A revolution in thought

[ChristinaM]

<deletes a bunch of internet psychiatrist musings since I don't know what I'm talking about...>

There's something almost childishly charming about her dedication to the guy and her mission to bring his writings to the world but I hope that it doesn't really disturb her that she's alone in her admiration. I suppose it's better than watching soap operas all day.

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by ChristinaM

<deletes a bunch of internet psychiatrist musings since I don't know what I'm talking about...>

There's something almost childishly charming about her dedication to the guy and her mission to bring his writings to the world but I hope that it doesn't really disturb her that she's alone in her admiration. I suppose it's better than watching soap operas all day.

I don't know about that. my grandmother used to watch her "Programs" each day, and she did a lot more good that Peacegirl ever will. She and Grandpa also always had a garden, about an acres worth, and she always had 2 rows of Irises planted next to the road. I remember helping to pick and shell peas, green beans, lettuce, and several others, the corn was planted in a larger field on the other side of the road. They also kept chickens for eggs and chicken, and a steer for meat, and pigs. My grandmother was a really good cook and you couldn't beat her pie crusts, which she made with lard. Grandpa had apple and pear trees growing and the apple tree had several kinds of apple grafted to one tree. Thanks for stiring the memories.

[ChristinaM]

I definitely don't think that it's better than gardening, cooking or just about anything else useful . My life isn't all that different from your grandmothers these days (minus the livestock) and it's a pretty great way to live and watching Firefly in my pajamas at 6 AM isn't exactly productive either.

I obviously haven't lost my ability to derail every thread I post in. I better go find the sections where people aren't trying to have an intelligent conversation for me to interrupt. I have terrible noob manners sometimes.

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by ChristinaM

I definitely don't think that it's better than gardening, cooking or just about anything else useful . My life isn't all that different from your grandmothers these days (minus the livestock) and it's a pretty great way to live and watching Firefly in my pajamas at 6 AM isn't exactly productive either.

I obviously haven't lost my ability to derail every thread I post in. I better go find the sections where people aren't trying to have an intelligent conversation for me to interrupt. I have terrible noob manners sometimes.

And I haven't lost my ability to keep a "derail" going. Sometimes I find the off topic comments more interesting than the original thread.

As another derail, I would suggest that watching fireflies at 6 PM in your pajamas can be very relaxing, and if you include grandkids chasing the fireflies it can be very entertaining too.

[ChristinaM]

Originally Posted by thedoc

And I haven't lost my ability to keep a "derail" going. Sometimes I find the off topic comments more interesting than the original thread.

As another derail, I would suggest that watching fireflies at 6 PM in your pajamas can be very relaxing, and if you include grandkids chasing the fireflies it can be very entertaining too.

There may come a day when you'll wish you hadn't encouraged me .

We don't have bioluminescent fireflies here in my part of CA so I haven't seen any since I left the east coast decades ago. I miss catching them almost as much as I miss real pizza and bagels. I grew up in the Bronx so it was always a big deal to go visit our cousins in the suburbs and spend the night outside catching them. We were just so amazed that their bugs glowed and all we had were roaches and some ants.

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by ChristinaM

There may come a day when you'll wish you hadn't encouraged me .

We don't have bioluminescent fireflies here in my part of CA so I haven't seen any since I left the east coast decades ago. I miss catching them almost as much as I miss real pizza and bagels. I grew up in the Bronx so it was always a big deal to go visit our cousins in the suburbs and spend the night outside catching them. We were just so amazed that their bugs glowed and all we had were roaches and some ants.

I don't believe I could ever be dissapointed with a derail, But I would be looking forward to that day, just to see what could possibly dissapoint me.

Lightning Bugs - YouTube

Just something to stir some memories.
And this, just for fun.

The Mills Brothers - Glow Worm (Original) 1952 -...

[thedoc]

A few days ago my grandaughter decided she was Princes Aurora, then she was Cinderella and discovered that we have the DVD of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella with Lesley Ann Warren, so now she wants to watch it all the time. I certainly cannot fault the music, some of the most romantic music ever.

[ChristinaM]

Those are great - thanks. You must be close to my age (mid 50s) because I drove my mom nuts watching that version of Cinderella over and over again. I probably still know all of the words to the songs. I also watched Peter Pan with Mary Martin until my mom couldn't stand it another moment and threatened to throw my father's movie projector out of the window. It's so hilarious to remember now that the way to tape TV shows back then was to set up a movie camera in front of the television set.

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by ChristinaM

Those are great - thanks. You must be close to my age (mid 50s) because I drove my mom nuts watching that version of Cinderella over and over again. I probably still know all of the words to the songs. I also watched Peter Pan with Mary Martin until my mom couldn't stand it another moment and threatened to throw my father's movie projector out of the window. It's so hilarious to remember now that the way to tape TV shows back then was to set up a movie camera in front of the television set.

Close, I'm mid 60's, my son is mid 40's and the 3 year old grandaughter I'm refering to is my younger daughter's, mid 20's. My oldest grandchild is 19. I can remember when my first grandchild was due, and everyone else was whining that they were too young to be a grandparent or not ready, and I was just as happy as I could be, and saying I'm ready to hold that baby. It was just not in my nature, to not want to be a grandfather.

[ChristinaM]

I'm pretty sure that it's not in my nature to have been a decent parent because I'm too impatient but there were some medical reasons why it made sense to not to anyway so I never had to find out. I just borrow other people's kids and grandkids when I want to hang out with them and/or they want a babysitter and that works for me. I decided to have a homeless shelter in my 30s instead of kids and I don't regret it at all now. I think that my mom is bummed because she never got that opportunity to parade around outside of my house pointing and laughing for revenge when my kids hit their teenage years.

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by ChristinaM

I'm pretty sure that it's not in my nature to have been a decent parent because I'm too impatient but there were some medical reasons why it made sense to not to anyway so I never had to find out. I just borrow other people's kids and grandkids when I want to hang out with them and/or they want a babysitter and that works for me. I decided to have a homeless shelter in my 30s instead of kids and I don't regret it at all now. I think that my mom is bummed because she never got that opportunity to parade around outside of my house pointing and laughing for revenge when my kids hit their teenage years.

Payin' for your raisin', you understand that you are in debt, but it appears that you are trying to repay.

[thedoc]

I'm not the typical grandparent, I can't be, I was the primary caregiver for my 7 year old grandson and then my 3 year old grandaughter from the time they were born. I took care of them, sometimes over night so my daughter could work at a job and go back to school. The typical grandparent can teach the grandkids all kinds of ornery things and then send them home, anything I taught them I had to deal with, so they get a lot of wholesome movies and educational TV when they aren't playing. About a week ago I got my attic cleared out so they can ride their bikes up there now.

[ChristinaM]

I'm pretty sure that having to handle 200+ street people at a time was harder to do than raising me was but somehow I think she disagrees.

The only thing that our one grandparent ever tried to give us was scotch but I hated the taste. I think that she really wanted to send us home to dad drunk as some sort of payback for something he must have done but I used to run and hide so that I didn't have to take a sip. You sound like a much better grandparent than my grandmother was given that I was about 6 when she tried to turn me into an alcoholic like her.

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by ChristinaM

<deletes a bunch of internet psychiatrist musings since I don't know what I'm talking about...>

There's something almost childishly charming about her dedication to the guy and her mission to bring his writings to the world but I hope that it doesn't really disturb her that she's alone in her admiration. I suppose it's better than watching soap operas all day.

FYI, this might help to explain things, Lessans was Peacegirl's father.

[ChristinaM]

I'm pretty sure that I didn't know that but I'm not surprised. I might have missed it on IIDB but I was under the impression that he had been some sort of teacher or mentor but the emotional need for him to be right is more understandable now (and sad).

I can tell that I've been offline for a really long time because I keep typing my opinion and deleting it again. I feel like I'm talking about her behind her back right in front of her face even though she isn't here ATM to talk to. I have to keep reminding myself that it's really OK not to be as polite online as I would be IRL.

[thedoc]

If you have the stamina and care to review the thread, you will see that Peacegirl has earned any hostility that she has received. Willful ignorance, lying and accusing others of lying, tend to rub most people the wrong way.

[thedoc]

The way a child can respond to the way they were raised can take many forms, I would like to point out 2 of them.

A child can grow up to be just like their parents and make the same mistakes, "If it was good enough for me, it's good enough for my kids."

A child can recognize where there parents were wrong and learn from those mistakes. Then when the children have their own children they can make different mistakes

My Mother would do something that just bugged the shit out of me. She would see my brother and I through Rose Colored Glasses and say that because we turned out so well, that they must have been good parents.

[ChristinaM]

Originally Posted by thedoc

If you have the stamina and care to review the thread, you will see that Peacegirl has earned any hostility that she has received. Willful ignorance, lying and accusing others of lying, tend to rub most people the wrong way.

Oh, I know - IIRC I ended up blasting her a few times from frustration or when she snarked at me even though I was being relatively nice. I'm still half-stuck in real-life manners where people can hit you if you piss them off but I'm sure that it won't take long to get un-stuck.

[thedoc]

Hmmm, 3 days, perhaps LadyShea's dog videos were too much, or I wonder how long it will take Peacegirl to find something on the net that she thinks will refute them?

[LadyShea]

She's taking one of her breaks is all.

[thedoc]

One of The most recient topics on this thread, other than the very enjoyable derail, was the discussion of dogs recognizing their master in a photograph. Peacegirl claiming they don't based on her fathers book, and almost everyone else stating that they do and citing videos and studies that proove it. There is a factor that has not been part of the dialogue, is the dog free to choose what to do or are they strictly running on instinct and reaction to stimuli. Can the dog choose to 'not respond' to the photo, even if it does recognize the subject of the photo. Humans can and do make choices like that in their daily lives, do dogs? In a situation of an adult looking at a group photo of their child and their classmates, they sometimes pretend to not know which is the child, encouraging the child to point out where they are.

[ChristinaM]

My first smartass answer is that my dogs ignore me all the time so I'm pretty sure they have some choice in the matter. My completely scientific observations based on the two dogs in the room right now (hey, if Lessans can do it so can I) is that my dogs react very strongly to our voices on the phone and will run all over looking for whichever one of us is on speaker phone but I just showed them a picture of my husband, they looked at it, sniffed at it and then gave me that "wtf am I supposed to do with this?" look but showed lots of interest in a dirty sock of his. I'm guessing that in Janice's world that was a controlled experiment and my dogs don't react to visual stimuli at all. That or they're blind and I just never noticed before this.

Now I'll go read the thread, look at the videos, read the discussion and see what someone that doesn't just make shit up would say.

[ChristinaM]

OK. more seriously of course I don't know what is going on in my dogs' minds to be certain about what they're reacting to and why. I would guess that they didn't respond to the little picture because even I can't tell who it is without my glasses on and the real person is just at the other end of the house smelling like himself anyway. Chances are that if I had a life-sized cutout of him walking in the gate they would run right into it before realizing that it wasn't really him. The last thing that I would guess is that their eyes aren't sensory organs. I wonder a lot about the stuff that my dogs do but I try not to ascribe magical or heretofore unproven theories to explain it. I think that it's far more likely that they know to wait at the gate for my husband at 5 because that's when I start a pot of coffee and wander around the kitchen getting ready to make dinner than that they've learned to tell time. I suppose it's possible that they have some sort of internal clock or hear his truck from 2 miles away but not being a scientist I would stick those into the "wouldn't that be interesting" file until someone qualified to do that sort of research proved it.

One thing that jumped out at me is that Peacegirl has learned a lot since the last time that I saw this. Back then she couldn't figure out how to use the quote feature and mods had to follow along behind her editing her posts to make them legible and there was no way that she could throw around all those big words in any sort of context that made sense at all. The Mr. Bill "Oh noes he's being mean to me" routine is still the same though.

[thedoc]

Just to muddy the waters a bit more, Dogs come in a variety of sizes, shapes, and temperments. One of the last dogs we had as a pet was a Coon Hound that wasn't really dumb, but in some ways couldn't control himself. In the presence of other animals, he would bay at them, and there was no stopping him even when I held his mouth shut, you could hear the bay in his throat. He was removed from obedience for it. The Vet. even suggested that he was 'hard wired' for that activity and there was no way to train him out of it.

I had another dog that could definately control her own actions. My father would place several treats on the floor in front of her and she wouldn't touch any till he pointed to one of them, and then that is the only one she would take or try to take. She would sit there patiently till she was given permisson to take one.

A humorous story about the Coon Hound, at one time he was having gas, and would pass it loudly, and It stank, so I would scold him and chase him out of the room, he and another dog had a room they stayed in when no-one was home or at night. That happened a few times and then one evening my wife and I and the dogs were in the house and someone passed gas loudly, not the dog, and the dog immediately got up and hurried to his room looking like he was about to get yelled at.

[ChristinaM]

Don't ever decide to feed your dogs pure venison and buffalo meat food or your eyes will never stop watering again. Just take my word for it.

I get all of my animals from rescue agencies other than the feral cats that keep showing up uninvited so unless I get them as puppies I don't know where some of their strange habits come from. Right now I have a cocker spaniel that I was starting to think was brain damaged because he seemed so dumb and he never did dog stuff like barking, digging, chewing on things or any other sort of thing that resembles dog fun. Then I adopted the Einstein of little terrier mutts and within days she was teaching the old dog all sorts of new tricks, like how to use the pet door that the cats had been using in front of him for a year. He figured out that it was OK to bark sometimes and run around getting into stuff in the garden that I would rather he didn't, he looks me in the eye instead of having a blank stare all the time and he's a completely different and happy dog now. Now my best guess is that he was one of those apartment dogs that never gets to do anything but lie down and shut up other than a 10 minute walk twice a day. The little terrier is the smartest dog that I've ever had and picks things up after only being shown a few times but I can't train her to stop that hysterical yapping when someone even walks down the road, never mind onto our property. I finally went out and bought one of those super-shooter water guns because squirting her shuts her up or at least makes me feel better. Now she stops as soon as she sees me pick up a garden hose or the water gun but it seems to be wired into all 15 pounds of her to defend the boundaries of her world against the invading hordes.