A chuckle for the morning

I was driving home from dropping something off at Nate’s office earlier, and I passed a McDonald’s.  It has one of those electronic marquees with a scrolling/changing message, and it is HORRIBLE.  It can only fit two short lines of text, and it seems like something is always being broken up between screens at an odd place.  (This is a McDonald’s I drive by regularly.)  However, today took the cake.

Screen 1:

Play Monopoly

Win $1

Screen 2:

Million

I had a revelation

I think I’ve figured out just why I like history so much and why I prefer to read about history over modern day affairs.  Although I have very strong political ideals and am very interested in what happens in the political arena, I find that I actually avoid reading too much about it.  I’m not one of those people who soaks up blogs and books and newspapers and radio shows about politics.  Perhaps I should be, but I’m not.

See, the thing is, I’m a very empathetic person – empathetic to a fault, perhaps.  The suffering of other people actually makes my heart hurt.  This empathy is absolutely the foundation of my political beliefs, but it’s also why it’s often difficult for me to read about modern day issues.  Reading about people dying in Darfur or children starving in our own streets makes me want to cry.  It actually hurts, physically; when I say that it makes my heart hurt, I mean that literally.  I feel a squeezing in my heart and an ache in my guts when I read these things.  And other news just makes me angry, so much so that I clench my fists and grit my teeth.  Reading about avaricious pharmaceutical companies or lying CEOs just makes me want to scream.

On the other hand, history is calming and even uplifting for me because history is already fixed.  Problems of the past have been made better.  (I’m of the camp who firmly believes that human belief systems have evolved mostly for the better over time.)  We repudiated slavery.  Women can now vote, own property, choose to divorce, etc.  Children aren’t forced to labor in unsafe working conditions.  (Although I recognize that even today, these things still occur in other parts of the world.)  I think it makes me feel good and, more importantly, optimistic to see how humanity has progressed.  It gives me hope that all of the other social ills I see can one day be fixed as well.  I doubt we can ever reach “perfection,” because I also believe that while humans are inherently good, we are also inherently flawed.  But reading about history provides a bit of a balm for the sadness and anger that I feel about too many things that happen today.

Happy 1st Birthday, Gus the Bus!

As much as I still can’t wrap my mind around it, my baby boy turned 1 today.  And I was so proud of myself.  I did really well all day.  No tears, good spirits…yay!  We had a simple, fun day.  No big party, just dinner and cake as a family. 

After devouring cake – his first sugar ever! – and making a thorough mess in the process, he got a bath, and we put our big boy to bed.  Nate and I watched some TV, and then he headed to bed, too.  I decided to stay up just a bit longer because I was trying to remove all the tags from the MASSIVE amount of clothes his Grandma gave him. 

When I was done, I hopped online for a few minutes.  I had posted birthday threads on a couple of my favorite message boards, including a brief retrospective of pictures: hours old, 3 months, 6 months, 9 months, and 2 from today.  I checked the threads to read the new replies, and again I had to go back to my original post and look at the pictures.

And suddenly, it just washed over me.  My chin started to tremble, and my eyes welled up.  And I just knew that I needed to have a good cry.  So rather than try to gather myself back together, I succumbed to the inevitable.  I went to my online photo album and perused all the pictures from Gus’s first month and cried my eyes out. 

It was funny seeing how much he has changed, and yet how essentially Gus-like he was from the very outset.  Even as a days- or weeks-old newborn, he had certain expressions and habits that he still has now.  So often, people think that all newborns look alike, and most of the time I wouldn’t really disagree.  They just don’t really seem to have individual personalities at that age.  And yet here was photographic evidence that Gus was Gus long before we all thought he was Gus.

So there are my birthday ponderings.  It’s hard for me to wrap my mind around the fact that this is likely my last 1st birthday.  Even though lately I feel more and more comfortable with the idea of being done with two, much moreso than I ever expected to, that also means coming to terms with the idea that all of Gus’s firsts are now the last firsts I’ll ever experience.  I want to hang on to these baby days as long as possible, but I’m inexorably swept along by time.  Everyday, he changes a bit more, becomes his own person a bit more.  And although it’s delightful to see, I won’t pretend it’s not bittersweet.

In closing, I’ll post the photo retrospective I mentioned earlier, as well as a few wonderful pictures from present time and cake time.

Day 1

3 months

6 months (and hatching a plot to rule the world…)

9 months

1 year!!!

With all his gifts:

Loving his brand new playsilks:

Kisses from Mama:

My horribly embarrassing attempt at cake decorating (I swear, it looked even worse in person), including Gus’s own little personal cupcake:

Clearly enjoying his first taste of sugar!

The aftermath:

So, what’s new?

I’m sure I could write a novel here, but I’ll try to keep it brief.

Dereliction of duty, shmereliction of duty

So it’s been pointed out to me that it’s been almost 6 months since I blogged here.

Oops.

What can I say?  I’ll try to be better.  Can I just say, “Lots of things happened,” and call it all good?  No?  You want more than that?  Sheesh.  Demanding much?

Alright, alright.  I’ll try to come back after the kiddos are in bed and update my blog.  Nate is gone all this week helping his family out in CA, and since I have no plans to throw a wild house party (wait a minute, maybe I should….), I should have plenty of downtime. 

Until later.  (I know the excitement will just consume you in the meantime.)