Many moons ago, I was forcibly uprooted from the co-ed, hippie, Montessori learning enclave of my early childhood and enrolled by my parents in Catholic all-girls’ school. Whereas once I had daily worn teal-and-black animal-print high tops and tee-shirts celebrating the fall of the Berlin Wall, I was suddenly thrust into a world of uniform plaid jumpers, saddle-shoes, and dour-faced nuns.
Orderly rows of assigned desks replaced the colorful carpets on which I was accustomed to lounging. I was no longer permitted to while away the hours in the library, obsessively consuming comics and books on the Salem witch trials, or scribbling in my journal. Instead, study time was strictly scheduled and misbehavior was publicly punished. I was forced to take math beyond pushing a desultory bead around an abacus.
Math, in fact, was the fundamental cause of this disorienting change of course, as recent testing demonstrated that my nine-year-old self possessed the vocabulary of the average college student (thanks to my insatiable appetite for reading) and the math skills of your average three-year-old sorting out Cheerios at the breakfast table. It seems my parents found this troubling, and despite the fact that I could adeptly weave hammocks from plastic six-pack rings and was extremely disturbed by the Gulf War, some basic educational tenets were lacking in my development.
This alleged inability (or total unwillingness) to learn math was also what prompted my mother to chauffeur me, whining, to Kumon twice a week, while my dad suffered my crying fits over everything from fractions to basic Algebra. If you are wondering if the extra-curricular Kumon teaching methods are effective, I can only say that my math skills sped from 0 to 60 and the school was later that same year forced to furnish me with a sixth-grade math book – this for the girl who, months prior, had barely mastered basic addition. In my experience, Kumon is the steroids of arithmetic, and for your math-averse child, akin to a prolonged, pinpointed torture session. Obviously, I plan to subject my own children to it in the future, when they’ve been very bad. (more…)
This video was emailed around my UK office yesterday and you could tell when someone watched it because of the audible gasp, even though we had all read the accompanying headline and knew what we were about to see. That headline? “Cat owners hunt for woman who put pet in wheelie bin.” Here’s the video:
The mystery middle-aged white woman in Coventry (quickly identified as Mary Bale after the video appeared all over the web) was captured on a family’s security camera dropping their cat, Lola, into a garbage bin. Walking by, Bale stops to pet the friendly kitty before looking around for witnesses, gripping the cat by its scruff, and dropping it into the garbage before walking away. Darryl and Stephanie Andrews-Mann searched for the family pet for 15 hours before finding Lola, and were flummoxed as to how the accident occurred – until they reviewed the tapes from their home security camera, which they had installed two years ago after their car was repeatedly damaged by drivers-by.
Darryl, 26, said: “I’d like to know how she would feel if she was stuck in a bin for 15 hours without food or drink.
“It was really hot day outside. I searched nearby alleyways [for Lola] but suddenly heard a tiny meowing coming from the bin. I looked inside and I found her in the bin. She was terrified and covered in her own mess.”
Unsurprisingly, a large crowd was reported to gather outside Bale’s home and death threats were received as the video spread. The Metroreports that Bale is under investigation by the RSPCA, and her mother was in the unenviable position of defending her daughter’s actions: (more…)
Last night I was talking to a friend who happened to mention that his wife has gained a bunch of weight and he’s not exactly thrilled about it. In fact, it has become enough of an issue for him as to cause problems for him when it comes to sexing his wife. We didn’t get into the specifics, but safe to say he’s less than enthused about banging her and he wanted to know how he could let her know that this was a problem. And so I thought about it, for quite a while. But I didn’t come up with any method that didn’t involve straight up telling her, “Babe, your ass is gettin’ too big.” In the end I told him he’d have to indirectly shame her somehow, because women are usually the most critical on themselves especially when dealing with the size of our ass.
Now, save all your outrage over how he should love her and want her no matter what she looks like, mother of his children, blahblahblah. That’s bullshit. Loving someone in the long term sense has nothing to do with keeping your sex appeal, that’s a separate issue that needs to be tended to as part of the whole. If anything, keeping yourself attractive to your partner is a vital component to staying together happily, in my opinion. That and good head. I wouldn’t expect my man/woman to still get hot in the pants for me if I was busting outta mine and that’s just the way it goes. Staying together for a couple decades is hard enough without having to lie to your partner about their looks and what effect it has on your libido.
But, I would like to offer him some better advice if possible. Thoughts?
Many moons ago, I was forcibly uprooted from the co-ed, hippie, Montessori learning enclave of my early childhood and enrolled by my parents in Catholic all-girls’ school. Whereas once I had daily worn teal-and-black animal-print high tops and tee-shirts celebrating the fall of the Berlin Wall, I was suddenly thrust into a world of uniform plaid jumpers, saddle-shoes, and dour-faced nuns.
