clickies

today's clickies are brought to you by nightdog_barks, lover of birds and coffee and alternative universes.

man wins lawsuit against polio vaccine maker after he was infected with polio through his daughter's poop. she'd had a live oral vaccine. talk about one in a million odds. more information here.

(you just know there's going to be at least one fool out there that won't get their child vaccinated now because of this.)

biker brawl in sydney airport.

rare star to supernova link established.

deadly nerve toxin affects deep sea creatures.

today, things are even more boring than yesterday. more cleaning, some unpacking, blah blah blah, boring. not even nice enough to go to the park.

this coming week is my last week of freedom before yet another week of pointless school holidays. good times. or something. i hate our school board for this; unfortunately transferring him to another district is nowhere near feasible, and us moving to another district is even worse if we want to do things like get around during the day (chris can't drive and neither can i, although for entirely different reasons.)

*suppresses the usual rant* where would i go to get an explanation for the number of idiotic school holidays?

clickies (the evening edition)

I fell asleep for like, three hours. this is bad, because i'm probably going to have trouble getting to sleep again, and round and round and round. my shoulder is full of hatred today, and i have a doctor's appointment tomorrow, which is only annoying because between going there and being there and going back again it eats up about forty percent of the day and i'm hoarding time without kid right now. stupid school, stupid orcs, stupid fellowship.

this is where the bitching about school holidays begins. just in case you're sick of hearing about it and want to skim.

regarding holidays:

the child gets at least one two hour early dismissal per month on average (i have no idea why these are), and one hour early dismissals before any holiday on a weekday (so before the thanksgiving break, at the end of school, etcetc.) two weeks of short days for parent/teacher conferences; ten days off at christmas: four randomly occuring professional development days, a week off at president's day/mid-february and another week off at the end of march/beginning of april; and memorial day off. and ten weeks off for summer vacation. in my mind this adds up to way too much time off, but (snark on) i'm one of those people who sees schools as free babysitting, of course (snark off) (this is a frequent complaint voiced toward anyone who complains about school holidays; i've seen it in many a comment thread. i don't know where they're sending their kids to school to where it's free, for a start. jesus.)

(note: for the record i realize that i am very not-impartial in this situation, and i realize that i have my own issues regarding staying home with children which have been colored by having a high-needs child in concert with my own difficult to manage physical and emotional disabilities and the kind of temperament that does not respond well to (tries desperately to make this statement neutral at least) being stuck at home at the beck and call of your offspring (i tried, i really did, but it didn't entirely work).

i probably bitch more than i should (which is nowhere near as much as I would unchecked. i am exercising quite a bit of restraint here.)

That said: it is difficult and/or expensive to find babysitting, daycamps are extremely expensive and (mostly) impossible because we're still in the early stages of potty training, and even if we do find babysitters they have a habit of disappearing, never coming back, potentially calling the police or child protective services because they can't handle the kid.

which all adds up to 'i am stuck in more than the average parent because other people fucking suck' and i'm rather bitter. also: it is sunday night after a three day weekend and right now the kid is living on borrowed time. even regular weekends are bad. next week is going to be hell. and this is AN IMMENSE IMPROVEMENT over the previous status quo.

bitching ends here

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today's clickies are brought to you by thewlisian_afer, whose clickies posts are perpetually better than my own, and who has also been adopted as family. (some of you have also been adopted as family. i do that.)

teachers force students to fight in steel cages.

politcian offered vibrator to screw herself with. very thoughtful, i think.

nasa delays test of space station urine recycler

china's last eunuch spills sex secrets. throwing out someone else's pickled genitalia is just rude. fuckers.

archives shed light on Darwin's student days.

twits

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