A Little Irritated
I probably shouldn’t gripe about this as a few people from work do come in here, but man, I’m irritated at Mountain Man. Not for anything he did to me, though. But he went to a restaurant yesterday and when he was telling us about it, he made a point to say that the waitress was “well spoken.” I’m also sure he thought he was being politically correct by telling us, about four times, that the place was “very ethnic.” Man, that stuff ticks me off. It’s the so called soft bigotry that we’re surrounded by in the south.

I also get people making Chinese jokes at me, I suppose to test the waters and see if I’m a bigoted white like they are. Really ticks me off.

I’m sure that Mountain Man thought he was being generous by saying the waitress was well spoken (implied, “not like the others”), but how can he not know that’s such a clichéd racist remark. I mean, duh.

One of the rules that we have at home is if the ethnicity of the person is not part of the story, don’t bring it up. Here in the south, though, the ethnic caste system is always part of the story with some people. Heck, that’s why I told a brief rundown of the story in Menace II Society yesterday to someone without mentioning that all the people in Watts are, in fact, black people. If I did, they wouldn’t want to hear about it.

Fussy Bunny
Yesterday, Nina was fussy. Rather fussy. She fussed and fussed. She fussed in the morning and fussed in the evening, all over this land. After crying in bed for a long time, we got her up and let her stay up for a while. She ended up getting in bed by 9:30.

And I know, everybody will say that we should let her cry. Well, screw that. She’s upset about something. Who’s to say what kind of emotions she’s having. We made sure it wasn’t her teeth, wasn’t food, wasn’t being wet, and wasn’t gas pain. I think it was separation from Alison or me. I think Nina really wants us around a lot more than we’re able to be. With Alison working four days a week, Nina spends a lot of down time over at her Grandmothers. And I say down time, because the activity level is very low over there. I get off work and head over and take her on a walk, but, while I’m pretty fun, she really wants her mommy. When Alison gets there, Nina is very happy to see her, but then cries when she has to be separate from her, physically, just for the drive home.

Then, she’s fine, until we try to put her in bed. Only if we get her totally exhausted will she stay down. So, maybe we need to either let her stay up later (like we did last night) or not let her nap as much during the day (though that makes for crappy afternoons like yesterday).

But, you have to cut her some slack. On Saturday, it will be the two month anniversary of us taking her away from the person she thought was her mother.


Fu Pei Xi and her Foster Mother


- posted by Nick Postagulous @ 9:32 AM