Onward and Upward

I finally broke down and got a notebook. The electronic kind. I figured there was no reason to get one with all the computers at school and everyone here having them too; but then Mom's computer stopped working wirelessly, condemning it to the upstairs office where there is no place to put it except on the floor; and there are so many more students this semester than during the accelerated ones that computer access at the campus is iffy. Plus, I decided it was time to completely disconnect the old dinosaur computer I had in my room, since Andy is becoming far too savvy with YouTube.

All of this right before I discovered that many of my ASL tests/projects this semester will require webcam. So it was time to shell out the money. And I'm not sorry I did. I got a secondhand Google Chromebook, and it seems to be just what I need. Small and light, but not a touch screen. I'm happy with it.

The Princess is talking. A lot. She started telling everyone to "Stop!" recently. That's what they tell her to say at daycare, instead of screaming and hitting. So of course she started saying it whenever anyone spoke to her, looked at her, etc. Lol. My sister has been telling her that's rude, so what did she replace it with? "SUT UUUP!"

Yep. Loud and clear. At the top of her voice. So polite. Big brothers are such good teachers. Oh, and uncles too. Especially the 17-year-old ones. The ones who berate me constantly for not making my kids better mannered/more controlled/less picky/you-name-it. Maybe we could just call him "Uncle Hypocrite?" Hehe.

She has fallen in love with the "Little Bear" show. I found a few of the DVDs recently. It's such a favorite of mine. I absolutely love Nelvana productions, and this is the best. I also replaced our Planet Earth and Blue Planet collections with my latest Financial Aid refund. Ours were quite destroyed, and I personally feel no home is complete without them. Such amazing views of our planet! Meanwhile the boys have discovered MineCraft, and it's all the rage at school. I'm actually rather glad. It's one game where they aren't killing each other and they can build things. And although I still prefer Legos, those tend to cause friction with my Mom, who wants everything cleaned up the instant it's not being played with any more. Virtual is better for now, particularly with the cold weather coming.

I'm so grateful this summer has been cool. I hope it doesn't foretell a bitter winter, but I can always get warmer. Oh! That reminds me that I made out wonderfully at the kid's consignment sale this past week. I got all the clothes they should need until next spring, with the exception of a winter jacket for Andy and snowboots for both boys. We have time for those, however, so I will keep checking the secondhand stores and the sale next month near our church.

One of my courses this semester is "Experiences In Diversity." It's fascinating. I had no idea that intersex births (infants born with ambiguous genitalia) were so common (roughly 2 percent), or that surgical correction is automatically done in the U.S., which has essentially the same effect as female genital mutilation. That's terrible. I am a firm believer in allowing children to make life-altering decisions for themselves when they are of age, if their health is not at serious risk in the meantime. And these surgeries often carry long-term complications too, so the risk would have to be greater than that.

The more I learn about scientific reality, the more I reject the religious perspective that sex was meant for procreation alone. Everything in nature goes against that. Infertile women and men would be unable to enjoy sex if that were true; and to avoid hypocrisy, shouldn't the church refuse to perform marriages for adults past childbearing years or with a family history of infertility? I had this argument just briefly with our priest before joining the Orthodox Church, since of course the Church's position is not to accept practicing homosexuals at communion. They talk about the immorality of sex outside of marriage, but Delaware recently began to allow gay marriages, making that guideline invalid. So the actual issue is that sex without the possibility of procreation is not condoned. Yet they do not forbid couples who are past childbearing years, or who have decided not to have more children, from having intimate relations. And intersex persons pose a similar problem. I do not think it right to expect that certain persons refrain from sexual relations their entire lives based merely on the way they were born.

According to our professor, the Olympics did chromosomal testing on their female athletes for a while in an attempt to prevent transgender women from competing and having an advantage. They had to stop because so many female athletes turned out to have a Y chromosome, yet were born female by all appearances. Since female is the default fetal state, it would appear that every now and then a male fetus simply fails to develop male genitalia and reproductive organs. That should tell people something about the reasonableness of this strict approach to gender and sex.

Anyway, food for thought.