Tuesday, February 23, 2016

5058 More Bits

Tuesday, February 23, 2016

"It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value."
-- Arthur C. Clarke --

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Back in June, 2012, I mentioned in post 3542 that I'd visited, on maps.google street view, the house I had lived in 40 years ago (I'll put the address in a comment) in the St. Louis area and was shocked to find that not only all the trees, flowering shrubs, and window boxes I had lovingly planted were gone, but the bare lawn now had a 20' totem pole smack in the middle of the front lawn.

I visited again this morning.

Now the totem pole is gone.  There's a stump-looking thing where it had been.  What trim had once been painted red or white is now a putty-tan-gray, and the shutters on the living room and upstairs windows are gone.  

The house looks so cold and bare.  I feel sorry for it.  Poor little thing. 


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Daughter came home from school one day, 2nd grade I think, and asked, "Mommy, what's a spanking?"  I asked her where she'd heard about spanking, and she said one of her friends had said she couldn't do something or "she'd get a spanking.  So, what's a spanking?"  

So I turned her over my knee and swatted her bottom twice.

She gave me a look that said "What the #$%^&??!!"  
Me: "That's a spanking, but it's usually harder and a lot more swats.  Remember when you were little, and I told you that if you ever ran out onto the road, you wouldn't sit down for a week?"
She: "Yeah?"
Me:  "Well, that's what I was talking about."
She: "Oh.  I thought you meant you'd take my chair away." 

So I asked the Nugget (she'll be 5 in two months) the other day if she knew what a spanking was, and she said yes, and described it exactly.  I asked her if she'd ever had a spanking, and she said no.  I asked how she knew about spankings, and she just shrugged and said everyone does.   I told her that I wouldn't ever spank her, except for one thing.  If she ever ran out into the road when a car was coming, I'd give her a spanking.  "And do you know why?"  She said no, so I explained that a spanking would hurt a lot less than getting hit by a car, but she'd be alive, and she'd remember it long enough that she'd always think of it before running out onto the road again.

So, yeah, I'd spank.  But not in anger.  It's more like assessing a huge fine on an adult who breaks the law.  You let them know that doing that thing carries huge costs they don't want to pay, so they are less likely to do that again.  Monetary fines don't work with little kids, and taking cherished things away from them, or withholding love and approval, banishment, causes longer psychological pain which I don't see as being any better than a few swats on a covered bottom, that they knew ahead of time was the exact price of that act.

Nugget thought about that a while.  Sometimes (well, actually often) when she wants to do something that I know her mother would not approve or might be dangerous, I'll say no, we can't, because if your mother finds out she'll be mad at me, or if you get hurt, she'll kill me.  (Usually these are things that are just fine with me, like sharing a root beer float after Daughter had said "No sugar.  She's had enough already today.")  So somehow Nugget decided that I'd spank her if she ran in front of a car because I was afraid of her mother.  She struck a deal, "Tell you what.  If I run in front of a car, I won't tell Mommy, then you don't have to spank me.  Ok?"

Our final deal was that she'd try extra hard not to run in front of cars.  We shook on it.

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The pregnant mares are back, at http://www.marestare.com/fcam.php?alias=pacificpintos.  If you go to that link, you'll get a photo of a pinto for a few seconds while the cameras load, and then you get real time video of four mares in stalls.  The little lady currently in stall 4 is overdue.  I noticed they've wrapped her tail, which means she's showing all the signs, so it could be any time now.  If you're lucky, you might see the delivery.

These are miniature horses, not ponies.  They're about knee-high to an average person.
They sleep a lot, so if they're not moving, check the ears.
If nothing is moving the feed might have dropped.  Just reload the site.
The stalls are cleaned often, so if there's no mares visible, just wait.  They'll be back.
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2 comments:

~~Silk said...

The address of the St. Louis house is 15526 Clayton Rd, Ballwin, Mo.

TheQueen said...

La LA.