Livingston, I Presume

Explained

Via Sher comes this hilarious video that explains the birth of the kilt. Since it is, as Sher points out, Burns Night, and it is, as Melissa McEwan points out, finally legal again after 21 years to import a haggis from Scotland to the United States, I think it's appropriate:

I hope all of my Scots friends are enjoying a festive evening, with all the haggis they can...um...stomach?

Extra super duper majority

In the clip below, Jon Stewart perfectly encapsulates the seething rage I've felt as I've watched the Democratic majority squander its every opportunity to actually do something for fear of the Big Bad Filibuster. As you watch the fallout from the Massachusetts Parade of Suck (TM Looky Daddy), please keep in mind that the Democrats, even without Ted Kennedy's seat, have a larger majority than the Republicans ever did under George W. Bush, and then heed Jon Stewart's wise words:

"It's not that the Democrats are playing checkers and the Republicans are playing chess. It's that the Republicans are playing chess and the Democrats are in the nurse's office because once again they glued their balls to their thighs."

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A first grader

Last week, we met with three teachers at Connery's school to try to figure out what to do with him. His kindergarten teacher was pretty sure that he needed more of a challenge. The second grade teacher who has been allowing him to come to her class for reading instruction was pretty sure that he had missed too much of the school's very specific vocabulary on spelling and reading to make the reading class useful. And the first grade teacher--who was in fact the teacher we hand-picked for Connery last spring, until she moved to a first grade classroom--was pretty sure she could make him feel both comfortable and challenged if we put him in her room. So starting today, Connery is a first grader.

I'm still boggling a little to have had a kindergartener come home last week and a first grader this week. I hope it's the right choice. He was excited about the prospect, and that was our final determining factor. I'm sure in 11 years when we still don't have a college fund ready that we'll wish we had another year.

Marriage...that dream within a dream

I can't claim any special understanding of the law beyond what I learned in an excellent Philosophy of Law course at the University of Montana in 1994. To do so would not be far off from saying that I know a lot about Russia because I can see it from my house. Not that I can see Russia from my house and, actually, I do know more about Russia than most people, but that's not where I was going with this. Where was I going with this?

Oh right, I was going to remark on the line of argument being made in the Prop 8 trial going on in California. According to the Sacramento Bee, attorneys defending California's same-sex marriage ban are arguing that "the fundamental purpose of marriage is procreation, to raise children in an 'intact' family and that same-sex marriage could erode that purpose."

As I said to Lynn in her Facebook thread about the trial, OMGWTFBBQ?

The fundamental purpose of marriage is procreation? Really?

This was not made clear to me at any point during the process of getting married. I was never asked, "Do you and your husband intend to have children?" Not once. I was asked to swear that we were not first cousins and, indeed, that I was a woman and he was a man. But our childbearing plans were not a line of inquiry.

Duh.

Because everybody and their dog and box turtle (whom they will logically want to marry if gay marriage is allowed, despite the difference between a grown, consenting adult and a reptile) would be up in arms if there were a required "breeding test" before couples got to the altar. It would seem logical to me that if you require some people to pass a breeding test and not others, that is pretty much the definition of discrimination. Am I missing something?

Perhaps the great legal scholars of the anti-gay right can enlighten me on this one. Because otherwise I know a lot of invalid marriages running around. Hell, my own would have been invalid for almost five years, assuming that one had to produce a child within the requisite nine months of the honeymoon under this new regime. Somehow I don't think that's the direction we want to be going, although it does bring up all kinds of hypotheticals:

• Would post-menopausal women be allowed to get married?
• Would everyone wanting to get married have to be tested for fertility and barred if they were shown to be infertile?
• How about people with disabilities that affect their reproductive capabilities?
• How quickly would you have to have a child to "validate" your marriage?
• Would one child be sufficient to prove that validity?
• What about people who just don't want to have kids? Are they to be forced?

Honestly, it doesn't take a lot of imagination to see the problems with this line of argument. Am I wrong here? Please hurry with the explanations, oh California defense attorneys, because I'm a busy woman with further procreating to do, apparently. Plus, Chip, the box turtle, and I have been waiting a long time to solemnize our relationship and you're really slowing things down.

Brian Schweitzer TOTALLY reads my blog

Did you see this? Did you?

That's right. Just days after I published my letter to him, Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer canceled the pay raises that I was bitching about. That's the power of the blogosphere, people. 

(Yeah, right!)

Seriously, though, I am pleased to see that he took to heart the criticism that came from all over about the raises. And kudos to him for recognizing the problem with them.

"These are tougher times," Schweitzer was quoted as saying in an AP article that appeared on the Missoulian's website. "We're going to ask you to do more and pay you the same."

In general, I think asking people to do more for the same pay sucks rocks, but that's kind of the way things are at the moment. Once we get through the crisis, I would hope that these employees' raises--along with some nice ones for all the other state employees whose wages have been frozen--will be forthcoming.

Welcome, Real Time listeners!

Thank you for listening to Real Time with George Cole and for visiting my blog. It was great fun to talk with George and Megan about blogging, and I hope you'll poke around a little bit to see what Livingston, I Presume is all about. 

If you figure it out, be sure to let me know.

EDITED TO ADD: (If you have no idea what I'm talking about but have come here in some other way, like searching for a recipe for chicken noodle soup with mashed potatoes, you can click here to listen to the the Real Time interview.)

This one's for Audrey

Via the TOL Off the Deep End blog comes this little gem of an advertisement for an Estonian evening news program. Don't worry, if you have ever watched the Simpsons, you won't need to know a bit of Estonian to understand.

I posted it especially for Audrey, who spent two years in Estonia as a Peace Corps volunteer and is now engaged in some less formal diplomacy. I'm glad to have her (and Dan) representing us.

I write letters to the governor

Dear Governor Schweitzer:

Normally, I'm a big fan. I voted for you and was very pleased when you won. I have in the past defended you vigorously from spurious claims that you go in big for pot, porn, and perversion, and I would still stand up to those kinds of slanderous whack-jobs. However, and I'm only saying this because I care, I really wish you would stop talking about the death spiral of the Montana economy while simultaneously giving your employees handsome raises. The timing is probably coincidental, but it doesn't look good and it certainly doesn't engender good feelings among ordinary Montanans, some of whom had been hoping to find jobs at some point in this young decade.

It's just not good form to tell people to make plans to cut budgets that have already been cut to the bone while not doing the same yourself. People will talk. And I know that your budget director has said that these were not so much raises as increased pay for promotions, but you have to realize that elsewhere in the public and private sector, plenty of people are doing more work and getting the same--sometimes even less--pay. That's the way things work right now. Employers lay people off but the same amount of work has to get done, and that means people step up and do it. And sometimes those same remaining people take pay cuts and put up with the more work and less pay because they know it's better than the alternative, i.e. no job at all.

I also realize that your budget director has said that these raises are not costing any more money and that in fact they are saving the state money through the magic or reorganization. I have no doubt that might be true. But the fact is that many of these people--talented though I'm sure they are--were already making the kind of money that most Montanans can only dream about. One of your employees got a 5 percent raise that brought her to more than $95,000 per year. Even before that 5 percent, that's a lot of damn money in a state with some of the lowest average wages in the country. (Incidentally, the budget director himself makes $99,998. Because we totally won't notice that figure is only $2 away from $100K. Shhhh, don't tell!)

Look, I get it. And I don't begrudge people who work hard making a fair wage, I really don't. It just that out here in the rest of Montana, there are a lot of us hard-working people who haven't been making anything close to a fair wage, um, ever. And the rest of the State's workers had to agree to a pay freeze, even though they are probably doing more work than ever before as well.

Governor Schweitzer, when you proclaim loudly that all state agencies had better start preparing for budget cuts, you would do well to look home first. I don't think you're a bad guy and I don't even think that your employees didn't deserve those raises. I just think that there are plenty of people around the state who deserve them just as much but will go without because that's what they've been told they have to do. And those are the lucky ones...the ones who, you know, have jobs.

Yours sincerely,

Nicole

Um, ow?

They say that you can't have a second child until you've forgotten how hard it is to have a baby around. Our minds are good at dismissing the four-a-night feedings and colic and explosive poo and really good at remembering the downy heads and baby smells. So it is with kittens. We always remember how cute they are, with their string-playing and tiny meows. We forget this:

 

The razor-sharp needle claws. Note to self: Newton does not want to be picked up just now. The eye goobers can wait.

New Year, New Pet, New...ton

We ventured into the unknown for Christmas and agreed to let Connery adopt a kitten--something he had recently professed to be his heart's true desire. I have never seen him so excited for a present, once he realized that his present was not just a litterbox and stuffed cat. ("Merry Christmas, son, here's a box where an actual cat would shit! But you get a stuffed one!")

We told him that he could adopt the kitten from one of our local animal shelters (we're blessed with two excellent ones here in Gallatin and Park counties) after Christmas, and he held us to our word. Even though he went to Great Falls to stay with Nana and Papa after Christmas so that we could get into his playroom with pitchforks and a backhoe loader, he still wanted to come home on the first possible day that the shelters would be open and, presumably, raining kittens. It was a little surprising, because normally we would have to remove him from the comfortable, warm, treat-filled home of Nana and Papa with some dynamite. Such is the power of Newton:

 

Connery visited with several cats during our stay at the shelter, but this was the one he bonded with. When I asked him for an answer to put on the form as to why he wanted to adopt this kitten, he replied, "Because I like him and he likes me." Cuteness.

The only one not thrilled is Sotek. Our faithful kitty companion for almost nine years, she was not amused to find a new kitten in the guest room. In fact, she's thrown up twice since we let him out of quarantine. Next time is sure to be on our pillows. I'm checking into waterproof covers. Since the last second cat she endured turned out to be Bean, I guess can understand her reticence. 

For all the angst Newton is causing our older kitty, however, he is bringing considerable joy to the rest of the family. Brought in to the shelter as a practically feral stray, he is still pretty skittish, except with Connery. It's pretty obvious to whom he credits his new home.

 

More surprising to me has been his willingness to interact with Emerson. I would have thought he would run off right away, but he has warmed up quickly to her. Meanwhile she loves him to distraction, yelling out, "'TEE!" (her word for kitty) every time she catches sight of him:

 

Best. Kids' Christmas present. Ever.