The kittenized posts are adorable.
The moderator at another site, manboobz (Misogyny. We mock it.), once set a particularly difficult commenter an awesome task: The commenter sometimes trolled and raged but sometimes managed, sort of, to keep himself under control and actually say things with genuine content. The rages were so vile and so frequent, though, that he got put on moderation. He begged to be allowed to post again, so the moderator offered him a deal. He could post anything at all he wanted, unmoderated and undeleted, as long as the post also contained either a picture or a video of an adorable kitten doing adorable things. Different kitten for every post. If he had twenty things to say, he had to find twenty kitten videos. And if he could find them all, he was free to post.
He actually stuck to it, and managed to keep from coming unglued, for an impressive length of time. He did finally snap and get banned forever, but he lasted pretty damn long; I can only guess that the extra effort involved in kitten-vid-hunting made it not worth his while to post too often, plus maybe all the cute kitten vids distracted him from his rage.
msbelle, have you checked out Sue's guys-with-eyeliner tumblr?
I have doubled in followers lately, I don't know why. To 35! So after quite a bit of neglect, I've loaded up the queue again. There are lots of models coming up. So much trolling through pictures of pretty men. Such a hardship.
We appreciate you taking one for the team so selflessly, Sue.
Well, a lot of those models do look like babies. They're all so young!
SPEAKING OF BABIES--what's the age overlap between gnaw-drool-on-everything-it-grabs and sitting up solidly?
Have now made two loaves of zucchini bread and some carrot salad. Quinoa is in the pot, so I can add some to the black bean and corn salad I made yesterday, so it's a meal by itself. The zucchini bread is a Paula Deen recipe that makes two loaves -- usually I cut it in half and just make one. Making both at once is kind of horrifying, ingredient-wise: Three cups of sugar, four eggs... Paula Deen.
ION, several things about my father:
1. We set up this website to ask friends to hang out with him when my mom's at work and he's not at his day program, and their friends are so nice! I mean, even people they aren't that close to are signing up for repeat visits. And I like it when they hang out with my grandmother as well, because she likes company too, when she's feeling up to it. (But holy cow, she is now mentally where my father was a few years ago, having wildly different versions of the same conversation within five minutes of each other...)
2. Yesterday, we walked by a guy playing guitar and singing on the street, and my father made a beeline for him. I was worried something weird was about to happen! But no, the guy greeted my father by name and was happy to see him, asked if he was still working, etc. I really don't know how he knows everyone in the world.
3. He brings home his dessert from lunch for my mother, or at least some of it. He always comes home with a little packet of cake or something in his shirt pocket. Cute and nice!
Babies teeth on and off for a long time, ita, so you'll have drooling and gnawing more than once. Sitting up solidly is generally by six months, if I remember right, sometimes earlier (although they usually can't correct themselves at first -- you have to sit them down, and eventually they tilt).
That sounds pretty good, Jesse. I'm glad your family's friends are stepping up.
