No Means OM NOM NOM

In light of the recent zombie apocalypse, now more than ever are situations like these coming to light; whereas before the number of costume-related fatalities were at an all time low, in the last couple of years it has become a frighteningly popular trend. "She was asking for it," says one eye witness, "I mean, did you see what she was wearing?"

"I could see more skin on her than clothes," added a another witness, "Obviously she wanted to be eaten."

The question many of us find ourselves asking is: are these women truly at fault or are the zombies the victim of bad reputation? When faced with such temptation as bared flesh, can they really be expected to resist? "They operate on base instinct alone," states one scientist with what appears to be an umbrella emblazoned on his lapel, "You cannot expect them to control themselves."

He goes on to explain further, "It's like leaving a candy bar open on your picnic blanket and being surprised when the ants show up."

When asked most women seemed to agree that efficiency and style can't always go hand-in-hand, and your last impression is certainly just as important as your first. For them the risk is worth it. "She didn't want to be eaten. That's ridiculous," one girl argues, "Seriously; who wants to get eaten by ravenous zombies with bad teeth?"

Another woman agrees, "If the zombies are doing it, we should be able to too! Besides, just because you left your candy out doesn't means ants will show up to eat it. Maybe there aren't even any ants nearby! Maybe the ants have something better to eat. Maybe they aren't even hungry."

Yet you can't dispute the statistics, 3 out of 5 inappropriately dressed women will die in a zombie-related eating, somewhere on the continent, every 6.3 minutes. It's no secret that if you don't want to die, you should probably better equip yourself, and that includes your style of dress.

(Inspiration courtesy of Neoseeker.)

The Velveteen Rabbit

"And while the Boy was asleep, dreaming of the seaside, the little Rabbit lay among the old picture-books in the corner behind the fowl-house, and he felt very lonely. The sack had been left untied, and so by wriggling a bit he was able to get his head through the opening and look out. He was shivering a little, for he had always been used to sleeping in a proper bed, and by this time his coat had worn so thin and threadbare from hugging that it was no longer any protection to him. Near by he could see the thicket of raspberry canes, growing tall and close like a tropical jungle, in whose shadow he had played with the Boy on bygone mornings. He thought of those long sunlit hours in the garden -- how happy they were -- and a great sadness came over him. He seemed to see them all pass before him, each more beautiful than the other, the fairy huts in the flower-bed, the quiet evenings in the wood when he lay in the bracken and the little ants ran over his paws; the wondrous day that he knew he was Real. He thought of the Skin Horse, so wise and gentle, and all that he had told him. Of what use was it to be loved and lose one's beauty and become Real if it all ended like this? And a tear, a real tear, trickled down his little shabby velvet nose and fell to the ground."
 - The Velveteen Rabbit

Television & Disappointment

TV shows have a way of somehow mattering in your life. Not on any significant level, if your priorities are straight and you're a sane person, but enough to make you care at least enough to bring it up in conversation when a relationship ends, a character dies, or the show reaches its final episode. If the writing is good enough it may even move you to be actually be upset or happy. What happens to Battlestar Galactia's Boomer, for example, or Hurley's character development on Lost.

Unfortunately writing that good is pretty rare and I can count the amount of times this has happened on just my hands (and I'd probably have digits left over).

Due to the constraints of parenthood I now spend a lot of time watching television shows where before I'd be doing something more interactive and engaging like playing video games. Often it's just background noise to keep my brain from turning to gaga mush, but sometimes I watch legitimately. I need most of my brain focused elsewhere and my hands free, so TV is great. Rather, Netflix is great because it revolves around my schedule and is cheap.

Never before have I been genuinely disappointed in something a television character has done before tonight watching season five episodes of Nip/Tuck. Which I guess kind of says a lot because if you removed the depravity from the show there'd be nothing left. But tonight an ultimate low was achieved and I watched in mild horror as a character did something I not only didn't anticipate but wholeheartedly found loathsome. It wasn't on such a level as to make me quit watching of course, but it was enough that I stared wide-eyed, mouth agape the entire duration.

Just, wow, man. Wow.

Has something similar ever happened to you? Include spoiler warnings!

Water is Life

One of the most important things you can do for yourself is drink water. Whether you're pregnant, breastfeeding, or neither.

One of the biggest problems in first world countries is chronic dehydration because people simply forget to drink enough water, or don't know a good way to keep track of how much plain water they've had every day. Tragic considering that there are places in the world where clean water isn't available, and here we are simply forgetting to drink enough, or passing the life giving liquid entirely for double lattes and fountain drinks.

It's not entirely our faults, household drinkware has the volume visible no where on it. Once you remove it from the box and recycle the packaging you've no idea how many cups of water each glass you fill has unless you measure them out, which is a little OCD. So here is a sure bet way to drink plenty of water, every day.

First things first: go here and take the hydration quiz. Next go the the store and purchase your favorite juice in a comparable volume to the above. As a pregnant woman I drank a ton of orange juice, so I found reusing the Tropicana jug quite fitting and simple. Next thoroughly wash out the jug and rinse completely. It may still smell like juice despite being clean so let it air dry, open, on the counter for a few hours. By now it should be clean and aroma free. Finally, simply fill with water and pop in the fridge! If there are multiple people in your household, you can each fill up a jug and write your name on it with a Sharpie to keep tabs.

You will know you've gotten enough water throughout the day if by the time you're ready for bed your jug is nearly empty and needing to be refilled for tomorrow.

Don't Apologize If You're An Ass

So here's the thing, when you do something wrong whether on purpose or not you are supposed to apologize. Forget to put down the toilet seat so your wife almost falls in? Say you're sorry. Talking so boisterously you accidentally wake someone up? Say you're sorry. Hurt someone's feelings? Say you're sorry.

However I have noticed something lately: repeat offenders. People who repeatedly do something, or a bunch of somethings, say they are sorry, only to then do it again. Over and over. If you were truly sorry, you'd stop doing it. Period. It's that simple.

I'm not talking about when Aaron goes to get Mexican food only to forget to order no onions in my burrito because they make the baby fussy. That's an easy oversight because he knows I love onions and normally would eat them every time. I mean when someone does something that is not quite so accidental.

For example, when someone repeatedly leaves the toilet seat up. It takes only a second to flip it down again and it displays a complete lack of consideration. You, as a man, only need the seat up some of the time. The lady of the house needs it down all of the time. Therefor keeping it down is more practical than keeping it up. You supposedly care about each other, you should want to make each other's lives easier.

Leaving it up habitually kind of proves that you don't give a single fuck. Every now and then she's liable to just put it back down herself and not even bring it up. Do it constantly and she's going to nag you about it because it blatantly shows you don't care enough about her comfort to take the time after you've finished pissing to put it down again. Your football game, video games, or beer with a pal can wait a single second longer. Put the lid down.

Where it gets even worse is if you habitually don't put the lid down but apologize every single time she confronts you about it, then do it again the very next time you have to pee. She's probably going to kill you in your sleep at this point. Because not only are you being inconsiderate every day, you're also basically lying to her every day. If you never plan to put the lid down, you may as well save everyone some grief and just say that plainly. At least then she'll know to expect it down and can make the judgment call whether or not she can deal with your man-boy behavior long term.

Now, after that example I should make it clear that I am not subtlety telling Aaron to keep the lid down. He's always been pretty good about that sort of thing. The inspiration for this blog actually came to me after talking to a friend and then thinking about my mother's husband. He's the sort of guy who will go out of his way to make a joke at your expense, apologize, then immediately do it again. Also known as an asshole.

Here's the situation with my friend, keeping it vague because while they are kind of douchey -- I'm not. Every day they do something they know not only bothers me but literally makes my day-to-day life harder. I've spoken to them about it directly. Yet every day they do it again. When I bring it up, they say they're sorry but sure enough, come tomorrow they'll have done it again. It's irresponsible, it's rude, it's inconsiderate, and really... it's basically passive aggression. Like they've finally found some manner of messing with me and they're going to try to covertly take full advantage. Only they're about as sly as a retarded giraffe.

Normally I'd just cut this sort of person out of my life so I didn't have to deal with their emo attention whoring, but I cannot do that here. Even if I told them to sit on it and spin, they're still mutually acquainted with other people I actually like. So there would inevitably be drama, resentment, and they'll STILL be a part of my daily life anyway. Ugh.

So yeah, if you aren't sorry -- don't say you are. If by some mental defect you are sorry but plan to do it again anyway, don't bother apologizing as it smacks of insincerity and makes people want to hit you in the face. I assume you like your face.

Fun With Genetics

Baby woke me up early today, so I spent the morning playing with him and thinking about dominant and recessive traits, because you need something to keep your mind busy while entertaining a human whose most exciting part of the day is when daddy disappears behind a blanket only to magically reappear a moment later with an exclamation of, "Peek-a-boo!"

So, let's talk genetics.

This is more or less how they work, granted it's been a long time since I took advanced biology, so bear with me. Dominance or lack there-of is the relationship between alleles. In dominant traits, one allele overpowers the expression of the other allele of the same category (ex. eye color).

If you break it down to mom's DNA and dad's DNA, there will be three possible outcomes; expressing the dominant trait, expressing the recessive trait, or carrying the recessive trait while expressing the dominant one. Some traits are super recessive, less likely to occur even against other recessive traits. Add in grandparent genetics and this gets a little harder to keep track of.


They play out something like this:
Dominant Trait ----------------- Recessive Trait
Brown Eyes --------------------- Blue Eyes, Gray Eyes, Hazel Eyes
Every Other Eye Color -------- Green Eyes
Brown Hair, Black Hair ------- Blonde Hair
Every Other Hair Color ------- Red Hair
Curly Hair ---------------------- Straight Hair
Widow's Peak ------------------ Normal Hairline
Dark Skin ----------------------- Light Skin
All Other Skin Color ---------- Albinism
Freckles ------------------------- No Freckles
Dimples ------------------------- No Dimples
Unattached Earlobes ---------- Attached Earlobes

Before Jude was born, Aaron and I played at guessing what he'd look like. Of the two of us, Aaron has the more dominant genes with his dark hair and his dark eyes. For ease, above I have color coded Aaron's genetic traits and Mine for comparison.

Thus we expected that Jude would probably be light skinned with brown eyes, brown curly hair with a widow's peak, dimples, unattached lobes, and maybe freckles later in life. When he got here we were mostly correct. He had Aaron's hairline, dimples, unattached lobes, light skin, eyes that seem to be suggesting they'll be brown, and while he's got straight hair now that could change as he gets a little older. However we were surprised to discover Jude is a ginger!

Have you ever tried to guess what your baby would look like? How accurate were your guesses?

Losing The Pregnancy Weight

Want to lose the weight you put on during pregnancy? As a new mother you probably don't have the free time or funds to join a gym, but it may be easier than you think. Use your baby!

First things first, if you can breastfeed or even pump breast milk... do it! Nursing mothers burn at least 500 extra calories per day. Per day. That's the equivalent of running five miles without ever having to get off the sofa. Ever seen the body of a runner? They're lean for a reason. The more you nurse or pump, the more you burn.

Second, you cannot spoil a baby in its first year of life, the lack of object permanence guarantees that. So when your baby wants you to pick him up -- pick him up! I know you may be tired or have other things to do, but carrying around extra weight burns a lot of extra calories and tones muscles.

If you need your hands free consider baby wearing rather than putting baby down. They spend nine months being cuddled inside of you, it's little wonder they want so desperately to be held close once they're here. Baby will be happier feeling your warmth and heartbeat and you'll be abolishing fat without really going out of your way to do it.

Want to kick into high gear? Try a few squats with baby in hand or, rise up onto your toes then slowly lower your heels to the floor. Toss in a lunge or two. Be mindful of your balance though.

Third, get out of the house and take baby for a walk at least a couple of times per week. The outside world is less likely to over stimulate your little one and the fresh air will do you both good. Getting out of the house has been shown to help with postpartum blues, too. Not to mention simply walking ten or more minutes a day can boost your metabolism. So plop your new addition in their stroller and hit the sidewalk. Even if you've nowhere in particular to go, just a lap around the block will suffice.

Lastly, and this really applies to everyone, drink nothing but plain water. You retain more calories from liquids than you do from solids. So simply cutting out the sweet drinks can work wonders without the need for hardcore dieting.

In summary:

1. Breastfeed
2. Pick Up Your Baby
3. Take a Walk
4. Drink Water