girlfiend

A bunch of creepy weirdos are stealing people’s photos of their children from Flickr and posting them on Orkut, a social networking site. The thieves are setting up fake accounts for the children so other weird lonely people can add them to their friends. Many of the pictures being stolen are copyrighted so the thieves can’t download them. Instead they’re taking screenshots and saving them to their computers and uploading them to Orkut. You can read more about the thefts and the ick-factor of it all from mothers who learned their children’s photos were used here and here. You need to be an Orkut member to see profiles, but here’s one of the actual fake profiles featuring someone’s little girl. Orkut, owned by Google, has not responded to any complaints about the picture thieves and fake profiles even though their user policy says you must be 18 years old to create a profile. If you’re outraged or sickened like I am, please go here and see how you can help. If you are a member of Digg please Digg this story so it gets the attention it deserves. And here’s a petition to shut down Orkut, a site that refuses to help parents who demand their children’s pictures be removed. This makes me sick. I’ve just privatized my more than 2000 photos on Flickr. I suggest that you do too.

I had a day that can best be described as god-awful.

The Fiendling woke up screaming for Dada who was out sailing and didn’t stop crying for hours. He refused to eat and didn’t even perk up when we went to feed the pig around the corner. He wouldn’t eat for hours and spent 45 minutes on my lap fussing before getting down to play at the playground. He only napped for an hour, woke up to be an angel for his grandparents, then acted miserable all over again when they left. I’m exhausted and cranky.

I hope he’s feeling better tomorrow.

I bought one of those cat scratching posts that comes with a little baggie of catnip. I put the catnip in my pocket so the Fiendling wouldn’t get his hands on it now that he’s figured out how to move furniture around so he can climb onto tables.

After dinner I took the Fiendling out for a walk to my brother-in-law’s house. We’d been invited for dinner, but since we’d already eaten I figured we’d just walk over and say hi. Before we even left our front yard we stopped to talk to my next door neighbor and his dog. The Fiendling was having a blast walking around holding the dog’s leash and I must have dropped the catnip because when I looked down I thought, “where the hell did that dime bag come from?” before picking it up and remembering it was just the catnip.

I finally wrestled the dog’s leash from the Fiendling’s hand and we began our walk. At the end of the block I ran into a friend, her husband and their two little girls on their way to get water ice. I decided water ice sounded like more fun than baked ziti, especially since we’d just eaten dinner and we walked back up the block towards my house so I could grab a couple of dollars. It turns out my friend’s the aunt of one of the girls who lives on my block and of course we ran into her on the way to my house. The little girl, her brother, their foster mom and their foster grandmom all stopped to chat so I left the Fiendling with them while I ran in to get the money.

When I came back all of the little kids were playing on the sidewalk with the bigger ones and the adults were all huddled together. They were all discussing a baggie they’d found on the sidewalk. It sounded like they were planning to smoke it to see if it was weed. It didn’t smell like weed, and if it was weed it was definitely low quality, but why not roll it up anyway, they’d decided. And of course I realized after about 30 seconds that it was my catnip and I told them that it was catnip and we all had a good laugh, but now I’m wondering if they think it really was a shitty bag of weed and I just didn’t want them to smoke my stash.

Last night Boyfiend gave the weekend a 10 (minus our irritating, frustration fueled spat about putting the Fiendling to bed) and I agreed.

Friday afternoon we walked up to the farmer’s market. I was devastated to learn they’d sold out of corn though they did offer to give me two nasty worm-eaten ears. I would have taken them until the Amish woman shuddered with disgust when she took a closer look. Armed with carrots instead, we went to visit the pig around the corner and the Fiendling fed him all of the carrot tops. I found feeding carrot top to the pigs quite satisfying. When we arrived home we accidentally got a bit drunk way too early, ate too much cheese, crackers and hummus and had pizza for dinner with Mix when he came over later. We considered buying Jesus pizza but there’s nothing Christian about their $2.50 delivery charge so we went with a new place we had a coupon for instead. I’m not sure if they were drunk, high, or stupid, but our pizza was cut so poorly my 18-month-old could have done a better job. It wasn’t even cut through the middle. Some slices were cut in perfect Fiendling size while Boyfiend’s slice was easily a quarter of the pie.

I started writing this hours ago and lost interest so here’s the abbreviated version of the rest of the weekend
Saturday we went to the Community Day Festival at the park and it was a blast. Lots of kids and families and a giant, inflatable slide. The Fiendling LOVED the slide. I did too. The best part about having a toddler is that you get to accompany them down the slide for free because they’re too little to climb to the top themselves.
Yesterday we went to my sister-in-law’s parent’s house in the country and went fishing. I caught my first fish and I had no interest in removing it from the hook myself.  But I caught one. Boyfiend was very proud. He’s been dying to take me fishing for years.

Last night’s dinner was awesome.

Brisket

Honey Mustard Chicken

Green beans

Roasted Cauliflower

Corn, Tomato and Basil Salad

Braised Carrots and Onions

Challah

I also made Baba Ganoush and fresh tomato bruschetta for appetizers with crackers and bread and served pesto I’d made and froze last summer.
For dessert my aunt brought chocolate cake and key lime pie from Trader Joe’s, Mix brought schnecken and rugalach, and my mom brought chocolate covered strawberries

We dipped apples in honey for sweet year, drank lots of wine and Manhattans, and there were as many Catholics as Jews (if not more, I haven’t officially done a count) in attendance. I love when holidays are good and not surrounded by insanity.

Even though I worked all day while my mother babysat things worked out well. I did almost all of the cooking the day before so I only had to reheat. Mix came over to help me set up so I wouldn’t have to deal with my mother solo. Boyfiend made it home from work early so he could help keep me and my mother separate. It’s not that I don’t love her. It’s just that she’s crazy. Really, really crazy.
I overheard bits of a conversation from upstairs where Mix said he bought an alarm system for a new house. My mom said it was stupid. Mix told her he got an insurance discount. She told Boyfiend we should get an alarm system for our house.

My aunt told me how amazing it was that I worked all day, cooked enough food for 15 people, set up the house and had a wonderful little boy. She said she didn’t know how I did it. My mother responded that I couldn’t have done it without her. I didn’t reply that my mother wiped down all of the dishes with a dirty, greasy rag and Boyfiend and I had to clean them all over again. I also didn’t mention that when my mom told me she’d vacuum what she really meant was that she’d sprinkle baking soda on the rug so I could vacuum when I got home from work.

More crazy, you ask? After the second time I came home and saw him drinking an entire bottle of undiluted juice I asked her not to give the Fiendling juice at all. He’s underweight and needs to drink water or drinks that at least contain fat and calcium like the yogurt drinks I specifically bought. She bought him juice boxes and HID THEM FROM ME!  Way to drive me fucking crazy.

Enough about my mother. It was a great night.

Happy 5768. May you be inscribed and sealed for a good year.

I was caught up on all of the bagel shop gossip today and it made me sick to my stomach.

A guy who’s worked there for at least five years was let go because his girlfriend who also works there had to file a restraining order against him after he hit her in the face.

Another girl who worked there was also let go. This girl was in high school when I worked there last and used to talk to the unborn baby in my stomach constantly, telling me he’d remember her when he was born. She was training another kid to be a shift manager at night and explained that if a register was short at the end of a shift the manager had to call the owner. The girl training asked her what one would do if the register was over, not under. She replied that no one would know if it was over, so you’d just pocket the extra money. Lucky for the boss the girl being trained ratted the trusted employee out.

One of the store managers, a woman who started working there the day before I did in 1994 and has worked there pretty consistently ever since has been stealing from the store for years. They realized, after blaming the high school kids who work in the evenings, that the missing money wasn’t coming from the drop boxes, it was coming from the credit card sales. My boss is legally blind. He can’t read small print. He trusted her with the credit card receipts and registers for years. She stole close to $100,000 from him. He couldn’t bring himself to press charges.
I feel awful for the owner. He’s been nothing but kind and generous (minus all of the screaming he’s been known to do) to all of his employees for as long as I’ve known him. He was like a second father to me when I was in high school and always welcomed me back to work when I asked for job, no matter how short the term of employment. It kills me that a woman who he trusted as much as he trusted his manager could steal from him. All she had to do was ask.