Category: Jenny thinks she’s funny

I don’t know if you’ve been living under a rock or not heard, but a certain former TV talk-show host whose name starts with “O” and ends with “h” and has a “pra” in the middle?  You know her?  Well, she’s been going around the country doing a tour of talks she calls a “Life Class”.  In these classes you learn really important stuff like how to forgive, how to say you’re sorry, how to live with purpose, how to let go of the past, and other touchy-feel %#!& like that.  And when I was reading on the internetz the other day about this Life Class business, I thought, “I need to have a life class.  Only in mine I will just tell people how not to be idiots and what to do and what not to do and it will. be. BRILLIANT!!”

And after this very short dialogue with myself, Jenny’s Life Klass was born.  Klass with a K because obviously, I am super-klassy, and because I don’t want the aforementioned C-Class leader to sue me.  Even though she has more money than God and I have about $10 more than the homeless guy down the street, still.  Just to be sure.  I mean, what would Emily and I do if O took away the $7.06 we make every month from our blog advertising??  I CAN’T LOSE MY iPHONE, people!! There are serious issues at stake!!

Ahem.  Anyway.  Welcome to Jenny’s Life Klass!!! Please pull up a comfy chair, grab yourself a cup of coffee or 44 oz. cup of Mountain Dew, a sugary snack, and a notebook. Cause you are gonna wanna write this stuff down.

Lesson #1: Don’t Love Animals More than People.  In this installment, I will explain to you that animals are NOT people, they are not as important as people, and they should not be privileged with all the rights and dignities that humans are entitled to.

And also?  I will tell you that your dog does not have a soul.  Sorry, dudes. All dogs do NOT go to heaven.  They go in the ground.  Or the crematory. Same with cats, gerbils, guinea pigs, parakeets, et. al.

I feel that this is a very important lesson for my first Life Klass, because lately I have been seeing a lot of animal-love on the internetz, and not so much of the giving to actual humans with disabilities, disadvantage, or disease.

If you attend this session of JLK and disagree with me, that’s ok.  Feel free to disagree, but I WILL give you a big ol’ F on your homework.  Because this is a pass/fail class.  And if you leave me a mean comment, you FAIL.  And clearly if you hate me for my opinion, you love animals more than people and, well, again with the FAIL.  You are dead to me.  Go read another blog.

Saturday I posted about Toyota’s 100 Cars for Good, an amaaaazing philanthropic effort by which Toyota is giving away A CAR A DAY, Y’ALL!!!  – for 100 days.  Each day, five charities are up to win a car.  They win by getting the most votes through Toyota’s 100 Cars for Good Facebook app.  Of the 500 charities that are part of the program, only 12% are animal charities.   That’s 60 of 500 charities devoted to animals.  AND YET.  The freaking ANIMALS CHARITIES beat out the humans EVERY TIME!!!  The first time I voted, a couple of weeks ago, I voted for a charity that served adults with developmental disabilities.  And I was all excited to see the results after I voted, because SURELY the charity that I picked was going to be the winner, right?  WRONG.  The animal charity had 46% of the vote, and was KILLING all the other charities (which served humans).  The adults with developmental disabilities?  ELEVEN PERCENT.  A crappy 11% of the vote is all they were getting.  You know those sweet special-needs kids in our communities?  They are going to be adults one day.  And they will still need therapies and services that cost a lot of money.  But methinks in America disabled adults makes us uncomfortable, so we’d rather give our votes and our charitable dollars to puppies because – OMG PUPPIES! ARE SO! FREAKING! CUTE! – but adults with developmental disabilities?  Aren’t as cuddly.  Neither are the elderly, battered women, or apparently even educational charities, compared with our four-footed friends.

It makes my blood boil.  Saturday I voted again, and again, the animal charity of the group was kicking tail (no pun intended).  This time I voted for a group that helps families who have a disabled child in the family.  The animal rescue charity was trumping even CHILDREN.  Here are the results after my vote:

Just stop it, people. Get your heads out of your @$$es.  Animals should be treated kindly, but their well-being should not be put above the health, education, or quality-of-life of humans.  I don’t know why animal charities are so flippin’ sexy right now, but the fact speaks to the rottenness of our hearts and our values.

Jenny’s Life Klass homework: Vote for Toyota 100 cars for good every day and DON’T VOTE FOR THE ANIMAL CHARITIES.  I don’t care who ya vote for as long as it’s an organization that helps HUMANS.

Let’s give the kids, old, people, homeless, disabled, and sick HUMANS a chance at the car for good.

Love people more than you love animals.   Write that down.  Practice it, and you get an A+!

*****updated*****

I am updating this to say that I think it’s totally cool if you have pets.  If you have them, you should love them and take care of them.  I don’t care if you call them your “kids” as long as you don’t have actual kids, then I think that’s kinda creepy. But go ahead and get all the pets you want, it’s no skin off my teeth. The point of this post, as stated above, is “Animals should be treated kindly, but their well-being should not be put above the health, education, or quality-of-life of humans. ”

So if you love your doggie or kitty, good on ya. Keep it up, and don’t be offended. If you’d rather pull your dog out of a burning building than a human, you’ve got problems.

Sunday morning Emily and I got up at 4:30 a.m. to catch a flight home from Mom 2.0 Summit.  It was brutal.  We arrived home about 12:30, though, which was nice. Since what can go wrong will go wrong when mom’s away, Bobby had gotten sick Saturday night while I was gone.  So, his planned trip to the store to get a few things we were out of didn’t happen.  Since we were out of milk, bread, and bananas, I decided to run out to Aldi about 4:30 Sunday afternoon. (Because Aldi was a Mom 2.0 sponsor, and their prices are amazing!)  But when I went out to my van, I was greeted with two police cars blocking my driveway. What the what?  There was also an SUV parked right behind the police cars, and an officer was talking to 3 adults, two women  & a man – there were also FOUR kids in the car, including a baby.

Bobby had come outside with me and almost immediately we heard “Joseph Albertson! The house is surrounded! Please come out with your hands up!”  We peered down the street and there was another police car and a cop with a bullhorn three doors down. Well, YEE-HA!  Just another Sunday afternoon in the city!

Naturally, Bobby and I turned on the Wii for the big kids so they wouldn’t notice the drama. Then, we pulled up chairs on our front porch and sat back to watch the drama.

The cop with the civilians was literally RIGHT in front of our porch.  From the conversation we surmised they lived in the house or were related to the person that was being sought.  The man was on the phone trying to make arrangements for someone to come get the kids.  I felt so sorry for those kids.  The younger woman was yelling at them a lot and using the “F” word.  Lovely. I know it’s a high-stress situation, but geez.  It was really hot so I went in and got a box of Capri Sun and took it out to the woman, but she declined, saying the kids were leaving soon.  Fortunately, they were all soon escorted away.

By this time they had completely closed off our block so we definitely knew I was not getting out to the grocery anytime soon.  I wasn’t too thrilled but I figured this wouldn’t take too long.  Soon, I’d have my bread and milk, and anti-fungal cream for Jonah’s wicked diaper rash he had developed while I was gone? Right?

Then, we heard the cop tell the people on our sidewalk that SWAT and the Hostage Negotiation Team were coming. WHEEEEE!

It didn’t take long.

Soon this was the scene across the street from our house!

Soon there were SWAT guys with assault rifles all over the place.  They were being very stealthy – jumping over fences, creeping through alleys, etc.  All this time, the policeman with the bullhorn was constantly calling the guy to come out.  Bobby and I could see a news camera crew down the street filming the action.  He and I were constantly updating our FB statuses, and I was tweeting and instagramming the drama.  And also, after about two hours, I was complaining HEAVILY about not being able to get to the store!

At one point a SWAT team member, or HNT member, dropped an orange box right in front of our sidewalk.  I was all…umm…I hope that thing’s not going to blow up!  Luckily my friend Jen, whose husband is on the HNT, told me that’s the “jump phone” they use to talk to the perpetrator.  From online news reports, we found out the guy was wanted on a domestic violence charge, and was believed to be holed up in the house with an automatic weapon.

At some point we went in and made the kids dinner, then after that we let Joshua and Sophie continue to play Wii so they would not know that their were men with assault weapons right outside the house (they remained clueless throughout. We turned up the TV so they wouldn’t hear the bullhorn.)

But since we are super-stellar parents, we took Jonah out on the porch with us and let him swing on his baby swing so we could keep watching the drama!

So we were just sitting there minding the SWAT team’s business, when all of a sudden a stealthy SWAT guy crept up right next to our porch! I didn’t even hear him but Bobby pointed him out to me. So, I did what any good blogger will do:

LOOK AT HIM SMILING!!! HE LOVES IT!

I wasn’t as stealthy as him, because he saw me take the pic and said. “Don’t you go putting that on YouTube.”

No worries, dude.  But you didn’t say anything about MAH BLOG!

Soon after this, things stopped getting fun.  The bullhorn kept going.  At one point they blared the SWAT truck’s sirens (it was on this guy’s front lawn at this point) really loudly for a really LONG time to try to get him to come out.

It got late. I still didn’t have any groceries.  Jonah’s biscuits were still burning and he needed that diaper rash cream!

We put the kids to bed.  It took forever.  At one point I went out and saw the SWAT guys all in a row, with their shields up, in tight formation – it looked like they were ready to go in and get that guy!

But then nothing.

And about 45 minutes later, the trucks packed up and left.  Huh?  Bobby finally got out to the store after 10 to get us a few things, and I went to bed.

Then I woke up to news reports the next morning that THE GUY WASN’T EVEN IN THE HOUSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  WHAT?????  I don’t know how he got out but he wasn’t there.  He ended up calling police from a location several miles away and turning himself in without incident.

After holding my neighbors and us hostage for over FIVE HOURS!   Ugh.

If he moves back to the house three doors down after he gets of jail, I am totally leaving a bag of flaming poop on his porch!