Voldemort will be starting his 4th month of swim lessons in a few hours. So far, he has learned how to put his face under water (which generally is ok, provided he has on his goggles), float on his belly for a few seconds, and learned how to throw himself off the side of the pool.

What he hasn’t learned is that he is still in the “never been exposed to water” class.

For three months.

He is, and has been, and possibly will forever be, a Pollywog. The class for kids who have never experienced water outside of their bathtub.

I don’t really care (look, my kid carried a purse to preschool this morning. trust me, I DONT CARE), but at the same time, I would really like to move on and see what the Guppies do. There is only so many times I can clap and cheer and say, “Great job!” at the fact he didn’t totally panic when the teacher let go of him to float on his own. His teacher just shrugs and says he just needs practice and some courage and he will be able to float on his back, which is the ONLY SKILL HE NEEDS TO DO TO MOVE ON.

Fourth time lucky, maybe? Here’s hoping!

I am still exhausted, and I’m convinced that Daylight Savings is the tool of Wolfram and Hart, or some other evil, soul sucking corporation.

Things I still cannot find:
-the posts I had previously written and queued

Things I can find:
-random links! Now, i’m not going to link you to MY tumblr, as tumblr is generally a bad dangerous place of either kitten pictures or gay* porn (but generally both), but there are some things that don’t feature naked people, how everyone on every television show is very not-straight, and weird invented spelling, so I’m going to link you to those, because they are cool.

Don’t stray beyond the links, though. I’m not kidding about the porn. I generally don’t post any, but due to being in a personal funk, I’ve done nothing but post pictures of the 2001 show, Roswell, which is when I fell in love with fandom and fanfiction. Regardless!

Cool Chicks from History posts pictures and texts and information on some awesome women – most of whom I have never heard of before, and are badass in the shit they did.

The Kids Should See This – dedicated to extremely cool and informative videos. Things like Rube Goldberg machines (Voldemort has watched this one half a dozen times since yesterday), glaciers calving, actual video of a working heart, and all kinds of cool shit that you AND your kids should totally see. What’s awesome about these is none of these were specifically “made for kids,” so you don’t get any talking down or anything other than really cool shit and the explanations of some of it.

Fuck Yeah Space – Space and NASA nerdery, because it’s AWESOME.

–thebloggess has a stick puppet of Beyonce, the giant metal chicken. Needless to say, I printed this out today and have been entertaining myself for hours.

*Actually, most people on my follow list post all kinds of sex. Gay, het, lesbians, trans…I generally don’t check my dash on Porn Spam Fridays until after Voldemort is in bed, just to be safe.

It’s been insanely busy, so me being smart and thinking ahead said, “I know! I can prewrite posts and set them up to post in the future! HOW COOL IS THAT?”

So, I did, and went about my merry way, only to get an email from blogher saying I haven’t updated and to get on that. And i’m sitting here going, “BWAH? But..but..I was smart!”

Where did those two posts go? Were they eaten? Did I just imagine hitting “save” and “post on…” dates? There was a post about our new cats, so it’s not like the most important literature since Shakespeare was lost or anything, I just don’t understand..

And it’s daylight savings, which is a vicious mean joke on everybody. It’s supposed to help the farmers or something? Can’t the farmers just ignore the clocks and get up when they need to? I DONT UNDERSTAND, I’m exhausted, and my kid decided to look out his window by looking UNDER his bed last night..and his bed, by the way, is lofted..so he falls off the entire thing, scraping his face down the wood and thankfully not breaking his neck.

CANNOT DEAL. SLEEPING FOREVER.

Gender is a funny concept. Boys do these things, and girls do these things, right?

NO. NOT RIGHT. FOR FUCK’S SAKE.

Sure, boys and girls are different, but it makes me INSANE when toys and activities and dress is brought into boys and girls stuff.

A Facebook friend posted a picture of her little boy, who is in PreK, wearing a dress, high heels, and a tiara. Multiple comments remarked, jokingly, that she need to call and make him an appointment with a psych.

But maybe I’m being over sensitive. After all, as a preK teacher, I’ve been educated to know that all kids play dress up, in all kinds of clothes, and that a boy playing dress up in a dress and jewelry is perfectly normal behavior developmentally.

But then I keep seeing stuff on Pinterest, with pictures of pink cookies with the Eiffel tower on them tagged as “perfect for a girl!,” or a construction birthday cake tagged as “what a great party for a boy!” And I’m fighting the urge to comment “or for a boy who loves Paris!” and “Girls love trucks, too!” with several smiley faces and exclamation points to hide the fact I want to smash my face into my keyboard with every gendered thing I see.

Maybe it’s from raising a kid. A boy. Who marches happily around the house “doing karate” in his pink Dora pajamas.

Maybe from seeing how gendered the world is, where it’s ok for a girl to like trucks or wear pants or wear a shirt that brags, “Daddy’s girl,” but it’s side-eyed and talked about if a boy likes High School Musical or wears skirts or you can’t even find a shirt that says, “Mama’s boy,” because that’s emasculating and insulting.

Maybe it’s from realizing that little boys and girls are shaped the exact same way, and there should be no such thing as a “boy’s shirt” or “girl’s shoes.”

Maybe it’s just from feeling like I’m fighting a losing fight, trying to provide my little boy with stuff he likes, in a variety of colors, regardless of what gender it’s marketed to. Maybe it’s because some days I think it’s useless, with Lego coming out with new sets “for girls,” and shirts being made “for girls” that say, “I’m too pretty to do homework.”

Maybe I think I should start commenting on all of those pins on pinterest, just to see if it makes anybody THINK. Maybe I should comment on that Facebook post, saying how cute he is, and how refreshing it is to see a parent who understands that little boys can wear dresses.

As a kid, I remember getting a new Scholastic book order form every month and spending hours pouring over it. First, I’d make a list of every single thing in it that I might possibly like, with the cost in its own column, laboriously adding up every single penny to see how much it came to. Then I had to cross out books I didn’t HAVE to have and subtract and refine, until I was under the budget the parents had given me for books that month – and I had to have a budget, as I swallowed books whole.

My point is, even as a kid, I was a planner. I was frugal and careful with money, but more importantly, I PLANNED.

Then I grew up and met a guy who wouldn’t know what a calender was if it bit him on the ass. A man who didn’t plan, who thought the highlight of fun was randomly taking off to places unknown at a moment’s notice.

I married him. And my planning went down the drain. We moved to Alaska because he thought it sounded fun and North Carolina because we threw a dart at a map and back to Colorado for no readily apparent reason, all in a ten year time span.

And now I’m buying a house with him. And while waiting and waiting for our final approval and our closing date, we distracted ourselves and ignored the deadlines and made no plans.

With the final result that we are closing on our new house tomorrow and haven’t put a single thing in a box. We haven’t thrown away the Happy Meal toys that have accumulated, donated the weird decorations my mother insists on sending, or even packed up the summer clothes that are thrown in the top of Voldemort’s closet that might or might not fit when it gets warmer.

We haven’t planned or prepared at all, and strangely, I’m ok with that.

For now.

I’m sure my mind will change when I’m unpacking our dishes and find hamster food in the same box, Brandus can’t find more than one pair of pants for work, and our newly bought laundry detergent goes missing until next fall, when we’ll find it in the bottom of a box of books and sewing supplies.

But for now, I’m content to sit in my pajamas on a day off, and make a list of things that need to get done. And maybe tomorrow I’ll call on them. Or maybe I’ll take a nap, and ignore for a little bit more.