Another semester ends

How I felt after finishing my finals:

How I actually looked after finishing my finals:

and five seconds later:

and five minutes later, after checking the degree requirements to see how close I am to finishing:

Changes

Sometimes kids seem to grow up almost by stealth. For months, you go along thinking you have a toddler, and then one day you look over and realize that somewhere along the line your child morphed into a preschooler and come to think of it you can't think how long it's been since you had to have the "drawing is only on paper" talk or the "some words are bathroom words" talk or the "GET THAT OUT OF YOUR MOUTH THIS SECOND" talk.

And then sometimes, it happens more quickly.

This morning when I first picked up Baby S to change her diaper, she felt at least three pounds heavier than yesterday. I know that sounds crazy, but it's true (and no, it's not just my muscles dying slowly of disuse - that's happening too, but too slowly to be the issue here).

By this evening, she had:

- Poured a bowl of cereal on the floor.

- Stood on a chair methodically taking all but two eggs out of the container of eggs Viggy had just brought home and breaking them (and when I came back in the room - this whole thing took, seriously, about a minute - her reaction was to point, smile proudly, and say "Bee-bee!").

- Crept up behind Adi and N as they were laying side-by-side on the couch reading (awww) and, grinning fiendishly, used one hand each to pull both of their ponytails at the same time. Repeatedly.

- Taken off her own diaper four times.

- Unraveled most of a spool of dental floss.


I think I officially have to stop calling her Baby S, and start calling her Toddler S or something.

In retrospect I maybe should have seen this day coming. She did draw on one of my library books last week (fortunately, it was by Neil Gaiman - if I have to be stuck buying a book off the library, I'm glad it's at least one I wouldn't have minded buying anyway), and she's been getting extremely picky about what clothes she wants to wear (she doesn't have the words yet to tell us which clothes she wants, but you can tell she wants the pink dress when you try to put on the yellow dress and she starts kicking it away while yelling "daidaidaidaidai").

And just in time for us all to spend a whole summer together, too. I'm not worried, though. Toddlers are fun, as long as you keep them away from the scissors and off the windowsill and away from the markers and from the bathtub, and remember to tape their diapers on. It's a lot of fun, really.

And the eggs. Keep them away from the eggs.

Storytime - Adi

A conversation that Adi recently had with our neighbor G, as related by G.

I should mention up front that G has taken Adi to school on the bus with her daughter pretty much every morning this year, and that Adi and her daughter are friends, and that G is a very nice person.

G: Adi, how much do you like me?
A: Not much.
G: I take you to school every day, and you say you don't like me much?
A: Right, not much.
G: I was going to get you some chocolate milk, you know.
A: Oh. OK, so ask me again.
G: Adi, how much do you like me?
A: On a scale from one to ten, I'd give you a seven.
G: Only a seven?
A: OK, an eight.
G: Eight's not high enough.
A: OK, a nine.
G: Nine's not high enough.
A: OK, now you're at zero.

A question for my atheist readers

I have a question. I realize it's virtually impossible not to cause offense - but I'm really curious, so I'm going to go ahead and ask anyway.

OK.

What is it with atheists and online comment sections?

Let me explain.

I would have thought that out of all of the obnoxious comments people make online about why anyone with a brain should believe this-or-that, the overwhelming majority would be coming from people who belong to a religion that emphasizes actively seeking converts.

And yet, for every comment like this: "That is why our once proud Nation is sinking we have no faith anymore, other faiths are given precedence over our faith, Christianity." (Not from an Israeli paper, obviously)

I see, like, twenty like this: "It's over. There is no EVIDENCE for any god(s) and certainly no EVIDENCE for any life after this one. Time to grow up. Fantasy Island is bankrupt. Reality is not that scary." or this more concise version, "Ha ha ha ha...Religion!"

And I'm not talking about just one paper here, or one day - this is a pattern I've seen in pretty much every comment section that isn't explicitly religious (eg, in Ynet, not Kikar Hashabat), for a few months now.

I understand that atheists, like any group of people with any kind of belief, think they are right, and enjoy it when others agree with them. But... shouldn't they be, like, 50th in line when it comes to pushing their views on others? They have no reason to expect spiritual brownie points for making an effort to convert the masses (to the extent that calling one's intellectual opponents brainless imbeciles can be considered an effort); that directly follows from literally the only universal tenet of atheism.

I was trying to come up with philosophies that would make less sense at the top of the comment-section-proselytizing list, and I could only think of a couple.

Agnostics - it would be pretty funny if there were huge groups of people going around and writing things like, "I don't know what I believe, and neither should you!!"

Druze, Scientologists, etc - Any faith where major tenets are only revealed to insiders. It would amuse me to see dozens of posts each day along the lines of, "I can't believe you people are dumb enough to believe that. It's so obvious that the real truth is [redacted], so there."

Anyway. I did have one theory - that people who believe in religions that proselytize tend to believe the consequence of failing to convince another person of the rightness of their faith is that God makes the other person's afterlife worse, whereas atheists believe the consequence of failing to convince others of the rightness of their faith is that other people make their life-life worse.

And when it comes down to it, almost everyone finds their own here-and-now much more motivating than someone else's afterlife, whatever their beliefs.

The flaw in that theory is that there are plenty of religious people who think secularism/modern liberalism/feminism/whatever threatens their current way of life. But - maybe those people don't have internet? Or if they do, are too busy over on WND to post comments to articles in more mainstream news outlets?

So... yeah. That was a long question. And hopefully not too offensive.

I honestly would like to hear an explanation for this (are there more "converts," with all the new-found enthusiasm for sharing one's beliefs that often goes along with that, to atheism than in the other direction? are there atheist groups that do actively proselytize? is it mostly just one angry atheist guy with nothing else to do? etc). Ever since I first noticed, I've been noticing more and more, to the point where when I see a "stoooopid religious people" comment I find myself wishing I knew the person's phone number so I could call and ask, "you, of all people, why do you care?? I get why the Christian guy cares, but what's your story?"

I spent the morning in my kids' gan (preschool) earlier this week.

Oh my goodness. It was like a prison yard scene from a B movie. Except that they didn't give us guards any tear gas to keep things under control.

I should note that the much-adored Ganenet was not there, which is why I was there - they needed two parent volunteers so that the assistants would be legally allowed to keep the gan open in her absence. So hopefully things are better under her watch.

***

In related news, I had a realization regarding labels for kids.

I always found it strange that there are these super-generic disorders for kids. Like, Oppositional Defiance Disorder, which has symptoms like "Actively refuses to comply with majority's requests or consensus-supported rules," and "Performs actions deliberately to annoy others." Literally every symptom I've seen for that one could easily describe 100% of toddlers. So why not narrow the definition of "disorder" a bit to something less uselessly vague?

But now I get it. These are the your-child-seems-to-be-possessed disorders. These are the labels you can use when help is desperately needed for reasons that can't be described in a sufficiently professional way.

There's no technical term for "Your child is sweet and cute and smart and fun, it's just that 50% of the time she appears to be channeling the spirits of the greater demons." So you call it ODD or something else that's vague enough to apply to any poorly behaved child, yet professional-sounding enough that the state will cough up extra money for treatment.

There are a couple of kids in my kids' gan who I believe could use an ODD diagnosis or two.

***

I don't want to give the impression that D is constantly running around naked and using bad language or anything. It's really only like ten percent of the time. Usually she's only half-naked, and is more interested in ferreting out hidden ice pops than in expanding her younger sister's vocabulary in bad directions.

But that said, I have another Dani story to share.

This one takes place as D's friend M is visiting. M comes here once a week when her mom works late, and not infrequently spends her first twenty minutes or so here upset that her mom isn't here, a feeling she expresses by sitting on the couch boycotting the fun.

So M was sitting on the couch not playing.

N: M, do you want to come play with us?
M: No!
N: We're playing babies.
M: No!
D (sympathetically): M, do you want to say bad words with me? Like poopy, peepee, penis?

That whole army thing

So the more I think about the attempts to get hareidi men to enlist in the army, the more I don't understand how this is supposed to work, exactly.

One idea is economic disincentives not to serve. Which could be effective. Except that the other big issue people/the government have/has with hareidim is that so many of them are under the poverty line due to lifestyle choices. Meaning economic disincentives are 1. unlikely to work and 2. a step in the wrong direction.

I'm going to assume that keeping 90% of hareidi men ages 18-22 in jail isn't an option. (Inhumane.)

I'm going to assume that creating army teams of three - two hareidi guys to guard, one non-hareidi guy to shoot them if they try to run away - is also not an option. (Not cost-effective.)

But on the other hand, having two different laws for two different groups of people is also not going to work. Unless they're Israeli Arabs, who also don't have to enlist, but let's not go there.

So. I like MK Elazar Stern's idea - make anyone who doesn't enlist pay. People who don't do army pay higher taxes for a while.

It's not quite an economic disincentive, since it improves the current economic situation by allowing those who choose not to serve to join the workforce immediately, rather than wait until they age out of the system.

And it lets everyone feel like they're a part of things. People who can't serve in the army for whatever reason can still feel proud knowing they've helped. Every time the IDF uses Iron Dome to shoot down a $15-dollar rocket instead of just shooting the guys trying to fire it in the heads, they (the non-soldier tax-payers) will have the warm fuzzy feeling of knowing that the taxes they paid that year covered 1/200th of that.

The only question is what to do if people refuse to either join the army or join the workforce.

Which is basically the dilemma we're currently in.

So, not really a solution.

But other than that, a good plan.

I have a really good reason for not updating my blog this time: I am an imbecile.

So what was it this time, you ask?

This time, I somehow got it into my head that my final paper in one course would be just like the others (except, you know, it would be the last one) when in fact it was supposed to be an in-depth analysis of a country's political system. And much longer. So I was pretty busy for the few days after discovering that. Which happened to also be the few days before it was due.

But hey, it could have happened to anyone, right?

Right?

****

Viggy and I recently took Baby S to the consulate recently to apply for a passport for her, so that she can come with when I reunite with SNAN, and do some other stuff.

The consulate here is a single room. The waiting room is also the actual meeting room, so as you're sitting there in front of the consul dude hearing about all the mistakes you made filling out your forms, you can simultaneously feel the glares from a dozen more competent people who won't have their turn until you finish.

And then Baby S noticed that we were doing something with pens and paper, which means DRAWING, which means OMG WHY AM I NOT DRAWING WHHYYYY it is NOT FAIR!!!!

So then we had the mistakes, and the glaring, and a child climbing up and down us wailing, "Daa-ing!! DAAA-IIIIING!!!!" and grabbing at the pens.

Fortunately, I came up with a simple but genius solution, to wit: let Baby S draw on me. I left the room looking like I'd been attacked by a flock of rabid pens, but that's the price you pay for keeping the decibel level down.
****

N was sick Monday. When I went to pick D up from daycare, she informed me sadly that it was "NOT fun, because N wasn't there."

Then we got home and she and N raced to each other and gave each other a big hug. Awwww.

Stistarly love: it doesn't always involve hitting.
****
I had the following conversation with Adi recently. It started when Viggy mentioned something about the last Twilight movie.

A: Twilight? I love Twilight.
Me: Honey, I don't think you've seen Twilight.
A: Yes I have! Twilight is my favorite!
Me: No, only grown-ups see Twilight. Twilight isn't for kids.
A: I saw Twilight! At E's house!
Me: E's mom let you watch Twilight???
A: Yes! Me and E love Twilight! (Pause) And porky-pie, and Apple-jack, and all the rest of the My Little Ponies!
Me: *practically faints in relief*

(not that My Little Ponies is super educational, either, but I'm pretty sure there's no necrophilia semi-abusive undead romance going on there. And that "spider monkey" is never used as a sexy nickname.)

****

Speaking of Twilight, my plan to become an expert on all things paranormal-teen-fiction related (a profession that, funnily enough, I didn't see in this year's job rankings) has been thwarted by the local library's poor selection. And the fact that many of the books are objectively terrible.

Luckily, I have my love story starring a serial-killing clown to work on while I wait for more books to become available.