The Princess Phase

Saving Our Daughters From An Army Of Princesses : NPR

What was going on here? My fellow mothers, women who once swore they would never be dependent on a man, smiled indulgently at daughters who warbled “So This Is Love” or insisted on being addressed as Snow White. The supermarket checkout clerk invariably greeted Daisy with “Hi, Princess.” The waitress at our local breakfast joint, a hipster with a pierced tongue and a skull tattooed on her neck, called Daisy’s “funny-face pancakes” her “princess meal”; the nice lady at Longs Drugs offered us a free balloon, then said, “I bet I know your favorite color!” and handed Daisy a pink one rather than letting her choose for herself. Then, shortly after Daisy’s third birthday, our high-priced pediatric dentist — the one whose practice was tricked out with comic books, DVDs, and arcade games — pointed to the exam chair and asked, “Would you like to sit in my special princess throne so I can sparkle your teeth?”

While I read this article, all I could think was “Thank Godric I never went through the princess stage,” and “Oh almighty conception statistics, please please please let me have sons.”

My husband, sister, mother and I were talking yesterday about my sister and my respective childhoods. Sarah dressed up in all out princess gear and trotted her Barbies around her room. I dressed like a cowboy and rode a fake horse around the yard. She begged for dress up clothes, I begged for bouncy balls.

Having never gone through the prerequisite Princess stage of girlhood, I have no idea how to react to it in little girls now. For example, my husband’s niece Jessica is entirely enraptured with the whole pink/princess/Barbie little girl culture. While we were at my sister-in-law’s house at Christmas, she wanted me to come play Barbies with her. I begrudgingly agreed (under threat of little girl tears and my husband disapproving) and sat down with her. “Cinderella,” a normal Barbie wearing a blue dress, was promptly shoved into my hand, and Jessica immediately launched into Playing With Dolls mode. I had no idea what to do. I stared at “Cinderella” for a few long moments, racking my brain for any previous experience in playing with dolls. Besides a few instances of Barbie beheading, all that came up was my American Girl dolls, but that didn’t help. I used them to play through events like the battle at Little Big Horn and the bombing of London. “Oh no, the army is coming over the ridge! We need to cross the river!” “The Germans are bombing us! Get into the bunker!” Molly and Josephina did NOT prance around shopping. They were historical!

Jessica was still rambling on through her Barbie about how wonderful it was that she could take her Barbie convertible to the Barbie mansion. I set down my doll and told her that I didn’t know how to play dolls the way she did, and maybe Uncle Terry would be better at it so she should ask him. I made my escape, batting off protests that Uncle Terry is a boy, he can’t play dolls!

This event, the Princess phase, is something I hope I never have to go through with my own children. I wouldn’t know how to cope. I suppose I’ll just have to hold out for boys… or girls like myself who somehow escape the whole terrible event.

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Angry Squirrel

I found this on a random Stumble around the internet. It made Terry and I bust up laughing, so I think I ought to share it. This is the website it was on, in the interest of giving credit where credit is due.

Angry squirrel

I don’t know who wrote this, but he tells it quite visually and it’s sure worth a laugh or two…If nothing else gives you a good belly laugh this year this will and will last the whole year.

I never dreamed slowly cruising on my motorcycle through a residential neighborhood could be so incredibly dangerous! Little did I suspect.

I was on Brice Street – a very nice neighborhood with perfect lawns and slow traffic. As I passed an oncoming car, a brown furry missile shot out from under it and tumbled to a stop immediately in front of me.

It was a squirrel, and must have been trying to run across the road when it encountered the car. I really was not going very fast, but there was no time to brake or avoid it — it was that close. I hate to run over animals, and I really hate it on a motorcycle, but a squirrel should pose no danger to me.

I barely had time to brace for the impact. Animal lovers, never fear. Squirrels, I discovered, can take care of themselves!

Inches before impact, the squirrel flipped to his feet. He was standing on his hind legs and facing my oncoming Valkyrie with steadfast resolve in his beady little eyes.

His mouth opened, and at the last possible second, he screamed and leapt! I am pretty sure the scream was squirrel for, “Bonzai!” or maybe, “Die you gravy-sucking, heathen scum!” The leap was nothing short of spectacular…

He shot straight up, flew over my windshield, and impacted me squarely in the chest. Instantly, he set upon me. If I did not know better, I would have sworn he brought 20 of his little buddies along for the attack.

Snarling, hissing, and tearing at my clothes, he was a frenzy of activity. As I was dressed only in a light T-shirt, summer riding gloves, and jeans this was a bit of a cause for concern. This furry little tornado was doing some damage!

Picture a large man on a huge black and chrome cruiser, dressed in jeans, a T-shirt, and leather gloves, puttering at maybe 25 mph down a quiet residential street, and in the fight of his life with a squirrel. And losing…

I grabbed for him with my left hand. After a few misses, I finally managed to snag his tail. With all my strength, I flung the evil rodent off to the left of the bike, almost running into the right curb as I recoiled from the throw. That should have done it. The matter should have ended right there.

It really should have. The squirrel could have sailed into one of the pristinely kept yards and gone on about his business, and I could have headed home. No one would have been the wiser. But this was no ordinary squirrel.

This was not even an ordinary angry squirrel. This was an EVIL MUTANT ATTACK SQUIRREL OF DEATH! Somehow he caught my gloved finger with one of his little hands and, with the force of the throw, swung around and with a resounding thump and an amazing impact, he landed squarely on my BACK and resumed his rather antisocial and extremely distracting activities. He also managed to take my left glove with him! The situation was not improved. Not improved at all.

His attacks were continuing, and now I could not reach him. I was startled, to say the least. The combination of the force of the throw, only having one hand (the throttle hand) on the handlebars, and my jerking back unfortunately put a healthy twist through my right hand and into the throttle. A healthy twist on the throttle of a Valkyrie can only have one result.

Torque.

This is what the Valkyrie is made for, and she is very, very good at it.

The engine roared and the front wheel left the pavement. The squirrel screamed in anger. The Valkyrie screamed in ecstasy. I screamed in . well .. I just plain screamed.

Now picture a large man on a huge black and chrome cruiser, dressed in jeans, a slightly squirrel-torn t-shirt, wearing only one leather glove, and roaring at maybe 50 mph and rapidly accelerating down a quiet residential street on one wheel, with a demonic squirrel of death on his back.

The man and the squirrel are both screaming bloody murder. With the sudden acceleration I was forced to put my other hand back on the handlebars and try to get control of the bike.

This was leaving the mutant squirrel to his own devices, but I really did not want to crash into somebody’s tree, house, or parked car. Also, I had not yet figured out how to release the throttle…my brain was just simply overloaded. I did manage to mash the back brake, but it had little effect against the massive power of the big cruiser.

About this time the squirrel decided that I was not paying sufficient attention to this very serious battle (maybe he was an evil mutant NAZI attack squirrel of death), and he came around my neck and got INSIDE my full-face helmet with me.

As the faceplate closed part way, he began hissing in my face. I am quite sure my screaming changed intensity. It had little effect on the squirrel, however. The RPMs on the Dragon maxed out (since I was not bothering with shifting at the moment), so her front end started to drop.

Now picture a large man on a huge black and chrome cruiser, dressed in jeans, a very raggedly torn T-shirt, wearing only one leather glove, roaring at probably 80 mph, still on one wheel, with a large puffy squirrel’s tail sticking out of the mostly closed full-face helmet. By now the screams are probably getting a little hoarse.

Finally I got the upper hand … I managed to grab his tail again, pulled him out of my helmet, and slung him to the left as hard as I could. This time it worked … sort-of.

Spectacularly sort-of … so to speak.

Picture a new scene. You are a cop. You and your partner have pulled off on a quiet residential street and parked with your windows down to do some paperwork. Suddenly a large man on a huge black and chrome cruiser, dressed in jeans, a torn T-shirt flapping in the breeze, and wearing only one leather glove, moving at probably 80 mph on one wheel, and screaming bloody murder roars by, and with all his strength throws a live squirrel grenade directly into your police car.

I heard screams. They weren’t mine… I managed to get the big motorcycle under control and dropped the front wheel to the ground. I then used maximum braking and skidded to a stop in a cloud of tire smoke at the stop sign of a busy cross street. I would have returned to ‘fess up (and to get my glove back). I really would have.

Really… Except for two things.

First, the cops did not seem interested or the slightest bit concerned about me at the moment. When I looked back, the doors on both sides of the patrol car were flung wide open. The cop from the passenger side was on his back, doing a crab walk into somebody’s front yard, quickly moving away from the car. The cop who had been in the driver’s seat was standing in the street, aiming a riot shotgun at his own police car. So, the cops were not interested in me. They often insist to “let the professionals handle it” anyway.

That was one thing. The other? Well, I could clearly see shredded and flying pieces of foam and upholstery from the back seat. But I could also swear I saw the squirrel in the back window, shaking his little fist at me. That is one dangerous squirrel. And now he has a patrol car. A somewhat shredded patrol car but it was all his.

I took a deep breath, turned on my turn-signal, made a gentle right turn off of Brice Street, and sedately left the neighborhood. I decided it was best to just buy myself a new pair of gloves. And a whole lot of Band-Aids.

 

 

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Meat Lover or Meatless: My Stance on Vegetarianism

There is precisely one reason why I could NEVER become a vegetarian. And that reason is BACON. The crunchy, meaty, smoky, thick slices of bacon that grace my sandwiches, my breakfast, and my burgers. I could write a love song, or an ode, or a sonnet to bacon.

Bacon is my kryptonite. I'd be a vegetarian for all of 20 minutes before somebody walked by with a bacon cheeseburger and I'd renounce vegetarianism immediately.

Oh bacon, how I love you… let me count the ways…

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