Cordelia's Mom, Still

Designer Kids – Breeding Perfection? (Re- Blog)

Posted on September 10, 2015 by cordeliasmom2012

Because today is Thursday (my normal post day) and because I’m bored:

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I recently read an article in our local newspaper indicating that 23andMe, a genetic testing company, has been granted US. Patent No. 8,543,339, entitled “Gamete donor selection based on genetic calculations.” (Wow, that’s a mouthful, isn’t it?)

Essentially, as I understand it (and I have absolutely no scientific background, mind you), the purpose is to enable people to predict the genetic traits of babies based on the DNA of the parents.

I’d like to think the patent was obtained with the viewpoint that parents could breed out inherited diseases, but I’m guessing there are people who would love to use such testing to “design” their offspring – you know:

Add a Gene/Change a Gene/Delete a Gene (E-I-E-I-O)

Without getting into the ethics and politics surrounding this patent, I would simply like to say:

If parents could design their offspring, 99.9% of the kids born in the future would behave a whole lot differently than they do today.

I mean, what prospective mother could resist the opportunity to breed into her child an obsession to clean his or her own room without prompting?

What prospective father could resist growing the next [INSERT NAME OF PRO-SPORTS PLAYER HERE]?

Both parents would want to assure that their 16-year-old daughters had an inborn aversion to dating before the age of 30 (and then only with Dad’s express permission).

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if parents could totally breed out sassing, stubbornness, “I hate you and wish you were dead!”, etc. etc.

Even better, maybe we could set up the genetics in such a way that the child went immediately from the cute-new-baby phase to the thank-god-he (or she)- is-finally-an-adult phase!

Never mind the blue eyes, handsome face, beautiful body – I want to choose my kids’ personalities!

Can we find a way to take the kids who are already here and change their genetics NOW, so that they become Stepford-children?

I love all three of my girls, but it would have been so much easier to raise them if they didn’t have that normal teenage hatred of obedience!

So what do you say, folks – want to get on-board with the idea of assembly-line children? Or should we just muddle through with genetically flawed beings like those that populate the world today? After all, you wouldn’t have to worry about your perfectly designed child growing up to become, say, an actor, a comedian, a writer [heaven forbid!], or a politician. Is that cool or what?

Not.

(Actually, now that I think of it, that patent is self-destructive. People who would choose to “design” their offspring are so flawed themselves that their DNA isn’t likely to make it into that new gene pool anyway.)

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I love to hear from my readers. You may comment on this post, comment on my Facebook or Twitter pages, or email me at cordeliasmom2012@yahoo.com or notcordeliasmom@aol.com

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Images by: Be-Younger.com, and Sunshinewalks (Lisa Bruce), respectively

Posted in Humor, Re-Blogs, Relationships, That's Life | Tagged Designer baby, DNA, Genetics, Parenting, Perfection | 18 Comments

Who’s Watching Whom?

Posted on September 9, 2015 by cordeliasmom2012

In her Photo A Week Challenge, Marilyn Armstrong of Serendipity, instructs bloggers to:

“SHARE ONE OR MORE PHOTOS WHERE THE SUBJECT IS SHOWN FROM THE BACK”

There is no better subject for me to photograph than Puppy Cody! What do you suppose she’s looking at in this photo?

Give up? Check it out:

↓

Now – who’s watching whom?

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I love to hear from my readers. You may comment on this post, comment on my Facebook or Twitter pages, or email me at cordeliasmom2012@yahoo.com or notcordeliasmom@aol.com

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Images by Cordelia’s Mom

Posted in Humor, Pets, Photography, That's Life | Tagged bunny, Cody, dogs, Puppy Cody, rabbit | 16 Comments

Stop Saying I’m a Nice Person! (Re-Blog)

Posted on September 7, 2015 by cordeliasmom2012

My computer will be down today and maybe tomorrow, so I won’t be responding to comments or emails for awhile. In the meantime, enjoy this re-blog of an older post – while I futz around with my new “home office.”

(NOTE: This post was written way before the creation of Not CM – but I still think she might have had something to do with it!)

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A lot of my clients and a lot of my readers seem to be under the assumption that I am a nice, grandmotherly type person.

That’s is so not true.

Please be advised that I cheat at Super Text Twist. When I get stumped, I go onto my favorite anagrams website and find the word I need to win the level. As of the writing of this post, I have had the same game running for a couple of years and have accrued over 66,500 points (woo-hoo, my life is soooo exciting!)

In addition, I constantly yell at other drivers.

Here are just a few examples (but I can get really creative sometimes …):

Driver in front of me makes a really slow turn: “Just do it already – you’re not driving a semi!”

Driver in front of me fails to use a turn signal: “What – I’m supposed to guess? Or don’t they require signals wherever you come from?”

Driver behind me is way too close: “Wanna just join me in my own back seat?”

Car in front of me has a flower on the antenna and a white-haired driver, and is going really, really slow: “Come on, Granny, you can do it!”

Driver cuts me off, and then goes too slow: “If you’re going to cut somebody off, you might want to get out of the [effing] way!”

Driver in front of me sits at the stop sign, seemingly forever: “You know – it’s STOP AND GO, not STOP AND STAY!”

Driver in front of me takes off really slow when the light changes: “Come on, didn’t that [INSERT CAR MODEL HERE] come with an engine?”

Driver in front of me doesn’t take off when the light changes – or starts to go and then stops again – and I almost get rear-ended by the car behind me: “Goddammit, would you just [effing] go?”

Driver in front of me has his/her left arm out the window, usually with a cigarette at the end of it, and is driving in very leisurely manner: “OK, I know you’re going to do something stupid, so I’ll just stay way back here.”

Driver in front of me throws a cigarette or some other trash out the window: “PIG!”

(That almost backfired once, when I happened to glance in my rearview mirror and found a cop car behind me … fortunately it was summer and my windows were up to keep the air conditioning in, and I wasn’t doing any illegal driving at that particular moment.)

Everyone else gets the non-verbal finger wave, the number of fingers depending on the severity of the affront.

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While I try to be a nicer person once I get to the office, sometimes things just get to me, ya know?

For instance, it was a very stressful time at work. We were in temporary offices after a fire, my boss’s secretary had quit, and he was trying to get by with a temp. My boss was out of town, and the temp did something really stupid.

My boss called in from wherever he was and yelled at ME for the temp’s error.
I yelled back and threatened to quit.
My boss backed off.
I hung up.

The temp, who had overheard my side of the conversation, skittered into my office and asked what she could do to help.

She, too, must’ve thought I was a nice person, because she was quite surprised when I lost it and snapped:

“YOU! Go back into your office, sit down, and LEAVE ME ALONE!”

She skittered away – and I felt like shit, especially since this temp was older than me by a number of years and really was a sweet, albeit somewhat stupid, woman.

After I finally cooled off, I did apologize to her, but our work relationship was never the same. Thankfully (well, for me, anyway) she got fired as soon as the boss returned the following week, thereby relieving me of the need to be extra nice to make up for my nastiness.

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Try as I might, I simply can’t change my basic personality. I can put on a good, professional front for work and a nice, sweet face for social occasions, but I’m still ME. And ME still isn’t Mother Teresa.

And that’s probably never going to change.

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I love to hear from my readers. You may comment on this post, comment on my Facebook or Twitter pages, or email me at cordeliasmom2012@yahoo.com or notcordeliasmom@aol.com

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Images by: Heather F, and Cordelia’s Mom’s Dad (sometime around 1955-ish!), and Liberty Photos, respectively

Posted in Humor, Re-Blogs, Relationships, Road Trips & Cars, That's Life | Tagged aggression, anger, driving, road rage, work | 12 Comments

WHAT IS (AND IS NOT) LOVE?

Posted on September 3, 2015 by cordeliasmom2012

Print by Ruane Manning – see note at bottom of post

The scream reverberating from the next room at Big Meadows Lodge woke me from a sound sleep. Somehow I just knew that my then husband had something to do with that scream.

No, he was not a philanderer, but he was an alcoholic.

We were on Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park in Virginia to celebrate our first wedding anniversary. After a day of hiking, we had cleaned up and had a romantic dinner in the Lodge’s restaurant, gazing out the plate glass windows at the Blue Ridge Mountains. Returning to our room, my ex-to-be gave me a quick kiss and then returned to the Lodge’s bar to “pick up something for later.” I changed into my newly purchased peek-a-boo negligee (hey, I was only 20 years old!). When he hadn’t returned several hours later, I realized he had continued our celebration, solo, so I went to bed, solo.

At some point after becoming sloppy drunk, ex-to-be attempted to return to our room, but got confused and somehow managed to get into the room next door. (Why was that door not locked?!) He thought the lady in the bed was me, and crawled in with her – by now, he was feeling amorous.

Hence, the scream in the wee hours of the morning.

Divorce eventually followed – but that’s a story for another time.

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On her blog, Behind the White Coat, Victo Dolore recently published a very simple post, the entirety of which was:

What is love?

When you can look at someone and see more than you just saw.

Which made me think, not only of my first marriage, but also of my current one.

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When Cordelia was an infant, my current husband took a job working on a project which would last for approximately one year. The money was very good – so good, in fact, that I was able to take a leave of absence from my own job in order to become a full-time mother to Cordelia.

It was a dream come true – a husband supporting me, while I cared for my child. A clean house. A good, home-cooked meal every night.

But of course, as a young mother, I was a wee bit insecure. Hubby was tired when he came home. I was tired after cleaning and cooking. Evenings were not as romantic as either one of us would have liked

And then I got the call.

“Hello, is this Mrs. [X]? I work with your husband, and I just want you to know that there’s been some funny stuff going on at work.”

Say what? I never thought hubby was particularly amusing. Oh …… wait.

Is it possible? Maybe I have let myself go a bit. He is working with beautifully dressed professional women all day. Could it be?

I waited all day, thoughts running amok. He loves me, he loves me not. He’s a man – would he be strong enough to resist?

Have I become fat and ugly?

I watched out the front window of our apartment when I knew it was time for his arrival. As he approached, I watched the way he walked and saw the look on his face.

And in my heart, I knew –

No way in hell. It didn’t happen, wouldn’t happen. A man who was cheating would not have such a loving, joyful look when coming back to his family after work.

Once Cordelia was in bed, we had a good laugh. It turned out there had been some kind of dispute with a female co-worker, and she was the vindictive type.

Thirty years later, I still think back to that day – it was the only time I ever doubted my husband’s love, even for a moment.

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I love to hear from my readers. You may comment on this post, comment on my Facebook or Twitter pages, or email me at cordeliasmom2012@yahoo.com or notcordeliasmom@aol.com

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The image is my photo of a print I bought during that trip to Shenandoah, and it is published with special thanks to the artist, Ruane Manning, who kindly responded to my email and told me that it was “one of my first published prints. I actually painted a series of 6 different animals back in the early 70’s..(painted in Sepia tones)” – Extra special, indeed! Thank you, Mr. Manning, for your permission to use the photo, and I hope this post does justice to its use.