Just for Laughs

Yes We Can (laugh) courtesy of The Onion:

"Obama Revises Campaign Promise Of 'Change' To
'Relatively Minor Readjustments In Certain Favorable Policy
Areas' "

Read the whole (short) piece here.

z

In Retrospect, I Should Have Been a Buddhist Nun

My latest go-to stress-relieving fantasy is that I’m a Buddhist nun. Living quietly with everything I need. But then I remember that for a variety of reasons I wouldn’t make a very good Buddhist - or any flavor of nun for that matter. Like being a Buddhist and being a pacifist sort of goes hand-in-hand and I’m not a pacifist. You’re probably surprised to hear that the way I criticize war, but I’m only opposed to the aggressor in imperialistic wars (the most common aggressor in my lifetime having been my government). Still, as much as I feel peaceful just looking at the Dalai Lama, I can’t help wondering that if he hadn’t been such a pussy, maybe the Tibetans wouldn’t have entirely lost their homes to the Chinese army. On the other hand, there’s a chance they’d all be dead instead of just exiled, but peace without justice is no peace at all and from where I sit, there’s not a whole lot of justice happening on this planet. So I’m a warrior, therefore not a very good Buddhist nun.

However, the real reason I’ve been obsessed with becoming a nun is a more personal and complicated story and not the kind of thing I generally share on this blog, but I’ve run out of topics so here goes:

A couple of years ago, I remembered that I had forgotten to go to graduate school, right about the time I had the temporarily devastating realization that my life is half over and so if I have things I mean to do “someday,” someday has arrived. So I applied to a Master’s Program and was rejected. I felt entirely destroyed, like there was nothing else I ever possibly wanted to do but that. Then after a while I got over it (I’m good at that, if nothing else) and applied to two more programs last fall. (I also opened a coffee shop, which is really fun but isn’t making any money yet.) When I applied I thought that I probably wouldn’t get accepted to either one, since I’m obviously such a loser I couldn’t get into the first one I applied to, right? But my thinking was, I will have tried -- and then being a good religious girl (or bad religious girl, whichever) I would accept that God has spoken and it’s just not meant to be in this lifetime.

So now, after living frugally and simply for all of my adulthood, just like the vast majority of regular people who are now being blamed for the financial crisis we’re in as a nation, I’m routinely calculating how long we might get to keep living here if I stopped paying the mortgage, weighing if I’d benefit more from not paying my credit cards (used to open the coffee shop) or from maintaining perfect credit at any cost -- basically living an eighth of a nickel away from debtors prison and working as hard as I can to make money fast enough.

Then what happens? I’ve been accepted to both graduate programs. And I really want to do them both. Because if not now, then when?

What I need is a miracle – and as luck would have it, I believe in miracles. So I’m waiting – breathing in the fear, breathing out relaxation – comforted by my relentless faith in the abundance of the universe and that all things, good and bad, come to an end. Maybe I could have pulled off being a nun after all.

Making Marriage Work and Timeless Blog Wisdom

Sometimes I feel sorry for celebrities who grow up famous, because I think about how awful it must be to be judged at 40 by the dumb things you did when you were 20. Blogging can be that way too – there is what you wrote, three years ago, on display for everyone to see, even though it may not in any way reflect the larger part of who you are – it is only a reflection of something you were processing at a specific moment in time. Like writing a letter on Sunday stating that you have the stomach flu, sending it thousands of miles away, only to be perfectly fine by the time the recipient reads it. I don’t have that experience very often, but last fall when I was thinking to myself, in light of this absurd debate about who can marry, why can’t we just get rid of marriage as a legal institution altogether, I started receiving a lot of blog traffic from people googling, “abolish marriage.”

So here is my blogging tip for the day – do not ever (EVER!) make an offhand remark about the mating habits of lions in a blog post, because you will get comment after comment from people telling you that not only do you hate gay people but you don’t think black people should be allowed to marry either.

Seriously.

Semi-related, my review of the book, Making Marriage Work, is up at Feminist Review. I really enjoyed reading it and it is inadvertently funny in some places – in ways I couldn’t put in the actual review, because I was pretending to be a smart, analytical reviewer, as opposed to my actual juvenile self. For instance, when outlining the historically perceived social importance for women to marry (not so important for men, of course) the author describes a case study of a woman who took a “Marriage Readiness Course” to address all of the issues that made her (sadly) unfit to marry and ends with this: “By the time that Marcia met and was courted by good, solid Dick, it was clear that she had invested sufficient time and energy in her program to become a successfully married woman.”

Or maybe I’m the only one who giggles at such a sentence. Ahem.

So about abolishing marriage for real – judging from my stats, comments and e-mails, if you’re reading this blog, odds are you’re probably married and a feminist (or you’re obsessed with Jim Bob Duggar and droopy tits, but I’m just going to ignore you people). So obviously pairing up with the opposite sex and making babies hasn’t gone out of style, but I like to think that marriage as a political institution has evolved. Still, it remains the safest way for a woman to keep herself and her children out of poverty, it’s discriminatory and just otherwise socially problematic on several levels. And when I ponder possible solutions to those problems, I just keep coming back to wondering why we need the state to define our families, alliances, romances, etcetera for us anyway.

Parenting, Politics & Oh Yeah, Happy Mother's Day!

I don't know what kind of sad-excuse-for-a-mommy-blogger forgets to post on Mother's Day, so I hope fun was had by all. As for me, I received the best gifts ever -- all homemade, including my new favorite poem:

Mama,

Sunny, funny

Reading, Fixing, Working

She is a cat person.

I love you,

J

I'm not sure if it's supposed to be a haiku or what ever gave him the idea that I like cats, but it is my favorite poem forever, nonetheless - as a fellow writer, I particularly appreciate the experimental point-of-view. Not to mention, it's not every day (or any day for that matter) that someone calls me "sunny."

Just because he and his brother are my favorite kids doesn't mean I'm not going to subject them to this video -- and I highly recommend that all adults watch, even if you're not a fellow lunatic-who-relentlessly-harasses-her-spoiled-children-about-the-evils-of-consumerism. Don't feel sorry for them though, I'll make popcorn to eat while we watch.

Finally, a great piece about Madmen and what's wrong with Barack Obama. (Hint: It's not personal, it's just that he's a well-connected, establishment politician -- who knew!!!!)

And finally once more, a link to one of my favorite organizations for whom every day is Mother's Day around the world.

Pax

The Fountain of Youth

On my birthday when I was gloomily contemplating my frumpy, old haggedness, a delivery came for my husband while he was at work. I said to the delivery guy, “Can you just put it on the porch out of the rain and then he can put it where he wants when he comes home?"

The guy said, “Umm, it weighs like two-hundred pounds, I don’t think I can get it up on the porch by myself." Then he eye-balled me for a second and said, “Well, you could probably help me, you look pretty strong.”

Later I told my husband so he could beat the guy up or something, but he doubled over with laughter, “Why didn’t you beat him up yourself, you’re pretty strong…”

(I am rather hefty, but really, you can keep your observations about that to yourself if you don’t mind.)

Then I then went upstairs and overheard J and Little One saying, “I love you better than poop.” “Well I love you better than chickens.” “I love you better than underwear on your head.” And just as I began to fantasize about flying to Madagascar. All by myself. Forever. Little One said wistfully, “Well – I love Mama the best of everything.”

So with Madagascar out of the running I thought maybe I’d just get a new hairdo. I said to my hair stylist, “Maybe I’ll go with strawberry highlights once instead of golden. Do you think I’d be a cute redhead?”

He kind of nodded and grunted.

Or how about one of those short in back, longer in front bobs ala Victoria Beckham - did he think I could pull that off.

Sort of a nod and shrug.

Then I said I really love pixies and every time I see a girl with a pixie I think oh my god is she the cutest thing ever, I wish I had hair like that. “But,” I said, “I think only girls who are skinny can wear that look well.”

He chuckled, “You’re skinny.”

“So you think I would look cute with a pixie?” I perked up.

Long uncomfortable silence.

In the end I just took a tip from my young baristas and bought a pair of Reeboks – I was skeptical… until I got carded buying a bottle of wine. Now I believe! So to my fellow mid-lifers, who are dedicated, in principle, to growing old gracefully, but simply aren’t “feeling it” – there is hope. Step away from the bovine toxin. Resist the urge to run away from home. Try some hip, comfortable shoes.

z

Appalling Anonymous Commentors

Lately I feel like a pinball -- I work on whatever it is I'm working on until I get a letter, an e-mail or a heart palpitation telling me I'd better hurry up and work on something else. In other words, I've got way more to worry about lately than I can deal with (but this nice bottle of Italian Red, block of Gruyere and box of Rosemary crackers are helping quite a bit - at least for now).

First Cynthia Samuels clued me in that CNN is asking for input about the state of our kids' schools -- I understand the hope is that the Obama administration is going to fix education (like all the administrations before him). Oh stop, I sound crabby - it's been a long day. Seriously, if I had time and knew how to make videos, I would love to be part of this important conversation, so check it out and participate if you can!

Then I was not-so-gently reminded that I'd forgotten to blog and as I wondered what exactly I was going to write about (I don't suppose you're interested in city sign permit fees or how many sinks a coffee shop needs in order to be allowed to slice a lemon) -- like manna from heaven, I got this anonymous comment in my inbox:

I think it is appalling you give your child coffee.

Now, as many of you know, often blogging is about sharing the parts of ourselves that are most vulnerable -- putting our parenting insecurities out there for all to scrutinize and so on. And when you do that and you get a bitchy anonymous comment it can really hurt, because the comment is close to home and digs at something you do (or don't) that you already feel uneasy about. I suppose Anonymous was trying to do that to me (for God knows what reason random people enjoy making strangers feel badly about themselves, but anyway) -- but I just had to laugh because I thought -- APPALLING? Half a teaspoon of espresso in a glass of milk is an APPALLING drink for a kid - really?

And then I just wanted to ask Anonymous -- what adjective would you use if I'd given him bleach to drink? Toilet water? Dog piss? I mean, get a grip.

I was reminded of a girl I once knew who told me her biggest nightmare was the thought of having a spider land on her head. I'm not judging her -- lucky her, she was young and she'd had a very very nice life thus far. But really, some of us have (and have already lived) much bigger nightmares than that. So I guess I could be a compassionate Buddhist and be glad to know that Anonymous has had such a perfect life that it can't imagine anything worse than a pampered middle class American boy having a sip of espresso in his mother's coffee shop. The horror!

And then I wondered if Anonymous thinks it's appalling when children routinely drink soda pop-- which my kids hardly even know exists (while we're on the subject, most of my family members are kind of appalled that I don't ever let my kids drink soda pop). How about caffeine-laden Easter chocolate -- should I confess that my kids had Easter candy too or will that necessitate a call to CPS?

Some day my childen will be adults and they will tell me all the appalling things I did to them as their loving, devoted and imperfect mother -- and I promise to listen and to take it like a womyn. In the meantime, a word to those who try to be hurtful, but don't have the balls to even say who they are -- it will work better if you find a parenting issue about which I lack confidence, my kids' ultra healthy abundant diet just isn't one of them. But on behalf of mothers who do waste time fretting about that, find a less appalling passtime.

Last but not least, did you know that I almost share a birthday with Gloria Steinem? I do! One day off - do you think that makes me special? Probably not -- maybe I'll criticize my mother for giving birth to me a day too late. Here's to Gloria and to all who commit outrageous acts!

A (More or Less) Mommy Wars Reading List

Just for fun, I want to make sure no one misses Katha Pollitt’s recent piece on Michelle Obama. I have to admit I’ve developed quite a crush on the first lady, partly due to David Brooks’ fear that she could bench press him (likely one-handed even), but frankly she had me at telling a young girl, who aspired to be a first lady one day, “it doesn’t pay very well.” Pollitt highlights even so much more to love.

Then I’m sure everyone has read the Atlantic breast-isn’t-really-best-fest, which was well done even though I had mixed feelings about it, followed up by Debra Dickerson’s inane right-on (right on the heels of dismissing the youngest generation of feminists as poll dancing drunkards – what has gotten into her lately?). I didn’t write about it because I didn't have much to add except my own story and a snoring rendition of humans are mammals and their milk is designed perfectly to nourish their young – it’s a good thing – still, the vast majority of reasonably intelligent, healthy Americans alive today managed to grow on evaporated milk and corn syrup – wah wah wah wah.

So I decided I’d rather just let it be until I read this great take by Judith Warner - sensible, thoughtful, perchance inspiring, definitely worth reading. With that I’ll return to my regularly scheduled programming of worrying about my own boobs and leaving the sisterhood alone to worry about their own, free from my judgment, (no doubt) wisdom and helpful hints.

Last but not least I would like to vent… no! Talk. I would like to talk about this most vile internet phenomenon which I will call the children-haters. Before I get myself into trouble, let me say that I know many people in real life who are child free by choice or by circumstance and none of them are repugnant children-haters. I don’t know where the internet finds these people. But you might have read in the comments from my last post that someone is horrified to see that I basically told a Mother Jones columnist to “off herself.” Which I kinda did, along with about a hundred other people – but don’t feel sorry for her! She’s smart enough to know that the surest way to inspire people to suggest you go fuck yourself is to refer to their children as nothing more important than carbon-emitting “monsters.” Certainly she was inflammatory on purpose. I gave her just what she was hoping for – an angry reaction and a link.

The post drew a lot of crazy parents who claim their children will cure cancer and end global warming, and a lot of crazy non-parents who feel the goal of civilization should be to end civilization, but there was one sane comment that’s worth repeating (trust me you won’t want to read through all of the nonsense to find it). The suggestion is that the U.S. might adopt a policy whereby tax breaks are only given for up to two children. The theory being an acknowledgement that people need public support to do a good job of raising their kids; yet everyone having more than two children, particularly in a wealthy (or really I should say, grossly wasteful) country like the U.S., is not sustainable and should be discouraged (or at least not publicly subsidized). It’s an interesting idea, but when I envision it in practice it seems it could be elitist – inadvertently punishing poor people for having the audacity to reproduce, which we already do enough in this country.

On the other hand, it's mind boggling the degree to which people feel disgruntled about the child "tax write off" factor. I mean all year long I educate, feed, house, clothe my kids, not to mention I purchase a boatload of useless junk for them to play with and destroy. At tax time, apparently I'm supposed to feel like I'm really cashing in on these guys -- you'd think it would make me want to have another, all the money I'm making. Well I don't know about you, but my reaction is more along the lines of whoop-de-doo. If we actually had policies in the U.S. that helped mothers, financially speaking, well then I suppose someone could complain, but trust me, for the most part, we're on our own out here. Some even complain about having to pay taxes for public schools. If you can't comprehend why educating children benefits the entire population, then you're a good example of how our under-funded schools fail.

So wait, I promised we were just going to talk and I accidentally vented there at the end. Sorry about that, but really I wanted to explain to anyone who might read that previous comment that I'm not in the habit of telling people to just die already and get it over with - I was only trying to help her embrace the mantra "let change begin with me." I meant well -- mostly.

My 7-Year-Old Coffee Snob

The other day my kids were at work with me and J asked if I would make him an espresso. An Americano (espresso and water) had just been made by accident, and I was drinking it even though it's not my favorite drink. (WHY does it feel less wasteful to eat something you dont want than to just throw it away?) So I took a tiny bit of the Americano, poured a bunch of milk into it and gave it to J.

It will be another thing he'll be using to impress the other adults in his life. One of his teachers told me that J is very sophisticated because he eats sushi and Thai food and frog legs and escargot... and anything really. Actually he's never had escargot, but that's his mother's fault. He really wants to, but French food is expensive and eating snails grosses me out, so I haven't exactly been all over helping him out with that.

As for the adults who tell me how cultured he is --I always have to just nod and smile, because what I'm really thinking is, at home he doesn't talk about any of that even half as much as he talks about butts and farting and assorted bodily fluids/functions -- he doesn't generally seem all that mature or fancypants around here. I'm hoping maybe with time...

Also, unfortunately his "sophisticated" palate doesn't extend to health food. He's currently being screened for a suspected food allergy, so he said, "You know I just thought of something I eat a lot of that's probably making me sick -- salad and vegetables."

Nice try, we told him. A for effort, C for creativity, F minus for subtlety.

(The current suspect is pineapple by the way, and I really hope that's the ticket, given the ease with which one can avoid it.)

After J discovered the Americano my husband was home with him for the day and when I got home he said, "I offered J a hot chocolate this morning, but he told me that all he drinks now is an Americano - where the hell did that come from?"

Hey, I told him, when you're hip you're hip, who can help it.

On a more serious note, if I had the energy to go on and on or analyze or even just think for a minute - I would write about this, but I don't - so I'll just leave you with a link to this thought-provoking piece from NYT. Additionally, the author of said piece has done a lot of fascinating work collected here.

Because I Don't Know What Else to Say...

I'm a little behind on blogging thanks to the opening of my new coffee shop! Oh and not only that, but both of my kids got the stomach flu opening week (hello guilt), I was accepted to a graduate school program and I received two books in the mail that I'd kinda sorta forgotten I'd agreed to review. Hence the bags under my eyes and the abundance of leftover takeout in the fridge. But my little one and the dog are cute, right? And soon you will be able to read my review of two fascinating books - Making Marriage Work: A History of Marriage and Divorce in the Twentieth-Century United States and Natural Great Perfection (a book on Buddhism, the wisdom of which is the only thing that is helping me stay reasonably sane).

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So wish me luck and if you're in the Portland area please come have a cup of coffee with me.

Can Barack Obama Save the World?

I had to giggle the other day when I read this article about JFK/Obama. Not because I think Obama is a liar, but it just reminded me of something for which I've always enjoyed making fun of my parents and their generation -- and what's not to love about making fun of one's parents?

(If you're a baby boomer, please know I wish you no offense.)

What is amusing to me is that if you ask a baby boomer who was the best president ever, they will invariably say JFK. If you ask why, they generally answer with one of three reasons:

a) He was young. b) He had a wife who dressed cute. Or c) I know where I was the day he was shot.

Now I'm not suggesting JFK was an awful president - he did sign the Civil Rights Act and he invented the Peace Corps (which was of dubious benefit to the developing world according to most historians, but can be filed under "heart was in the right place" so I won't hold it against him). But he also vastly escalated the Vietnam War and created the first U.S. budget deficit. To say nothing of waving his you-know-what at Cuba - if you're going to be a bully, you should at least win the battle for heaven sake.

But enough about JFK, it's Obama that I really wanted to talk about. Now that everyone's love affair with Obama has come to an end (all the radical lefty people I read are just stunned because he didn't CHANGE anything in Washington, golly gee who knew) I feel sorry for him. I feel sorry for him because basically his whole presidency is a crap shoot. Economies are cyclical, if ours happens to come around in the next few years, he'll go down as the greatest president ever, whether he deserves that distinction or not. On the other hand, if it takes 5 or 8 years, he'll have been the lamest most ineffective president ever -- whether he deserves that distinction or not.

I wish I could say I have high hopes. Don't get me wrong, I am rooting for him -- I'm starting a new business in this tanking economy and I own a house that isn't worth what I paid for it just like everyone else does. But here's why I worry. There has been a lot of comparison to FDR booming about. And FDR was a pretty good dude, but the fact is, his New Deal did not rescue America from the Great Depression. It did provide hurting people with some relief and I'm not saying it was a bad thing. But it was U.S. involvement in World War 2 that turned our economy around. Governments spending more money than they have to help people out might save the day, but I'm not very optimistic. What's worse is we've already been bombing everybody and their sister for the past eight years, so we don't even have "go to war" in our economy rescue toolkit.

So I didn't mean for this post to be such a big downer... I just wanted to raz the JFK zombies. I am hopeful. A little bit. But I will tell you that more than 600 people applied for a minimum wage job at my new coffee shop -- some of them unemployed engineers, executive assistants and even an attorney. On the other hand there was the person who wrote in her cover letter: "I have great work history and many different work ethics also. In my past employment I have won some top employee awards with most of my employment history. I'm a quick learner also catch on quick."

Times are hard - here's hoping I'm just a crabby old cynic who doesn't know what she's talking about.