It’s a great day in America, ladies and gentlemen. (Is Craig Ferguson still on? Does he still do that?) The good guys won the election, and today you could definitively tell that Avery does try to carry a conversation. She’ll even yarp at you if you aren’t paying enough attention to her. This at 7.5 weeks old. The next couple decades should be a real hoot. I jest. She’s utterly charming. We managed to hang out a lot today, just hanging. Chatting. It was awesome. Also, she loves being an airplane. I can tell because the airplane drools.
What if she’s talking before she can even reliably find her hands? That would be weird, right? Unusual? She’s very smart. No pressure on us, right? To keep her entertained? Stimulated? Challenged? Yikes.
I’ll wait a bit before calling Mensa.
It snowed yesterday! A nor’easter, whatever that is. Today was sparkling crisp blue skies with an inch or two of snow on the ground. We took Avery for her second subway ride ever, into town this time. We saw some snowmen, some snowangels, some kids having a snowball fight. She slept through it. Maybe it won’t be so hard to keep her entertained.
That might do it. Thank you, Thomas, for being our very own lolcat.
I saw a comment on FB that gave me pause. I hadn’t thought about it before. It said, “Please be respectful of our veterans and don’t put up Christmas decorations until November 12th.” They don’t have Remembrance Day down here in the US – they have Veterans Day (also November 11), which seems to be mostly furniture sales; and they have Memorial Day in May, which is mostly barbecues, fireworks and more furniture sales. Remembrance Day in Canada, depending where you are (and what age you are), can be a vaguely understood minute of silence at 11:11am, or a full day of solemn acknowledgement of the horrors of war and honoring those that died in them. I was somewhere in my high school years before I had some sense of what that meant. There’s this urge to glorify soldiering, which is what landed us in World War I, and continues to send testosterone-fueled boys off to get themselves killed at the direction of politicians who may never have held a gun. The point of Remembrance Day, in the words of those that decreed the day in the first place, is lest we forget, and it’s not the glory we’re supposed to remember, I can tell you that. For me, it’s not even about some notion of noble sacrifice, though there are countless stories of that. Lest we forget is a solemn vow, for me, to remember the desperate wrongness of taking human life. Honoring those that sacrificed is right and appropriate, yes, but that’s only half of it. It doesn’t go far enough. The hope is that our leaders will grasp at every last straw before resorting to war. If everyone could manage to take ego out of the equation… really, how much more war would there be?
So I promise not to put up decorations until after November 11, this year and every year. Seeing as that’s still seven weeks of silly season, that’s not too big a sacrifice. Not by comparison, right?
If you know any veterans, thank them. So many of them have been through hell. If you know anyone thinking about signing up for the military, ask them why. Defending your country or fighting for the rights of others is a lot different from kicking some camel jockey ass. The sort of person that thinks that way would do his country the greatest service by not having children.
Heavy.
I wonder if I get into the heavy topics here because I spend the day writing comedy and trying to make my daughter laugh…
Hey, let me ask you this – do you read all the words, or do you just check out the pics and tl;dr?
Sleep well, dear reader. I hope your tomorrow is pretty great. I’ma get x-rayed to see if I have a broken chest.
Lest we forget. I would say you are very right. It is a day to remember, everything. The horribleness of war, the soldiers who fought and died, and the ones that have gone to dusty places to try and help people, and come home so scarred that they will never be the same. It’s a time to say thank you to those people, for protecting us, and fighting for our rights and freedoms. I hope it’s a time of reflection for our governments, so that they look at war and dying and think beyond the financial gains, and really look at the human toll before jumping in. I want to say thank you to you for not putting up Christmas until the remembering is done.
From,
A messed up soldiers wife.