Mishmash Musings

Some people never learn… or are just plain stupid. Drew Peterson, who was a suspect in the murder of his third wife, as well as the prime target of investigators in the disappearance of his fourth wife, is engaged yet again. Who in their right mind would want to marry this guy? Some 23-year-old Bolingbrook woman.

What is it with these young women and their daddy issues?? Wife No. 4 was also young (Stacy Peterson would be 24 if she were around today), but this new one is even younger. It’s amazing that anyone would want to get involved with this guy after all that he’s been suspected and accused of.

The new bride-to-be hasn’t been named yet, but I’m sure it’ll surface soon. I can’t imagine the girl’s parents will be too pleased to hear the news. Wow.

I tell you what, Peterson must be one smooth operator, that’s for sure. He’s not even remotely good looking, nor is he rich. So how is it that he has convinced 5 different women to marry him??? And women in their early twenties to boot. Are there really that many 23-year-olds willing to shack up with a disgusting 54-year-old pig??? Color me surprised.

I’m finally back online after being out of touch for close to 20 hours (I’m not sure exactly how long it was, but am basing that estimate on what other irate users have said), thanks to some hardware problems over at Dreamhost. I have to admit that I was pretty annoyed by having all my sites down, as I actually did have things to do on them. Fortunately, however, the downtime didn’t end up costing me money — unlike a lot of other customers who had web stores, etc. affected.

I know people complain about Dreamhost frequently, and when they have problems, they have PROBLEMS, but I don’t mind them. Their customer service is super-fast most of the time, their rates are reasonable, and the problems only come up every once in a blue moon for me.

Anyway, my sites are back now, and that’s what matters in the end. Now I can actually get some work done!

My five-year-old boy is just about the sweetest kid there is. We’ve never had ANY major behavioral problems with him at home (which isn’t all that surprising since he’s an only child) nor at school (either preschool or kindergarten). But he had a very scary temper tantrum today that left me feeling helpless and frightened — and I’m still shaken up about it.

The problem started when my husband (who had the day off) and I picked him up for school. We had run a few errands to picking him up, and were consequently three minutes later than usual. My son had obviously been crying because of this slight delay, an issue that we’ve spoken to him about in the past. There’s no reason to cry or get anxious just because we’re not at the doors the minute they open; we haven’t forgotten about him or anything like that.

Anyway, when I asked my son why he was crying, instead of giving me a straight answer, he lied and said it was because his friends wouldn’t play with him. I knew he was lying, so I asked him to give me the names of these friends so I could ask them what the problem was. First he named his best friend, then when I said I would speak to that boy, he immediately changed his answer to a different kid, and then a different one, and yet again to a different one. When it became obvious that he was lying, I said he wouldn’t be allowed to play his Nintendo DS all weekend because of it.

That’s when the tantrum started. We were driving back home by this time, and he started kicking the driver’s seat from his position in the back. My husband was driving, and was surprised enough by the force of the kick to swerve into the oncoming lane just a bit. Fortunately, no cars were coming at the time, but I told him to pull over anyway. I then said my son and I would get out and walk, as he would not be allowed to ride in the car after doing that. We were only two blocks away, so it was no big deal.

My son at first refused to get out, so I had to physically remove him. Then as we were walking, he started running — and purposely dove headfirst into the sidewalk in an effort to injure himself. I saw the entire thing and was horrified by it. I expected him to get up with blood all over his face, missing teeth, etc. I mean, the impact was that hard!

Fortunately, he just had a huge knot on his forehead, as well as some bruising around his eye. He was still pissed at this point, and screaming that he wouldn’t go home, so I had to wait for him to calm down, and then walk him the rest of the way home, where both my husband and I talked to him about proper ways to express his anger.

I can’t believe what he did, and still have the image of that headfirst dive into the pavement in my mind. I have never seen my son so angry before. It was a truly scary sight — one that I’m not going to forget anytime soon.

I’ve heard of younger kids (2, 3 years old) banging their heads on the wall or otherwise trying to hurt themselves when they get angry, but not older kids like this. So now I’m going to spend all weekend reading about the subject so I can be better prepared to handle the situation if it comes up again.

What an utterly draining day….

I just read that Macaulay Culkin’s sister Dakota Culkin died today after being struck by a car on Tuesday in Los Angeles. Initial reports came from the TMZ.com website, with follow-up confirmation provided by the LAPD. Today, Macaulay Culkin’s publicist confirmed Dakota’s death, and asked for privacy for the family while they deal with this tragedy.

And for those of you superstitious folks out there, the LA Times blog made the connection that this is the third celebrity sibling to die a “violent death” recently. First, there was Jennifer Hudson, whose brother, mother, and nephew were brutally shot in Chicago. Then, there was Mark Ruffalo’s brother who was also shot (in L.A.), and Dakota Culkin makes three.

Well, this certainly is sad news for the Culkins and all of Dakota’s friends. RIP.

One of the most popular videos on YouTube for the past couple of days has been the following clip that shows a stray dog dragging the body of another dead dog off a highway in Chile. The footage comes from traffic cameras on the highway, and unfortunately does show the first dog getting hit by a truck — which was kind of tough to watch for me. After that, the other dog comes in and starts dragging the body off to the side of the road.

According to follow-up reports, a cleanup crew reached both dogs, but the stray got away again and nobody knows where it is now. That’s too bad, as the news station that aired this footage reportedly received numerous offers from people willing to adopt the dog.

Everyone knows that college football doesn’t have a playoff system or tournament to end their season, so Bowl games are the next best thing. There are something like 34 bowl games to be played at the end of December and early January, which is a heck of a lot, and the official selections will be announced tonight.

There aren’t really any big mysteries, as the BCS standings came out a bit earlier today, so we already know that Florida will take on Oklahoma for the national championship. The other bowls might mean something for the schools in terms of more money or whatever, but I don’t think fans really care. I mean, does the average fan know if the Fiesta Bowl is more prestigious than the Sugar Bowl or Orange Bowl? I sure don’t. Different payouts, probably, but beyond that, it’s not as though one is the third-place game or whatever.

Anyway, there’s a whole television show dedicated to the selection process now. That’s a bit of overkill, if you ask me… why waste time watching that when you can just glance through the sports pages in an hour and see all the results?!

Apparently, a number of people have filed lawsuits in different states requesting that Barack Obama’s birth certificate be reviewed by a judge. There are some who doubt that Obama is a U.S. citizen, which of course would prevent his ascendancy to the presidency. Among the questions are: was Obama really born in Hawaii as he has maintained from Day 1? If so, why can’t his “official” birth certificate be located? And, did Obama renounce his U.S. citizenship at some point while he was living in Indonesia during his youth?

One case regarding Obama’s birth certificate is headed to the Supreme Court, where the justices will make a ruling on whether to allow the lawsuit to proceed.

What is going on here? You’d think with all of these questions, the Obama camp would just pull out the damn birth certificate and put an end to the speculation, right? Why prolong this crap? I haven’t been following these stories very closely, but just reading the bit I did makes me think that Obama has something to hide. This is one of those things that won’t go away until he just shows the damn papers already!

As I was looking at my dashboard just now, I noticed that this will be my 1,000th post here at MishmashMusings.com! I can’t believe I reached that number in just 25 months — especially since I run three other blogs that have similar post counts! That’s a lot of blogging in the past two years.

I have to admit that out of all my blogs, this is the one that needs the most work. It’s the only one without a real identity, as my others pretty much have a single niche that the posts fall into. Originally, I wanted this blog to be filled with more personal stuff, like about my family and work, but after a few months, I realized that I simply wasn’t getting enough search engine traffic based on that stuff.

So then I started posting about current events, and got more hits — but lost that personal connection with readers. Very few people leave comments about news stories, unless it’s something highly controversial, like the Victoria Lindsay beating.

Anyway, from this point forward, I think I’m going to try to find more of a balance between the two extremes. I’ll try posting about my home/family life at least a couple times a week and post about current events on the remaining days. Maybe this approach will do the trick of getting more readers involved in the conversation, while not sacrificing search engine traffic in the process.