We interrupt this blog for a brief public service announcement. A road-looking squiggle on a map, a stoplight, and a left turn lane do not indicate a road on which you may turn left. Neither does Google's word for it. Thank you. You may now return to your regularly scheduled bitchfest post.
Some bloggers have silly "boyfriends" such as Target or Meijer. I of course have never been this silly... at least not out loud. But I have had a long-standing love affair with Google. It's not just the search engine. It's the APIs. If it's owned by Google, it's made of gold. Until now. Google, you have broken my heart. Take back your pin ring map. I don't want it.
So I have playgroup this morning, a few towns south. I use the term "towns" loosely - around here, you drive two miles and you're in a different town. I'd never been to this particular mom's house before, so I pulled up her address using my trusty lover's navigational tool. Otherwise known as Google Maps.
To the left you can see the route on which Google sent me to my doom. Please note the ENTIRE LACK OF CIVILIZATION on the better part of this route. Do you see all of the green and brown in the middle and lower left quadrant? Two words: Farm. Country. Now, there's nothing wrong with Farm Country in and of itself. However, when you live in a populous suburb, it can be rather disturbing to suddenly find yourself there.
So I'm driving along and I get to the place where I'm supposed to "Turn left from Stewart onto Plainfield Road." Please attempt to follow my thought process.
Ok, cool. There's a stop light up ahead. Oh, and here's the left turn lane. Right on. Let me just turn on my blinker, here... I guess I better stop for the red light. Plastic bags over the left turn arrow, what's that about? Oh well, the sign says yield on green before turning left, I'll just do that. Oh look, the light's green. There goes the traffic I'm yielding to. All clear? *I turn my head left* HOLY FUCK WHERE'S THE ROAD???
Here's a closeup of the Road which Does Not Exist.
You would think, looking at the picture, that Plainfield crosses Stewart here. YOU WOULD BE WRONG!! Do you see it? No? Allow me to illustrate.
Direct your attention to the Big Red Circle (of doom). Well, that jog in the road has been straightened out, and so far as I can tell, Stewart goes straight here. Plainfield meets it from the right. I expect that in the near future, Plainfield WILL cross Stewart at this particular intersection. For now, however, there is a stop light, a left turn lane, and DIRT AND TRACTORS IN A FIELD (ostensibly preparing the way for a new road) to the east of Stewart at Plainfield.
Lucky for me, I'm gullible stubborn perseverant. I kept going and eventually the next road on my directions showed up. Christ.
Once I arrived, I knew there had to be a better way. To the right you'll see the route my gracious hostess suggested I take home (B->A). Please, assist me in giving Google the finger for making me do this:
instead of this: 
Trip 1? 
Trip 2? 
And let's not even discuss the 3 turnarounds I ended up doing on trip 1 due to road signs hiding behind trees. Fuck you, Google. Fuck you.
All year long I struggle with a positive MASS of toys Q doesn't play with, and at least every couple of months, I try to get a handle on organizing them. So it shouldn't be a surprise when, come holidays and birthdays, I say, "Quentin doesn't need any more toys!" I guess it's no fun to be told how to spend (or not spend) your money, though, because kids toys are just So Damn Fun. Sometimes I wonder whether grandparents (and aunts, uncles, and friends. And let's face it, US) buy gifts to satisfy the kids or themselves!
But the fact is, gifts are going to be purchased. The best I can do is try to make sure the gifts the kids DO get meet some specific criteria. Here are my perpetual "suggestions" (read RULES) for buying gifts for my kids.
California. I've always had a romanticized picture of it as a land of progressive milk-and-honey. If you wanted to see forward-thinking policies, I thought, look to California. It seemed just about anything liberal could be found there, from "free" college educations to strident grass-roots efforts at a single-payer healthcare system, to an almost rabid environmental protection agency, California seemed about as progressive as you could get. Until 2004 when many groups and legislators fought to invalidate the 4000-odd gay marriages that had taken place that year.
Today, however, true to form, the California Supreme Court ruled that the state's ban on same-sex marriages was unconstitutional, and that the "separate" institution of domestic partnerships is not "equal" to marriage.
From the New York Times article:
In striking down the ban, the court said, "In contrast to earlier times, our state now recognizes that an individual's capacity to establish a loving and long-term committed relationship with another person and responsibly to care for and raise children does not depend upon the individual's sexual orientation, and, more generally, that an individual's sexual orientation -- like a person's race or gender -- does not constitute a legitimate basis upon which to deny or withhold legal rights."
One of my biggest impediments to regular blogging is just not being able to figure out what to say. In an effort to jump-start my creativity, I hopped over to the Creativity Portal. There I found what they've dubbed, "Imagination Prompts" which, by and large, weren't very helpful.
Then came this, "What do you think of your children?" At first I laughed, because as a mommyblogger, my children are ostensibly the crux of my work. I blog about them incessantly, so that prompt is moot. Or is it?
Let me give the quintessential response. I love my children. I adore them. They are my very breath of life, and I would die for them. Now allow me to be a bit more frank.
They drive me positively batty. I can't stand the whining. I'm tired of making meals only to have them picked at. I HATE being reduced to a 3-ingredient existence for my own meals. I SO wish Jude would sleep in more than 30 minute increments. Quentin's incessant chatter, cute as it seems to outsiders, usually makes me crazy. I wipe butts, clean up snot, fight over sleep, pick up messes, and answer to, "mommy, mommy, Mommy, MOMMY!" in both English and baby-cry. I wonder what made me think I was qualified to have one child, much less two. I am often reduced to tears, and most days wish I could run away, at least temporarily.
But the truth is, I melt when Quentin soothes his teary brother. I grin stupidly when I see Jude gazing adoringly at his big brother. Q gives some of the best hugs on earth, and when I break down in front of him, he assures me, "It's ok, mommy. I know it's frustrating."
The truth is, life with children is a roller coaster ride to rival my mental instability. That's really saying something. And not necessarily something bad.
Grocery shopping last night was an interesting experience. No, stay with me here, it really was. Despite Jennifer's Sage Advice, we did a 7 pm dual-duty shopping trip with both kids in tow. And BOY were we a sight.
Quentin's been feeling a little sick, so he decided to piggyback on Daddy in the Ergo instead of whining about wanting to walk like a big boy riding in the cart. Jude, as per usual, rode in the hotsling. Those of you who come from AP circles know that such a setup is like a secret handshake; you see us, complete strangers, across the store and wave like we were old friends. The rest of you would be the ones giving those crazy hippies wearing their kids and using cloth shopping bags the weird looks. But peer pressure be damned; we had four free hands and all of our groceries fit into three bags.
My 3-year-old, however, is not immune to such outside forces. The power of "peer" pressure exerted on children by books is truly amazing. Take, for example, Eric Carle's masterpiece, The Very Hungry Caterpillar. For the past 2.5 years or so, 
we've read it regularly, sometimes every night, sometimes not for weeks, but always going back to it. Quentin likes to put his fingers in the holes on the pages and count each item the Caterpillar munches.
Not to spoil the story for you, but near the end, the Very Hungry Caterpillar eats Too Much Junk and gets a tummy ache. The next day, though, he eats through one big green leaf and feels better. My dear son, who has been a tad sick the last couple of 
days, insisted last night at the grocery store that we buy him "Some green leafy vegetables" to make him feel "all better." At his request, he had a spinach salad with strawberries and blueberries for dinner. The creamy poppy seed dressing expired in 2005, though. I'm turning into my mother-in-law.
I guess peer pressure even gets to moms eventually, after all.
As those of you who visit me on blogger instead of in a reader will notice, I have a new sidebar! I've officially joined the ranks of bloggers attempting to make a dime off of pouring out our souls for the public at large. In theory that means you'll be hearing from me more frequently, since I need to get more than 10 people reading to make it worthwhile. In practice, I'll probably write frantically for a few weeks and then peter off back to normal. It's kind of what I do. So, *ahem* CLICKY CLICKY.
10 Musings
