Wild Things

Saturday, Toney and I received training on how to be Triangle Speakers. While we were at the seminar, Kristin got to go to Wild Things, which is a ranch just outside of town where a bunch of Hollywood stars (animals) get to retire.



She got to meet the lions and monkeys that Disney used to make The Lion King (the animals that the animators used as models). There were also hyenas there, but if they were related to the hyenas in the movie, they were probably second generation.



Debating feeding the elephant.



Being cautious with the carrots.



That wasn't so bad!

Victims of the recession

I'm officially unemployed today. My job is a victim of the recession and I just put my last paycheck into the bank.

It worries me, our way of life will drastically have to change. 1 in 5 people in Salinas are out of work, that's 20% of the town, almost twice the national average. Nobody is hiring.

I was contract/self-employed and since no one is hiring, I feel my best option is to start my own business. But I can't describe how monumental that feels, my career has stalled, and I feel too old to start over.

What I worry about most, of course, is Kristin.



I can weather this storm, we can get through this. But the future is very uncertain right now.

The tooth fairy must work for the Treasury Dept.

Kristin lost another tooth last night, and while she was asleep we were looking around for some change for the tooth fairy, but we couldn't find any. It seems we use our debit card for most everything now and just found ourselves without any cash except a 10 dollar bill. This happened to us last time and we gave her a 5 dollar bill then. So now this morning Kristin is running around the house dancing and singing about how the tooth fairy gives out money in multiples of 5 and her next tooth should land her 15 bucks. I don't think even AIG executives were that lucky.

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I think I'm going to give up on youtube. I like watching old music videos but the site has become worthless in its search results. A lot of music, they didn't make into videos and I'm okay with listening to the music while some still photograph or similar is shown. However, I'm getting too many results now of people doing karaoke versions of songs from their basement or live cellphone captures of a concert which just doesn't have the sound quality. I just can't find what I'm looking for on youtube anymore. The original video of older songs. Imeem seems to be a good free alternative. It's videoless, but at least it focuses on the original version of a song and not some tone deaf person doing a cover from their home webcam.

Seeing things only Time can show me

The first years of Kristin's life, I had no idea what to expect in terms of peers. I can see now I was overly paranoid, thinking that every time someone couldn't do a playdate or when she wasn't invited to a party, that it was personal, an indictment of our family.

Kristin has friends who have intolerant parents, it's after school hours (playdates) that seem to be a no-no, but by now, (1st grade), she has other friends whose parents have no problem and so I don't care. She's not alone and that was my biggest fear. The last three years of school (two years of preschool and one year of kindergarten) have shown me that kids come and go, parents are busy and dismissive of other parents besides me (showing me that my fears of it being personal are unfounded). There's lots of parents of young kids out there who don't associate with other families. Oh, that sounds bad, but it's not because I realize it's a universal thing, families are just busy, mostly. Having never been through parenting before, I didn't know what to expect. I expected the worst.

I had nothing to fear, but of course I didn't know that at the time, now I can look back on it and see. We are all families in the same boat.