Selfish Mom

Better late than never…

Jun 30, 2009 Amy in the Morning

Obviously, we made it home OK, because her I am posting.  After managing to make great time for most of the trip home from Buffalo to NYC, we ran into two accidents and almost constant construction in the last 50 miles.  Then I ended up in the wrong lane about two freakin’ blocks from the hospital, and was forced to get on the Brooklyn Bridge and then turn around and go back to Manhattan.  Sucked!  But we made it.

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Originally posted on Selfish Mom.  All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted.  Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.

Tags: video

Raising the Bar on child porn prosecutions

Jun 29, 2009 What's Going On

When my son was two we lived next door to our neighborhood’s biggest and most popular playground. We basically treated it like our backyard, and were there all the time.  There were some tense moments that summer between a few parents and one of the Parks Department workers who maintained the playground.  Some of the parents were letting their kids run around naked in the sprinklers.  These were not big kids, these were diaper-age kids having some fun in the sun.  Now, my son wasn’t one of the nudie kids.  I’m sure he would have loved it, but I just don’t think it’s proper.  It’s one of those things I’m uptight about.  Out in public, I think that kids should always wear pants (boy or girl, I don’t care; they basically look the same on top at that age anyway), or in the sprinklers at least underwear if a bathing suit isn’t handy.  But, I was lucky enough to live next door to the sprinklers.  If I forgot my son’s bathing suit, I could let him run around in his underwear and then be home in 60 seconds to get him changed.  Other parents didn’t have that luxury, and I could totally understand why you wouldn’t want your kid stuck in wet undies for the long walk home.  So, whatever, let your kids run free and unencumbered.  Who’s it hurting, and what business is it of mine?

I wasn’t all that surprised when the Parks worker told the parents the kids couldn’t be naked – I figured there was some sort of rule pertaining to the public health code.  It seems like every year they pick something to get worked up about.  One year, it was bikes.  Another year it was water shoes.  That year, apparently, it was naked two-year-olds.  But it was the reason behind it that got me pissed: this worker claimed that having naked two-year-olds running around in the water would encourage perverts.

Excuse me?  The little little kids can’t run around sans clothes because it might excite some child molesters?  This seemed absolutely ridiculous to me.  It seemed to me that if there were a potential problem with child molesters in the playground, perhaps we shouldn’t assume that keeping underwear on the kids will make everything OK.  Perhaps we should try to address the problem in such a way that puts the burden of behavior on the adults in the park, and not on the innocent children.

I felt the same sense of misplaced blame last night as I watched an advance copy of the newest episode of Raising the Bar, a legal show on TNT.  Every parent with a camera and a computer should watch this show tonight (it airs at 10pm on the coasts, 9 central time).  It centers around a man accused of endangering his child and promoting child pornography.  What did this man do?  He snapped a picture of his son in the bathtub, penis showing, and posted it on the internet, on his personal page, for his family and friends to see.  Dumb?  Yes.  Lacking foresight?  Yes.  Criminal? Oh my fucking God no, at least it shouldn’t be.  The criminal charges should have been brought against the scumbag who grabbed the photo off of the personal website and put it on a child porn site, without the father’s knowledge.

I don’t think there’s a parent out there who hasn’t inadvertently put her child at risk at some point. Whether you’ve driven around without strapping your child in, or turned your back while your kid ran into the street, or forgot to wind up a blind cord, you’ve probably done something that could have ended in disaster for your child.  Every single summer, a handful of parents leave their kids in hot cars to die a slow agonizing death because they forgot.  Other parents go inside for just a minute to answer their phones and their kids drown in pools.  These are accidents.  Attempt to harm is not there, even if cluelessness and stupidity might be.  These parents generally aren’t charged, though, because everyone involved tends to agree that you would never mean to harm your own child, and that the tragedy is punishment enough.  We’re not talking about repeat offenses here.

But – and this is what got me so pissed at this episode – we have to rely on having smart, capable DAs working on our behalves to make sure that the right people are prosecuted.  A lot of these decisisons are judgement calls for the DAs.  And if a prosecutor decides to make an example out of you, and can draw a wavy line from you to a crime, then you could be charged with something like this.  Even if you’re eventually acquitted, you’ve probably lost precious time with your children, and a lot of money in legal fees, and you’ve been labeled a pervert.

Raising the Bar is a well-acted show with a fantastic cast (Jane Kaczmarek as a judge, Mark-Paul Gosselaar as a public defender,  Gloria Reuben as his boss, and many others), and I was sick to my stomach for this dad.  He wasn’t even being prosecuted for doing something wrong, he was being prosecuted for making it possible for someone else to do something wrong.  It’s like if I forgot to lock my door and my house got robbed, and instead of looking for the robbers, the police arrested me for leaving my door unlocked.  People with no intent to harm should not be criminalized for mistakes.  Sure, we should all try to look ahead and prevent problems, but sometimes it’s hard to assume the worst in people when your own mind doesn’t think that way.  I’ve struggled in the past few years with how much of my kids I should put online, and I think we can all agree that their privates should be off limits.  It seems like a no-brainer.  But if I make a mistake, if I don’t take into account the worst that’s out there, should I be thrown in jail and lose my kids?

My grandmother was over for dinner last night, and she had with her her favorite tote bag.  I had it made for her a few years ago, with pictures of my kids all over it.  There’s one of them in the bathtub.  They are both completely naked.  The water is obscuring most everything below their waists, but if you look closely you can probably see some naughty bits.  Pictures of kids in bathtubs are cute, there’s no doubt about it.  When I was picking out the pictures for that project, it didn’t really cross my mind that this bag would be taken with my grandmother pretty much everywhere, and that some sicko sitting near her in a restaurant could get turned on by that picture.  But if he does, whose fault is it?

It’s easy to go after the low-hanging fruit (and of course there is no pun intended).  It’s easy to prosecute doctors for writing out prescriptions for too many painkillers because arresting them probably won’t involve a street corner gun battle and the headlines will make it look like you’re doing something in the bull shit war against drugs.  Going after my neighbor for building his deck with the wrong kind of materials will make your statistics look good in terms of finding building code violations, but you don’t have enough inspectors out there and perhaps you should be sending more of them to the hugh-rises with giant cranes and the buildings with huge cracks that are ready to fall down.  Prosecuting people for mistakes, when they’ve obviously learned their lessons, leaves less resources for the real criminals, the ones trafficking in underage children and taking pictures of them in situations that are designed to be sexual.  Don’t waste time on the easy marks.

Originally posted on Selfish Mom.  All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted.  Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.

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Tags: child pornography, GloriaReuben, internet porn, Jane Kaczmarek, Mark-Paul Gosselaar, Raising the Bar, TNT

Procrastination sucks

Jun 29, 2009 Amy in the Morning

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Originally posted on Selfish Mom.  All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted.  Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.

Tags: video

I can’t seem to get emotional (for once)

Jun 26, 2009 Amy in the Morning

Originally posted on Selfish Mom.  All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted.  Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.

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Tags: video

Better than the tampon remark, but not much

Jun 25, 2009 Amy in the Morning

Originally posted on Selfish Mom.  All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted.  Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.

Tags: video

Jason Jones made me choke on a pretzel

Jun 24, 2009 What's Going On

I haven’t posted anything from The Daily Show for a while.  It’s been consistently amusing, but nothing that jumped out as “Oh my God I have to share this with everyone I know or their lives will be incomplete.”  Until now.  I was simultaneously folding laundry, eating pretzels, and watching Jason Jones’ report from Iran, and I almost pulled a W., getting a piece of pretzel lodged in my throat from laughing out loud unexpectedly.  (If you’re curious, it was at the very very end.)

Why is making fun of Americans so much fun?

I feel really sorry for that one kid, you know which one I mean.  I blame his parents.  They need to stop talking about football around the dinner table and pick up a newspaper.  Hell, turn on the news during dinner.  TV during dinner would be better than whatever’s going on in that house already.

Not to say that I would have aced the quiz.  But come on.

Originally posted on Selfish Mom.  All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted.  Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.

Tags: Iran, Jason Jones, Jon Stewart, The Daily Show

My strawberry plant is here!

Jun 24, 2009 What's Going On

I love getting packages, especially when the contents are edible.  I wanted to grow some strawberries, because around here we eat them like they’re going out of style.  So I started doing the research and was quickly overwhelmed by the choices (have you ever wanted someone to build a search engine just for you, where every query would be met with a summary page telling you exactly what you needed to know and no more?).  Finally, I figured out that there are two main kinds of strawberry plants: those that yield one big crop of juicy, food-commercial-looking strawberries in June, and another kind that produces three or four smaller crops of smaller berries.  I was too late for the first kind, but that was OK because the second kind is supposedly better for indoors, so I ordered a plant from Amazon, and it got here a little while ago.

Unfortunately, the strawberry pot I ordered the same day just shipped today, so my strawberry plant will have to stay in its temporary pot for a few more days.

I took a look at the little berries and was a bit disappointed, because there were a few ripe ones and they were very small.  I took them off and threw one out that was very ripe and looked like it might be molding already.  I washed and ate the other two, and Oh. My. God.  There was more sweetness and flavor packed into those little berries than in ten of the big, beautiful store ones.

The one thing I haven’t quite figured out is how I’m supposed to transplant this into the strawberry pot when it gets here.  The runners – those long shoots with the berries on the bottom – are supposed to poke out of the holes on the side and cascade down.  So, do I just plop the whole thing in the pot in one piece and then gently pull the runners out through the holes?  If anyone has done this, please let me know!

Originally posted on Selfish Mom.  All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. Amy did not receive any payment or products from Microsoft in exchange for this post, although she has received products from Microsoft in the past.  Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.

Tags: Strawberry Plant, Strawberry Pot

Gamer envy

Jun 24, 2009 Amy in the Morning

Originally posted on Selfish Mom.  All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. Amy did not receive any payment or products from Microsoft in exchange for this post, although she has received products from Microsoft in the past.  Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.

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Tags: video