And you thought Easter grass was bad

Uranium-235 has a half-life of something like 700 million years. I'm not a nuclear scientist, but I'm pretty sure that by the time this stuff has passed even 4 half-lives, the Easter grass I bought 7 years ago will still be lingering in the jungled-over ruins of my rotted house.  Some future archaeologist will find it and try to piece together what purpose it served in ancient times.

For reals.  I haven't purchased or used Easter grass in 7, yes SEVEN, years, and despite having vacuumed at least twice and having purged the children's bedroom several times during those years, I still find it--in the most random places, like the corner of the bathroom or a heater vent.

The stuff keeps living; well, its that or old Lewie Pasteur giving the smack-down to the theory of spontaneous generation was total bullshit. Either way, Easter grass is a pain-in-the-ass to a level that only parents can fully understand.

I've officially been the barer of fruits of my loin for 16 years last Wednesday.  I cannot emphasize enough how this doesn't make me an expert in the parenting realm.  I am of the humble opinion that it does, however, deserve me an honorary Ph.D. in "Knower of Things That Drive Average Non-Overachieving Parents Insane."  So, in the name of philanthropy aimed at helping the less fortunate overcome Asshole Syndrome, I offer the following dissertation on "Things That Drive Lazy Parents Such As Myself Insane" (Easter grass not included, because you already know my thoughts on that).

Oh, and I should caveat, its mostly me just being an easily irritated bitch, so don't take it personal.

1.  The Coach from The Stand Reliving His Glory Days of High School Sports Parent (or, more commonly I NEVER Played Sports but My Kid is Destined to be the Player I Never Was Parent): This is the guy (or lady) that is stretching and warming up at a little league game for 4-year olds.  This is the parent keeping score when the score board is shut off for a reason.  This is the parent screaming at their kid during a time-out to do something while the coach is trying to tell the kid something--these two things the kid is hearing are usually EXACT opposites.  This is the guy, who at a basketball game for kindergarteners, is showing off his mad dribbling skills (usually off some kids head) and trying to slam dunk in front of the other parents.  You know what parent can get away with that shit and look cool?  Michael F*N Jordan.  The only one.  Ever. 

2.  The Endless Advice Giver:  This is usually the lady who is the room mom, scout mom, religious education volunteer, president of the PTO, school board runner, obsessive pinner, and food storage fanatic (all home-grown, organically, of course, and canned in her own kitchen).  She has a daily photoblog for every.single.day. of her 9 children's lives.  She's usually the one with the disapproving look in the corner when you're five minutes late for story time at the library.  Her kid could read before he walked and was doing differential equations before he weaned, which she credits to a diet completely lacking in sugar and processed food (I mean, really.  Who needs a childhood and social skills?).  She's usually the one you have to work with at the Barnes and Noble book fair, and she orders you to accost people for donations while she holds down a chair and tells you how lucky she is she doesn't have to work and feels so sorry for you, while you secretly plot smacking her in the face with a Women's Studies textbook on 'privilege.'  If all else fails, you can recognize her when she runs in a panic to stop her kid from eating flies out of the window seal.

3. The Clueless, Oblivious, I-Either-Overdosed-On-my-Xanax-or-Have-no-Brain parent: This is the lady you get stuck volunteering with over an activity that makes herding ferile cats look like a cake walk.  She turns in circles searching for a pen for 2 hours and makes you realize those Deadheads have nothing on this bitch.  She forgets what she was talking about mid-sentence of a 10 minute, monotonous story about laundry, and happy hour is still five hours away.  Her children are the ones tearing shit off the walls and screaming like an air raid alarm.  She's usually best friends with the Endless Advice Giver.  There's a middle ground, people.  Find it.

4.  The I-Don't-Really-Give-a-Shit Parent: This is the parent that only shows up because they feel obligated (and, if your kid's school is like ours, they get charged $20 an hour for every hour under the volunteer quota). This parent is thankful that for 8 hours a day, someone else has to deal with this shit. This parent has no clue when anything is due, because the spouse takes care of all that. This parent beats foot to volunteer for the beer and wine stand at the Halloween carnival.  This is the parent of the child constantly saying, "My mom forgot.  I told her to put it on the calendar, but she forgot."  This parent rolls her eyes when you offer advice about sugar, bedtime, spanking, and just advice in general.  You can identify the fruits of this parent's womb by the stream of curse words they use, in context, in front of nuns at Bingo night, when they are three.  This parent is me.

5.  Grandma:  This is the lady formerly referred to as 'Mom', that beat you within an inch of your life for lying.  This is the lady that never let you go to school without a hot breakfast (i.e. freaking pancakes...NO cereal.EVER.), but sees absolutely no problem with feeding your children chocolate cake and ice cream for breakfast.  She's usually accompanied by someone going by the name of Papa.  He's the guy that she always told you for whom you were gonna be sorry when he got home.  She pulled her hair and said things like, 'You're driving me stark RAVING MAD!', but your kid brain thought she said "To start raking mud", and you always pictured her in the borrow pit with a trowel.  This is the lady that begs you to let her have your kids for the weekend, then returns demon spawn that behave as if they were never taught a thing.  EVER.  You'll know this lady when all the things she said would kill you as a child, are the things she enables your child to do.  She's usually the lady in a store somewhere with angelic children worshipping her like a saint.  You'll recognize her by the fact she never tells children 'no.'

Joe

I kind of grew up in a bar.  My grandmother owned it, and we would go with her to the liquor store and to clean and stock the bar in the mornings.  Always at 10:00, after the mail came.  She always gave us money to play the jukebox and we’d get to make our own Shirley Temples with way too much grenadine. We’d play pool, and for a while when we were little, she had Space Invaders on a table machine.

We’d get bored and head outside to roll down the grassy hill next door until we were so dizzy we couldn’t walk.  Then, we’d head across the parking lot to visit Joe.

Joe lived in a tiny one room apartment connected to my grandfather’s office. He always had cookies and comic books for us.  Sometimes we got him out of bed, and if we were lucky, he’d have boxes of CrackerJacks.

Joe and Grandma and Gracie went to lunch every Wednesday…except for poker days.  Then they switched for another day of the week.

Joe was always at Grandma’s on Christmas.  He didn’t work, and Grandma said after he got out of college he applied for one engineering job and didn’t get it and he never tried again.  He was a piano player in bars until he “retired.”  I’m sure he didn’t have a lot of money, but my grandmother had 9 grandchildren and EVERY year, we got a Christmas present from Joe.

Joe had a crazy sense of humor, and he always kind of reminded me of Johnny Carson.  He gave my grandma dirty cards on her birthday that always made her laugh.  

Joe got old and started living in filth.  Grandma had to call his family.  I think they lived somewhere in Oregon, and I remember being shocked that Joe had a family.  I was pregnant with Sheridan at the time, and he called and told me I needed to come get some books.

He was packing, and he was pissed about having to leave.  I remember there was mouse shit on everything, and I said, “But, Joe, you can’t live like this!”  He just kind of slumped.

“Books are on the shelf back there,” He said and pointed to the bedroom.

It’s weird going into someone’s bedroom, and I was a little uncomfortable.  But, I’m a bookworm and I found book Nirvana.  A whole leather bound antique edition of all of Shakespeare’s play and sonnets—each in its own little book.  Steinbeck.  Asimov.

Joe came in and sat on the bed.  “You like Steinbeck?” He asked.

“Yes.  Very much.”  And we had a half-hour long conversation on the tawdry in and outs of “Of Mice and Men” and “The Grapes of Wrath” while I packed a couple of liquor boxes full of books.

When I stood to go, I noticed the wall next to the bedroom door.  It was covered in pictures of us grandkids.  You could tell he started pinning them at the top.  Our baby pictures.  Pictures of Christmas. Honor roll clippings and sports news from The Arco Advertiser.  Sports photos from when we were in high school. It was like an inverse growth chart.  The older we got, the farther down on the wall we were pinned.

It took my breath away.  I guess it was the first time I ever realized how much we all meant to that old man.  We were his grandkids, too.

He saw me looking.  “You can’t have any of those!” he said and laughed.  Then he pointed and said “Remember this?”  and we had a nice walk down memory lane.

Here’s the thing:  Joe was gay.

I only learned this, because he always took my brother and the cousins to town to the movies for birthdays, and once, one of my mother’s aunts had the audacity to tell my mother she shouldn’t let my brother go.  My mom doesn’t get pissed often, unless she feels pretty passionate about something, and she said, “I’d NEVER put my son in a situation where I didn’t think he was safe.  Let me tell you something (and this is how I knew she was pissed, because when she says ‘let me tell you something’, the woman MEANS business)…he’s gay.  He’s NOT a pedophile.” And she loaded us up, and we went home.

I didn’t know what either of those words meant.  I was probably ten at the time.  In the car, I asked her what gay meant, and she told me.  “But, he’s good to you, right?” She asked me.

“Yes.  Always.”  I said.

“That’s all that matters.”

That is all that matters.  

I’m tired of hearing how you can love the sinner and still hate the sin. When did love become a sin?

I’m tired of hearing how gay marriage is a threat to traditional marriage.  REALLY?  How?  Are you scared that by someone else vowing to love someone for better and for worse somehow, in some way, makes your vow any less valid?

I’m tired of hearing “What’s next? Polygamy?”  Who cares?  Seriously.  How would even THAT affect your marriage?  I had Rural Community Economics in college with a guy from Kenya.  We called him Simba, and he was a Ph.D. candidate.  It was a very small class, and I sat next to him one day.  “So, Simba,” I said.  “You have three moms?”

“Yes,” he said in his heavy accent that I liked to hear.

“Do you want three wives?”

He chuckled.  “My father has always told me to only have one wife.”

“Why?” I asked, intrigued.

“Because more than that and they fight too much!” 

Three moms and as far as I can tell, from getting to know him, he seemed liked he had a pretty good grasp on life.  

I take my marriage vow pretty seriously, for the most part.  And, I’ll be the first to admit, I’m kind of inclined to believe that without some kind of divine intervention, we probably wouldn’t be together anymore.  I DO believe my marriage is a sacrament.  But, that is me.  I own that. And, I don’t need anyone else outside of my marriage telling me what my marriage means anymore than they need me telling them God has to be in their's.

This is the United States.  A place where religion has no place in government, and lately, it seems like nothing blurs that line between church and state, quite like marriage.

If government is going to grant certain sectors of society benefits based on marriage, then we have to give those benefits to everyone.  No one should be marginalized, least of all in the name of God.

The logical fallacies of the arguments out there against gay marriage are textbook classics. 

Don’t tell me how much you love gay people when you seem to be perfectly fine denying people like Joe the ability to make end of life decisions for their lifelong partners, or share insurance benefits, or heaven forbid, raise and have loving families.

Bigot: a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices; especially : one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance. (Merriam-Webster)

I hate to break it to you, but yeah, if you think it’s somehow fine to deny one group of people the rights everyone else gets, based on who they love and because they ‘sin’ differently than you, then yes, you ARE a bigot and don’t be offended when people tell you so.

Same sex attraction has been observed in almost all mammalian species, at a rate of about 10-20% of populations.  Bigotry and intolerance, as far as I can tell, is only observed in one.

I do believe we all have a cross to bear in this life.  And, maybe, just maybe, instead of telling people their cross is not acting on their love for another person, maybe it’s time we realized our own cross might be learning tolerance for people who are different.

Steubenville

When I was in my early 20s and single, I convinced my grandpa to give me the keys to one of his cabins in Island Park.  The Piper and I were going to a pig roast.  This was back in the day when we didn't just go to a party.  We PARTIED. HARD.

We ended up at the old A-Bar. This was back when I drank vodka collins, and as I was showing off my stupid human trick of being able to tie a cherry stem in a knot with my tongue in under 30 seconds, I noticed a girl almost passed out near a pool table.  Two guys were trying to get her up and she was getting pretty combative.  We'd watched her do a few shots, and her girlfriends appeared to be nowhere in sight.

My eyes got big, and I nodded at the Piper in her direction.  The boys had her up and were trying to get her out the door. We both sat our drinks down and followed them out the door without saying a word.  She didn't want to get in the car with them, so I went to the car and asked if we could give her a ride.  For a second, she was a little lucid and grabbed the Piper.

We got told to mind our own business.  One guy was her boyfriend or something like that.  "Then it shouldn't be a big deal if we give her a ride," I said.  "I'd feel a lot better about it.  No one wants the cops showing up with us all drinking and stuff." I said.

He got really pissy, and The Piper chested up.  Somehow, after lots of cussing, we ended up with this girl in the car, unable to tell us where to go, but she handed us a phone and gave us a name.  We met her friend at Pond's and transferred custody.  I never saw her again, but The Piper and I talk about that night a lot.  I'm convinced something bad would've happened to that girl if we hadn't made them let her go with us.

For the life of me, I cannot remember what she was wearing.  Since it was early September in Island Park, I assume she was dressed just like us and every other 20 something in the place.

I bring up this story, because I felt like I needed to talk to Sha about Steubenville. It seems like everyone out there is worried about how to talk to their kids about this.  Unfortunately, the conversations I had to have with my daughter regarding alcohol came at a very young age, and they both involved the death of people very close to both of us.  The third involved DARE, and we've been having them since.

I was very open with my kid during the DARE conversation.  I've done a lot of stupid shit in my life, and I was open about how I felt.  I was as honest as I thought I could be.  I told her point blank, alcohol will make you do stuff you NEVER in your life thought you would do, and sometimes, it makes people not remember a damn thing.

I told her about the girl in Island Park.  I told her about my own stupid stuff (some, not all).  I told her about girls in college who woke up in the morning mortified about what they had done.

I'm as pissed as off as everyone else out there at the newscasts telling us how two star athletes futures were ruined.  I'm as tired as everyone else with hearing how she was drank herself into that situation.

You know what?  As much as I hate to admit it, I found myself puking in the parking lot once while my friend Tom held my hair.  You know what humans do?  They do what he did, and called me a ride and waited with me until The Piper showed up.

THIS, THIS, is why we don't tell girls its what you wore, or what you drank.  I should be able to walk down the street naked as a jaybird, and THAT does not give anyone consent to do anything to my body.

I'm not shocked that Jane Doe was accused of being a slut.  I'm not shocked at the people who said she deserved it.  When I was in Girl Scouts, they taught us to carry our keys spread out between our freaking knuckles "just in case someone tried to grab us in a parking lot."  I've heard all the "don't dress like that" and "don't act like that" that I can stomach. I watched the Jody Foster movie and knew then how screwed up it all was.

What shocked me, and I mean shocked me, was the defense lawyer saying the young woman never said no.  What shocked me was that these young men said they didn't think it was rape.

NO ONE HAS TO SAY NO.   We are all entitled to sovereignty over our bodies and our sexuality.  You aren't invited to the party, stay the fuck out.  Its not that hard to comprehend. 

That young woman is an athlete and honor student, too.  What about her life sentence?  She decided to drink...at a party...with her peers and "friends."

When you tell me and my daughter how to carry our keys, how to aim for pressure points on an attacker, how to be fearful when its dark, you are telling me, and my daughter, that men and boys have no control.  THAT my friends, is just about as sexist as it gets. You are negating the actions of men like my friend Tom, or another friend who walked me home because we were both too drunk to drive, and saw me to the door...the one I tried to kiss who told me I was too inebriated for that.

You are sending a message that men are inherently evil.  Its not true.

I don't have male children.  I do have a father, a brother, nephews, cousins, and lots of male friends.  ALL who are decent human beings.

You know what?  That young woman was as drunk as many of us have found ourselves. The others appear to have had enough capacity to make a few decisions about what they did, and brag about it in front of the whole entire world. They get a minimum of a year in jail, which in my opinion, doesn't mean shit.  Its still all about them.  "My life is over", one sobbed as he fell into his attorneys arms.

You, sir, will not have to live with being called a SLUT for the rest of your life. Your lack of any sense of what you did, beyond taking a picture that was wrong, is insane.

We call India backwards when a young woman dies of gang rape; we condemn acid burnings in Afghanistan.  Yet, we continue to slut shame and victim blame in our own backyard.

That whole debate a few weeks ago about how if every woman carried a gun, rape wouldn't happen...just got shot in the ass.

Like I said, I don't have boys.  But I can guarantee you, if I did, the conversation starts, not with big words like consent, but a tiny, four letter one called love.

It starts with love and it ends with taking care of people.  People you don't know and people you do.  It involves the fact that just because someone else acted irresponsibly, doesn't mean taking a total leave of your senses.  It means respect.  It means having common human decency and not being shocked when you're a pariah because you show a total lack of it.

It means being a friend.

My daughter turns 16 in a week.  Every time I hear about this story, I think of her.  I can lock her in the house, tell her not to do this, not to dress like that.  Not to trust.

I believe in a better world.

All I can do is teach her to be the best human being and trust her to do it.  I'll still teach her to watch out and be aware.  But I will NEVER, EVER let her believe that because what she wore, or what she said, or because she had sex before, or, God forbid, gets blackout drunk, that somehow gives someone license to treat her as something to use.

I won't ever let her think men lack control.  Its time we stopped selling our men and boys short and making excuses for them when a small minority do fall.  Its time we let some boys know women aren't here to please or be used.

If its actually true, that those boys didn't know it was rape, which I'm not sure I believe, it says a lot about society in general, not just one small town with a football fetish.

Why I Hate the Dinner Dilemma

So, I’m totally down with the fact I’m not the June Cleaver or even the Claire Huxtable of motherhood.  In fact, I’ve made it my life goal not to be. And, I’m in a little bit of trouble with The Sha over it.  I don’t care.  I hope she learns something from what I did. 

In the last week, I’ve had people tell me to get over feminism, and one that accused me of hating my people and wanting to change people’s way of life because I had the vagina to point out we need an Equal Rights Amendment because there is much case law over the years pointing to how equal protection under the constitution isn’t the dream some envision.

A LOT of my thinking in this regard has been ingrained in my head since before I can remember.  My great-grandmother was a proud first-wave feminist.  Except even our family, no one used that word.  It was women’s lib.  

Her stories are personal to me.  When she was told she didn’t need the same pay as her male peers at her teaching job, because she had a husband, she fought. Marching herself to the state capitol, and she got what she was after.  

I’m a Title IX baby.  I was always able to play little league, and lived for sports in school.  In fact, sports is one of the reason I’m not straddled with student loan debt. My great-aunt came to all of my games.  She would tell me how much she loved playing basketball, but half-way through high school, they quit letting girls play, because they thought it would make them unable to have babies.

When I was told by a boss his wife never worked when their kids were young, and maybe I should think about that, I quit and found a new job.  Shocked that being the third generation after my great-grandmother’s fight, here I was looking at someone who claimed to be a social progressive questioning my motherhood, because I worked.  

I’ve stood toe-to-toe with my husband, demanding he help clean house without being asked while I worked and finished my degree (thank God I had only had one semester after we got married, or the ship might have sank).  “I do more than most!” he would say.

“Who is ‘Most’?”  I would demand.  “Tell me who?  And he better not have a housewife!”  I would yell while throwing dishes into the sink in a snit because the house was a disaster. I worked hard to be able to contribute to my families economic well-being,  be able to stand on my own feet if I have to, and I’ll be damned if that means I have to do everything around the house, too.

My great-grandfather always told me, “Never let a man tell you what to do,” and when he met B-Rye, he looked me in the eye and said, “You don’t let him boss you around do you?” Brian laughed at the little white-haired, VERY spiritual Mormon man who was 99 at the time. 

We got in the car and he was still laughing.  I said, “I hope you know, he’s dead serious.” 

And, let me tell you how much we’ve fought over him trying to tell me what to do. :-) 

My point being, its been ingrained in my head since before I can remember that women’s equality is serious, important business.  From my own struggles with mommy guilt to wanting to raise my daughters to be strong women, I take sexist shit personally.  If you really want to piss me off, tell me how much it doesn’t matter.

A major debate in feminist circles these days centers around a conflict between second and third wave feminists.  Mothers who don’t think their daughters appreciate the struggle, don’t fight enough, don’t realize the world they live in and take for granted, was shaped and formed by serious battles.   

And, that is how I got in trouble with The Sha on Wednesday.

I came home from work, and was sitting at the table and asked how her day went.  She laughed and told me I would have come unglued in her health class. She knows these things because she thinks I’m on par with some woman who doesn’t shave her armpits and barks at the moon…well, I wouldn’t put it past me.  BUT, she knows this because I HAVE pointed out she could tell the DARE officer to “suck a fatty.  Girls don’t have to wear dresses to be professional, and when he wears one when its ten below, he can dictate you do,” and I did kind of go on a tirade on a test her history teacher sent home for me to fill out—there was a spot to write in your gender, and I wrote “gender is a social construct that needs to be squashed like the patriarchy” and some other things regarding colonialism and hegemony that were probably pretty radical.  He got a kick out of it though, and told me so at P-T conference. 

I get it I’m radical.  There was a time I really thought everybody just knew and accepted this stuff.  That time passed a long time ago.

But, at least I’ve gotten one thing across to Sha—I’m not gonna stand in silence about this stuff.

See, it’s the start of a new trimester and she is telling me about her health class.  The teacher is lecturing on fast food and asks if anyone in class knows why the consumption of fast food and its horrible health effects have become such an epidemic in America.  No one answered, and the teacher apparently said it happened when women started working, so no one is home to make dinner anymore.

My jaw hit the table.  “She said THAT?  IN CLASS!?”  Sha started laughing, a huge belly laugh.  “Did you tell her men are perfectly capable of making fucking dinner?!”  And she laughed harder.

I got up and started pacing the kitchen, determined I wasn’t making dinner just to prove a damn point.  She kept laughing at me, and told me how she loves my reactions. 

I’m pretty much myself around my kids.  I can be professional and lady-like, but if anyone knows how I really am, its my girls.  Mostly, because I want them to know its ok to be loud and have an opinion and take up space.  They deserve that.  They’re entitled to a voice, and I hope they find it.

“Well, did you say anything, Sheridan?!”  I asked.

“No!”  She laughed. “But I knew you would have.”

I guess a little part of me is glad she even noticed the sexism, even if she was too afraid to say anything.  I told her, “You really should point out that stuff.  By not, you’re letting people think its alright to think those things.  You don’t have to call it ‘bullshit’ like I would, you can say it in a nice way.”

She just laughed again as I finally sat back down, and she pushed some papers in front of me.  She explained to me I needed to read the curriculum for this health class, talk it over with her, and sign a paper agreeing she could learn about sex and STDs.  “She going to teach you about birth control?” I asked.

“No. She said that’s too touchy around here.”

“Figures,” I said and left it at that.  I’d been on my soapbox enough.  “I’ll sign them before I go to bed.  I want to look over them a little more.”

So, later, I signed and dated the paper, and left a P.S. at the bottom.  It said “Please don’t blame the fast food epidemic on women.  Blame it on the still unequal division of domestic labor.” And left a nice little smiley face.

Sha’s embarrassed, and told me yesterday “I’ll just have dad sign my papers from now on!”

“Fine.”  I said.  Dad can sign those papers, because we agreed a long time ago to split chores and share parenting. I kept my mouth shut about how that still doesn’t happen at some houses.

This morning, as Brian was getting Schmoo ready for school, like he has every single day since she was two and I quit working from home, while he was warming up her clothes in the dryer like he does every day so they are warm for her, I asked her if I could fix her hair today.

“I want Daddy to do it.” She said.  “He does it better.”

I sipped my coffee, and watched them get ready for the day (picture above).  In the past, the mommy guilt over this has almost killed me.  As I watched, I’m thankful he’s as involved in her life and every aspect of it as he is.  There’s no way in hell I’d have ever thought to warm up her clothes every day.

I’m lucky.  He IS better than most I know.  I work with women who do everything and have to do it.  Some don’t have anyone to help. Some don’t stand up and demand help.

I was outside the building the other day, and a lady said to me, “You’re a good mom.  You do awesome things with your kids, especially with the hours you put in here.”

I was a little embarrassed, but it was probably one of the best compliments anyone could give me.  “Thank you.  I have a great husband,” I said.  “He helps me a lot.”  And, its true.

He shakes his head at me a lot, just like The Sha does.  “Think about where we live.  You think a lot different than most people,” he likes to tell me.

Well, that doesn’t mean it can’t or shouldn’t change.  So, I won’t fight with my daughter over how I think she should handle things or where she should take women in her generation, and I'll do my best not to be an embarassment to her.   

After all, the point behind it all is I just want her to have choices and opportunities in her life and not be limited by something as trivial as being “just a girl.”

I don’t want her to feel guilty for not making dinner by following her dreams. So, every time someone says something to make her think she's "just a girl" or that dinner is her job, I'm going to say something.  For her.