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Well, the Easter Bunny visited Kiki in the night, so we've got that part of Easter down. The whole religious/Jesus/God side of it... not so much.
See, my dear, long-suffering wife & editor came from a family with a Buddhist mother and a Protestant father, so she viewed Christianity as the thing that made you go somewhere with Dad every Sunday morning vs. Buddhism which allowed her mother to stay home alone and have some peace & quiet.
I came from a father who grew up Catholic in Europe, experiencing religion in cathedrals that had seen generations come & go, kingdoms rise & fall, ideologies flourish & die, and then he came to the United States where we have a church that is almost 12 years old!!!!! Needless to say, he didn't find religious rapture in institutions that had yet to hit puberty. My mother was raised Southern Baptist, with a central theme of people are sinners, women are sinners, you, Jean-Clare, are a sinner. Thankfully she recognized that this form of religion is less an aid in life and more of a bully, and distanced herself from it and organized religion in general.
Thus Kiki is, I guess, being raised without religion. I won't say atheist, as that indicates an adherence to a belief system almost as strong as most religions. It's a sort of sciency/loosely buddhist framework, informed at times with lessons from George Carlin and She-Ra.
Writing that out makes me realize how batshit crazy it sounds... but then that's probably the indication of a good religion, isn't it? Do you think the guys writing "How blessed will be the one who seizes your young children and pulverizes them against the cliff" (Psalm 137:9) were thinking how logical that was? Well, dear reader, count yourself lucky, you may have just witnessed the genesis of a new religion! You can call yourself a disciple if you want. Or Pope, for that matter, I don't really give a fuck. And we just found our central tenet!
In our parenting efforts we have tried to instill a sense of independence, strength, and creativity in our daughter. 4 years into this, I'm starting to think that may have been a bad idea. We now have a daughter who prefers to be called "Aduna" over her given name of Akira (a.k.a. Kiki). Though, to be fair, it could be spelled Adoona. Or, most accurately, when asked she informed me that it's spelled "33221" so what the hell do I know?
She has also informed us of our future pet choices. It all begins when our current dogs die, all three of them, which according to her is going to be rather soon (two are ancient and the third, well, let's just say I hope Kiki's being silly and not foreshadowing a serial killer future).
First we'll be getting a cat. Then a hamster. Then it starts getting more unusual. Next we'll have an iguana. Then we're getting a parrot. At some point she also wants a "trained" dog, because ours are fucking uncontrollable and annoying as hell. That's the one choice I'm fully behind, although when she says trained, she is referring to a seeing eye dog we met at dinner one night, whereupon she decided she wanted one too, because it would help her "do the dishes, clean up my toys, and cook dinner", so I think she should probably be prepared to be disappointed.
I did get her to agree that we have to wait for each pet to die before we get the next (because I'm the parent so I'm in charge here. Okay, I get a vote. Granted, she gets 5 votes to my one, but I worked hard for my one vote).
But joke's on her, because given her current age and the expected lifespans of our various pet, she'll be about 30 when she gets her iguana and, depending on how well she cares for it, could be well into her forties when she gets her parrot.
At that point I'll be nearing 80, so assuming I even still have my mental facilities and am not just entertaining myself by watching the drool puddling in my lap, I will be old and crochety enough that I can refuse to help watch her parrot.
Because parrots, despite what my daughter and wife may say, are horrible fucking pets. If I want to have a flying buzzsaw, well, I'd go to Amazon and buy such a thing. I have free time (plus Prime!) so would have it quickly. But at least my drone/chainsaw hybrid would be relatively short lived, surely meeting it's demise against a ceiling fan within a matter of minutes, while a parrot lives forever. Fine, they may not live forever, but so far no one has kept one for it's entire life, either getting rid of the damn thing or being found dead with little beak shaped pieces missing from their face, so no one knows the lifespan of a parrot kept in captivity.
But, given that my daughter (a.k.a. 33221) is also in charge of naming the animals (strangely, I lost that vote 5 to 1), I am curious just to see what the hell this procession of pets is named.
