Not a kerfuffle, but should my rage overwhelm me, I hope my lawyer flags MiracleMan on voir dire. But could I ever get a jury of my peers? Who are my peers? Odds are a disabled person would not be in the pool, as I've been a registered voter for ten years and never called. The retarded person question that started that discussion lo all those hours ago is complicated by the high incidence of cognitively impaired people being willing, even eager, to give false confessions when "FrankenTim" get started on that whole "Now, Jimmy, she's your neighbor. We know you wanna help us out," thing. Because they do. And they wanna be like everybody else so they pretend to understand. The disability community is very concerned about this.

Allyson, welcome to Bitches! Have a tiara.

Good morning everyone. I got to sleep in this morning AIWFG.

ETA: Also

Owen's winter coat came in today! Yay! Just in time for more snow this coming week.

Am I the only one who was picturing Owen suddenly growing a nice think undercoat of fur?

Yeah, thought so.

I am going to kill my son. I swear it. I am going to kill him.

He is a 12-year-old boy working on his science fair project with his best friend. ALSO a 12-year-old boy. Science fair project due Monday.

I think you can see where this is going.

He is arguing me over every. single. step he has to do, because he'd rather be playing with his friend.

DUH. He doesn't get to redefine the project -- we get to hand it in late if we go on vacation, it doesn't really say we have to include a summary, I don't have to start it if I'm still eating Jell-o -- and yet I have to fight every single battle.

URGE TO MAIM.

Remind me: this is just a 12-year-old boy. NOT A DEMON FROM HELL.

I can't tell you how many times I've pumped gas, gotten back into my car, looked in my side view mirror and I don't remember putting my gas cap back on. And yet, when I double check the mirror, the gas cap is magically on. It's like I totally skip those steps in my head. Freaky.

That's the wonder of procedural memory.

There could be some overlap, Betsy. But I still wouldn't break out the stakes yet.

this is just a 12-year-old boy. NOT A DEMON FROM HELL.

I'm not sure this isn't the same thing. I am trying to decide if it is worth my time to let the kids ( mostly 9 to 13 year old boys) that come into the library everyday to play games, that the hammer is coming down. It won't be just one day out, but longer , because they are takeing away from people that need/want out help. I have no idea if they will hear me.

ETA: I actually like most of these kids.

Betsy, he's twelve. He's old enough for you to say, "Dude, you want so much as a lick of help from me, here is what you will do.... You wanna go it alone, you are quite capable so have at it. You get lower than a C on the project or you don't have it done on time, and you are grounded for ____." At least, that's how I would handle it. The science project I did in sixth grade? It never occurred to me to ask for help from my parents. I may have asked for permission to raid the cupboards for the glass jar I needed to make my homemade barometer, however. I have AD/HD - so some parental guidance with big projects would have been marvellous. Except that it never occurred to them that there was anything wrong with me, as I was just like them. I do wonder what would have happened if I had asked for help.

On a different note, for the cat-owned among us may be interested in this link to request a free sample of Feline Greenies, a crunchy treat designed to clean teeth and freshen breath. I got some for my cats, who promptly went bonkers over them. [link]

One of the things that I learned in psychology is that our mind has a template for many different things, and so even from the beginning our memories are often colored by the way we think such things are "suppose" to be.

One of the interesting side effects of this is that thing that happens where you go to a new city and you keep thinking you see people you know, a second before realizing that of course it's not them. Because the brain is trying to do pattern matching - rather than comparing thousands of data points making up a face, it grabs some lesser number and makes a leap to what it already has stored.

Thanks for the link Windy, I got a sample for my cat and for Mom's cat.

The library had their annual booksale today. I didn't get there as early as I liked but that's okay they were still putting out books. They have way more books than they have space, dirt cheap , but there was some confusion over the paperbacks, once I realized that the Norton Anthologies were $1 I went back to get more but there weren't many left, I ended up with 3.

I ended up buying a lot of YA books (they were a quarter)...including several Sweet Valley high books -- including Dear Sister where Elizabeth goes into a coma after being in an accident and wakes up acting "Bad" and goes over to a boy's house and it looks like she might be really sinful and have sex but she slips and falls and gets her memory back. And Kidnapped! where, Elizabeth gets kidnapped by an escaped insane prisoner, this is only about 6 books after Dear Sister. Plus I got some other YA Romances. And some cookbooks from the 60s.

He's old enough for you to say,

Well, sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't. I know there were times, twelve and after, where if my mother hadn't been riding me, I probably wouldn't have gotten it done. I did eventually get the hang of it, but different kids, different, uh, strokes?