Xposted

Dear Thomas,

In just a few hours you will be 9 years old. And as I have every single year on your birthday I am writing you a letter. Your father and I reminisced today about those last few days of pregnancy before you were born. Everyone says it, and I suppose they say it because it is true, but we had no idea what was in store for us. I suspect one of the great things about genetics is that it can produce children so well suited for their parents.

You have grown and matured so much the last 12 months. You amaze me every single day. This year has been an incredibly exciting year for you. You started off school and did very well. Probably the biggest highlight of the last 12 months was when you were voted your 3rd grade class president. You wrote one of the best, funniest, and totally true to you speech in your run for sergeant of arms. And as you know it brought you lots of media attention. Flying to New York with you so you could be on TV was unforgettable.

The summer before school started you impressed me and lots of other people by hosting anyone who wanted to come to your Wizard Rock Birthday party. Sure the cops showed up twice! And that was pretty kickass! But mostly it was the kindhearted request to raise funds for the Harry Potter Alliance. The funds split between the HPA and the Genocide Intervention Network. The money you raised by requesting no gifts protected 52 women for 52 weeks. It was an amazing celebration of life, you amazing, amazing boy.

But there was more than just media!Thomas wrock!Thomas this year. There were endless games of monopoly and civilization. There was the sudden discover of Harry Potter in the written word instead of just the stories retold by bands. There was the community service you performed not only as part of student council but also as part of our family. There was your first piano invitational and wonderful improvement in your violin. There was our rock band, Listeria. And the hours the three of us spent on it. There was Costa Rica and ziplining. There was laughing until you cried. There was your religious struggles and finding peace in a faith that you came to on your own terms.

You amaze me. Every. Single. Day. I am torn between wanting you to stay little and wanting to see every single moment of you as an adult. You are the best person I have ever known and your presence in my life makes me want to believe in a God who would give you to me.

Happy 9th Birthday.

Mama.

Yes he is adorable and yes he really is starting to look like me.  And yes he is freaking adorable and a heartbreaker and seriously you have to click and look at how cute he is.  ACK!  I don't know when exactly I became this mom, but he has reached a new height of fucking adorable at 8 years old.

( Picspam )
( Picspam! )
A teaser of my adorableness I call Thomas

http://tinyurl.com/82zt8f

I think it was stupid to tweet that to peeps you don't know.  But I have tweeted similar and I am pretty sure I just told hp5freak that my new year's resolution was not to murder my 8 year old.

For the record there is absolutely no risk of me murdering anyone.

Thomas has the chicken pox.  Broke out yesterday apparently but decided not to mention it because he thought they were mosquito bites.  In December.
Inside.
Randomly
on his butt.

Yeah

The child is brilliant, but also lacking in common sense.

The Flemings had a lovely little Christmas.  I think Tom enjoyed all his gifts and I liked mine perfectly well.  Although remarkably this is my first sweater free Christmas.  I got many lovely things but two particularly lovely items.  An emerald and diamond double helix necklace for Tom and lovely golden topaz earrings from my sister in law.  In addition to tasty candy, books, socks!, lots of kitchen goodies, new dishes and flatware and a food processor. 

Thomas had a lovely Christmas as well.  He welcomed Santa with a note inviting him to some whiskey.  He was less than enthralled with the few items of clothes (much needed sweaters) except for two shirts (1. 2.)  My child is a math geek.  He is wearing his get real/be rational shirt today.  He opened all his gifts, waited very politely while Tom and I opened ours and through Xmas morning at the inlaws (across the street) before he had to tear into his PS3 to get it set up.

Lots to put away.  Daring dress to wear for Xmas dinner at aunt/uncle in laws.  And naps to be taking.

http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2008/nov/25/kid-savvy-politico/

Things I love, another one of the kids in his class got to be in the article.  She said he was nice.  She also admitted to voting for him instead of herself.  I just love the tone of this article.  I also was very happy to see him say something a bit less overreaching, that helping his school be better helps america be better.

I have to admit it, I am terribly proud of my kid.  He may express a bit of an attitude with me but he is one of the nicest, most compassionate children I have ever met.  He balances his intelligence with a genuine caring about other children.  He loves getting to do service projects and truly is the best of the best of boy scouts (while none of the worst!)

Also, he needs a haircut :)

Leaving aside the discovery I made about my regular physician (and the one who sees all of us)Poll #1293589 Is my foot broken?
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

Have I broken my foot?

this morning I am headed to the minor med after increasing boughts of pretty severe foot pain.  See also crying on a bench in NYC.

I had stress fractures on this foot when I was pregnant...I am wondering if that is what is wrong now.

Work finally announced my job change yesterday.  For almost 2 years I have been juggling notes, project management and theoretical development.  I report to the manager over the programmers for Business intelligence and 38 hours of my week I am actually a Notes Sysadmin.  Since the BI Manager is a bit of a micromanager this has led to two hellish years reporting to her (and numerous close door screaming sessions almost always coinciding with difficult personal times).  There are always too many cooks in the kitchen for anything and I was helping do the sysadmin job for Canada as well.

Effective Jan 1 I will be administratively reporting to the BI mgr here but functionally reporting to the Sysadmin team lead in Canada.  I will be 100% sysadmin for Notes and my entire salary, benefits etc are going to be paid for by Canada.

This makes me happy.

We are watching returns, eating pizza and snacking on halloween candy and Thomas looks at the TV looks at me, waves his fists over his head and says "Why didn't those people vote in 2000 instead of just holding signs around saying 'Stop Global Warming'"  I laughed ad to make sure he was saying what I thought I asked what he meant.  And he said, well they should have voted for Gore, it would have done more for them then holding the signs.

I pointed out they probably DID vote.  But still OMG I love him.  He is just adorable.

Thomas is busy writing his journal entry for school for his trip and I have to admit it makes me laugh a lot.  It is very detailed and funny.  This whole thing has been a pretty wonderful experience for all involved.  I talked to the wonderful reporter at the WSJ several times and felt actually pretty sure he wasn't going to be in the article until she confirmed it.  She was very nice and I thought the article was overall well written.  While T is certainly interested in politics and has his own ideas I am pretty sure only the style came from politicians not the actual ideas.  Those were a mix of things he picked up in pop culture and at home and just thinking things out in his head.  He is a very smart child (often much smarter than I) and I was very suprised at the depth of his speech when he read it . 

( More behind the cut )
The studio pictures here

http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=6113801

We are still here.  Our hotel is across from the ABC studios at Times Square.  We have had travel nightmares.  We ended up in Pittsburgh and ABC sent a limo to haul us from PIT to NYC.  that would e a 6 1/2 hour ride. 

Anyhow, it was lovely.  Thomas loves Manhattan and probaly is going to campaign to live here or something.

ABC news called today and so did the amazingly awesome Andrew Slack.  ABC called about maybe having him on Good Morning America this weekend.  Andrew called to discuss how Thomas can help the HPA.  And then he posted this lovely article about him:

http://www.thehpalliance.org/?p=218

Thomas is very happy about both. 

Front page below the fold.  Also online: tinyurl.com/6xtquz

I have commentary and will be back later.  Thomas was over the moon.  So was Daddy :)

Is supposed to be published tomorrow.  Maybe front page?  Maybe with a picture?  Reporter read the paragraph about T to me and it sounded lovely.  Tom and I are very happy for him and admittedly probably more excited about it than we should be.

If you subscribe, please let me know.  I fear finding them in Memphis might prove a little difficult.

I know lots of my f-list is going through really tough things right now and I hate to post something so frivolous but I want opinions.

I have bought two party dresses. I have my inlaws big anniversary bash coming up in Nov and am wearing one there. I am also going on a cruise (gift for said anniversary) in March and will wear both then. However, I bought them both with the Yule Ball in mind. So which one? (and can I say how excited I am to get my boy in a suit for the first time?)


Dress one

Dress Two

I left the outakes in and yes my hair is a disaster these days.

Help.

My mom made T a Brain Slug for his halloween costume.




So Fry basics:
1. Red Hair - Check
2. Blue Jeans - Check
3. White Shirt - Check
4. Black coverse - Check
5. Brain Slug - Check
6. Effin non existent red jacket that will not cost me 50.00 - not so much check yet.

As mentioned last week, Thomas won the election for his 3rd grade class president. So he is appointed to sit on Student Council as part of this. I am sure the Student Council of his elementary school accomplish's very little. However they had their first meeting Friday and nominated folks for other positions. All 3rd graders can run for is sergeant at arms and Thomas was nominated. He has to give his campaign speech before the whole council on Monday. We wrote none of this...in fact he had the whole thing written before we picked him up Saturday (had hot date with Huey Lewis friday night). We did not even know there was a meeting Friday.

Bonus points if you can guess where the last line is from. I think redstapler might!

I have been mostly silent this year other than to express my disatisfaction with Clinton not winning the nomination. Part of it I think is simply feeling apathetic I am hardly thrilled with Obama and McCain long ago lost any possibility that I would vote for him. Some of it is personal grude see also: Brett O'Donnell and some of it is simply saying if he would embrace Jerry Falwell and accept Brett to advise him then he is no moderate. He is in fact the same as them, hate mongerers. Questionably moral.

At the same time McCain is brilliant. I still can't even decide what to make of the Palin choice. Of course I hate her, but she has provided strength to unity to the Replublicans that was lacking under McCain only. And he hired Brett. All my personal feelings aside, all the philosophical differences I have with brett, ignoring the fact as a college student under his tutelage I was told to lie for him or say goodbye to debate (eventually I said no and then followed the story of Liberty saying goodbye when I started to say exactly what went on behind the doors of the debate lab) the man is a brilliant debate coach. I find him a repungnant person but I am positive that the information he gave McCain was integral to any success McCain had Friday night.

But the problem is that Brett is a moral chamelon. He fought for the right for debaters to have access to things more highly restricted to other Liberty students. He didn't demand that we should be able to watch or read the "liberal media" on our own and figure out our own choices. He allowed and encouraged breaking of the rules by his debaters when we were on the road. Our music was not censored as what the rest of the Liberty students. In fact in one of the more humiliating moments of my life was when I was forced to sing Dancing Queen in front of the entire team to make up for what I am sure was a minor transgression. Falwell issued a special dispensation to allow debaters to argue pro-choice during a season when privacy was on the topic yet regular students would have faced might foes had they attempted to argue the correctness of Roe V Wade. I was not accepted, liked or loved on the debate team while I was there, probably because they overrated my talent initially and I struggled to do well on the college circuit. But that doesn't make them wrong, what went with that made them wrong. Using humiliation and lies to get what you want. Suddenly pulling my scholarship leaving me with thousands of dollars in college bills when I was pretty much told I would not be returning the following semester.

I am not the person I was when I was at Liberty. While still completly unsure about my social position I am not desperate for acceptance I once was. This Kelly would have fought harder for the students at Liberty to have the same privileges the debaters had. Discussion should never be a privilege, access to information should never be a privilege, and when you make it so? It probably means your side is wrong.

And that is why in my opinion McCain can never be a moderate no matter how much he slobbers on Liberman. I may enjoy his jokes occasionally. I may find him a smart, calculating man but he has embraced and filled his staff with at least one person who I know extremely well and have faced down the worst of this man. Brilliant but of morally questionable fibre and willing to sacrifice his ideals for debate while maintaining those ideals should be upheld when it has no effect on any sort of competition.

I can not for the life of my find a red jacket for Thomas's Fry costume. Ebay no help. Stores in person no help. Do not want to spend a fortune.

Why is a red jacket that has a color and no writing or graphics so hard to find in boys size 8?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/21/AR2008092102529.html?hpid=topnews

I can give all sorts of hypothesis as to why this happens but I believe
1. Men with these attitudes are seen as more dependable. They won't have to take off work to watch a sick kid. He is going to use his FMLA (and possibly paid benefits if a few companies) when his kids are born. He won't be meeting with teachers etc. For the record I don't believe it is logical to say traditional gender attitudes = the thoughts above.
2. Hi glass ceiling!
3. A lot of people wondered why I was so insistent on Clinton as presdential nominee and I repeated "If not now, when? If not her, Who?" Here is a prime example.
4. Hi prime example of gender privilege!