Monday Morning Open Thread

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What’s up?

First, an update: as it turns out, Matt, our baker baker’s husband is able and working on switching the underlying platform of MotherTalkers.com to keep us there. (Yay!) However, to let him do his thing we should meet here until he is done. Then he will converge the two sites and we will continue meeting at MotherTalkers.com as we have the last seven years. Thank you for your patience and understanding.

In the meantime, I am collecting funds to pay him, hopefully, for a one time upgrade and every once in a blue moon if the site is down. If you feel inclined to help, paypal me at elisa at mothertalkers dot com. Thank you!!

In other news: I was tickled to see this rock video by Daily Kos intern Faith. She is the lead singer with the red hair and she used Eli’s dolls to rock out! We were all smiles here. Enjoy!

Mitt Romney won the Puerto Rican Republican primary this past weekend, according to the Washington Post.

I already see the Republican presidential candidates all over this one: the Springfield, Massachusetts school district will hand out condoms to students 12 years and older with parents’ approval AND handing out information on abstinence as well. Of course, this won’t stop us from hearing about it on the campaign trail as if kids today don’t already face teen pregnancy and STDs.

Seattle is considering canceling its contract with Teach for America before completing one of it’s three-year commitment with the organization, according to 360 Education Solutions. Public officials are starting to question the program’s effectiveness especially since the program trains its students only 5 weeks to become teachers and it is expensive to implement.

This BlogHer story touched a nerve as I’ve shown up to an Aveda hair salon in Chicago to be told that my children couldn’t stay with me. This particular story focused on whether hair salons should have child-free policies. My beef is if they are going to have such policies, then they need to state that upfront. It isn’t fair to the parents to show up to learn of the policy.

And justice is served. A Rutgers student who secretly video-recorded his roommate having sex with another man to share with others — in which his roommate later committed suicide — was convicted of 15 charges related to the incident, according to the New York Times.

Also, Freedom Airlines settled with a mom who it kicked off one of its flights five years ago for breastfeeding her baby. Companies, take notice.

What else is in the news? What’s up with you?

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100 thoughts on “Monday Morning Open Thread”

  1. Hey! I can see it now. Of course, I’m no longer bored at work. But I’ll look forward to my entertainment when I wake up tomorrow.

    None of the links work for me…but that’s okay. :)

  5. Hey!

    Changed my name for the new site but happy to hear that we may be able to merge things and go back to regular MT. Will shoot off a paypal as soon as I remember my password.

    Good weekend here. Crazy warm and sunny.

    (lonestar canuck)

  6. Last week did not feel like spring break at all, with DH’s surgery, but he is doing well so that’s good. He had thought he might go back to work today but he’s decided against it [yay -- did not think he was ready].

    lots to do to catch up now that the kids are going back to school — see y’all later!

  10. Look at us- all spiffy in our temporary digs! I love that 1) there’s a chance we can go back to the old site eventually and 2) we have a place to hang out while it’s under construction.

    It’s skirt weather in New Hampshire- two months ahead of schedule. I think we’re going to get one more good snow storm, at least, but still- it’s nice to have this little pre-spring. :-)

  12. Hey all! I changed my name from sherishu, hopefully everyone will be able to crack the code. : ) I’ve been a bit MIA because the girls and I are at my folks, but will leave to drive home in a few hours. DH has supposedly gotten many projects accomplished in our absence…we’ll see. I try hard not to be a micromanager, but will serve a quality control function since we’re going to put it on the market in a month.

    In massively new news, DH has had a job opportunity fall into his lap in the past couple of days. No more money, actually a bit less, but something he’d really really like to do. I’m supportive, but a bit anxious about so much change at once. More on all that later.

    • Oooh, I am not crazy about this. I thought I was logging in with my username (which is different from my display name) to comment, but I guess I wasn’t. So it let me comment without being a registered user, I guess. I think I’m logged on properly now. Is there a way to not let people comment without being registered?

      • Since these are our temporary digs, Matt changed the settings so people could comment without registering first, he thought that might be one less layer of confusion for our readers. Plus, wordpress has a pretty good spam filter.

        Is that OK with everyone? Or should we make it registered users only?

  15. My mom had really high blood pressure last night and felt all queasy and dizzy and thought she would have to go to the ER, but the after like an hour she felt better and she even went to work today… IDK what’s up with that. She was barfing-sick at the end of last week, and then working really hard to catch up with her report cards and such.

    I am going out of town to do work for two days and one night. DH is here on his spring break, but he has lots of work to do and may have to retake a test and DD has a bad cold and the house is a huge mess and aaaaaagh!!! Plus what it my mom has more health trouble? Oh, and also my dad was being a belligerent drunk during the health crisis thing, so that’s new and fun. /sarcasm

  16. So this afternoon I take BOTH my sons to the DMV. 15 will be getting his permit and 26 will be starting the process to re-activate his long suspended license from his DUI’s between 17-19. Yes, he has been w/o a license for THAT LONG! But – he has finally completed all of his required classes and paid his fines (well, I paid a lot of it but at least it’s done) and I get the huge JOY of both boys driving at the same time. Hello gray hairs & heartburn. Also, my insurance is about to triple..

    Happy Monday?

    • Ugh. Car insurance. We’ve wrestled with this for 10 years now. One of the downsides of having kids very close in age. To compound matters, we have two kids who have cars that are in our name. One still has a loan out on this car because he didn’t have enough credit at the time to finance on his own. His car will be paid off this summer, though, so I’m getting both him and his brother off my insurance. They pay us every month, but, the way insurance works is that are, in effect, insured on every one’s car while my husband has to be insured on theirs because they are in his name.

      Of course, by the time I get these two and their cars off our insurance, I’ll be adding the two youngest kids.

      Back when we had four young drivers all at one time, we put a car in one child’s name and insured them all primarily on that car while we kept the rest of their cars in our name with just my husband being listed as the primary driver. Worked and kept rates down lower, but some insurance companies get really pissy with that.

  17. I don’t know if I’m the outlier here, but I see nothing wrong with a salon having a child free policy. A lot of women carve out salon time as precious relaxation time away from wailing children. And while infants can at least be immobilized, even the best mom is going to have trouble supervising/entertaining/controlling a bored preschooler from a salon chair in the middle of a haircut. And let’s face it, not all children and moms are well behaved – I’m not sure I’d want to be the hairdresser trying to hint to a client that maybe little Jimmy shouldn’t be touching the scissors.

    • Word. We have a really good salon here; they do the girls’ cuts as well as mine (too many years of my mom’s bowl cuts; I will pay trained professionals to cut my kids hair so help me bob.) They’re really good at kids’ cuts, and Jess and Lily are really well behaved when they’re there for their cuts. But I wouldn’t take either girl and make them sit on the sides while I had my cut – that’s just no fun for anybody, plus the possible risks of chemical spills, etc.

      So I don’t really have a problem with a salon that advertises itself child-free.

  18. I agree- but they need to be upfront about it. No one likes surprises and if I assume that my kids will be okay reading their books while I get a trim (and there would, in fact, be okay) then telling me when I show up that they CAN’t hang out? Major foul.

    • Age also seems relevant … there is a big difference between a child who is old enough to sit quietly reading and a toddler. Banning everyone under 18 seems over the top, but I can see that bringing a kid who isn’t old enough to be unsupervised around scissors, dyes, etc. is not ideal.

      • I agree that age is relevant, and I suspect few places would have any issue with a child old enough to sit quietly and unattended in the waiting area. But it becomes more difficult for the salon owner to set a policy. It’s one thing for the owner to say “no kids, but we can make an exception for Jenny since she sits quietly”. It’s another to say, “sure, bring your kids…aaaargh, it’s that demon child again!”

        Mine are more than old enough to sit quietly – individually. Together they’d start out just fine, but I can’t guarantee a swordfight won’t break out if they forget themselves. Ooops – sorry, mom!

        • I don’t know—I think there are plenty of places that can and do allow well-behaved children to sit quietly while asking the parents of unruly children to remove them. Theaters and movie theaters come to mind. Of course the obvious problem is what happens if, say, mom is mid-shampoo (or mid-cut) when all heck breaks loose.

    • No, Elisa wrote that post last week and scheduled it to post today. She must have forgotten about it. We won’t be posting at the old site until Matt gives us the all clear.

    • saw that and immediately thought of our previous discussion about it — and Swiss Clogs.

      Then Colbert did a few funny tweets afterwards about “in my heart” or whatever it was that spokesperson gave as an excuse~

    • Grrr, just lost a long comment – still getting used to this place. Anyway, I am very happy we have a place to play while MT is getting its overhaul.

      Thanks for the link, Katherine! Glad to see it got picked up, ‘çuz wow, the ignorance is staggering. I am quite used to explaining our, rather liberal, laws on things like gay marriage, legal soft drugs (pot), abortion and euthanasia, but Santorum’s comments were so off, that I really couldn’t get much further than ‘no!’

      The funny thing is that he got something almost right, but not. There have actually been news reports recently about elderly and sick people having ‘No CPR’ tattooed on their upper left chest. So rather the opposite from ‘what’s in Santorum’s heart’… These people want to prevent getting into a situation where euthanasia is no longer an option for them (one has to be concious and considered to be clear-minded to even be allowed to take that decision.

      Anyway, that’s more than enough explaining. Colbert did a good job and I would guess more people saw that, than the original statements by Santorum.

      • I’ve read about that in the US, too – old or ill people getting “DNR” (do not resuscitate) tatooed on their chests. Once an emergency response team puts someone on life support it can be difficult to get them off, even if you can show that this was against their wishes.

  21. So I made it here and it is summer apparently. It is March in upstate NY and our coolest day for the next week will be 60 degrees. Can’t be global warming though.

    • Nah…can’t be global warming even though I live in a climate much like yours and the trees and flowers have all been budding and blooming for a few weeks already….

      • My crocuses are blooming. Usually March is the “oh my lord, another snow storm? For the love of cheese, will this winter never end?!” month. Instead the birds are nesting, my daffs are up and almost ready to bloom, and we’re busting out shorts.

        It’s nutty.

  22. I donated to the paypal for BB’s DH, but I have no idea what is an appropriate amount for him to be getting, overall, from us to do this [or on a maintenance basis]. Would it be possible at some point for someone to give us a “this kind of work would normally cost us about X dollars and so far we have raised Y dollars.” I know none of us want to take advantage~

  23. Any non-US moms need or want another kid?

    My DS informed us over the weekend that if Rick Santorum wins the Presidency, he is leaving the country – so I guess I’ll need one of you to step forward to house him (goddesses-forbid!). He seems neutral on whether DH and I come with him, so you don’t need to worry about housing us, just him.

    In all seriousness, it did trigger a nice discussion about the election, and his feelings and opinions, and I was surprised at how much he’s thought about these things. Don’t know why I’m surprised – he does listen to us talk and watches TV, etc – but I guess in my head he’s still my baby boy…so it’s odd to hear him have political opinions.

    • I would offer Australia as a refuge, but the fine citizenry here (of which I am not one as yet) is in danger of electing a right wing nutter of its own in the next 18 months, so I don’t consider this a good time to migrate for political purposes…

    • We have a right wing government already, but in many ways it’s probably still left of the Democratic Party.

      I’ll take him. Sounds like he is growing up an amazing young man! I’d love for you to come too though :-)

      I think I will have to give minors precedence, but I would be incredibly happy to have more of you here!

        • I find the Australian government (and politics in general) far easier to ignore than the American one. And our two parties seem too close together for me to get too worked up about which one is in power these days. Having said that, Tony Abbot is a scary little man. But being on the west coast gives you a certain isolationism…the east coast ignores us and we ignore them. I was actually kind of amazed at some of the comments from some east coasters while I was in New Zealand. People have really weird ideas about Perth. But if it keeps them out…. :)

          • Tony Abbot is just the tip of the iceburg. Repeat after me: Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce. Foreign Minister Julie Bishop. Treasurer Joe Hockey.

            Oh yeah, try ignoring *that* quadrilla.

            • EEP. Did you have to make it so stark? Of course, I’m in Julie’s electorate. Safest one in Australia. Really, I may as well not even vote!!!!

              • Sorry to be a Debbie Downer, but every time I hear someone saying “aaaargh, anyone would be better than Juuuuuliar”, I whip that one out. By the time I get to Joe Hockey, they’re sweating, squirming and downright whimpering.

                Australians may hold most politicians in disdain, but they still hate to see pissants holding office.

                • You have a politician whose name is Joe Hockey? That guy would be Prime Minister in Canada without having to do anything but put his name on the ballot.

                    • He could be the Devil’s only son but as soon as you put that name on a ballot he’d be elected. Wouldn’t matter in my homeland. Name like Joe Hockey is like Dave Baseball in the States. He could eat a puppy on national television and he’d still be elected.

                    • heheheheh. Guess it’s a shame that he’s not named Joe Football for this country’s purpose, then.

                • See…I quite like Julia. But I’ve given up…it seems that most Australians can’t cope with a strong female in the lead. Whatever. And yeah…that list makes me cringe. But again…my electorate is sooo not in contention. Julie could skip the whole campaign and still win.

  24. Logging in w/ Twitter because I’m too lazy to set up a shell-MT-email-address WP account if we’re moving back. It’s Sister Q. I’ll be glad if we can move back–WP and I have a hate/hate relationship.

    It was an insane week last week and this weekend, but hopefully this week will be pretty quiet.

    I wouldn’t mind being less tired, but really, the only thing that’s bugging me right now is low blood pressure. It was normal-to-low to start with, so with pregnancy it’s low enough to make me dizzy. And I still have another 6 weeks or so before it starts going back up. If it gets worse, I’ll have to discuss it with my NP next week when I see her.

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