An exercise so simple a child could do it!

[elfs]

Compare		and contrast.

Comments

[trinsf.livejournal.com]

Aww, Elf. We all know, so you don't have to snark about it. God knows there are times *I* want to snark about the same sort of matter in my own life, but I remind myself that the best revenge is living well, or at least that contentment doesn't depend on pointing out the misery of others.

But yeah, noticed.

[blaisepascal]

I am assuming that Stormy==Yaamarashi-chan(sp?)? Why did her mom think she was crying at Beltaine?

[trinsf.livejournal.com]

Well, it sounds like she was unhappy for having to do her homework instead of participate. (But I'm sure Elf will explain.)

[blaisepascal]

I'd be unhappy too, but Y-chan hasn't been described as the type of girl who'd cry over that.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

She was miffed, of course. Your standard ten-year-old snit, the kind that happens when a parent says "responsibilities first." But when she finished she bounced up, hugged her elder sister, and dove head-first into the chocolate fountain with Kouryou-chan.

*Shrug*.

This is what she tells her friends and, sometimes, I suspect she believes it herself: Yamaraashi-chan is miserable here, it's horrible, it's awful. It has to be, you see, because obviously Yamaraashi-chan was happy when her mother had custody, so life must be hellish now. At least, that's what I think she believes.

She's not usually so blatant about it in public. But this time, good grief, I had pictures!.

[trinsf.livejournal.com]

Yup, had exactly that experience. Even when my children both had their own cell phones and third party email accounts (because I'd been accused to censoring or filtering accounts on my domain), my ex and his partner told people that the children were being refused any contact with him, that I was trying to turn them against him and therefore restricting contact. I also fed them terrible food and any number of imaginary sins. It used to really upset me that they told so many blatant lies about the situation on LJ and in other places. But at some point we just realized that as a family, we're happy, and the results speak for themselves.

There are people who think that prioritizing schoolwork is somehow crazy, which *I* find strange. I was at a con recently where part of some small drawwma revolved around Younger Child not being able to finish something she had agreed to because it was con-related costuming, and she had school work to do instead. I helped her finish her commitment to the con, but a few of the people involved seemed very upset at me over it.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Oh, we've had that too. "You must restrict her phone use because she never calls me." As if the kid ever calls me when she's over there. She has trouble remembering to call her friends; Omaha and I sometimes feel like we have to push to give this kid a social life. She's got her own computer, Internet access, and a gmail account, and she still doesn't send either parent email when she's at the other.

I think she's just a kid, short-term imagination and out-of-sight, out-of-mind temperment. I'm not crushed by it. She's just being, well, ten.

[trinsf.livejournal.com]

My ex hasn't spoken to the children 3-4 years, at least. When they moved here, he got upset at me when I reminded them to call him, because he said that he only wanted them to call when *they* thought of it. YC says that because any time she called he cried a lot or made negative comments about her living situation, she had no interest in doing so. He doesn't send cards, doesn't email, nothing. Supposedly this is because of me, though I'm not sure how.

When they lived with him, I understood that if I wanted to keep contact steady, I had to initiate it regularly, because as you said, out-of-sight, out-of-mind.

Still, I am sometimes sadly amused that he refers to himself as this incredible parent of our children (and that his friends constantly back him up on this and stroke his ego) when he hasn't contacted them in years.

[shunra.livejournal.com]

That's fairly impressive parenting vs. non-parenting, there.

[whipartist.livejournal.com]

Clearly you are a horrible person and a terrible parent for expecting her to do her school work. How can you live with yourself?

[marketeer]

I don't know how you all do it sometimes. The constant negativity would wear me out.

[insomnia.livejournal.com]

Hi Elf,

I know that you probably avoid anything that even remotely smacks of politics like the plague, and would completely understand why you might send a two word reply to this comment, but I'll send it anyway.

For a long, long time now, many at LiveJournal, including people like myself who helped create it long ago, have been extremely frustrated at the management of the site, their policies, their occasional censorship, their weak response to the Russian government's prosecution of a LJer (http://www.theotherrussia.org/2008/03/13/russian-blogger-heads-to-court-after-fiery-comment/) for leaving a comment suggesting that corrupt cops should be publically burned at the stake, etc.

Well, I've created an LJ community called ljunited, where our goal is to form a large, centralized group of LJ members to fight that.

Specifically, our goal is to work towards defending and restoring the original promises made to LiveJournal's members (http://web.archive.org/web/20040401175244/http://www.livejournal.com/site/contract.bml) by LiveJournal itself.

We want to stand up for the free speech of ALL of LiveJournal's members, restore LJ's original strong support for community-based Open Source Software development, and restore community participation in the successful operations of LiveJournal... because frankly, the people managing the site are also slowly killing it (http://community.livejournal.com/no_lj_ads/48335.html) due to their poor policies.

The site is shrinking in activity about 1% a month currently, and it's within the management's power to do something about this trend, rather than contribute to it by further alienating its members.

In the past week or so, I have attracted about 150 fairly motivated people to help out. We're also working with helping candidates for the upcoming LJ advisory council elections who embrace our views.

We've endorsed rm on LiveJournal, who is a very knowledgeable, thoughtful individual (http://community.livejournal.com/ljunited/1896.html) with a lot of persuasive oomph who has been on LJ forever. A talented writer, longtime LJ member, very knowledgeable, very talented individual.

We've also attracted several LJers in the Open Source community, who have their own issues relating to the open source side of LJ that need to be addressed, because LJ has turned its back on working with the open source community for its development over the years, shutting out needed improvements to the software. We want to make the case that they should reverse this policy.

Despite current crap Russian management at LJ's parent company SUP, we have some reasons for hope. Recently, they brought in someone who previously oversaw the internet development at ITV to be their general manager, so there seems to be some recognition that they need a bit of a change. Our job is to basically do a far better job in making the case for it, and to lay out where they're going wrong and what the better alternatives would be.

I'd be curious what your concerns are regarding LiveJournal and its future, because it's our goal to bring people into our group and have them positively effect our policies and ideas.

Sure, it would be a wonderful thing to have you join our community, to have your support for LJ United, its goals, and its candidate... but failing that, I invite you to find out more about us.

Best,
Mark