a reaper tired reposes

My favorite grocery store cashier died a few months ago. I know this probably sounds like a bizarre thing to be sad about. Her name was Judith and I only saw her once or twice a week, and only while I was paying for groceries. But even now, months later, I think of her when I'm at the grocery store. She used to save the ends of receipt paper rolls when they only had a foot or two left on them and give them to me, which I never asked her to do, but the first time she did it she held one out to me and said "you look like someone who would make a craft out of this," and I laughed because she was right. I do save them to put in geocaches and letterboxes. Our small talk was about the weather and the weekend and aren't those cookies good? They're so expensive though. But it's worth it.

The only times I ever remember seeing a dentist or doctor as a child was at school. I'm quite healthy physically and I'm very grateful for all the care I got from the various professionals who cared about my well-being and development more than my actual parents did.

Some parents would not take care of their children even if they were given all the time and the resources. Mine are a great example of that — my mother stopped working and became a homemaker when I was in kindergarten, my father worked from the garage and was also always home. They had a car and our village even had a bus that would come once or twice an hour that would take you to the next two bigger cities.

A knee-jerk response to neglectful parenting I see a lot is “people should have to get licenses and take rigorous tests to PROVE that they should be ALLOWED to have kids” which is eugenics. That’s just the starting line for eugenics.

Parents do not have to be neglectful to fail!

Listen man, its a work week, you just got done your shift at the dollar store, youre in a rural area and the local waffle house is a 35 minute drive away and driving from the waffle house back home will be another 45 minutes, so what youre gonna do is youre gonna pick these four bad boys up from the dry goods aisle, drive home, cook some Carolina long grain rice with a little bouillon cube stirred into the cooking water, and in a separate skillet, youre gonna add a tsp of veggie oil or if youre lucky some butter and cook down some of that garlic. Then add a little extra oil and if you have spinach or any hearty greens, youre gonna throw them in your skillet with some salt and cook them down, if not thats okay. But youre also gonna transfer your rice from the pot into the skillet with your garlic (and veggies if youre lucky) and stirfry that rice for a minute or so. The bouillon cube didnt quite season your rice to your liking, so youre gonna throw a little extra pinch of salt. Perfect. Then youre gonna turn off the flame and add parmesan to taste. You take a look in your fridge and you see that you have a little parsley left from the last time you were able to clock out early enough to stop in at the local Food Lion and its still in good condition. Youre gonna wash that parsley, dry it, give it a quick chop, and finish your fake risotto with it and a couple splashes of lemon juice.

so wildly obnoxious when you agree with the starting point of someone's stance only for them to hard turn into things you DON'T agree with and now you have to defend the thing that was originally annoying you