30 days

I’ve been tagged  to share my political views. Oh boy. I do have a lot to say. It seems like the whole world is focused on abortion and taxes and guns and can’t really see past those issues.

So. Abortion. I am very much pro-choice. I believe we are born with the privilege and the right and the opportunity to express ourselves using our own free will. It is not my decision whether you have an abortion. It’s yours. It is my decision that I do everything in my power to be sure that if you decide to go ahead and do it that you have a safe place staffed with highly trained doctors and nurses to help you along with the procedure and a strong support staff to help you deal with the hormonal and emotional fallout that is almost certain with the termination of your pregnancy. History has proven that women will seek abortion regardless of its legality. Women have died and will die at the hands of hacks. This cannot be disputed. Please do not make it possible for your daughter to be one of these women.
I see what happens to children who are born unwanted or to mothers who are incapable of caring for a child. Abortion is not an option in every community in America. Many indigent women do not have the resources to travel to a town where abortions are safely performed. When I was in high school, a very good friend of mine did everything in her power to abort her fetus, short of traveling up to NY and getting an actual abortion. She tried everything from drinking heavily to repeatedly dropping a cinderblock on her stomach. She read about what not to do while pregnant and did every single thing on the list. Her baby was born healthy, and she tried to stay in school- she was always a straight A Honor Student- but she couldn’t. She never finished and as far as I know never got her GED. I am quite sure that her life would have been very similar to mine had she gotten the abortion she wanted, instead she is living in a trailer off West Lake Road and working as a data entry person at some sort of office in our hometown. Most offices in our hometown are closing.
It’s really cute that you think that adoption is an option, but who is adopting all these babies? You aren’t.  I invite you to make arrangements to speak to someone in an adoption agency. In reality, these children are shifted from home to home and have discipline problems beyond your wildest imagination. There aren’t too many Foster or Adoptive parents who want a little black baby born to a schizophrenic drug addict whore living under the same roof as their “real” children. I don’t. And I’m pretty damn progressive. Those little white ones born to a 15 year old cheerleader on the Main Line are expensive. I know I can’t afford one.
Teaching abstinence is not enough. I urge you in addition to telling them it is against most moral systems to have premarital or pre-committed relationship sex, to educate your children regarding birth control and safer sex practices. I urge you to support legislation that implements a sexual education curriculum in the public schools. I recommend that you review the information that the children are given and talk about it with your child. Start this early. Twenty years ago when I was twelve, my peers began to have sex with one another. I can only imagine at what age children are experimenting now. Ten? Nine? I wouldn’t be surprised. I plan to teach Jake that abstinence is the absolute safest route to go. I also plan to teach him about birth control options, STD facts (let me stress FACTS), and how to build and maintain a healthy, loving relationship with a partner of his choosing. I do not expect that he will be a virgin when/if he marries. I do not expect him to marry the first person he is intimate with. I do expect that when the time comes that he is faced with sexual decisions he will be armed with the information to make decisions responsibly. Your children are listening to you. They are also watching you. Keep that in mind next time you decide to get close to someone.

And taxes. I am pro-taxes. I want my hard-earned dollars to be used to improve my local schools and roads and health centers and parks and social service organizations. I sure as hell am not going to take a look at my bankbook at year-end and see an extra $4000 that I will donate to PennDOT or the school district or the City. Please take it from me up front and do good things with it so I can enjoy a safer, cleaner, more livable life. I want my child to play outside after a good day of learning on a well-kept street with neighborhood children who are well-fed and educated. I do not want addicts or mentally ill people to go untreated and threaten my sense of security. I want sick people to have access to health care. REAL health care so they get better and they aren’t walking around infecting the rest of us.
I do not want my dollars going to pay other people’s debts. If you were dumb enough to buy something you cannot afford, that’s on you. Whether it is a multi-million dollar company or a big suburban house or a car or a war, I don’t care. Spend wisely. Stop being so retarded with your money.
I do not want my dollars to fund a war we have no business fighting. I want the troops home. We have wars to fight here. I hate to say W is fighting his daddy’s war and silly things like that, but I have yet to hear a valid reason why we are at war with Iraq right now. It breaks my heart to think that my child may never know a life where his country is not fighting. It kills me to think he may want to go and fight this battle. It may kill him. I’m all for homeland security, but I don’t see how being a very large threat to someone else’s homeland is making me more secure. What ever happened to the olden times when nations would just surround the country with battleships and toss a few radar satellites in the sky and have some missiles pointed in the “right” direction just in case?

Guns. Guns guns guns. I believe we all have a right to carry arms. I support hunting, provided you are hunting herds that need thinned (pretty much only due to suburban sprawl, but whatever) and you aren’t hunting farm-raised stock that is released on private land for the amusement of the hunter and the profit of the landowner. It’s your choice to pay some hillbilly to shoot farmed fish in his barrel but I suggest that you and the boys take a real trip up to camp and drink some beers and eat a bunch of junk and shoot your guns at anything that moves and be real hunters, but it is adorable that you take your little Elmer Fudd daytrips from time to time. It gives me and the girls some time to dress up in our cutest little silky jammies that we never let you boys see and feed each other pudding off our fingers and have pillowfights and braid each other’s hair.
ahhhh. Back to guns. My problem isn’t hunters, its all the gun violence stuff I have a problem with. I think buying guns should be harder because too many people are dying. I think gun sentencing should be as stiff as possible. Chances are that if you are caught with an illegal gun you probably should be off the street for a number of reasons.

Guess what else I have an opinion on? Drugs. Legalize, legalize, legalize, control, control, control. Even with my gritty job I see so many more lives and families ruined by alcohol than I do drugs. I want to stop paying for inmates incarcerated for drug offenses and I want to be sure that there is plenty of room in the jails for the real bad guys.

I touched a bit on social stuff. I work in social service, and I think I might like to do policy making in the next few years. I could talk about what I think we need and how I think it might be done but basically we need to use our tax dollars for fair and safe housing, adequate mental and physical health care, affordable utilities and available healthy food sources, a wide variety of addictions services (AA is not for everyone), and education programs that teach adults how to budget their income, keep a job, and properly care for their children. Of course we need welfare and other forms of state aid. Some people really are incapable of holding a job. Are you hiring? Because I know of a bunch of under-educated mentally ill girls who need to support their seven kids. And a few ex-cons who are running with an IQ of about 80 who are trying really hard to take care of their sick parents. For those of you against using tax dollars for these services, what do you propose? Are you aware that the lack of these services is going to make your life more difficult? Do you want to walk past homeless people, be near sick people, crazy people?

Religion and religious morals must be kept out of policy making. Your religion isn’t right just because it is yours. This is why so many people are scared that Obama is somehow some sort of Muslim. Who cares if he is? He’s not. But it wouldn’t matter if we weren’t living under the rules of the religious beliefs of the current administration. Church and state are supposed to be separate here. Just because we have Judeo-Christian roots doesn’t mean we have to be fundamentally Judeo-Christian in all we do. And Judeo my ass. The only thing Judeo that infiltrates my life is the fact that our Program Assistant doesn’t show up to the office on JewDays. And then we fall behind at work.

We need to re-evaluate the level of education our children are receiving. Children are illiterate. Literally. You can make it to high school without being able to read, so long as you are funneled through the proper special education programs. We need to implement adult education services for those who fell through the cracks of the school district. Our nation’s people are operating at a third grade level because they can. It’s disgusting.

Local representatives must make themselves available to the citizens in their district. They have to listen and we have to speak up. We have to start thinking about what is important to us and doing something about it. I know we don’t all feel that we need the same thing, but I don’t want to hear yer bitchin when I beat you to our Rep and he thinks my idea is pretty damned good.

Do you know what is going on in our heartland? With government farming and the corn industry and all that crap? Do you know what you are eating? Do you know what goes in your food? Do you know what the chicken you ate last night is eating before he is sent to be chopped apart? Do you know what dairy cows are eating to make it possible for you to buy a gallon of milk? Do you know what is used to fertilize the semolina that gets turned into your pasta? What’s in all those powdery packets of goodness that you dump on your boxed rice? What sort of dirt your carrots and potatoes grow in? It is all controlled by the government. Says right there, “FDA approved”. What does the FDA work for? Your health or your dollar? Don’t you think you ought to know what you are putting in your mouth? In your baby’s mouth?

Prescription drugs too. About a year ago I was sitting at my dinner table with a friend who has a sister who does trials for a major pharmaceutical company here in town. He says she laughs because she and her colleagues often just “pass” trials because they want to get home to their children. I don’t think that’s very funny. A drug that I take (took) for my arthritis is under fire right now after several people have had problems with it. Last time I saw her she said “oh don’t worry, it only killed the rabbits and made the rats sick. No people actually died from it”. If you watch enough television you’ll see the four minute long commercial telling us how it is actually very safe and we should keep taking (buying) it. No thanks. I know I’ll feel better if I exercise and watch what I eat and maybe pop a Tylenol or seven. Our country is run by these drug companies. Our lives are run by these drug companies. We feel like there should be a pill for everything. Can’t sleep? Pill. Can’t stay awake? Pill. Something hurt? Pill. Can’t do your wife? Pill. Maybe if the government wasn’t putting so much crap in our bellies and we didn’t live like a bunch of sloths we would be feeling a lot better and we wouldn’t need all these meds. But then lots of my friends wouldn’t be livin‘ fat on their six-fig pharm-rep salaries and I won’t be able to go to their swanky parties. Oh man. I just dug myself into a hole with my own political views. I better stop while I’m ahead.

I’m sure I have more to say about stuff. But the boy is being incredibly whiney and the Phils are playing and the laundry isn’t done because I skipped town yesterday and didn’t get back until after midnight and I think there is a rogue Hershey’s Bar in the fruit basket that may as well be divided with the boy and devoured immediately and I need to pee and the laptop is searing a hole in my left thigh.

How about you? Share what you are comfortable with sharing. All I ask is that you are honest. Maybe you will change someone’s mind and you can start building your army of minions and things will start to get done the way you want them done. I might edit this later to specifically call out five of you but for now I’m gonna have a go at that chocolate.

one more thing

I completely forgot about gay rights on that last post. It’s almost easy to forget about them here, where we have an entire neighborhood that celebrates homosexuality and our city is open to just about anything. Most businesses respect partnerships in regard to health benefits and FMLA stuff. You can have your commitment ceremony and get on with life. You can buy a house and start a family and have a nice normal picket fence existence.

I know it isn’t like that everywhere, and the idea that someone would disapprove of a relationship solely on the gender of the partners completely blows my mind. What the fuck does anyone care about who someone loves and what they do with the holes and the poles they use to express that love? Why does it matter if a person chooses to love a person that has the same parts as they do or if they were born that way? Does it make them less of a person? Do they threaten you or your children? Can’t you just leave well enough alone?

Personally, I think that the majority of people who are disapproving of gay people just happen to be really physically ugly. It’s true. Check out protest photos in the news. It’s a bunch of disgustors who make your sexy parts shrink all the way back up near your belly button. It sickens me that anyone would want to do it with them all missionary position-like and what not (or however it is that people like that do it) and the fact that they would go ahead and marry someone who looks like that? And have to see them every day across the dinner table? That’s just disgusting. If I was the President all ugly people would be sent to South Dakota and wouldn’t be allowed out because they repulse me and bring the general beauty of the world down at least seven points. That makes just as much sense as restricting who gets married to who. I can go out and marry a junkie abusive baby-raper dog-puncher who likes to stick his finger in his ass before he pours your soda at McDonalds and no one will say anything. I marry my dream girl and everything falls apart.

So I think that gay people should be given the same rights that straight people are. Why is it even an issue? I’m serious. If you can give me a legitimate reason why this is a political issue please either email me or leave a comment. I am totally baffled by all this and would love to hear something that doesn’t include the words “unnatural” or “God”.

You know, I really don’t care what your political affiliation is.

That didn’t come out right. What I mean is, I really don’t mind what your political affiliation is. It’s a free country. You can think and feel however you wish. You can say just about anything and do an awful lot of things.

You have probably figured out who I’m voting for. I recently changed my voter’s registration to Democrat (from Independent, this time. Last time I changed, I changed from… ready… no seriously?… Republican to Independent. The time before that, Democratic to Republican). I have no party loyalty, I have policy loyalty. I am a Democrat now because I feel that the majority of the tax cuts and initiatives proposed by the Republican Party would have an adverse effect on my State, on my City, on my neighborhood, and on my job. When social service programs get cut, the quality of life in urban and suburban areas deteriorates. I want to keep my job, and I want to keep my neighborhood nice. You know, for the boy.

Oh, and don’t think you are safe out there in the burbs. Want to hear a dirty secret? When City programs are cut or limited, we do-gooder social workers have a trick. Our trick is to filter everyone who needs housing and rehab services outwards. To. Your. Neighborhood!!! The horror!!! You know that house on your block, the one with the unmown lawn, that has been on the market for six months? That would make a great HUD house, or maybe Section 8. A few phone calls to the realtor, a few emails to your local government, and the seller of that house lands herself a sweetass deal with tons of tax breaks. Then we call the church around the corner from you and they set up a furniture and clothing drive. We call the elementary school and they have a canned food drive. Two or three months later, Cathy Crackhead and her eight children move down the street from you into a fully furnished house with a stocked pantry. And then her sister Helga Heroin moves in when she gets kicked out of her apartment, and Helga brings her seven kids and her boyfriend, Mario-a-juana. It’s gonna be awesome for you! And better for me, because those damned addicts will be out of my caseload and gone from my town. I can’t wait!

That abandoned boutique on your corner looks like a great place for a meth clinic, btw. Can you get me the number off the For Sale sign in the window? One of my agencies is running into hard times here in the City and wants to move out where the taxes are more reasonable.

Anyway.

Want to hear what I do care about, something that has been bothering me? People I have considered friends, people who I look up to, people who are my higher ups, people who own businesses that I support, people, people, people, have been talking. I have been terribly disappointed lately because I’ve been hearing things like “that fucking cunt Palin“, and “I’m not voting for a nigger”, and “fuck McCain for his plans on National Security and fuck the men overseas. They chose this life”, and “I hate Muslims, and Obama is secretly a Muslim”, and so on and so on.

Again, I don’t care how you vote, but I am shocked and embarrassed that people I have chosen to surround myself with have the gall to say those things. Out loud. In public. To people they don’t know, or hardly know, or know well. As if talking politics in a professional setting (okay, or a bar) should include slurs and stabs at men and women who are fighting every day to make life better for us.

I don’t support this war, but I support the troops. I have friends over there, and a family member. I just want them to come home. And so what if Obama has Muslims in his family. It’s not like they are the Taliban. It could be worse. He could secretly be a radical Evangelical, like some people who currently hold office. That scares me more because American’s love them a Christian boy, and tend to treat Christians in government like a Pastor. Sheep scare me. Shepherds scare me.
And really, Palin, a cunt? I don’t like her, I think she is a redneck who needs to read a bit more before opening her mouth and maybe devote a little bit of time to the raising of her children, but I wouldn’t call her a cunt. I save that word to use a compliment. I save that word for Hillary. It’s like “bitch” to the thirty-seventh power. Someone who gets things done through the back door no matter what. Someday I hope to be a cunt.
And nigger? There are two things I know about the word “nigger”. One is that it doesn’t matter what color you are, you can still be one. The second thing is the only people I have ever heard use that word are niggers, white or black or red or yellow. What’s the old saying? “I can say that because I am one”? “You can only say it if you are one”? Something like that. So there you have it. I can’t imagine that word has crossed Obama’s lips too many times in his life.

I’m just disappointed, is all. This election is bringing out the worst in people.

On a lighter note, is it acceptable that I think McCain was a total hottie back in his POW days? Those propaganda ads where they show him leaving captivity totally hit me below the belt and above the knees. And I think his little nautical star logo is really cute. All of us Alternaset Post-Indie kids are drawn to nautical stars. It’s like if you were born in the mid-seventies that is your chosen symbol. I think that some campaign manager designed it that way to rope us in.

And, maybe I would totally suckle at Sarah’s ripe milky teat if I was given the chance. She is a looker, I’ll give her that. I would also like to slap her face and make her imitate Tina Fey while she was on her knees begging for a bite of my hotdog that I would be enjoying with ketchup and relish, both of which would be dripping down on her face and smearing up her glasses.

But you probably don’t want to hear all that.

weather or not

Everyone okay?

For some reason I have a pretty strong Texas following, unless it is just the same three of you checking in seven times a day to see if I’ve put up anything new. To that I say “Google Reader” or sign up to be a follower in that little feature on the sidebar. Self-preservation and pride do not allow me to check the IPs on all those Tay-haas hits to see exactly how many of you there are, but I’ve been thinkin’-a y’all.

We are practically swimming here, but we haven’t had any rain today. The humidity is well over 600% and I don’t think it is supposed to dip below 85 until Monday night. I am so more than ready for this summer to be over. It’s been gross and I’ve had to come up with multiple indoor activities because the boy will surely double over in a heat stroke if I take him to the park because he can’t stop himself from going amok to the extreme.

I ran him around ragged yesterday on a Busriding and Rainwalking Umbrella Adventure instead of coming straight home from daycare. We both needed it, me because I was a crybaby mess and Jake because he is going through one of those hunger-strike rapid physical and mental and lingual development weeks and if we came back to the house there might have been a little bit of strife. When we got home we had a nice steaming bowl of Not Dogs and Beans and shared an apple and played a little bit of Diego Meets McQueen & Fights Fires and when it was time for bed Jake asked if he could sleep in my room. Back in the olden days I would let him sleep over on Friday nights but then he started sleeping like a maniac and that stopped as soon as it started. I figured I’d give it a try so I turned on the TV to see if there was any suitable programming (I don’t have cable upstairs) and found a cartoon on Public Access.

Yeah, it was Animal Farm. So what. Jake had fun naming all the animals and telling me that they were learning their letters at school and (here’s the kicker) how they were all being good and working together to get the job done and they were happy! Happy to be working and cleaning up the farm!

In the same vein, one of his favorite books right now is Tootle. I picked it up because I remember having it when I was little and I like Jake to have things that I had. Have you read this? I don’t like it. It is about a train who loves to jump the track and play in the meadow and have a jolly time but that is not the right thing to do. The right thing to do is conform, conform, conform, and stay on the track and work hard and stop when someone tells you to stop and go where and when someone tells you to go and the only way you will ever amount to anything is if you do exactly what you are told. Tootle just wants to be different and do his own thing and the townspeople find it so horridly despicable that they band together and force him to stop prancing around in the flowers and dancing with the butterflies and racing the horses and wearing rings of daisies around his neck and stop being true to himself and get back on the straight and narrow path that society has carved out for him (“Staying on the Rails No Matter What“). I guess it is a good message when you want your kid to eat his vegetables, but it’s not really the way I like to get things done. I let him look at the pictures but I don’t read the words. We usually just tell stories about how nice it is to get a break from staying on the rails from time to time. I encourage singing and dancing and frolicking in my house. It all kind of makes sense when you consider the book was written in 1946, and I especially love that there is liberal use of the words “gay” and “queer”. I am immediately attracted to all things gay and queer, including Tootle, and 1946 in particular. The whole thing makes me want to buy you an ascot and a martini shaker and meet you on a diner car so I can give it to you properly.

It’s fun to find a balance between being too much of a stickler for the rules and being one of those annoying parents who let their child “express itself”.
Oh don’t mind Johnny, he isn’t breaking your things, he is creating something new out of them. Johnny is an artist.
Mary isn’t screaming, she is getting in touch with her frustrations. Mary, dear, please use your inside voice.
Timmy feels that it is his turn to play with the blocks so he is throwing them at Joey so Joey develops a healthy fear and respect for things that are seemingly harmless. It is very primal and healthy.

God I hate other moms. Except you. You I like because you hate other moms too.

Back to the story (as if there is ever such a thing here) Jake was an absolute joy last night and he curled right up to me to try to find that spot he used to sleep in when he was first born but he couldn’t quite get in there because he is almost four times as long as he was back then. He wrapped his arms around my neck and touched my face over and over and told me he loved me any time one of us moved even if he was sleeping and any time I opened my eyes he was either smiling in his sleep or he opened up his eyes too like he knew I was looking at him and he told me he was so happy to be next to me. He told me I look pretty with my eyes closed (I don’t) and that he likes to hear me breathing next to him. Does it get any better than that? When he was a newborn and sleeping in my room he was always opening his eyes at the same time I opened mine and I don’t have the words to explain how it feels that he still does that.

I could go on and on but I don’t want to creep you out. Because if you had typed this I would be a little creeped out by now.

nonsense

So, how come Middle America is lauding Sarah Palin for sticking to her guns and not having an abortion in spite of the fact that the baby has Down Syndrome? Are you supposed to have an abortion just because your baby has Down Syndrome? I mean, it’s just Down Syndrome. Not like the doctor came in and said that the baby was mutated beyond recognition or the mother’s life was in danger or the baby was missing a sizable chunk of its brain or its lungs or something. Then maybe you may want to consider abortion because your baby will suffer violently or you will die and be of no use to your other children. Did she really only birth this child because she was opposed to abortion? Not because she loves her baby no matter what? That’s the strangest piece of parenting (il)logic I have run into in a long time. And I run into a whole lot of illogical parenting on a daily basis.

So, begs the question, how come no one in Middle America lauds me? I love my baby so much that I didn’t even have the damned retard test in the first place. Take that, Conservatives. By the time my pregnancy progressed far enough to have those tests there was no way in hell I was going to abort that brat. I loved him with every ounce of my being. Who cares if he came out retarded? I was going to take care of him because he was mine and I was his and that’s the way life works.

stuff

All week long I’ve been in this terrible dilemma about whether or not I’m too old for blue eyeshadow. The real issue is that I don’t want to deal with the contract stuff that is going on at work, so instead of worrying about hundreds of people and their jobs and thousands of people and their horrid parenting skills and ten thousand bad kids I worry about the possibility of someone pointing and laughing at me because I’m a 32 year old whack job with garishly decorated eye lids.

And they would totally notice because 1) doesn’t everyone notice me and everything about me? and 2) I often have my eyes closed while in hysterics over something that someone else is wearing/doing and my entire blue lid will be exposed to the masses.

And then there is the decision whether to go to my girl at the MAC store and have her custom pick some blue for me or just take a $7 stab next time I go to the CVS at some sort of Maybelline junk (maybe she’s born with contusions on her eyes, maybe it’s Maybelline).

Have you ever stepped back and noticed how incredibly hard it is to be me?

I know, right?

Then I got a phone call this evening from a doctor who likes to periodically remove portions of my reproductive organs and bring them home to her family because they taste really good (or something. She never gives them back, in any case) and she says based on the small amount she took a few weeks ago it looks like she needs to take more out so I don’t curl up and die any time soon and I was all like, “fuck if I care what your mom thinks about my blue eye makeup. I’m getting some of the expensive shit first thing tomorrow morning and I’m wearing it dammit because it looks really awesome with short red hair and hazel green eyes”.

And then I got a little sappy because the worst thing in my life right now is that I get a little bit of bad news because I have amazing health care and the luxury of all types of screenings that actually work to detect the smallest changes in cells that lie deep inside my body and the technology is available to remove them as often as possible in order for me to stay healthy so I can take care of my little boy who thinks I’m the prettiest, funniest, smartest girl in the whole world and who tells me I’m his best friend at least twenty times a day.

this might be a temporary post

Mere hours after emailing someone about how I secretly love the hatemail I get because it

1. means you are reading

and b. means I’m being honest here and no one in our current America loves honest

and I included the fact that I

a. don’t drink nearly as much as I allude to here

and 2. am not doing anyone’s mom despite the yourmom jokes…

…I find myself accidently drunk because I made a phone call and cancelled a work appointment and sorta kinda poured myself a giant glass of bourban because it’s been a long week and I really needed it and I probably should revamp my timekeeper at work since I’m admitting this here and I know I have some workreaders. I think daydrinking falls under “personal” time but I’m sure I’ve used all mine up so this might have to be a “vacation” few hours. I even turned my ringer off because I thought I needed some alone time to deal with all the garbage I am dealing with because the City (capital C) is cutting funding to preventative services which are pretty important in my opinion and the call I got from the doctor was a bit more disturbing than my nonboozy mind will let on to.

Well, and, yeah, so I’ll admit it halfaglass in that it turns out this blog thing I’m keeping is kinda catching on. It’s reaching further than my friends (my family pretty much gave up long ago) and my littlebig town and it almost (don’t want to jinx it) seems like you like me, you reallyreally like me and the more I write about the stuff that is filed away under dysfunction the more I feel better about things and the more you tell your friends about this site and I’m getting loveya mails instead of blog trolls who tell me that I don’t deserve my son and that I’m a terrible mom because sometimes I admit to wanting sleep in over coloring in poorly drawn Sesame Street books or something equally as evil.

So I’m going to stop editing this to fit the nice little genre of “mommyblog”and start making this “my blog”, which is what I intended to do in the first place but I was too afraid that you might think I’m a little brash or obscene or unfit or whatever.

Um. Welcome.

This is pressureful.

And sobering, which is good because I have to pick up the boy soon.

And flattering, which is nice.

And not that it really matters in the long run, I guess, what you think of me. But the more I am lauded here the more confidence I have in the real world that maybejustmaybe I am capable of doing something bigger than what I am doing now.

Deep breath.

Getting older is good, but getting wiser is amazing.

highly offensive post, highly elitist blogger, don’t bother reading this

Sometimes I consider telling you that I have an anonymous guest poster who needs to get something off her chest but she can’t say it on her blog because she doesn’t want to seem like a snobby biznatchy c-word or doesn’t want her mom reading something she needed to type in order to get past whatever it was that was bothering her. I would definitely tell you that today.
But, I try to be honest, so I am going to tell you that you might be offended by this because I am a snobby biznatchy c-word from time to time about certain things.
But you already know that…

I stopped at Mimi Maternity at lunch today, to pick up a pregnant girl’s best friend for one of my best girls because she is newly pregnant and I can only imagine she needs all the help she can get with hiding the rigged pants buttons and to maybe get an iota of assistance in not prematurely feeling like a saggy draggy fat girl.

Please tell me it wasn’t just me who felt fatter and grosser and way more repulsive in the first trimester than I did the second. I didn’t want to leave the house, lest I offend the general public with my enormous bloated gut that surely made everyone gag.

Unnoticeabley pregnant is the worst kind of pregnant there is.

When I put my hand on the door of the maternity store a horrible feeling came rushing back so fast that I lost my breath. I gasped a bit and coughed so as to appear normal but it came off as pathetic, and the girl behind me asked if I was okay. She probably thought I was going to puke. She wasn’t far off.

When I found out I was pregnant, after I got over the initial shock and subsequent anger I was outright embarrassed. Girls like me aren’t supposed to get pregnant. Girls like me are supposed to do something with their lives. I was slated to do big things, to save the world, to make a goddamn difference somewhere. Not sit around and gestate like a schlep who didn’t know better. Like one of my clients. I didn’t want my friends to know I was going to have a baby, I didn’t want my co-workers to know, and I certainly didn’t want it getting out in my little network of people-more-successful-than-I that I had gathered.

I worked hard to get where I was headed to, and it seemed to be over before I could slide into the door I got my foot into.

I was married, which I guess is supposed to be important. I bought a house, but it wasn’t my REAL house. My real house was about a mile north of the one I bought. I had a job, but that was practice for something big too. I was sitting on a good-sized Board of Directors, but it was one of those oak Boards. I wanted solid mahogany. I was consulting with a few different people and agencies to develop evaluation tools and non-profit organizations and social policy and people were starting to know me. I could walk through City Hall, The City Hall in my Big American City and get a few nods from old white men.

I was the girl who looked down at the other girls who got pregnant. Getting pregnant was something that you shouldn’t do until you are a woman. A successful woman over the age of 30 with some sort of direction in life. Anyone else was surely failing at giving their child a real chance in the world. I felt/feel that being a mom in your twenties means missing out on experiencing your twenties as they are meant to be experienced. College, grad school, post-grad, networking, career building, earning a little bit of extra cash for traveling, shopping, eating, drinking, staying out late in big shiny places, hiding during lunch hours in little quiet places, reading everything you should have read in school, re-reading everything you did read. We are given 80 or so years on this earth for a reason, and that reason isn’t sitting around in faded stretchy Walmart clothes and spitting out kids and worrying about how you are going to feed those little fuckers before you are a third of the way through your life. I mean, go ahead and do what you want, but don’t be mad when your friends are having the time of their lives and you are stuck scrubbing shit out of your sofa.

I was ashamed because I viewed myself in the way that I view other girls who get pregnant before they accomplished something. Like a big stupid loser. Like someone who couldn’t do anything else but have sex and get pregnant because everything else requires an ounce of effort. I was ashamed because I was supposed to be smarter than that. Because I wasn’t raised to bring a baby into a house where there were stacks and stacks of student loan bills and car notes and a credit card balance. Babies were supposed to be brought into a house where the parents were absolutely prepared, and that meant the bills were paid and the salaries were high enough and the schooling was all done. I only have a Master’s Degree. That is like practically equal to a high school diploma these days or something. I can’t have the job I want with a Master’s Degree. I can’t even figure out what job I want with a Master’s Degree. I need at least two more years of schooling before I learn what I want to do. They don’t teach you to know what you want until at least your twentieth year of formal education.

There I was, at the top of my game at 28 years old and I go and get pregnant. I felt like a knocked up teenager. Like a welfare mom. Like everyone in town was going to pat me on the back, buy me a bag of cheap onesies, give me a fistful of Pampers coupons, and walk away while shaking their head.

I wasn’t ready. I was Ms. rather than Dr. Lora. (No I don’t go by Mrs. “Mrs.” sounds tacky and is a pathetic attempt at showing the world you have latched yourself to man. Do people still call themselves Mrs.’s? Maybe Republicans still do. Or Midwesterners. Who knows.) I still had two good years of piss and vinegar in my veins to get out there and get what I had coming my way. I didn’t even have anything published that wasn’t under the clearinghouse of my University and I really really wanted to have something published. There was work to be done and now it was going to stay undone. I decided to have Jake. I’m pro-choice but I am anti-abortion when you are in the situation I was in. Married smart girl homeowners are supposed to suck it up and give birth to the monster, no matter how they felt about getting pregnant.

Things certainly aren’t bad as a mom. I don’t do anything extra-curricular at work and I don’t volunteer anywhere because I think time with Jake is of utmost importance, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t wish I had the time to be a superstar in my community. I feel that my brain is wasted. My schooling is wasted. I don’t know anyone in local government anymore. All that can come back, I’m sure, in time. For now I’m stuck donating cash to worthy causes and writing letters to the suits and doing all I can from 9to5 to make this world a better place for when Jake is ready to step into it.

My time is not wasted, my energy is never wasted, and the job I have now at work is completely relevant to the job I have now at home. If I had to do it all over again, I would have waited until I was 30 to have Jake, but I would have to be guaranteed to have Jake. No other brat would do.

I often wonder if I am still bitter, still angry, still embarrassed at becoming a mom so soon and unexpectedly, and yes. I am. But maybe it was a good thing I got pregnant sooner rather than later because there would be a lot more to give up later and I might not have been able to handle that. I didn’t plan on having children (child) and I think I would have been happy with my life if I didn’t.

I’m sad I’m missing out on a big influential career and being a big voice for the masses and trudging through a few more years of schooling. That might be in the cards for me yet. Who knows.

I’m awfully glad I’m not missing out on Jake.

And I’m glad I’m not missing out on your kid, who you had by choice in your twenties. I love your kid. I wish you called more, emailed more, blogged more, stopped by more so we could do less missing and more kissing of each other’s children. I sure did miss you when I was out running around those ten years between 18 and 28. I thought of you all the time. It would have been a lot more fun if we were out there running around together but it’s okay this way too. We’ll catch up when all the kids are out of the house. We’ll be those old chicks on the cruiseships in the big straw hats and tummy-paneled bathing suits, holding comically pink drinks and lugging around giant woven totes full of books and snacks and pictures of our grandkids.

i live in a zoo

and look and smell like a monkey.

A thirty-two year old monkey.

NOT the kind of monkey with a blue and red butt. Those are gross.

I’ll be accepting gifts, cards, well-wishes, and accolades all day.

I woke up the other day and realized that the world at large probably considers me to be a real adult now. I even have a brand new car. Brand brand new. Not just brand new to me. Poor Miss Bruce has gone to the afterhours cagedance mostfabulous discotheque in the sky. Oh don’t worry, no major accidents and we are all fine, we just decided to put her down before she started suffering. It was the only humane thing to do.

I don’t think I look or act like thirty two, but I think I’ve established that I’m not familiar with how thirty two is supposed to look or act. Or any age for that matter. I work with some girls who look forty but their driver’s license puts them in their mid twenties. I work with some girls who I thought were born in the mid-seventies but they remember Vietnam. I think my friends all look twenty-three years old and one hundred and twenty-three pounds but maybe I just can’t see that the numbers have gone up a bit over the years.

I’m starting to understand what “you look just the way you did the day we met” means. I used to think it was a bunch of bull old people say to one another to make their peers feel less decrepit and dried up and repulsive.

It’s weird being older but not being old. Since having Jake more than a few people asked me what I think about being a young mother. Check out clerks and other moms and random weirdos on the bus mostly. I’ve been asked if I was the babysitter a few times. I don’t think it has to do with the way I look as much as it does the fact that I dress like an eighteen year-old frat boy and I don’t hesitate to run and jump and climb and play and make Indian (feather not dot) whoop whoop whooping noises at the park or crawl around on the sidewalk, chasing after bubbles with a fishmouth and taking toddler orders of what to draw with chalk. A lot (read:most) of the moms in my neighborhood just sit their fat asses on the park benches and front steps and yell bad words at their kids when the kids seem to be getting out of hand. It doesn’t matter how old they are, they just sit there and complain among themselves between tinny screams. It makes me want to puke that their children will be Jake’s schoolmates and Jake will ask to go to their houses (no). I get some side-glances from the quote-unquote other moms when I play with Jake, but I don’t let them bother me. I loved when my mom and dad rough housed with me, and I think Jake deserves the same. Hell, my arthritic grandma got down to play with me on the ground so I think Jake deserves the same. And she was waaayy older than I am now. She was way older than I am now when she had my dad, and I know she was a hardcore player back then too. I’ve seen pictures. And she wore dresses instead of Old Navy cargo shorts.

What the hell am I talking about right now? Who are you? What day is it? Who is the president? Where am I? Why am I strapped down to this bed? Is it 12.30 am or 12.30 pm? Where are my pants? Where are your pants? What are you doing with that gerbil? What kind of party is this? Is that horse shaved? How did a horse get in here?

Anyway, it’s weird and wonderful to get older.

If you see me, wish me happy birthday. And tell your friends I’m turning 35.

I look awesome for 35.

underwear bingo

Ladies, listen. Germs, skip this post.

You know how all these years I’ve been telling you to get your rear end to a real lingerie store and have yourself professionally measured? And you know how you’ve been shocked into bliss at how more well adjusted you and the girls are doing now that you found a good bra?

Well, I haven’t been professionally measured for a non-nursing bra in about five years.

Because I don’t like to be touched. And because last time I was measured I was shown contraptions that looked more like a scoliosis brace than a sexy underpinning and required at least three teamsters to figure out all the metalwork on the back of the thing.

After a month long search for something that fits me between the range of 32 and 38 from Bravo to Delta at discount department stores I put aside the fact that I might cry inside a little while some lady wearing too much perfume pokes around at my funbags and went ahead and got measured and holy crap. I never would have even guessed. It sounds so porny because the number is so tiny and the letter is so big. Okay, letters are so big. Don’t judge me because there are multiple letters in my bra size. Especially since I know some of you who’s bra size is a zip code.

Is it just me or are there some other girls out there who are really not happy with the size of their boobs?

I’m half kidding. If I could pick out a perfect set I’d pick my friend Samantha’s. If she could pick out a perfect set I’m sure she wouldn’t pick her own. Someday when I’m rich as a result of being famous I’m getting some sort of lift that would keep the same shape that they have now but pare them down to a nice sveltely supple B that sits a little closer to my chin and further away from my knees. An A if I had my real choice, but I don’t want that problem where my belly sticks out further than my boobs and I don’t know if I can ride out this flat stomach thing for more than a decade (she types as she throws away a Take 5 wrapper and opens a roll of Rolos, smiling because it’s too hard to hide ’cause Rolo is a whole roll o’smiles). I want cute bras that don’t require multiple hooks and the option not to wear any at all. A viable option for not wearing any at all.

Speaking of underthings, what’s the deal with ill fitting underwear? I buy my underpants by the bag. At Kmart or Target or wherever. I used to love the Fruit of the Loom Hipsters, but now they are made of the scratchiest cotton ever. Then I loved Hanes Low-cut Bikinis, but then they changed the waistband to “the world’s most comfortable waistband ever’ but it is about seven sizes smaller than the original and not comfortable at all.

No matter what brand/cut/size I buy, the elastic is too tight and the fabric is too big and I end up looking like the Michelin Man in a muumuu. All dents and creases and slack cloth that leaves visible folds under my pants and when I take them off they leave marks on my body and I feel really unsexxxy because you can see where my underwear was when it isn’t anymore. Maybe I should break free of the belief that a pair of underwear should never cost more than one dollar and fifty cents per pair and invest in something that doesn’t make my midsection feel sausage-like.

All these dysmorphic hangups are leaving me a bit low lately, so I’m resolving to take some time and really learn to love and/or appreciate all my parts.

I’m starting with my hands, because if you can’t learn to love your hands you’re in pretty deep. My poor little gnarled up arthritic hands have been the brunt of some pretty nasty feelings these past few years. Now if they hurt I’ll realize it is because they are working overtime. They get to experience the world from the front lines, touching people I love, things I love (read: the inside of my nose and cute butts on the subway), bringing me food and drinks whenever I want them, typing and writing important work stuff and not-so-important personal stuff, coloring, painting, and playing with my kid, and cooking up delicious treats once a month or so when the mood hits. I read something when I was up in Toronto at an art exhibit about how Descartes wrote that if you asked a man who has been blind and deaf from birth where the soul is, he would say that it resides in the fingertips. I like it. I’ll live it.