Category: Rants

This is where I gripe about the bad things that happen.

Faith: You’re Doing It Wrong

To the man who just refused to give my son fifty cents so he could buy a stick of deodorant,

You know, I could appreciate you doing this if you didn’t have change, or just didn’t trust it. I understand that. What I don’t understand is that you said. “No, not for you.” And watched him walk out of the grocery store after telling the clerk he didn’t have fifty cents. The clerk just shrugged at him and pointed at the door. All of that is fine. It’s that you actually followed him out to his car after you allowed him to be humiliated to tell him exactly WHY you didn’t help him out. You said that his language was foul and that he had a poor attitude and that Christian people would never help him if he continued to behave that way. You said this, to a young man who said, “Crap.… [Read More]

Gender Specific Pronouns Are Not Sexist

Dear Apple,

This morning I tried out the “proofreader” feature of Pages for the first time. I’m writing a novel, you see and my word processor of choice does a bad job formatting things in PDF and Word format. When I went to send it off to a friend, who is going to give it a read, I decided to double check my work with the spelling and proofreading tools provided with the application. The spellcheck worked great. The proofreader, however, flat out offended me.

I’m a fiction writer. This means I write, you know, fiction. I’m not even writing contemporary fiction. I’m writing fantasy. Swords, sorcery, dragons and damsels in distress? Not familiar with that are you? Well, after using your proofreader tool for Pages, I’d have to say that I’m not surprised to hear that.

I understand that it’s not appropriate to use certain language when writing business to business correspondence, but when you’re writing a fantasy novel calling a woman a “lady” is not only appropriate, it’s offensive to do otherwise!… [Read More]

An Open Letter to the Parents of Special Needs Children

I don’t live near you, or at least, if I do, I don’t know about it. My neighborhood is pretty quiet and not a lot goes on here. Every now and then, someone has an outdoor party in the summer. Big deal, right?

I’m not writing here to talk about that. I’m here to tell you that I have seen some of the most horrible things that I have ever seen said about a special needs child posted to the internet today. Some woman in Canada wrote a letter to a grandmother who babysits her autistic grandson during the summers and on behalf of the parents of “normal” (what the hell does that mean anyway? No one is “normal”, not if they’re being honest with themselves) kids everywhere, I just wanted to say that I am so sorry.

If I did live near you, I would probably ask you the questions that you get so sick of answering, but I wouldn’t ask them out of some twisted curiosity.… [Read More]

This Has Been 2012. Thank You and Good Night.

I’m ready for another good year, like the year that happened between May 2007 and May 2008. Nothing went wrong during that year. When I think back on this year, all I’m going to remember is that this year is the year that I lost my best friend, again. This was the year that my son broke up with his first serious girlfriend and I watched him cry and all I could do was tell him that I understood, that I loved him and offer him chocolate, even though I knew it would do no good and that this kind of pain is not something a parent can mend with band-aids and a hug. This was the year that we began having serious obedience problems with Jet. This was the year that a freaking tree collapsed into my back yard, thankfully no one was injured, but a fence was destroyed. This was the year that I learned that not all contractors actually show up when you give them a job.… [Read More]

So this is Christmas…

My husband has been giving me grief lately, because he feels like he married the next John Grogan. The only thing I seem to post about on this blog are my dogs.

Well, let’s face it, I’ve had a rough couple of years in terms of my life with dogs. First, I lose my best friend and our first family dog. Then we bring home Mugen and he starts sewing us up and then we adopt Lucy and feel like the family is complete only to have her taken from us by cancer less than two years later. Along the way, we adopted Jazzmin because she needed someplace to go and when Lucy was gone, I was so horribly lonely without her that my husband decided we needed a third again and we adopted Jet. That’s a lot of doing with dogs in three years, so I have a lot to talk about when it comes to my crew.… [Read More]