A random thing that made me smile – celebrities upside down!

Smile! It’s a fantastically cute video of a laughing baby.

Smile! Check out this awesome stop-motion video with Post-It notes!

For many people, today is Christmas. For me, it’s Friday. Well, it’s Christmas for me, too, but only in the way that it’s still Super Bowl Sunday even when I have no idea who’s playing, what time the game is on, or even that it’s happening at all until I get to the store and find out the pretzels are all sold out.

Joshua and I have been trying to get pregnant for about three years, to one extent or another. We gave the non-medical route a year to work on its own. Then for a year or so we tried the half-assed medical route, which involved a doctor who would give me Clomid but not do much else. After two miscarriages, we spent several months on pause. Now, I’ve been added to Joshua’s insurance, and we’re ready to go the medical path to pregnancy, at least for a little while.

A friend of mine’s mother recently died, and he is cleaning out her home. Many of her things are going to her friends and family, and many items are being donated to a women’s shelter. My friend also invited me to come over and look through her things. He knows that I love “eviction sales”, rummage sales, and dumpster diving, so despite the sadness associated with him losing his mother, this was a really fun activity for me.

One of the items I picked out immediately was a decorative jewelry box. I’ve always wanted one of those fancy jewelry boxes that unfold. However, it’s a silly luxury, and not something I’m actually very likely to spend much money on. That makes it the perfect item to pick up in a thrift store or to find amongst the available stuff at his mother’s house.

Just a happy little video for you, showcasing the collaboration between a band and their fans. Enjoy!

I was waiting for a ride outside of a bookstore. It must have been sometime in May or June because the store windows were filled with books for Mom or Dad. Specifically, one window was full of books for Mom, and one window was full of books for Dad.
Oh, this should be good.
Here are the [...]

I don’t remember the book Where The Wild Things Are from my childhood, but I worked for 11 years as a nanny and came to know it quite well. At first, it made no sense to me. I would read it aloud to children but wouldn’t get any meaning from it. Then I heard a line of the book spoken by Leo Starwind in the middle of a song of his. Starwind spoke the line in a very particular, distinct, dramatic voice. I went home and read the story aloud in this voice, and instantly my love, understanding, and connection to the tale clicked into place.

That may be a strange story of coming to love a children’s book, but it is a strange book indeed, and the movie blows it up into the reality-sized strangeness of the emotional landscape that is real life. The movie Where The Wild Things Are takes the barest hints into the mind of Max offered up in the book and fiercely and fearlessly expands on those clues into a dark and dirty, uncomfortably formidable movie.

There are lots of things that squick me out about religion. I was raised Southern Baptist, but that died around the time I became sexually active. I became Pagan in college, but that began to die the first time I tried to speak to deities out loud in a ritual (”Who the fuck am I talking to?!”) and finally ended when I went to a burn for the first time and realized that everything I wanted from religion was available without religion.

Some things that squick me out: rules and regulations about everything from what are the right clothes to wear for celebrations to how to conduct romantic relationships. Here’s a new one by way of the Friendly Atheist: God is an abusive partner!