Potty training sucks....but at least he's not lonely.

My youngest son fell in love with his diaper at the ripe old age of "just fucking born"....and they have been a monogamous couple ever since.  He does not go without a diaper longer than it takes to get a bath.  And until recently, he also HAD to be fully dressed at all times.  I say until just recently because he has started taking off his shirt like his two older brothers at night when they are wrestling.

So.  He's been completely covered up since birth, got it?
Well today, I started forcing the potty training issue.  I took his diaper off at 8am and told him he could have them back at nap time and then again at bedtime.
Seriously.  Day One of potty training has been an epic fail.  He's peed three times....none of those times were in a potty.

I need a drink.

But he hasn't asked for a diaper since his hour long meltdown over losing them this morning.  Wanna know why?  He has a new friend.  And he really likes this new friend.  They've played Wii together, talked and gotten to know each other.  He even brought him over and introduced him to me while I was reading.  I'm just waiting for him to name it.  Wanna guess who his new friend is??

I'm just hoping his new friend is enough of a rebound to get him over his obsession with his diaper.  We can hope, right??

Sorry, no clever picture tonight....given the subject matter, I couldn't find one that would be appropriate.  Give me a break, I've had a rough day.

I'm here for your movie watching needs....

I love the theaters on base.  Mainly because they are CHEAP.  Like, I can get my whole 5-member family in for just a dollar or two more than I pay for one ticket at regular theaters.  So I keep an eye on what’s playing and when something that we’ve been really wanting to see comes through, we pack up the kiddos and pay our $13 and enjoy.  

Today, the movie featured was TRON: Legacy.

Now, I LOVE Jeff Bridges.  Besides being a very talented actor, he is also a really amazing photographer.  And it’s hard not to smile at the laid back, “surfer dude” sort of way he carries himself.  BUT.  CGIed Jeff Bridges is creepy.  He just looks so wrong.  Wrong, wrong, wrong. 

 

Right Jeff

Wrong Jeff

For half the movie, I sat there staring at Wrong Jeff trying to figure out just what made him so fucking creepy.  His face looked normal when he wasn’t moving or talking.  But when he did move or talk, there was just an “off-ness” to him. 

 And then I realized…..yes, his face is technically moving, but there’s not enough muscle-movement to coincide with the action.  His mouth moves, but his face muscles do not.  And it makes for one creepy looking face! 

WHEW!   

Once that was figured out, I was fully capable of enjoying the movie.  And it was a good movie.  Going to see it in 3D would have been amazing.  The actors (and actress) in it were really really good……but Michael Sheen should get mad props for absolutely stealing the few scenes he was in.  He was hilarious. 

He's come a long way since "Aro" from New Moon....

So.  Go see TRON: Legacy.  You can fully enjoy it now from start to finish because I worked out the “Why is Wrong Jeff Bridges so fucking creepy??” problem.  You’re welcome. 

So what I'm saying is,,,.sexually, I can see it...as a lifestyle, not so much.

I’m in the process of reading a trilogy of fanfics about a Dominant/submissive relationship.  They are really well done, and I am enjoying them immensely (so much so that I’m actually reading three books at a time right now, because I can’t choose which one I like best).  I walk a fine line with enjoying these types of stories.  My favorite books are the Kushiel’s Legacy series by Jacqueline Carey.  The heroine in the first three books (Phedre no Delauney de Montreve) is a masochist. 

I am decidedly not.

But Phedre is far different from the submissives in all the other stories I’ve read/watched.  Anne Rice wrote a retelling of the Sleeping Beauty story (under the pseudonym A.N. Roquelaure) called The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty that I literally couldn’t force myself to finish.  It disgusted me.  I was telling someone about my reaction to that book and they asked me how I could love and re-read 1000x the Kushiel’s Series, when a lot of the same actions were taking place in both books.  The difference is most definitely choice.   

Phedre, like the submissives in other stories that I enjoy, choose to take part in their lifestyle because it brings them sexual pleasure.  No one decided it for them.  They don’t submit in every aspect of their lives.  They had selected periods of time where their Doms lord over them and when those times are over, they shed their submissiveness and take back control of their lives and actions.  

In the stories that I can’t stomach, like The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty, the women are forced into these roles.  And usually, they learn to love their place under the heel of their oppressor.  It really just smacks of patriarchy and misogyny.  I have definite knee-jerk reactions to these themes that I will get into later….but suffice it to say, I don’t find these types of books entertaining.  They actually kind of infuriate me.  I think they tend to normalize these types of abusive relationships whether they mean too or not.  We need look no further than the patriarchal religious ideals of “Husband as the Head” and the wife submitting to the husband as the church submits to Christ to see just how easy it is to convince someone that they can and should be happy in their own oppression.  But that’s a subject for another day (oh, but I will get to it, rest assured).  

So I’m enjoying this trilogy, but it once again reaffirms that I will probably never really understand these relationships. 

 (That is not to say that my lack of understanding equates into judgment on my part…your gig is your gig, and I don’t understand a lot of things.)

(Or rather, I should say if you’re choosing this for yourself, I’m not judging you.  If it’s being dictated to you, and you submit because you feel you have to for religious or safety purposes, I pity you.  If you are simultaneously trying to push your oppression onto me through religious dictates or by changing societal mores….I am probably judging you and pitying you at the same time.) 

I'm so thankful that I've finally found a use for my massive random picture collection.

  

PS.  I watched The Tourist last night.  I don’t know what all criticism was about; it was great! 

Losing my blog virginity....

I've been dying for a place to use this cartoon since I saved it.

I've never blogged before.  Really really blogged anyway.  I fooled around a little when I first made a profile on MySpace, but never gone big league.  I don't know if I am capable of this type of commitment, but I'm going to give it go anyway.  I mean, why not?  It's actually a lot like talking to myself, which I do a lot, but now no one will laugh at me or try to medicate me.

My main problem will be:   I am super judgmental.  Especially of myself. I love to write and be creative, but I've NEVER been able to finish anything that I didn't have to turn in for a grade.  Mostly because when I go back to edit it.....I second guess everything I wrote and revise it to death.  So.  Even though I'm currently about 1/3 of the way into a story that I dreamed up....I know that it will never get finished if I don't learn to write without berating myself right out of my own ideas.  Especially since I dreamed up this story almost a year ago, and haven't finished it because I can't stop myself from revising what I have written.

This blog will be a lesson in writing without overly second guessing myself.  I will not process my thoughts through my "Diplomacy" filter a hundred times before hitting that big orange "PUBLISH POST" button.  Consider yourself warned.