Year: 2012

Today I took Cassidy and her BFF to one of those ceramics painting places but it was closed because they are remodeling. We were totes bumbed so Cassidy and her BFF suggested we go to see that new Step It Up movie and I lied and told them we wouldn’t make it to the theater in time even though the theater was like a block away from where we were. I felt bad for about half a second but then got over it because that’s the kind of movie I need some time to prep for. Like a marathoner trains for MONTHS before the big race, I need a good 24 hours before a Step It Up movie to, like, prepare. Mentally.

So then Cassidy was all, “Can we AT LEAST go to Micheal’s, SHEESH!?” And it seemed like a reasonable enough request and required no pep-talks or prior preparation time on my part so we went. After looking through posters and picking up some new craft FUN STUFF we left and started home.

Did you all know it’s garlic harvesting season? It totally is. And IT IS AWESOME. Our entire town smells like garlic. If you don’t like the smell of garlic I’m sorry that you suck so much and I’d also recommend to you that you never EVER visit Gilroy in July or August.

When they haul the garlic in from the fields it’s in these MASSIVE trucks and the sides are a metal mesh so you see THOUSANDS OF HAPPY LITTLE HEADS OF GARLIC on the way to the food processing plant in town and it’s such a glorious site. Today on the way home, in less than 10 miles, we saw four of these trucks. While stopped at a light, one passed in front of us.

Me: I totally want to Scrooge McDuck that shit.
Cassidy: Whatever THAT MEANS!
Me: You know, Scrooge McDuck! Like in his money vault!
Cassidy: I think you’ve finally lost your mind.
Me: WHAT!? DUCK TALES! *singing* LIFE IS LIKE A HURRICAIN, HERE IN DUCKBURGH!
Cassidy: …
Me: RACECARS, LASERS, AIRPLANES! IT’S A.. DUCK BLUR!
Cassidy: You realize we aren’t alone in the car, right?
Me: *sigh*

So I did the only logical thing. I pulled up the Duck Tales intro on YouTube, plugged the iPhone into my car stereo, turned the volume to 60 and sang along. Every word. By heart. BECAUSE I AM THAT AWESOME.

Good luck getting that out of your head anytime soon.

After the music stopped Cassidy and her BFF were dead silent for about 30 seconds.

Cassidy: Dude, that was horrible.
Me: What are you talking about!? That was AWESOME! That was when cartoons HAD intros! That were AWESMOME.
Cassidy: That was horrible. I feel sorry that you had such crappy cartoons when you were a kids.
Me: DUCK TALES!
Cassidy: SPONGEBOB!
Me: REN AND STIMPY!
Cassidy: POWDERPUFF GIRLS!
Me: SHE-MOTHERFUKING-RA! OH! Or JEM AND THE HOLOGRAMS!
Cassidy: Lame.
Me: Dude, Scrooge McDuck could dive into his money vault, swim a lap then tell you exactly how much money he had. All Spongebob can do is make Crappy Patties.
Cassidy: We are not related anymore.
Me: Good, move out or start paying rent.
Cassidy: On second thought, I bet that was a pretty good TV show!
Me: OMG, I KNOW RIGHT!? BEST EVER!

I would say there’s a lesson here but the only one I can come up with is that it’s really easy to manipulate your teenager into agreeing with you by threatening to no longer feed or support them and that seems kind of mean. Although, anybody that actually HAS a teenager would realize this is just a means to an end. Well, a means to sanity at least. I should totally write a parenting book on raising a teenager except that I really have no clue what the hell I’m doing half the time. That’s really her fault though because raising a female teenager is a lot like trying to predict earthquakes or tornadoes. It’s really just a hope for the best but prepare for the worst (and learn early that you can get a tornado to change it’s path by threatening to take it’s cell phone away) kinda situation.

What I’m saying is, make sure your kids watch lot of cartoons that don’t suck and never let them get any older than three because that’s when they really start to have opinions and it’s basically all downhill from there.

You’re welcome.

In my head this is how I want this post to go:

Dear America,

Don’t be a dick.

<3, Antigone

In reality, I think it’s going to take more words. And ALL CAPS. And annoying segmented sentences.

Before I even start I want to be very clear that I’m not basing my judgement on Chick-Fil-A’s president’s words. Although I believe they were ignorant and extraordinarily misinformed, he has the right to express his own opinion. I think I am smart enough to separate The Man from The Brand and while I don’t agree with what he said AT ALL, I DO believe he has the right to say it.

The reason I don’t like CFA is not because of the bigoted words of one man, it’s because the company supports hate and that is not something I am willing to sit by and ignore. Let’s look at some numbers:

In 2009 alone, WinShape (Chick-Fil-A’s Charitable Arm) donated $1,733,699 to multiple anti-gay groups:
Marriage & Family Legacy Fund: $994,199
Fellowship Of Christian Athletes: $480,000
National Christian Foundation: $240,000
Focus On The Family: $12,500
Eagle Forum: $5,000
Exodus International: $1,000
Family Research Council: $1,000
(*source)

In 2010, WinShape donated $1,974,380 to a number of anti-gay groups:
Marriage & Family Foundation: $1,188,380
Fellowship Of Christian Athletes: $480,000
National Christian Foundation: $247,500
New Mexico Christian Foundation: $54,000
Exodus International: $1,000
Family Research Council: $1,000
Georgia Family Council: $2,500
(*source)

You can learn all about those organizations from the source links but lets just look at one example to better understand what’s going on. In order to become a member of the Fellowship Of Christian Athletes you have to agree to their sexuality standards. This is a part of the application on their website along with a question asking how you address students when they question you about homosexuality:

FCA’S SEXUAL PURITY STATEMENT
God desires His children to lead pure lives of holiness. The Bible is clear in teaching on sexual sin including sex outside of marriage and homosexual acts. Neither heterosexual sex outside of marriage nor any homosexual act constitute an alternate lifestyle acceptable to God.
While upholding God’s standard of holiness, FCA strongly affirms God’s love and redemptive power in the individual who chooses to follow Him. FCA’s desire is to encourage individuals to trust in Jesus and turn away from any impure lifestyle.
(*website)

$980,000.

They gave $980,000 to this ONE organization alone. This organization that WILL NOT ACCEPT YOU IF YOU ARE GAY. PERIOD.

This money was not donated by The Man, it was donated by The Brand. The CFA company donates this money from the profits it makes selling it’s food. Therefore, I will never (and HAVE NEVER) purchased anything from CFA. Now, up until the last few days I never mentioned this to anybody. For the same reason I never talk about the fact that I don’t shop at Walmart because of their support of anti-gay causes (and because it’s the most infuriatingly bullshit experience to have to shop there). And if I ever had a son I’d never allow him to be a Boy Scout because they won’t allow gays in the organization. I don’t feel like I need to tell people why I choose to support, or NOT support, a certain company because I assume if it’s important to people, they’ll do their own research and learn for themselves what they are, or are not, willing to support with their own money.

I was happy never going to or discussing CFL. When CFL president Dan Cathy went on the air and made baseless outrageous claims about how “damaging” same sex marriage is and this all blew up in the media, I just kind of sat back and watched for a few days to see where it all going to go and I have to admit, I wasn’t at all surprised to see this turn into what it did but I was completely disgusted by what happened all across America yesterday.

And here is where I differ from a lot of people. I do not see this as a 1st Amendment issue. Dan Cathy can stand in front of CFL store and preach his hate all day long. I am FINE with that. What I do not, and will never get, is this outpouring of people willing to rally around that message.

Everybody that knows me, online or off, knows that I am a loud mouth pain in the ass. I have very strong convictions and I will stand up for what I believe in. ALWAYS. I will also not stand by online (or in real life) and watch while people virtually spit in the face of the people I care about when all they are trying to do is LOVE. Bullying is a huge problem. We teach our kids not to be complacent. We’ve told Cassidy that standing by and NOT saying something when she sees it happening makes her just as guilty as the offending bully.

But somehow we live in a country where it’s okay to just look the other way. Where apparently our freedom of SPEECH is MORE IMPORTANT than the freedom to get married and commit your life to the person you love. It makes me very sad. Sad that we look back 47 years ago and think it’s ridiculous that it was ILLEGAL for interracial couples to get married but then turn and look the other way and ignore the fact that THE VERY SAME THING IS HAPPENING. RIGHT NOW. TODAY.

It makes me sad that people decided that the time to “stand up and fight” was in the fight against love. Men are shooting up movie theaters because medical and mental health care in this country are a fucking joke. AMERICAN CHILDREN are starving. Dogs are being bred to FIGHT TO THE DEATH. Homeless people are freezing to death on the streets in the winter… but hundreds of thousands of people yesterday thought it was important to fight for one man’s right to publicly deny a group of people the right to love who they choose.

I am sad that this is the world my daughter is going to grow old in. My only hope is that one day she, or at least my grand kids, will look back and write blog posts about how ridiculous it is that there was a time when gay people were not allowed to get married.

In the mean time I think that everybody should go read this blog post:

The Chick Fellatio: stuck in the craw
“So stand up. Stand up for us. Do the right thing. You don’t have to agree with us on everything, but repudiate Chick-Fil-A. Unlike them on Facebook. Withdraw your support for them. Join us in the boycott. If you can’t do that, then please ask yourself whether I’m your friend. In fact, ask yourself whether anyone is.”

Our princess dog, Danica, stopped eating food for about two weeks till we finally figured out that the reason she had stopped was because she no longer liked the wet food we were putting into her bowl in the morning. We do a half wet/half dry mixture in the morning and all dry in the afternoon but because she wasn’t finishing the wet in the morning, we were just mixing in more dry in the evening and she would only eat about half of that too. She was only getting about a cup of food total a day.

Because Ben and I are pretty particular about the food we’ll give the pets I decided to try my hand at making it myself rather than do a ton of research on different brands of foods and hoping that our picky dog would eat. After reading a bit online it seemed that all the recipes were really similar and most sites gave the same basic directions for slow cooker food. The last site I ended up reading said “You know what your dog likes, just use that and you’ll be good” so that’s what I’ve been doing.

General directions are easy: put food in slow cooker, cook for a lot of time, stir, serve. Where a lot of people differ is the ingredients. Just make sure before you start that you read up on anything you want to add to make sure that it’s safe for dogs. Apples, for instance, are loved by a lot of dogs but the seeds can be dangerous so make sure to core them and remove any seeds first. For a great list of foods that are and are not safe for dogs go here.

Here was the recipe I used the first time:

1.2 LB Boneless Skinless Chicken Breasts or Tenders
20 OZ Ground Turkey
2 Apples (cored and deseeded)
1/2 a 2 LB bag of carrots
1/2 a 2 LB bag of frozen peas
1 cup brown rice

It netted about 16 cups of food. This time I took pictures of the process to show you how simple it really is. I changed up the recipe a bit to see how Princess Pick Eater would do with it and she’s eating it fine but I forgot the rice so it made less food. Also, I think that I’ll probably drop the turkey next time and use all chicken. EXPERIMENT! It’s SO EASY to make and your dogs will LOVE IT and you will have total control over the kind of food they’re eating.

So here are the basic steps:

1) Gather all your ingredients (don’t forget the brown rice LIKE A FOOL ;)):

2) Throw the meat in there! Whatever your dogs like! Danica once stole an entire roasted chicken off the counter and ate half of it in less than two minutes. On another occasion she stole an ENTIRE PACKAGE of frozen turkey off the counter and ate it. Pretty sure the American Government could have bottled up the farts that occurred after that to use for the most harsh form of chemical warfare.

3) Add the veggies! Kumo LOVES carrots. We actually use them for training with him. He also LOVES apples but this time we were running low on them so instead I added two large sweet potatoes. I also add peas for a touch of color and because they are good for you!

4) Add enough water to cover the meat. I added a little more that than here and it was a bit too much, I had to remove some when it was done cooking.

5) Turn the slow cooker on low and walk away. This batch cooked for nine hours overnight while we slept and I finished it up in the morning. You will be tempted to stir it or smell it or gaze longingly at it but don’t. Just leave it alone and let it be.

6) When it’s done cooking (I wouldn’t go less than 6 hours) turn the cooker off and start to stir the food. The meat will just fall apart as you stir. Mash the veggies into it a bit while you stir. Try to avoid the temptation to taste it. It isn’t bad but with no seasoning it’s kind of bland. Ben said it smelled and looked like chicken pot pie filling. The dogs will be somewhere near you drooling, try not to slip on it. (Since I forgot the rice there was a bit too much liquid here and I had to skim some off the top so don’t be like me and forget the rice!)

7) FINISHED! We throw it into a Tupperware container and dish it out every morning for breakfast. Our dogs get a cup each so we use it all up before it goes bad but if your dogs eat less then you can freeze what you don’t need right away and pull it out as you need it.

So that last post was written right in the middle of a fever that ended up lasting for about two weeks. It was the exact opposite of awesome. My body does not respond well to not being able to regulate it’s temperature. I became REALLY irritated and was uncomfortable about 142% of the time (I think most normal people would consider all 24 hours of the day 100% of the time but I don’t include sleep time in my percentage because it’s just a WASTE. A waste of time I refuse to acknowledge except when I’m sick. This time I was uncomfortable EVEN IN MY SLEEP. I wanted to punch sleep in the nose.).

This part is where if you are a man you should probably stop reading.

Trust. You just don’t need to know that women think this way.

And now I’m back two weeks later having pretty much the worst period ever. Don’t worry, I don’t mean that in the gross graphic kind of way because BLECH. I don’t go there because I know when I read about THAT aspect online, I want to punch the offending girl right in the uterus. Seriously, don’t need to hear it. UNFOLLOW!

No, my period is bad in a much worse way. The kind of way that makes a normally sane women turn into a batshit crazy emotional roller coaster of shame. I cried last night because toothpaste fell on my nightgown when I was brushing my teeth. I really wish that was an exaggeration but it’s not. It is my most comfortable nightgown and it’s black so the toothpaste shined bright like the light of a mid day sun. It was a tragic turn of events at the end of a very, very long day at work and not being able to sit down after work till almost 9:00PM and all I wanted to do was crawl into bed and snuggle up to Ben and BE DONE WITH THIS DAY ALREADY and that toothpaste was like FUCK YOU, LADY. And I cried. At the sink. With my toothbrush hanging out of my mouth. I managed to pull myself together before Ben walked in a few minutes later and he’s had the privilege of living with me long enough to know to ignore my red, swollen eyes this time of the month.

It’s only when I have the red, swollen eyes AND I’m hyperventilating that he really starts to question me. Or when I have the red, swollen eyes and I’m holding something sharp. Then he looks concerned but generally keeps pretty quiet about it.

The fact that the Olympics are this week means that you’ll probably be able to find me every night on the couch crying like a baby. Crying because people win, crying because people lose, crying because the announcer gives me another piece of useless information WOULD HE JUST SHUT UP ALREADY, crying because a player from a country I’ve never even heard of before has been injured… you get the idea.

I’ll be a mess and it will be awesome because it’s the Olympics.

There are about 75,000,000 other things I’d rather do than sit at home all day being sick. It’s SO BORING. The only redeeming bonus is that HGTV plays House Hunters and My First Place all day if I can stay awake to watch them. That’s the problem with a 101 degree fever, my body gets all SLEEP FOOL on me and keeping my eyes open for more than an hour becomes almost impossible. Actually, it IS impossible so thank you DVR for never letting me miss which house those people that mean absolutely nothing to me picked because I’m not sure I could have continued on with my life without that information. Can you even imagine? What kind of life would that be?

OH! And you know that thing people tell you “I woke up covered in sweat?” Well I thought that was just a saying to garner extra sympathy. Like, maybe if you say that, your husband will get you some ice cream on the way home because he feels so sorry for you but who ACTUALLY wakes up COVERED IN SWEAT!? But you know what?! That ACTUALLY HAPPENS! I woke up Sunday night and thought I had a spider crawling on my face and temporarily FREAKED OUT when I realized it was just a drip of water ON MY FACE, FROM MY SWEAT GLANDS. Apparently that’s what happens when your fever finally “breaks” but since the same thing happened again last night I have my doubts. Although, I guess technically since my fever “breaks” several times a day after freebasing large amounts of Ibuprofen I’ve been doing nothing but sweating profusely, judging people’s home buying choices and sleeping for about 24 hours now. It’s all kinds of sexy.

And I’d rather be at work. I still worked Monday and Tuesday even though I hardly have the energy to stand up and got a little too dizzy on the way home yesterday from not eating enough. Today I finally gave in and realized that if I didn’t give my body some time to heal this had the potential to NEVER END and I’d be stuck at home for DAYS ON END and there are not enough anti-psychotics in ALL THE WORLD to help me deal with that.

And now it’s time to sleep/sweat some more. On the couch this time because the sheets smell and I’m too tired to walk up there and change them right now and the couch is right here below my butt and all I’d really have to do is close my eyes and…

Happy Father’s Day to my most amazing dad. He who taught me the proper way to fry and egg (IN BACON GREASE, DUH) and to never trust a man that asks you to pull his finger. You know, all the important things.

Also, Happy Father’s Day to Ben. Who loves, guides, cares for and makes Cassidy laugh every single day. We are both better off because we have you in our lives. <3

From: Benjamin Hirsch
To: Anna Hirsch
Hey honey,
can you round up all of my dirty black adidas socks and nike shorts and run a load for me?

From: Anna Hirsch
To: Benjamin Hirsch
I think I probably could if I applied myself.

From: Benjamin Hirsch
To: Anna Hirsch
just make sure you warm up and stretch first

Back story: We taught Cassidy from a very early age the difference between “can” and “may/will”. Asking somebody if the CAN do something is just asking if they have the ABILITY. OF COURSE I have the ABILITY to wash your clothes. But they are way upstairs and I’m lazy and tired and on my period and I can continue to come up with excuses all day long because I’m a woman so it’s a built in skill.

From: Anna Hirsch
To: Benjamin Hirsch
You said “can”! NO LAUNDRY FOR YOU!

From: Benjamin Hirsch
To: Anna Hirsch

From: Anna Hirsch
To: Benjamin Hirsch
You are not allowed to use your hot sexy body to….

Wait, what were we talking about?

From: Benjamin Hirsch
To: Anna Hirsch
😉

From: Anna Hirsch
To: Benjamin Hirsch
Okay. I started a load of all your whites. They should be done by the time you get home.

From: Benjamin Hirsch
To: Anna Hirsch
uh… please tell me you’re joking, the socks/etc are all clean (near the bed). this is what I wrote:
Can you round up all of my dirty black adidas socks and nike shorts and run a load for me?”

From: Anna Hirsch
To: Benjamin Hirsch
Well, it’s not my fault I got it wrong. You had to be all “look at my chiseled abs of steel” and “let me just flex my MAN MUSCLES”.

PS – I was kidding. All your reds are in the washer.

From: Benjamin Hirsch
To: Anna Hirsch
…

*He’s probably going to be frustrated that I mentioned his grey hair but you know what? Grey hair is hot. He doesn’t realize that the reason I do these things to him is because every time I do another hair turns color and the more they do, the hotter he gets. I’m doing this for YOUR GOOD, BEN!

The other day it was late and we wanted a movie to watch so I picked Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers extended edition on Bluray. There is never enough Lord of the Rings. Not in ALL THE DAYS.

So we are watching and Aragorn asks Legolas what his elf eyes can see. And as Legolas answers that they are taking the hobbits to Isengard Ben starts to chuckle and we have a conversation that goes something like this.

(Warning: The following conversation is how it went in my head. Where there is more crazy. And pie.)

Me: What?
Ben: What?
Me: You laughed. What was so funny?
Ben: THEY’RE TAKING THE HOBBITS TO ISEGARD! GARD! GARD! GARD! GARD!
Me: What the actual fuck, Ben!?
Ben: You’ve never seen the video?
Me: I’m not sure how this is a laughing matter! They are taking the hobbits to fucking ISENGARD, BEN! ISENGARD! Where you know what’s going to happen? Saruman is going to probably torture them into telling him where the ring is and then they are going to KILL Mari and Pippen, Ben. They are going to kill Mari and then who’s going to tell Desmond that it’s not Penny’s boat!?
Ben: …
Me: …
Ben: Hand me your iPad.

And then this happened.

And my mind BLEW THE FUCK UP WITH AWESOME.

You’re welcome for the ear worm.

So moms and people in general are all aflutter today with the current Time Magazine cover of a woman breastfeeding her 3 year old son. I’ve seen reactions range from “HIGHFIVE LADY” to “she should be ashamed what is her son going to think of this photo when he’s an adult”. I’m pretty sure Time did this for the reaction and it’s not hard right now to capitalize on the current trend of parenting styles ALL OVER THE INTERNET. The anti-vaxers, the anti-circumcision movement, the breastfeeding crusade, the cloth diaper swaps, the cosleeping coalition… it’s like a hippie’s dream.

Assuming your dream is to have a succubus stuck to you constantly for 18 years. Not my idea of fun. At all. Honestly, I think all this attachment parenting is going to guarantee that we raise the most codependent bunch of whiners we’ve ever seen. But that’s ANOTHER BLOG POST FOR ANOTHER DAY. LET THE HATE MAIL COME FORTH AND BLESS MY INBOX!

So about the cover. I really don’t have a problem with extended breastfeeding. I think it’s a decision that a family should make together. Do what works for THEM. You want to breastfeed your five year old? Go for it!

I really hate this cover though. But not for any of the reasons I’ve seen mentioned online yet. It’s not the picture, although it’s something that I’d never want, to stand there while my child is perfectly capable of grabbing a banana and eating it if he’s hungry, but because of what is implied in the text:

“ARE YOU MOM ENOUGH?”

Are you mom enough to do this? I hate the connotation that if you are worth anything as a mother, you will breastfeed till your child leaves for college. If you can’t or CHOOSE NOT TO breastfeed well then, you just aren’t MOM ENOUGH.

I’ve written about this before. I get really annoyed when I see parents are made to feel “less than” for a decision they’ve made. I get the appeal of attachment parenting but I do not get why a lot of the attachment parenters I see out there online feel the need to constantly shove their opinions and links and superiority complex and JUDGEMENT down your throat.

It’s mean and lame and STOP THAT.

JUST STOP.

*quietly steps off soapbox*