I am regularly full of brilliant ideas to write about. Stupidly, the majority of them hit me while I am physically attached to a child and therefore unable to do anything with my hands besides play my turn on Scramble. (This is also why I haven’t won against my sister Erica in the last nine rounds.)
Then I got an infection in my right thumbnail. Here’s a fun challenge: try typing for an entire day and only hitting the spacebar with the the thumb you never use. Actually, just do it for fifteen minutes. You’ll get the gist.
Between Epsom salt soaks, garlic water soaks, doc appointments, a round of antibiotics pumping through me and a baby (which, if you know anything about antibiotics and digestion you will understand when I say that these had the opposite of the usual affect on Isaiah), and now, ointment, understandably, I’ve been absent.
Upon the advice of John, the first thing I did was look at the copyright details on Hubpages (the site where the article is originally published). According to their regulations, I own everything I’ve written and have no legal backup through them to go after anyone. Once we sat down and discussed exactly who this person probably is, and what she is doing, John further advised me to simply write her an email equivalent of a cease and desist letter.
To me, this option didn’t pack enough punch.
In addition to this blog hobby, once in a while I write slightly more educational pieces and post them on another website (see my “Parenting Project” page).
Well, about a month ago, I Googled something, clicked a random blog looking for information, started reading, and thought, “This sounds weirdly familiar.” I continued to read and upon the word “brainless” realized that I had in fact written this. Exactly this. All of this. Here were my words, reproduced, unquoted and without my permission, and published on some stay-at-home-mommy-BLOGGER-blog, the kind created for the sole purpose of generating Adsense revenue from accidental clicks and impressions.
I have been sort of silently and sort of not silently complaining about something all year (school year, not just the last thirty-two days). I have been complaining about our new afternoon schedule and how it requires getting in the car right in the middle of someone’s nap time, no matter what.
I have been complaining about the lack of uniformity between the elementary school pick up times, and the pre-school pick up times, and the thought that next year I’ll be making the drive to drop off or pick up kids at school not twice a day, but three times, and some days with only a two hour gap in between. (What with the time it takes from our house to the car line, and then to get through the carline, it almost isn’t worth it to go home. But what exactly does one do for an hour and forty-five minutes on the corner of Peace Haven and Country Club, with a four year old and a one-year old who should be napping?)
It seems I’ve been on a streak of heart-warming, tear-jerking, and somewhat soft and fuzzy posts lately.
Well guess what, people? The happy baby hormones have officially run out.
I often wonder how many of my friends living in close proximity to extended family take for granted the availability of someone to come watch their children for a night, a weekend, a sick day.
Some things I am not taking for granted right now:
- Friends with no children who love our children as much (possibly more) than we do.
- The courage of those friends to take on the twenty-four hour childcare challenge, times three, and then succeed.
- An infant who, in just five weeks of life, has given me confidence that he can be away from mama for twenty-four hours, and then prove me right by being as good as I could have expected.
- Children who can be bribed into good behavior and then totally satisfied with gas station candy as a reward. Continue reading “Blessed”
The UnderToad 