hi guys

[metaphortunate]

I'm sorry if I owe you a phone call or an email - or three - it's because I'm so behind that I can't cope, and I swear I will be getting back to you sometime around the 4th of July.

No sooner do I find a new pair of work pants - than one of my old ones develops a hole. Aargh! And pants are really hard to shop for online. And these days finding time to go to a store in person is a sort of invasion strategy development that involves careful timing and personnel deployment. I might get to try around the end of February.

We need to get in an exterminator because we have so many freaking silverfish. I know they are harmless but they are getting so numerous that I am having nightmares all night about them.

I see people online sneering at vegans because they claim their food is cruelty-free and yet their food is actually picked and produced by brutally exploited migrant workers. Guys: is there a non-brutal-exploitation food production option that I am currently unaware of? Is the idea that working in a slaughterhouse is a much better job? Or is it just sneering at an attempt to do something for not doing everything?

Thank god for the internet. I grimly decided that it was time for the Junebug to learn to wipe his own butt. I… realized I had no idea how to teach a kid to wipe their butt.

To the internet-mobile! THE INTERNET DELIVERS.

(At breakfast, me: "Oh my god! This site totally explains how to teach a kid to wipe their butt!"
Mr. E: "How?"
Me: "You use peanut butter!"
Mr. E: "…
…
…you must be joking."
Me: "On a PLATE.")

It's brilliant! We're working on it.

Comments

[azurelunatic]

I think it's specifically in reaction to the probably-small but definitely loud (and likely over-amplified because internet-and-probably-tumblr) subset of vegans who treat meat-eaters who give zero shits about how their meat is treated when it's a live animal, exactly the same as meat-eaters who take efforts to look for meat which comes from animals who are otherwise well-treated. And drilling further down, the ones who are really super insufferable while doing so.

[cyprinella]

Yep, it's the ones crowing about the superiority of their "cruelty free life styles" when frankly there isn't a way to be cruelty free in the current food production set up unless you are particularly blessed with land, energy, and climate. I don't give a fuck what people eat and as a fat woman, I'm already subject to a fuckton of judging but someone wants to take me to task on this one? I'm gonna point out all the ways their diet isn't perfect either.

[metaphortunate]

Huh. I know a crapton of v*gans and the last time anyone gave me any shit for eating meat was in 1990. I'm much more used to encounters like

"What have you got that's vegetarian?"
"Well, the ham sandwich's got a lot of vegetables on it."

and

"Dad, I know it's Thanksgiving but my boyfriend's vegetarian: what can we have that he can eat?"
"He can have the apple in the pig's mouth."

[cyprinella]

This is generally my experience as well and I've got a bunch of vegan recipes because of a dairy allergy myself. I make sure to feed my friends and family as best I can! However, I'm also friends with some outspoken small farmers who catch shit for talking about their farms and animals and it's ridiculous. When they're calling someone who I know spent a lot of time crying over dead goat kids a "hobby slaughterist", I lose a lot of respect and patience for the topic.

[likeadeuce]

Tumblr bb!s are often having conversations that have little to do w/ the real world.

Though I've also found that 'people angrily or cluelessly judging you for what you eat can come from all sides & whichever side you have experience w/ can lead you to some conclusions.

[phi]

I encountered a great many asshole vegans when I was nineteen (and most of the vegans I encountered of any personality were also around ninenteen). That happens less now, but I still encounter asshole meat-eaters who really are old enough to know better, much like the examples you gave.

[laurashapiro]

I found MAGIC PANTS on my birthday! They are comfy, stylish, they fit my insane waist-hip ratio, and they are machine washable. Maybe they will work for you? They come in a lot of sizes. Also different leg-widths if you don't like flowy pants (I love flowy pants).

[metaphortunate]

They look good! Do they have any pockets?

[laurashapiro]

Alas, that is the one thing they DON'T have. I am always wearing a jacket with pockets, where I keep all my crap, so it isn't as big an issue for me as it might be for you.

[jesse_the_k]

Those look highly promising. How wide is the "wider waist band"?

[laurashapiro]

Four inches! So incredibly comfy.

[jesse_the_k]

Ah ... useful info. (I don't have four inches between the bottom of my underwire and the top of my underpants — is that the underzone?)

[laurashapiro]

I don't know what an underzone is, but the pants come up to just below my navel. The fit is sufficiently flexible that you could wear them low-rise if you wanted -- I've experimented with pushing them down around my hips and they look fine.

[jesse_the_k]

Fold-over waistbands are the very best idea in clothing since elastic! Thanks so much for the review.

[laurashapiro]

My pleasure! Lots more reviews at the J.Jill website, too.

[wild_irises]

Eric Schlosser, who wrote Fast Food Nation just had a piece somewhere on how you can manage your diet so as not to be cruel to animals, but you cannot manage it so as not to be cruel to people. A particularly historically aware friend of mine, when I mentioned this, said that it has been true since the beginning of agriculture.

I suspect your internet sneerers are getting some ammunition from this piece, though their tone is absolutely not Schlosser's tone.

In another note, the peanut butter story makes me think of those horrible baby shower games with candy bars crushed up in diapers, only yours is constructive.

[jesse_the_k]

ZOMG I can't unsee the baby-shower game and may never eat a Butterfinger again.

[wild_irises]

I'm sorry!

Someone at my work (where people are usually much more tasteful) included that game in a baby shower probably eight or nine years ago, and I am still grossed out by it. Apparently it is Quite The Thing in some circles.

[jesse_the_k]

As if parenthood doesn't offer enough chances for poop and fart jokes ...

I won't hold it against you :,)

[jesse_the_k]

Peanut butter illustrations are FABULOUS!

It seems that somewhere's there is a market for an "Engineer Your Better Baby" book full of facsimile challenges to enable a bug to twirl through life.

I am so there on silverfish. Creepiest crawliest ever (well, actually I think it's a dead heat with millipedes). Is there a weTarnish service to age them suddenly?

[metaphortunate]

lol. Apparently! It costs $200. D:

[veejane]

The internet knows all. Someday, when one of your children is a burgeoning ballet dancer and needs to be introduced to how to wear a dance belt (approx. age 11), there is a website for that.* Complete with (verbal) explanation of the swoop & scoop, which is strikingly like all the internet's instructions for proper bra placement, only with different objects being scooped.

(*I don't even remember why my sister and I had to look that up. But now we know!)

We did not find out whether men who wear dance belts professionally wax or shave their bikini lines. Maybe yes, if the tights are not opaque? (I have seen modern dancers, who sometimes wear nothing but the dance belt, be gloriously hairy on all surfaces. But ballet dancers, I just don't know.) But Dr. Dancebelt was focussed primarily on dance schools and on the clumsy explanations parents might give their prepubescent boys, so the bikini line issue did not come up.

[metaphortunate]

It seriously does know all. Thank god, because I know nothing.

[lovepeaceohana]

Wow. That is ... I'd never thought to use peanut butter. And I mean, these kiddos have been toilet-trained from two years onward and they're four and six, now. (WHY DID I NOT THINK TO CHECK THE INTERNET THEN?!) We trained them using wet wipes, which was probably a bit easier than toilet paper, and taught them to make a sort of crabby, pinching motion to prevent them just smearing it up their bums. KK's still figuring it out and there have been times I've sent him back in to wipe again, but Lu's got it at least.

I'll add though that I'm still a little weirded out by the fact that Lu's pants always smell of poo, despite having not even the tiniest mess in his underwear and a squeaky-clean bum. I figure maybe he just farts a lot? Beau will be happy to hear that Lu takes after him at least a little bit, I guess.

[metaphortunate]

lol. That's worrying, though! I don't want people to go through life smelling like shit!

[lovepeaceohana]

Haha, me neither! I mean, he smells fine - I haven't noticed an odour wafting around him, at least, and he's long past the days when I can sniff at his butt! - it's just his underwear and pants.