Wednesday, May 19, 2004

Squuuuuueeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!

So - I have a confession to make. I can be a bit of a crotchety old lady sometimes - esp. when it comes to changing something that I LIKE and didn't really plan on changing...like my cell phone. Yesterday, Ol' Crotchety (OC) was out in fulllllll effect.

C. has - suckass credit. I knew it before I married him (and it's actually milllioonnnsss of times better than it was when we first met), and I knew it would cause issues - but the lack of a PHONE was really blowing my mind. We don't have a landline as I was getting tired of being bent over by Ameritech. So - I had my lovely little Nokia, and he had a prepaid. *sighsighsigh* With all the work he has to do for the restaurant, and just his general business stuff - that phone was getting outlandishly expensive. So - we looked into a couple of plans, and figured that we could go with the Family Talk plan. I reallly do like cingular - they are head and shoulders above punkass AT&T, and Sprint *shakes head* I was in DC and couldn't hold a singal. DC! The nations CAPITAL! *shakes head* But - anyhow.... we go, and I find out (much to my horror) that I have to get a NEW cell phone. I like my celly. I have areally cute blue boxy cover on it, and it's just the right size, and - stuff. Add to that the fact that I'm cheap, Cheap, CHEAP - and well, you have the perfect environment for OC to come out of hiding.

I wandered around the store, moaning and groaning about the fact that I had to get a new phone and how all the phones were ugly and how I didn't wanna pay that much for a damn phone anyway and.... well, you get the idea. C was trying to top me by commenting on the fact that he had to get a new phone NUMBER - but well, OC is hard of hearing too. So - finally I settle on a siemens s56 phone - largely because it's a cute little bugger (LITTLE - I could tuck it in my bra and you'd have to be REALLLL close to notice - and while they are roomy - DAMN!) and secondly because it was only 40 bucks (after 50 buck mail in rebate). So - I'm whining the whhhooollleeee time - till I get home and started playing with it.

Ah! Ahhhhh! AHHHHHHHHHHHH!! This phone SOOOOO rocks. I mean - it rocks in ways I didn't even KNOW a phone could rock. I've got internet access, a shit load of memory, a COLOR screen, a voice recorder, and I can play all kinds of tunes for ringtones, and downloadable games and ahhhhhhhhhhhh............... it's SO fraking coool. It's kewl, even. I haven't been this distracted by a techy toy since I got my palm pilot. *sigh* It's a lovely little piece of machinery, it is. My only complaint is that the selection buttons are pointy, so while I'm reteaching myself to text (or SMS as they call it since it's an American version of a European phone - the s55) my thumb is gonna be sore. But seriously.... it rocks.

*shakes head* I don't believe I just wrote an entire entry about a phone. If it wasn't for my general supersition about wishing for excitement, I would wish for just a little excitement in my life. But - everytime I even think about it, I remember that old Chinese curse:




May you live in interesting times.




Really... no thanks.


Thursday, May 13, 2004

'Us' Survey

1. How long have you been married? 1.5 months.


2. Where did you meet your husband? At a busstop downtown.


3. How old were you &  he when you met? I was 24, he was 26.


4. How long did you know him before you started dating him? about a month.


5. Where was your first date? We went to California Cafe for dinner (where I was first exposed to his chefly crtiqing skills), then walked along the canal for a couple of hours.


6. What was your first impression of him? Intelligent, funny, cute (though he was, and still is, high yalla!).


7. Did you kiss on your first date? Yes.


8. How long did you date before you got engaged? A little over a year.


9. Was his proposal unique? :) It was - us. He came home from work and called me in to 'talk', and making a big production out of it, proposed.


10. Did you help choose your own engagement ring? Help? *grins* Yeahhhh.... you can say I 'helped'.


11. Do you still have your original ring or have you "upgraded"? I still have the original stone, but changed the setting so that I could wear it with my wedding ring.


12. How long was your engagement? 3 years.


13. What color scheme was your wedding? Gold and Copper.


14. What is your fondest memory or favorite thing about your wedding? Fondest? :) When the minister TOTALLY screwed up saying work...repeatedly..


15. What one thing about your wedding still makes you cringe when you think about it? The fact that the flowers were LATE, and when they got there, they were wilted. *sigh*


16. What song did you dance to for the bridal dance? Since we didn't have an 'official' dance, I've no clue.


17. When you fed each other cake at the reception, did you do the smashing-cake-in-each-other's-face-thing? Nope! Cake went DIRECTLY into the mouth.


18. Did you have a honeymoon? No.....


19. Describe the first place you lived in together. Officially? My second apartment in Indy - before we got married. Afterwards - my *thinks* 3rd apartment in Indy - where we had been living in before the wedding too.


20. Before you married, did you discuss when you would start a family? Yes.


21. How many children do you want/have? He wants 2, I want 5...we'll have to figure out a compromise.


22. Use three words to describe your inlaws. Weird as hell.


23. Use three words to describe your husband: Wonderfully aggravatingly MINE.


24. In what ways are you not alike? He's more go with the flow, I have to plan. I'm anal about money, he's - not.


25. What things do you have in common? mostly everything.


26. What is the hardest lesson that being married has taught you? Sometimes you have to do things that you don't want to do because it's best for the both of you.


27. If you had a chance to do it all again, what would you do differently? Nothing actually....maybe stay at a different hotel?

Friday, May 7, 2004

Trauma

A couple of weeks ago, somehow I got on the subject of circumcision with C. I think I just asked him whether or not he would want to circumsize his sons....and of course his answer was yes. I cringed - I couldn't help it - and started a discussion of why. I got the usual answers - 'so he'll look like me' - 'it's cleaner' - 'it's healthier'. And ya know - I can get with all that....but I can't get with putting my hypothetical son through more pain than he has ever experienced in his young life for a cosmetic choice. We parted - agreeing to disagree at this point in time.


I was reading an entry of Timmy's where he was talking about the regrowth of his 'fauxskin' and that put the bug up my bum to go and check out some circ sites. *deep breath*


I actively looked for 'balanced' sites - so that when I presented it to C. it wouldn't be some mad radical rantings. And - I thought that circumcision.org was a rather balanced site - it presented the times when circumcision is medically needed (which you can't determine until the kid is four or so) and the history of circumcision (didja know it became popular in the States as a way to stop boys from mastrabating?) and - pictures of an infant circumcision. I'm still slightly nauseated - and normally I'm totally cool with bloodish pictures. But - that? to a week old child? so he'll LOOK right? And potentially WITHOUT anesthesia since it came make the already tiny member swell to the point that the circ will be 'incomplete'?


So - I thought - okay - let's try to find some 'reliable' sites. The American Association of Pediatrics states that circumcision is NOT medically necessary, nor is there any proof that an uncircumsized man has a higher rate of catching STD's (circ'd or not - use a damn condom!), UTI's or penile cancer. And - the care of an infant uncir'ed is actually EASIER - because you don't have a open wound to deal with - nor do you have any risk on the kid getting infected from unire or feces in the open wound. The AAP was even kind enough to provide information on the care of an uncirc'd baby - you just wash it. You don't have to pull it back (in fact that is a BAD idea as it's still partially joined to the glans and you can cause tearing and bleeding by doing that) and you don't have to take any special care. Once the child is older - all he has to do is pull back the foreskin, wash under it with soap and water, and rinse. I don't have a dick - but damn that sounds easy. And the smega? Girls produce the SAME thing - and in slightly larger amounts - yet in the States we prosecute people who try to cut their daughters labia's off so they won't mastrabate and so they stay cleaner - instead, we teach our daughters how to wash their bits.


So far - I hadn't seen a single thing that said, or even suggested - you will do harm to your son if you don't get this done. In fact - so far everything I had seen and read suggested that you inflict more pain and do more harm by getting it done. But - people still do it - why? So - I went looking for some pro-circ sites. *sigh* Three were obviously jewish, and one *shudder* one was just a weeeeee bit fetishtic. Outside of religion (and arguements about cleanliness which the AAP squashed - and sometimes, yeah - I will listen to the good doc's) I didn't find a single pressing reason to put a infant through a 'minor surgical procedure' in the first week of his life so that his ding-dong would look right. Hell - they even wait longer than that for children who were born with FACIAL defects.


So - I'm not sure when, but at some point I'm going to sit down with C and go through these websites - I'll save the pictures for last. I'm not sure what I would do if one we had a son he would still want him circumsized - I'm not sure how far I would go to protect my child. I know that I would make sure that he watched the procedure to see exactly what he is putting his son through for cosmetics, and I think I would cry. Yeah, I would definitely cry. Before I saw the pictures I cringed at the thought of doing it - afterwards - I think I'd be sobbing knowing that the child I cherished, nourished, and protected inside of me for nine (ten really) months was going through that kind of pain for NO GOOD REASON. I'd be traumatized.