Celest's Inadvertent PR Idea

Celest has been obsessing about electric meters lately. For some reason she's decided that they are decagons. And on the topic of geometric shapes, she's been a bit obsessed with the number of sides of different polygons and their names.

However, if I don't give her the name or number she wants she just repeats her version until I agree. The other day she was going on about pentagons, and she suddenly decided that they weren't pentagons after all: they were peace-agons (I chose that spelling, but either way, piece or peace is how she pronounces it).

I was thinking that maybe she could pitch this to the government as part of a Department of Defense and military PR overhaul. The Pentagon would become the Peace-agon, the government entity dedicated to achieving peace. They don't have to change any actual procedures or policies, this would be strictly an image makeover.

Dang Life Touch!

First of all, let me disclose that Life Touch, the portrait company, has always sort of irked me. At least as an adult. In my senior year of high school I paid about $300-$400 to have my senior portrait taken by a photographer. He included a yearbook photo, which fit the style and size requirements pretty much all yearbooks follow.

However, when I tried to submit it to the school I was told they wouldn't use it. Why? Because they felt it was unfair to the Life Touch photographer because he did all the other school photos from K-11, so he should be the only photographer for the seniors as well. Bull crap, I think. In the guise of not hurting the photographer's feelings they force you to have your photo taken by him. I'm sure money had nothing to do with it.

Anyway, I ended up getting my pic taken by the Life Touch photographer when I rode along with my friend. I wasn't planning on getting my picture taken, but that's when I found out about the no-outside-photographer crap. The high school year book president/coordinator/whatever-you-call-her looked me up and down, then quipped, "You're getting your picture taken in that?"

I didn't much care for this lady either, and my feelings were confirmed by her snotty attitude towards me. Incidentally, I was wearing the same John Lennon "Imagine" shirt that I had to my other senior portrait shoot.

Anyway, back to the present. I got the little Safe Smile, or whatever they're called, cards from Life Touch last year. I didn't have the money to buy the photos at the time, but the cards said the photos were accessible until December 2010. I thought I had until then to order photos. Nope. I guess that date means that law enforcement can access that photo in the event a child is abducted. To me, I would assume this means that the photo is in a digital retrieval system somewhere until December of this year.

So why can't I order a copy of the pictures then? Well, I can order Lotus' pic until next Tuesday. Celest's, however, are unavailable. As luck would have it, it is the best school picture they've ever taken of her. She is looking right at the camera and smiling. She looks really beautiful.

I'm really sad and annoyed that they won't let me order the picture. Lotus' picture came out good as well, so I'll still order it. I'm just very disappointed they won't let me order Celest's pics.

As the title says, Dang Life Touch!

Jett Travolta

John Travolta finally admitted that Jett had autism. Many parents of kids with autism were pretty convinced that Jett did have autism, but John Travolta denied it. He said Jett had Kawasaki disease (a disease involving inflammation of the blood vessels and high fever), which he may also have had at some point in time.

After all of the horrible pain his family has gone through, he decided to not pursue the extortion charges against the paramedic that arrived to treat Jett and a Bahamian politician.

I guess I am happy that he finally confirmed it, as I don't think autism is anything to hide or be ashamed of. Of course, I don't think John had to "admit" to anything per se, but by repeatedly denying his son had autism it seemed that he felt the need to hide something or maybe he was in denial.

Really it's none of my business, or anyone else's for that matter, but since he is a celebrity we know more of his personal life than we need to. I just hope that his family is able to remember the good times with Jett and let their new son know about the brother he never got to meet.

Puberty or Something Else?

The past few days have been really rough. I don't know if it's puberty, the change of starting back to school, or something else all together.

Lotus has bruises all over her arms and torso from her almost constant pinching. She has scabs on her hands from biting them. She has been trying to pull her hair out again as well. She just gets so angry and directs it towards herself. I don't really know why, so I can only guess that it's hormones or stress. Or something else entirely.

Celest has been having rages. She tries to attack whoever is close to her most of the time. Sometimes she gets mad over being told she can't have something while other times it isn't clear what triggers her fury.

Hopefully this phase will pass soon, but either way, it'd be nice to know what the girls are feeling. The reasons for their emotions remain a mystery to me much of the time, which is frustrating.