This Happened

[Phoebe]

Jealous!

[Zen]

Something Rotten! was fantastic! One of the best shows I've seen. Not quite Hamilton, but it was extremely funny and the music was good. To summarize the show, it is basically a parody of almost every Broadway and West End musical from prior to 2015 in the guise of a Shakespearean style comedy of errors full of misunderstandings, anachronisms, intrigue, double entendre, and poetry (occasionally good, usually bad).

[Phoebe]

Sounds great! Maybe someday... My kids are really into musicals (Hamilton being the #1, but now others too), and my oldest seems to be in the "kids who do the school musical" group of friends, so this is right up their alley.

[Zen]

You know, I am really happy that the State of Illinois finally has a budget after two and a half years of the Governor and the State Legislature basically standing around comparing the sizes of their dicks. It's nice to not have to worry about things like whether the teachers at the boarding school my daughter attends, which is run by the state, will be paid, or the cafeteria staff, or the nurses and residence life staff. (I'm relatively sure there were months on end last year where the company that provides food services was doing it with the promise that they would eventually be paid when the school had funding again. There was a special funding measure tossed into some other bill that helped pay their bills during December of last year. They literally didn't have money to pay for everything near the end of the first term.)

However, it seems there are some unpleasant things that resulted from ceasing to be the laughingstock of the nation, or at least being the laughingstock of the nation with a budget instead of without one. One of those things is: Construction projects!

Yeah... It was kind of nice when most of the road construction was at a standstill because nobody had any money to do anything... The first couple of years, it wasn't really noticeable, especially on the freeways. The trips up to Aurora to see my daughter at school were FULL of construction zones. But near the end of last school year, even those interstate construction projects started to thin out. It was nice. And the local ones... Sure, there were cones and things on the side of the road showing where they should be working, but the money ran out and they just stopped a while ago.

[RANT]NOT ANYMORE! The roads all over town are torn the hell and back. What's worse, they don't seem to have enough LABOR to actually man the construction sites properly. What do I mean? Well, my normal route to work has a road where there are two spots where they have dug holes in the road for some purpose. I have yet to figure out what that purpose is. I don't recall those spots being more rough than the rest of the road that I have to drive over or anything, but at those spots one lane is currently COMPLETELY CLOSED, as in, blocked off and there is NO ROAD there. Normally, when this is the case, there is a person, or sometimes two, at the site who is usually called by the moniker of "Flagger", who holds a sign that has "STOP" on one side and "SLOW" on the other to tell drivers when it is safe to go through the one-lane available to ALL traffic. Both of these sites, which are within 500 feet of each other, have nobody serving this function.

I mean, I guess we're all grown ups... mostly... Well, the High School is right around the corner from this construction site so there might be kids going to summer school driving through... and, gee, if the are having to go to summer school, they might not be the brightest crayon in the box... (not a charitable statement, I know...) But you see, this is a road I drive on DAILY... remember a while back when I ranted about people who don't understand the rules of 4-way stops? Both of the 4-way stops that I was talking about, where I was waved through by people who had the right-of-way but decided they would "be the nice guy/girl" and wave me through, were on this road. This is not a road that has good drivers on it on a regular basis.

WTF construction company? Do you want people to have head-on collisions right next to your workers? Don't you think that might put them in danger? Sheesh![/RANT]

[Tahlvin]

I'm sending my wife and daughter to NYC at the end of November to watch a Broadway play. As a Christmas/graduation gift for my daughter, we got tickets to Dear Evan Hansen, which she really wants to see with Ben Platt playing the lead. I had to use up all of my hotel points and frequent flier miles, but the only thing they'll end up paying for is the tickets to the show (which have already been purchased), food, and taxis. And they get to stay at the Marriott Marquis, which is just around the corner from the theater where the play is showing, and right near Times Square, so they should have plenty to do.

[Zen]

[Tahlvin]

[Phoebe]

Argh! Two articles currently poisoning Facebook about women not wearing makeup, both of which feature photos of well groomed women wearing obvious makeup!!! Men, I don't want to insult you in public (none of you men here!!). But cut this shit out already.

[Phoebe]

Ok now that the lunchers have lunched, let me explain. When men express a preference about women not wearing makeup, thinking that they are somehow supporting women in resisting the patriarchy and living their free life, what they're really doing is just reinforcing the patriarchy by expressing their preferences about how women should look to appeal to them. Meanwhile, I'll tell you what at least some women are doing because it's something I've done all my life like a well-trained woman in patriarchy: they're taking note of every slight facet and detail of what you're saying about your preferences for how women should appear to them and storing it up as knowledge of how they should operate. If I want this man to desire me I will need to find some way to appear natural and authentic, the woman now thinks to herself, knowing full well that she can spend a half an hour just as easily with the makeup drawer achieving that look and that you'll be none the wiser. Obviously I hope most women don't actually do this; I'm merely pointing out what we are all trained from a very subconscious level from very early in life to be doing all the time.

And then sometimes you actually get hold of an actual makeup drawer to play with! This happens with increasing frequency as you age. And many times in this situation, you're hanging around there with your friends or cousin and just having FUN that matters to nobody except you. Having been indoctrinated into a patriarchy where makeup is very important for appealing to men in a certain way, you play with the makeup and realize that it also can be a source of harmless amusement. Your interaction with the Fashion World, for instance, often involves playing around with makeup things that are completely unappealing to men but that are fun for you. Therefore when the man tells you how important it is for women to shed the shackles of patriarchy and be natural (beneath a veneer of makeup the man can't even detect), the message you hear on the other end is, please stop having fun that's just about you with makeup, and instead do your makeup again in a way that I like.

And at this juncture some group of men will be like, no, I really want no makeup at all - I don't want you wasting your time on that stuff and I honestly know the difference between none and some and I prefer none. And there it is about your preference again instead of my fun.

[Tahlvin]

Not to distract from the makeup discussion, but may I just say that I think automobile engineers could do a much better job making cars that can be maintained reasonable without having to be a contortionist! I had to change a headlight bulb in my daughter's Prius, and the way I had to bend my hand to reach the bulb and get try to twist it into place was almost impossible for an adult male to achieve.

The best vehicle I ever had for DIY-maintenance was a Jeep Wrangler. I loved that vehicle. There was so much room in the engine compartment, it was easy to get anywhere you needed to change oil and filters, pull the spark plugs, pretty much anything you'd need to do. Someday, when I don't have to haul kids around any more, I'll get another Jeep Wrangler just to play around with.

[Phoebe]

[Phoebe]

Another one. WTH? A few of these women are wearing ZERO makeup (cf Drew Barrymore), but most are wearing as much as I wear on a typical day in the office:

[Phoebe]

There are people here having a sleepover and apparently that doesn't involve sleep. Why am I the only parent who doesn't get sleepovers? I didn't want my teenager to go on one recently and I was like, well, this is kind of irrational. Yet it seemed like a better idea for a 9 year old's birthday party than it seems for teenagers, eh? Anyway, I will sleep when they sleep, so this kind of motivates me to motivate them to sleep. How do I do that?

I had a conversation today that went like this:
"I am almost done going potty now and I will discuss your concerns when I am actually done and we can be together, conversing."
This is a very common sort of conversation and I realized, when does that end? Maybe never.
Why do people so very much want to be right in there with you, talking, right when you need to pee? Why? I never really want to talk to or be with someone who is peeing. Really not at all!

The dog has done wrong.
He knows it, but learning doesn't happen even though he knows it, displays tragically guilty behavior, and realizes that bad consequences follow in the form of a grumpy person not being totally solicitous of his desires as per usual. Why doesn't he learn enough to be done, then?

What is a thing I can eat that has, like, no calories, kind of like a fake big thing all puffed with air, no sugar, but that seems like it's food going into the mouth? It doesn't even have to taste great - just a thing that masquerades as food but has no caloric content.

Why won't they go to sleep?

[Phoebe]

Is it wrong to want to run away from home? I give up. I'm not suited to running a household like a dictator. I just want peace and quiet and to reason with reasonable people and be listened to. It creates problems, too, because if you're always annoyed with 2 out of 3 kids due to their repeated behaviors and hostile reactions to correction, and the other one behaves badly but at least listens and pretends to be cooperative, it doesn't take long for the other two to figure out you're less annoyed with the other one. But in the end, all are causing you constant work and stress and helping minimally with things they're in theory supposed to do. Does this happen to everyone at the end of summer or am I just a shitty parent? Husband has to work nonstop, so on the one hand I'm annoyed that it's all on me and I can't do my own work, and on the other hand it's unfair to burden him with extra work when he gets home, since I should be able to handle it. And since the house and cars slowly fall apart as they all do, and that's mostly his problem. My filth-encrusted car interior is living testament to daily life with the nonreasoning noncooperators. I'm going to photograph it and call it "art" under some title like Futility.

[Tahlvin]

Phoebe's current title on the boards, "Little Person Wrassler", is perhaps apropos to her previous post.

[Tahlvin]

Yeah, I get to have sinus surgery again. It seems to be a once-a-decade occurrence for me: I first had it in the mid-1990s, then again in the mid-2000s, and now I get to in the 2010s. The good news is that the surgery will be on a Friday, so it should not adversely impact our Runelords campaign. In fact, the surgery is scheduled for September 22, and our Runelords game should be on September 21, so it will be a nice, pre-surgery session as a send-off. And hopefully, I'll get my sense of smell back, at least temporarily.

[Phoebe]

Haha, you are funny. but then, your nose. Won't you need rest? Don't they usually cut people early in the day?

[Tahlvin]

I won't find out what time the surgery is until a day or two beforehand. Typically, they start in the morning (I believe 8:30 AM is the first surgical timeslot). Barring critical cases, they usually do old people and young kids first, so they don't have to go so long without eating and have more time in the recovery room, then work towards the middle. I probably fall on the older end of the middle, so I don't expect to be the first one in the morning, but I shouldn't be the last one of the day.

[Tahlvin]

[Phoebe]

My little guy doesn't much like school so far, to put it mildly, and it's eating me up. Poor thing, it has been SO hard on him. Very rough days. I am hoping that it gets better as he gets to know classmates and gets past some of the initial physical challenges - like just dealing with the onslaught of many loud strangers constantly swarming around, touching you, possibly hostile. I am hoping that the first encounter with "hey, I already know all this" turns out to be an occasion for "I am a good boy whose teachers love me" vs. "I am bored and the other kids find my knowledge-level weird". Hopefully there are some others from his peapod who will be friendly and come up with some bizarre story to explain the true, hidden nature of the playground equipment, who will also see the invisible dogs he spends the day interacting with since they're clearly superior to the other humans who disturb him. I don't know. I will be low-level a wreck inside until I know it's getting better. The girls were bored sometimes in school but it was never bad like this for them - they always generally enjoyed going. This poor child Jim is like, nope, I am NOT going in there today mom. I have had to tell him, essentially, the government forces us to do this. I am not informing him that I could quit my job and teach him because, among other obvious reasons, he needs to be around other people as much as possible. Other people can be really difficult, though.