure, she wants to make new friends who also have babies, that's only natural, but she hasn't yet done much in that direction yet. So I'm hearing this and that about being pregnant and baby stuff that I'd never heard about before.

I am so glad that I'm not going through any of this myself.

I'm not completely in the dark about such things. I did know that while a woman is pregnant that the baby moves around, that babies "kick". What I did not know was that it is something you can actually see happening. Really. It looks like something from Stan Winston's special effects studio.

Guess the Alien parasite bit wasn't too far off.

And I knew that pregnant women were always running off to the bathroom, because of the baby pushing on the bladder. And I knew that there was such a thing as an episiotomy, that often the doctor will cut a woman to help deliver the baby. And I knew that even under the best of circumstances the couple isn't supposed to have sex for at least six weeks. What I didn't know was that sometimes even after the episiotomy the poor woman tears even more tissue than the doctors thought to cut, and that after delivery the poor woman might still be running off to the bathroom and having gas and all of that. Sometimes, in a really bad case, it isn't just the baby wearing the diapers.

I am really glad that none of this is happening to me.

She looks really good now. You wouldn't know that she'd been pregnant less than two months ago, unless you maybe look at the stretch marks. And she didn't have a Hollywood trainer getting her back in shape or anything like that. I think she looks just the same is she did before, but she says she still has a bit left to go. But however she looks, she still hurts from the delivery.

As for the baby, he didn't cry much in the hospital. The new parents were then fooled into taking him home, where he cries whenever the mood strikes. But after a miserable two or three weeks, they are getting used to him. And the baby squirms a lot when held. I didn't think that babies this age moved around so much.

Other than that, it appears that he does nothing but eat and sleep. I know that isn't quite the case and that he is already learning stuff, like the important people speak English with a Texas accent.

Monday Morons--Don't tell my kid what to do

Well, we're a bit ticked off over something that happened at my husband's job last week.

My husband is a portrait photographer. He works for one of those companies that does traveling sales. Someone calls you in to be in a club directory or a church directory, and while you're there getting your picture taken for the directory, they take more pictures and try to sell them to you. And then there's a similar thing set up in grocery stores and such. Someone sells you a coupon good for a low cost 8x10, but then they try to sell you a bunch of other pictures and frames and such. The photographer is only at the one place for about a week, maybe less, and then he packs up the equipment and goes someplace else.

So that's my husbands job. He spends all day taking pictures of people who have been lured in by some gimmick. A bunch of them then get mad when they realize they have to listen to some sales pitch. They are just here for the directory or the free picture or the low cost thing that they bought, and they don't want anything else and they don't want to talk to the salesperson. Some of them won't even cooperate with the photographer.

At first I just thought it was awful how these companies got people to come in and have their picture taken like this. Before my husband got one of these jobs, I went to a couple of places like this, just to buy the special. I hated the whole sales thing that followed. But, if no one bought anything other than the special, they couldn't stay in business. So no matter how many times or how many different ways you say that you don't want to buy anything else, you still have to listen to a sales pitch. Personally, I would rather that they be more honest and tell you up front how much pictures cost and how much they expect you to buy instead of getting you to come in for some other reason. I'd just decide not to waste my time or theirs and not have my picture taken. But for some reason, no one in this business wants to do that.

After my husband had the job for a while, and I took a job as a salesperson, I started to lose patience with the customers. I quit feeling sorry for them that they'd been tricked into getting their picture taken "just for the directory" or whatever. Sure, the first couple of times you fall for it, but after that you should know what is going on, and if you don't want to spend hundreds of dollars on portraits, don't waste everyone's time.

So it amazes me when someone who should have been around enough to know what is going on is surprised when someone wants to spend an hour trying to get him to buy all this stuff when all he came in for was to get a free 8x10. Did you think that people actually get paid to give you free 8x10s? But what really ticks me off is the guy who knows what is going on, who knows that people don't get paid just to put his picture in the directory, and he comes in anyway and complains about everything. And then sometimes he has the nerve to say that we're lucky that he didn't just stay home.

No, we're not lucky that you didn't just stay home. We would have been lucky if you'd been in a serious car wreck on the way over so you didn't just mess up our sales average and cost us money. You're not required to buy anything. If you really don't like those pictures for some reason, maybe we can retake them. But if you know ahead of time that you don't want to buy anything, stay home. Better yet, don't make an appointment in the first place.

So there are these idiots who come in, who are already in a bad mood cause they don't want to buy any pictures, and they won't cooperate. They waste a lot of time cause they won't do what you tell them to. They won't fill out the paperwork correctly and they won't do what the photographer tells them to do. Really, filling out the paperwork should just take a few minutes and getting the actual pictures taken should only take ten minutes, unless you have a big group or are handicapped or something. And then the sales pitch takes an average of thirty minutes or so, but it really depends on the salesperson and how much you want to buy and how many people are in front of you. And yes, if you're sure you're not going to buy anything, it would be polite to mention that both to the photographer and to the salesperson, but don't keep saying it over and over again, and don't assume that you're done and jump up and leave. Someone will have to go and find you cause you didn't finish your set or you didn't fill out some form, and the people in line behind you will just have to wait longer while you act like a two year old.

So this last week my husband had a customer who came in with an attitude, cause he didn't like something that happened last time. Whatever. If you know what's going on and you don't want it to be "just like last time" then why do you come in and do it again? So the guy is already in a bad mood, and my husband just wants to get on with it so everyone can be rid of the guy.

So the guy comes in with his wife and kids, and my husband has to think for a minute on how they should be arranged for the photo. Then he moves a stool in front of the background and says "Okay, sir, have a seat right here on the stool and we'll get started."

So one of the kids runs over and sits on the stool. Kids do that. Once in a while, it's just that the kid has made a mistake and really thought he was the "sir" being asked to sit down. But mostly, it's just that the kid thinks he's being funny. After the first few hundred times, it's not funny, but you act like it is anyway.

"No, not you, get up. Okay, sir, have a seat right here."

And the kid laughs and gets up.

The dad isn't laughing.

"What did you just say?"

Okay, the dad is either really slow, or maybe he just has a hearing problem.

"Sir, just have a seat right here."

"No, before that, what did you say? Did you just tell my kid not to sit there?"

"We'll get to him in a minute. We need to get you and your wife seated first."

"You don't tell my kid what to do. I'm his father and I tell him what to do. If you have something to say, you don't talk to my kid, you talk to me. Don't tell my kid what to do."

Portrait photographers cannot take pictures without telling people what to do. Sit here, stand on this piece of tape, move a little to your left, tilt your head a bit more to your right, etc.... Some people get their left and right confused, and some people just don't get it and you physically have to move them however they are supposed to be or you will get a really bad picture or maybe even cut someone out of the picture.

But it's rare to have a grown up come in and say, "You can't tell me what to do." And it's rarer still to have to deal with anyone stupid enough to say this sort of crap in front of his kids. I have gotten into it a few times with people who are complete idiots, but most people do not try to tell me that I have to stop doing whatever I'm supposed to be doing at my job because I'm not allowed to talk to their kids.

There are some people who get upset when just someone walking by tells their kids to stop yelling, stop running, don't use language like that, wait your turn, etc.... "Don't talk to my kids that way" and "That's none of your business" and "You can't talk to my kid" and "If you have a problem with someone my kid is doing then you need to tell me about it first" etc.... Fine, it's your job to correct your kids, but why aren't you doing your job? If the kid is clearly doing something wrong and you don't do something about it, someone else is going to say something. It's really strange to me that the parent is bothered more by this supposed breach of etiquette than by the fact that their kid did something wrong.

But you don't get to go through this "Don't speak to my child" nonsense when the people talking to the child are just doing their jobs. Lots of people have to tell people what to do as part of their jobs, and a lot of these people have to deal with children while they're doing their jobs. Teachers, librarians, doctors, nurses, dentists, cops, mall security guards, crossing guards, etc.... They're all going to tell your kids what to do. And unless the kid is deaf or doesn't speak English and literally needs you to translate something, they're not going to go through you first.

Even that dumb job at the Halloween store required me to tell people what to do. "The line starts over there", "Don't touch the display", "Don't open the packages", "You can't try on costumes out here, but there's a dressing room over there", "No, you are not allowed to try on nylons or slips or anything else that is considered undergarments", "No, there are no refunds past this date", "Children are not allowed in this area", "This area is only for employees", etc.... I told people stuff like that all the time. If I saw a kid doing something he wasn't supposed to do, I told him not to do it anymore. I usually didn't go looking for his parents to tell them instead. If I went looking for someone's parent, it's because I'd had to tell the same kid something more than once. In that case, both the kid and the parent were usually idiots. If the parent had any sense to begin with, the kid probably wouldn't be acting that way in the first place, and parents with sense usually don't allow their kids to wander about unsupervised, especially in a store that has "adult" stuff that the kid shouldn't be looking at anyway.

Anyway, back to the idiots my husband had to deal with last week.

So my husband is just not having much luck with the guy. He won't do anything he is supposed to do, and he keeps going on about "this is just like last time." I don't know what happened last time, but if someone got you to come in and have your picture taken for a directory, fill out some forms, told where to stand or where to sit so that someone could take your picture, and then someone tried to get you to buy those pictures, then, yes, it was probably very much like last time. And you knew that before you came in, so get over it already.

There are rare idiots who actually try to pose the pictures themselves. Unless that person is a portrait photographer himself, the pictures usually look bad. And if the person was a portrait photographer,he should take pictures with his own camera and not come here. If you come here you have to stand where you're told. That's not the same as asking for particular groupings or particular poses. If you have an idea of something in particular that you'd like to buy it's usually okay to make suggestions or even ask for extra poses, but you shouldn't try to arrange the people in the picture yourself.

Sometimes my husband will stand back and let the idiots try to arrange themselves and just take a bad picture rather than deal with them anymore.

So he finally says "Dad sit here, and mom sit here, and kids stand whatever dad tells you to."

The guy said that he didn't have to take that and they walked out.

Well, that happens sometimes. But then the guy wouldn't actually leave. He stayed in the waiting room for about an hour complaining to everyone. So all the people who are waiting to have their pictures taken get upset thinking that the photographer is deliberately taking bad pictures or mistreating kids or whatever. And one of the salespeople gets upset cause she can't sell any pictures while she's trying to talk over this idiot yelling about "this is the same as last time" or whatever.

My husband takes pictures of four more groups, and the guy is still out there. He won't go home because they got all dressed up for nothing. They came here to get pictures taken, so they should get pictures taken. But my husband is the only photographer, and if he won't cooperate with the photographer, he can't have his picture taken.

So the guy finally calms down and he apologizes and my husband apologizes and everything seems okay. And my husband takes some pictures and gives the disk to one of the salespeople.

Apparently mom is also an idiot. After all of that work to get the pictures taken, she won't sit where she is told, and she turns in such a way that she cannot see the computer screen to view the pictures. Whatever.

My husband goes home for the day and calls one of his bosses and tells him the whole story with five part harmony and all that. And the boss tries to calm him down a bit and doesn't want him to quit and assures him that everything is going to be okay. So my husband just wants to know if he's still on the schedule for the rest of the week and is he still supposed to work at that same place the next week like originally planned. And the boss says yes and that everything is going to be fine.

So we think that everything is going back to normal. The next day we are going to meet one of the salespeople for lunch and a place not to far from where they are working. So we left the house about 11:30 to go meet the guy. The guy tells me about how the idiot customer was bothering everyone in the waiting room and how his wife sat in her chair sideways so that she couldn't see the pictures. And then he told me about the other salesperson not helping the situation. The other salesperson is a.) not very bright, b.) not very popular with other employees, c.) not making a lot of money is general, and d.) making very little money at all at this particular place. She seems to think that it was somehow my husband's fault. The other salesperson assured me that wasn't the case, and that he's doing just fine while working with my husband. But the other salesperson kept complaining about how my husband is ruining her sales for the week. The whole building heard her complaining about it. The whole building also heard her say how she needed to hurry and get out of there so she could go to the liquor store.

So we all had a good laugh over lunch. Then I left to run some errands, and my husband and the salesman went to Starbucks on the way to work.

A few hours later, my husband comes home. Apparently, at 11:35 my husband's boss called to say that my husband shouldn't go to work at that place for the rest of the week. But we had just left for lunch and did not get the message. Apparently, the idiot got home and decided that he really had been mistreated and went back to the place after my husband had left so he could complain some more. So he was told who to talk to about this complaint, and he made phone calls, and someone else made some phone calls, and it was decided that my husband shouldn't finish the week at this place, and that my husband should be rescheduled to work someplace else the next week. Otherwise this idiot will not go away and no one will get any work done.

What especially sucks about this is that my husband was taken off the schedule for two days, so that's two days that he isn't getting paid anything. But he really didn't have those two days off. Friday he wasted about three hours going to the place and talking to his replacement for about an hour and then driving back home. On Saturday he had to waste another three hours driving back to the place and packing up the equipment and then driving back home.

Good News?

Well, I thought I would take a break from the usual "this is what I've been doing" post and write about something a bit serious. And I'm not sure how to ease into the subject, so here goes.

A lot of women are going to have miscarriages. Someone did a survey and found out that one out of five pregnant women lost their babies. So that's kind of sad, but these things happen.

Someone else did a survey and found out that our pets and horses and cows and such were also having miscarriages. But the animals had miscarriages at a higher rate. One in three pregnancies ended in miscarriage.

So someone was wondering why the animals were having more miscarriages than people. So they did another study. And in this study, humans and animals both miscarried at the same rate. One in three pregnancies ended in miscarriage.

Why the discrepancy?

In the original human survey, the patients were asked if they had miscarried, and one in five of them reported miscarriages. In the animal study, well, you can't ask animals if they have miscarried. Instead, the information was gathered from veterinarians and people who bred dogs and horses and other people who keep up with such things. Their numbers were based on lab tests.

So, in the joint study, the human patients were asked if they had miscarried, and still one out of five said yes. But, in addition to that, lab work was done, and according to the lab work, one out of three had miscarried. A lot of these women had miscarried without even knowing.

Let me explain. Say that a hundred women are pregnant. But they have only just become pregnant today, and they don't know that they are pregnant yet. In the next two or three weeks, before they even know that they're pregnant, thirteen or fourteen of them have miscarriages. Only they don't think that they are having miscarriages, cause they don't know that they're pregnant. They just think that they are having periods. Maybe it is a bit more painful than usual, or maybe it didn't start on the exact day that it was supposed to, but it was still pretty much just like a period. So they don't report the miscarriage or go to the doctor or anything like that. In the next month or two, the remaining pregnant women find out that they are pregnant, but then later twenty of them have miscarriages. The rest of the women (except maybe one who will have a serious problem that might end either her life and/or the life of her baby) will be fine if they can avoid angry boyfriends, car accidents, falling down stairs, etc....

Enter the early home pregnancy test.

So now we have a bunch of women who are trying to get pregnant, and every week they go to the drugstore and buy these tests. And every morning a bunch of them are looking at these little sticks and wondering if they've done the test right, and maybe it just takes longer for it to change color, and what does this look like to you? And some of them happily run out and buy some sparkling grape juice, cause they're giving up alcohol cause it's bad for the baby.

And a couple of weeks later, about ten percent of them are crying in the bathroom.

Okay, someone I know went to the drugstore and bought two of the early home pregnancy tests. And the little sticks changed color and all of that stuff. And later a blood test confirmed the results of the first two.

Don't worry, it isn't me.

Anyway, this person doesn't want everyone to know, cause she's afraid she's going to be the one in three who has a miscarriage. Telling someone who would tell me was probably not the best idea, if you don't want people to know. On the one hand, they are happily doing things that couples do when they are expecting, only they are trying to do it without anyone noticing. On the other hand, she's trying not to get too excited, since sometimes she doesn't feel well, and she doesn't feel well in a way that is like how she feels right before she has a period. Every little twinge makes her panic.

She's had about six tests now. She's definitely pregnant. She's wondering when she should tell people.

Personally, I think that she should tell everyone right away. I understand wanting some privacy and all that. I understand not wanting everyone to know that you're going to have a baby and then find out later that you're not having a baby and have to deal with all these people coming to tell you how sorry they are. I get it.

But if you're really concerned that you might lose the baby, don't you want as much help as you can get? Don't you want people you work with to know that you shouldn't be doing the heavy lifting and such that is usally part of the job? Don't you want someone to kind of check up on you when your husband is out of town? Don't you want a few people to be ready to help out if there's a problem?

Of course, I don't want any babies. Maybe I'm just imagining the situation all wrong, because I have trouble picturing myself being in it. I don't know.

Maybe they shouldn't have told me.

When I take over the world, everyone will be a single parent

This one was originally in another blog. A funny thing about that is that on the other blog the title was too long for the whole title to be listed on the previous blogs. So it said that When I take over the world, everyone will be a sin....

So, hopefully, when I take over the world, everyone will get the title right and not be a sin.

Another thing is that I happened to write it on what would have been my dad's 65th birthday.

But never mind. Read on. And I have included the two comments from the original post


(the following was originally posted in another blog on Febuary 9th)

I was going to start a new blog to talk about how I would fix things if I had a magic wand. But I have several blogs already, and I've hardly used this one at all. So I'll just make the when I take over the world stuff a section of this blog.

I wasn't sure which of the take over the world posts to start with. Recently I read someone else's blog, and she was talking about being a single mom. So I guess I'll start with that.

Every once in a while, I hear that someone has a plan to pay people to volunteer for a sterilization procedure. A mathematical formula would determine how much of a potential financial drain your future children would have on society. If you agreed to be sterilized instead of having these children, the government would pay you a percentage of the estimated tax money saved.

Sounds great to me. I don't want any kids anyway. If someone offered me a free and safe permanent method of birth-control, I'd probably take it. If someone offered pay me to do it...wow.

Of course, I like to think that my high I.Q. would prevent me from being paid much money. On the other hand, my low personal income would also be factored in, and the two would probably cancel each other out. But if I'm offered any amount of money before I'm too old to have children, I'm going to take it.

Not that it will ever happen. I like the idea, but everyone else seems to hate it. And I really don't get most of the arguments. Like a bunch of poor people will go and have the procedure, or a bunch of black people will go have the procedure. So what? What if a bunch of poor black people willingly go have a sterilization procedure done and get paid for it. A bunch of other poor black people won't go and have the procedure. That would forever put an end to the discussions about welfare moms cranking out babies to get more money. If some people were really doing that sort of thing, and you offered them something like this instead, wouldn't they take the easy money up front?

Several years ago I read a book, and I can't remember the name of the book, or even who wrote it. It was a woman, I remember that much, so I want to say it was by Anne McCaffrey or Vonda McIntyre, because that was who I was reading at the time. Anyway, in this book all the people were legally allowed custody of one child. Period. But they had sole custody. There were no custody fights and arguments about visitation or how someone thought their child's other parent wasn't raising the child right. You have custody of one child, and everyone else back off, including the child's other biological parent.

Wouldn't that just solve all kinds of problems? Custody of children is decided before they are even conceived. If a couple gets a divorce, there is no custody battle. If the custodial parent wants to pick up and move to Alaska, that's okay. There is no arguing about how much child support the non-custodial parent will have to pay, because there is no such thing as child support. If you can't afford to take care of a child yourself, don't have one. You and you alone are responsible for that one child.

Which is not to say that you couldn't have custody of one child and live with someone who has custody of another child. You could raise them together, share living expenses and all of that. For that matter, you could live with ten other people who have custody of ten other children, and raise them all together and share living expenses and all of that. But it would be very clear who had custody of a particular child, and who had the final word on all things concerning that child.

There were a lot of things in the book that would probably never work in America. In the book the custodial parent paid the other biological parent for creating the child. In general, women were paid more than men per child. On the other hand, in an individual's lifetime, a man could father many more children than a woman would be able to have. In the book, the main character's custodial parent was paid to be the biological father of over three hundred children, but he still owed money to the biological mother of the child he had custody of. Paying someone to have sex with you, even for the purpose of creating a child, is still prostitution. And it might seem too much like babies for sell. We don't buy and sell people anymore.

There are other things that did not happen in this book that I would also think about. If you have bad genes, besides paying someone of the opposite sex to help you create a child, couldn't you also hire someone of the same sex for the same purpose, so that the resulting child would not have your bad genes. And since I don't want any children anyway, could I sell my legal right to have custody of one child to someone who would like to raise more than one child?

A lot of things will be different after I take over the world.


2 comments:

a friend said...

Concerning high IQ vs low income: I don't think Einstein was ever rolling in the dough, and who really wants to see the Donald Trump or Paris Hilton genes propagated! In other words, the high IQ probably matters, but the level of personal income really might not matter much.

Concerning the author: Did you read Ursula Le Guin? She liked to deal with similar issues, as I recall. The only McCaffrey's I read were "light" and never got into such serious issues. I only read one McIntyre ("Star Trek II")

What was done in the book if a parent happened to be a very bad parent who should not have custody at all? Or did they ever go into such things?

"There were a lot of things in the book that would probably never work in America."

You'd have the opposition from Catholics and others who want larger and larger families.

"Paying someone to have sex with you, even for the purpose of creating a child, is still prostitution."

Actually, this is legal in many countries, and in a small part of the US. If you make insemination artificial, this gets rid of any of this concern if it is necessary to get rid of such a concern. Then it takes us one step toward "Logan's Run" by disconnecting sex with procreation.

Concerning bad genes: Yes, some people have very bad genes. The problem right now is that there are a lot of bad genes out there and there is probably no ability to identify them and screen everyone readily. This is changing, however. The advances in genetics, even in the past 6 or so years, are rather significant.

"And since I don't want any children anyway, could I sell my legal right to have custody of one child to someone who would like to raise more than one child?"

That would make sense as part of this. However, the same complainers would call this "exploitation".

"A lot of things will be different after I take over the world."

With or without the help of lab rats...



Laughingattheslut said...

The proper question is with or without lab mice, not lab rats.

And I guess it will have to be without, cause I'm sure he'd soon find a way to get rid of me.

No, the level of personal income matters, because the point was to lower the number of children of parents who can't financially take care of them. It's a math problem--spend X amount of money now to convince someone not to have children, or spend several times X amount on the children through welfare, food stamps, unpaid medical bills, etc....

McIntyre wants to cure everything with virus therapy. And I hear that her day job is scientist, so she might actually do it. Once she's cured everything, she'll move on to making people who can fly and people who can live underwater.

The book did not get into such things. The woman in the book had a very loving father, who was a bit upset that he still hadn't been able to meet his financial obligations to the biological mother.

I don't doubt it would be done artificially a lot of the time, but this was not the implication in the book. The man was well liked and had been paid to father over 300 children. It probably wasn't entirely for his high IQ. I did wonder about the phrasing of the contract. If a pregnancy doesn't happen right away, how long do the people have to keep having sex before one of them is allowed to disolve the contract, and is there a fine one of them pays to get out of the contract, etc....

There's always someone complaining about exploitation in this sort of thing, so I don't think it would happen anytime soon. I still think it's a cool idea.