The other weekend my surrogate mother called me a Goody Two Shoes. Ordained minister aside, I suspect she was drunk. Why else would she call me that?
We were at the neighborhood pool – her neighborhood pool, not mine. We frequently use her pool during the summer, even though we aren’t residents. That’s right! We show up without Susan the Surrogate Mother and pretend to be Susan in order to gain access.
Would a goody two shoes lie like that? I don’t think so. I even have my children in on the lies. I coach them about whose name is what, and that I am actually Susan and, oh my god, DO NOT let it slip that my name is Heather. Instead it is Susan. Repeat after me: MY MOM’S NAME IS SUSAN or they will THROW US OUT OF THE POOL.
This is what you call teaching your children secret agent skills. I don’t think Susan knows the first thing about teaching secret agent skills to children.
On this particular pool recon, a kink appeared in our secret agent field training exercise when Susan came to the pool two hours after we get there. I quickly draw my children over to me in the water, opposite side of the Pool Gestapo.
“Ok, boys,” I whisper, “Susan is on her way here. When you see her, DO NOT yell out her name, even though you’ll be excited to see her. Remember, I AM SUSAN BERENT! Do not blow our cover!”
“Ok, Mom! Err, I mean ok, Susan!”
Susan gets there and I tell her the instructions I gave the boys, expecting her to be overwhelmed by the sheer brilliance of my mastermind planning skills.
“Yeah, or you could just pretend you’re my daughter visiting from out of town and you’re named after me.”
Gesh, it’s like she thinks she’s more experienced in lying to the Pool Police than I am and knows how to make this less complicated. Hello? This is our second summer stealing this pool! I know what I’m doing, and the more complicated you make your lies the more befuddled the other side becomes. It’s in the secret agent training manual.
The second thing I did once Susan arrived at the pool was oh-so-casually walk over to the Pool Police and report that the addition to our party, please note it in the pool log so you can charge MY club account properly. After all, liars just aren’t honest about those kinds of things! Who would suspect me of being stealing pool privileges if I’m honest about the number of our party?
And that’s when Susan called me a Goody Two Shoes – for FOLLOWING THE RULES by reporting the actual number of people in my party. What she doesn’t understand is it was only about staying in character and making the lie real.
Come on, nothing else in my life points to me being a goody two shoes. Look at me, I attended college, got engaged my senior year, married just weeks after graduation (with honors!), bought a house, waited an appropriate number of married years before having children (none out of wedlock for me!), quit my job to stay home, bought a minivan, joined the PTA, put my husband’s career first and learned to bake the best chocolate chip cookies ever.
That doesn’t sound anything like a goody two shoes, does it? DOES IT?!
Fucking hell, it does. EXACTLY. The only way I could sound more goody two shoes is if I did volunteer work and stayed away from drugs.
That’s it, I’m screwed.
And if that moment of depersonalization isn’t enough, I’ve been talking with Megan about my blog. I’m at a crossroads with it and Megan is trying to help me. While discussing potential blog name changes, she said she comes to my blog expecting to find me either a) funny or b) pissed off.
Attention everyone! Megan has spoken, so my new blog name must be FuckYouAssholeLOL.com.
I had no idea I come across as pissed off. I’d like to know what the fuck Megan means by that!!! Oh, that’s probably what she means by that – the F bomb and the exclamation points. Shit! Oops, I mean, crap. (Did that sound less angry?)
My point to all of this is I can’t see myself. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen myself. I have this idea in my head of who I am, but I’m getting a hunch it’s loosely based on reality. Very loosely. I guess this is why whenever I’m asked to write a bio of myself I get very flustered and mentally flounder for ways to describe who and what I am.
Pissed off, fired up, whichever I’m described. Maybe feisty? I could live with feisty. Except I like to imagine myself being level-headed and rational, and the antonym of impulsive, whatever it is. That word. I’d like to imagine myself that way, if I knew the word.
I don’t want to be a goody two shoes. I want to be a radical mother with absolutely no intentions of getting a tattoo (ew, trashy), but willing to smoke a menthol to prove a point. What point I don’t know, but some point, damn it.
So far the only adjective that fits both my idea of Heather and the outside world’s idea of Heather is funny. Yes, I see it. Except I’d like to imagine myself more of a refined, cerebral comic. As someone who actually deserves to have a humor article published in an intellectual magazine and not as a “diamond in the rough.” But I am rough. I like to cuss. A lot. Shit. Fuck. Damn. See?
How does one go about reconciling oneself with oneself?
I was once told I would never be described as refined. Maybe I should reconcile with that. I don’t know what to wear to country club weddings or how to process the sight of men in seersucker suits. (They actually exist, and not just in Southern novels. I couldn’t help but stare.) But I can belt out the most authentic yee-haw when your four-wheel drive truck slip-slides around in a muddy field. Yet if you were to see me pull out of my suburban driveway in my minivan and Gap jeans, you wouldn’t know that about me either.
I’ve spent weeks now trying to define myself and subsequently rebrand my blog through this new found clarity of self. So basically I’ve wasted a lot of time recently. I’m no closer to anything, except maybe schizophrenia, which is what happens when you take yourself too seriously or listen to Glenn Beck.
Poor Heather, she can’t be the perfect embodiment of fire and ice, of revolution and peace, of impulse and temperance. Boo-hoo-hoo.
Just shut up and get over yourself already.
Hmm. Maybe FuckYouAssholeLOL.com is the way to go.
It’s not even 8:30 in the morning and already I’ve heard the words “Mom!” or “Hey, Mom,” 253,000 times.
Please, just don’t talk to me for one hour. That’s all, ONE HOUR!
Do you see this poor quality picture that, really, no blogger in their right mind should post on their blog because every successful blogger is an expert photographer.
Those are my kids, playing the new Lego Harry Potter game. But I insist everyone call it The Video Game that Must Not Be Named.
I swear to you, if I have to answer ONE MORE QUESTION about Harry Potter, I am going to do something drastic, like find Jesus or something. And I love Harry Potter. LOVE IT. Probably in the same disturbing way grown women love Twilight, which I hate in equal proportion.
Actually, that’s not a fair comparison, because I’m not forgetting myself and lusting after teenage boys, regardless of their supernatural power. No, if anything I find Snape attractive. What’s not to find sexually stimulating? He’s an ADULT, for one. And he’s half evil, half good. I’m convinced it’s within my feminine powers to bring Snape completely over from the Dark Side.
So, Snape = hot, independent and challenging. Edward or…fuck, what’s the other guy’s name = co-dependent and potentially abusive, which is not hot at all.
But now my Harry Potter love is dying a slow, tragic death due to the torturous game called ASK MOMMY 150 QUESTIONS IN A MINUTE.
“Hey, Mom, why does Ron’s rat blah blah blah blah.”
“Mom, did you know that Harry’s spell blah blah blah blah?”
“Hey, Mom, look what happens when I explode this with a spell!”
“Mom, which book does Ron’s rat turn into a person?”
“Hey, Mom, what is Ron’s rat’s person’s name?”
“Mom, can I make pumpkins fly?!”
“Hey, Mom, can I meet the dog, Fang?”
“Mom……blah blah blah.”
“Hey, Mom, …..blah.”
“Mom…..”
“Hey, Mom…..”
“Mom….”
“Hey, Mom….”
“Mom…”
I don’t know what techniques Lord Voldemort used to torture information out of Ollivander the Wand Maker, but he certainly would have benefited from lessons with my kids.
“Mom, do you have a small box?” asks The Evil Genius.
“What for?”
“To mail something.”
“Like what, your brother?”
He thinks this is funny.
“Hahaha,” he laughs.
But like all evil geniuses, it’s only a polite, clipped laughter and stops as abruptly as it began. So it actually went like this…
“Hahaha,” stop abruptly. “No.”
“Who are you sending it to?”
“The President of Cleveland.”
I nod my head, as if this is the most sane thing I’ve heard all day.
Actually, it is, because I am home ALL day with bored school-age children who do not want to do any summer camp-y activities. At this halfway point of summer vacation, even Dr. Laura begins to sound sane.
“Okay, and what are you sending to the President of Cleveland?” I ask.
A dashing yet devilish smiles slowly grows upon his face, transforming him from your typical innocent 9-year-old to a suave 30-year-old trapped in a prepubescent body.
“Something he has never seen before,” he answers.
And now I’m just remembering that 20 minutes before, evil son asked me what TNT stood for. Do you think I should worry? Or only stop allowing him to watch Wile E. Coyote cartoons?
And then he asks my help in finding a slug.
Hey, Mr. President of Cleveland, I’m guessing you’ve never seen an exploding slug before, have you?
Look at me, torturing my readers in this way. Are you feeling left out? Do you also want to receive random, never seen before, potentially explosive items from The Evil Son? We’ll even create imaginary executive titles for you, too.
It’s like 105 degrees outside and I’m sitting here drinking hot chocolate. I’m sure that means summer vacation finally broke my tenacious hold on sanity. Take heed, reader, this is what happens when your kids do not want to do ANY summer camp-y events…
Hey boys, do you want to do a karate camp this summer?
NO!
Okay, how about we just go see Karate Kid, then we’ll talk about Karate Camp?
NO!
Hey boys, do you want to do a painting camp this summer, it’s only a week?!
NO!
Hey boys, do you want to stay home and do a Mom Makes Us Do All The Chores camp?
NO!
Fine then! I’ll just ship you off to Camp Granada!
…and then *KABLAMO* there goes your sanity and you find yourself drinking hot chocolate on an insufferably hot summer day. I consider it practice for day-to-day life at a mental institution, really. I need to prepare for ridiculous daytime activities, like making myself a name tag out of popsicle sticks.
(True story: I had to do that once, which is how I know it happens in mental institutions. It was at a MOPS (Moms Of Preschoolers) meeting way back when I was a wet behind the ears stay-at-home mom. They had us make nametags with popsicle sticks and beads. It was then I knew those religious fuckers were insane and the “meeting” was just a front for involuntary committals.)
So I spend most of my time arguing with the boys that it is WAY past time for the TV and video games to turn off. If a psychiatrist were to witness my arguments, they would see me repeatedly arguing WITH A WALL. And then the screaming and hysteria when I turn the TV off myself? Fits right in with the noises found in an insane asylum. But that’s not the only reason I’m convinced I’ve mysteriously ended up in an institution.
I’ve become obsessed with crafts this summer, though I do draw the line with popsicle sticks. I say that, but I’m actually lying, which insane people happen to do quite often. I erased the line when I discovered this popsicle stick craft. I’m going to make those motherfuckers in time for Christmas.
And after that, I’ll be promoted to Level Two Mental Institution Crafting and will make this craft and possibly do this to a lamp. On the condition of good behavior, of course.
Then comes Level Three, which is where I transform my oldest son’s room into a Pottery Barn magazine spread, all through Goodwill, Craigslist and a gallon of navy blue paint. Except forget the sail and surfing theme, because why would my nine-year-old Payton want something typical like that. He wants a cat-theme room. Awesome. I get to figure out how to masculinize a cat-theme room. I don’t think I’ll ever make it out of the nuthouse.
Thanks to my latest love, Netflix, I am now streaming The Medicated Child, and let me tell you, I am drunk on my superior ability to parent a quirky child.
Hold on, that may actually be the Smirnoff vodka I’m drunk on and not my superiority.
Is it me, or do you find it a strange coincidence that I watch The Medicated Child and then find myself needing to self-medicate with vodka? It’s like the medical establishment wants us to be sick. There’s a conspiracy somewhere in there involving subliminal messages and profits, I’m sure of it.
Now, if you haven’t heard of this movie, or you are a complete dumb ass, it’s about medicating children. Obviously. I think most were medicated for mood disorders, though when you watch a documentary while drinking extra-strength cocktails, it’s hard to remember every detail. They should add that to the federal warnings for the movie.
Warning: Drinking extra-strength cocktails while watching this film may cause short-term memory loss. So take lithium instead.
On a related side note, I just Googled lithium to make sure my memory is actually correct and this is used to treat bipolar. Look, it’s been mumbleteen years since college and these things get murky. IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE ALCOHOL. Only the passage of time and re-prioritizing the mental filing cabinets. I may not remember psychotropic drug uses from college, but I do remember to pay my mortgage, which is saying a lot in our society.
So anyway, I Googled lithium for bipolar and this is what I found on WedMD.
Lithium for Bipolar Disorder
Lithium has been used for years for bipolar disorder. Find out what to expect if you’re taking lithium.
Bipolar Disorders and Anticonvulsants
Anticonvulsants were originally used to treat seizures. Find out how they can help bipolar disorder too.
Antipsychotic Drugs for Bipolar
Did you know that some people with bipolar disorder get long-term help from antipsychotic medications? Learn more here.
Calcium Channel Blockers for Bipolar Mania
Here’s where to learn why doctors sometimes prescribe these blood pressure drugs for bipolar mania.
Benzodiazepines for Bipolar Disorder
For short-term relief of manic symptoms, benzodiazepines can be very helpful. Here’s where to to learn where, when, and how they are used.
And this medication list goes on and on with seven other drugs, and how, if you go through your nose to get to your ass, it will help bipolar. So why don’t they just add this one too?
The fuck? Do these medical professionals even know what they are doing with meds? Blood pressure medication to treat a mental disease. At this point I’m not sure which of us should be on the couch and which behind the desk, though it leans more towards us on the couch since Listerine invented (as in completely made up!) “chronic halitosis” as a medical condition and consumers started buying it right and left because we thought we needed a cure. From a MADE UP medical condition. Now, who’s the crazy one?
At one point in the film was a family with a four-year-old girl diagnosed with bipolar. They showed a clip of this little girl hitting at her father. And he cowered from her.
He shrunk in his shoulders and cowered. From a four-year-old.
Isn’t this where you grab their little wrist, look dead into their little eyes with your RED LASER BEAMS OF GOD-LIKE WRATH and tell that little shit YOU. DO. NOT. HIT. MOMMY. (Or Daddy.) Because that’s what we did and guess what? Our toddlers stopped trying to hit us.
But let’s give this family the special consideration they’re due. You might cower from your four-year-old too if she, like this little girl, told the shrink she would cut off mommy and daddy’s head.
But me? That’s when I’d say, “Not if I cut yours off first.”
It’s probably politically incorrect to talk back and scare your kids like that. Attachment parents might lynch me if they found out my ideas. You should hug your children and affirm their unlimited power in the world instead!
Like other people say, though, all’s fair in love and war. And mind games.
I’ve seen this work. Child tries to mess with your head, you mess back with theirs, and it’s like two negatives create a positive! You can’t argue with math, people. It’s the only pure form of truth.
Isn’t it necessary to be smarter than our toddler? Isn’t that the entire point of parenting – to lord over smaller people? What is the fun in having kids if I can’t play God for 18 years and scare the shit out of them with my power?
And here I am, drunk on my superiority again. Or maybe on the third extra-strength cocktail.
I watch temper tantrums unfold on this film, as a kid’s meds wore off, and think, huh, Payton’s tantrums were way worse than that. Did my son have tantrums in need of drug intervention, only he was my first child and I was too ignorant to know better?
I hear another mom of a bipolar child talk of how her child tries to injure herself, banging her head against the wall.
Mine did that, too. I had forgotten he did, but the memory came rushing back, so sharp and clear that I swear my mind now sees in HD.
I saw my sweet, chubby one-year-old baby become so INCREDIBLY ANGRY that he would bang his head repeatedly on the floor. I probably I caused this INCREDIBLE ANGER by committing terrible crimes against him, such as giving him a blue sippy cup instead of a red.
And woe to the heavens should he be in the den when INCREDIBLE ANGER struck.
CARPET! IS FOR PUSSIES!
He would then crawl over to the hard kitchen floor to hurt himself. He would use the metal exterior door once he learned to walk full-time. I stopped him, of course. Of course! This was my beautiful, chubby baby that I adored more than my own life. Of course I stopped him from hurting himself on purpose.
So I wrapped my arms around him and tried to soothe and comfort him, only to have him scream even harder, if it was possible. (It was.)
I mentioned this to his pediatrician at the time. “Oh, he’s trying to get your reaction. He won’t do it hard enough to hurt himself.”
So next time I did what any good behavior modifier would do and ignored it. No response! No negative or positive reinforcement! I know how to play this psychology-ordained mind game!
That time Payton banged so hard that he gave himself a horrible goose egg on his forehead.
It was then I began to realize medical professionals don’t always know what they are talking about.
And sometimes, neither do I.
This path I am on, raising an atypical kid without medical intervention, is it any less of an experiment than a concoction of eight different pills? I’m not going to tell how old Payton was before he finally stopped trying to bang his head when he was angry. To name that age in public would be to add a piece of evidence to the Heather, You’re Child REALLY Needed Help file. And that’s just one example of the different types of atypical behavior we’ve dealt with.
Aren’t I playing a crapshoot too?
Do any of us parents know until it’s too late?
It seems as if I did bet the right hand. My son is both mentally and physically healthy. But I really have no way of knowing how it will all turn out until the end.
On Saturday, I came the closest I have ever come to crossing that fine, imaginary line from sanity to insanity.
I was *THIS* close to crazy.
I almost bought a bikini.
I managed to stave off lunacy and properly rewire my synapses by rushing home and baking the BEST BATCH OF BROWNIES IN THE WORLD. I ate 5 of them. Huge pieces too. I made an ice cream sundae with one of them. With homemade hot fudge sauce, which is also the BEST IN THE WORLD.
That’ll teach me to come *this* close to buying a bikini. I mean, am I an American woman or a French. I am so American that you can practically see the words “U.S. of A.” in the pattern of my abdominal stretch marks.
I think I’m incapable of enjoying life unless I sabotage myself with food on a regular basis. What would I gnash my teeth over if I had a great body? What internal demon would I wrestle? I have great hair, my children are wonderful, so is my husband. I was never molested, abused, nor did I grow up with a drunken father. As a writer, aren’t you required to have at least one of those? I need a demon to slay, damn it, and so I choose sugary concoctions as my adversary.
I spent 30 minutes in the dressing room, wearing that bikini and looking at myself in the mirror. The thing is I didn’t look bad. I didn’t look perfect either, but with a month’s dedication to eating right (I already exercise 4 times a week) I could wear that bikini in public.
But that would mean sacrificing nachos! And pizza! And pan-seared shrimp with a creamy, cheesy garlic-lemon sauce over pasta! Horror! I better eat all of these fucking brownies before I stop believing in God!
So I eat a bunch of fattening food to ward off a different form of insanity. And osteoporosis. I don’t know if you’ve heard or not, but “They” now say an extra 10 pounds is actually better for women’s bones than being skinny. Gwyneth Paltrow may wear a bikini, but in 30 years, I will totally kick her ass and make her break a hip.
Sigh. Now I’m sitting here depressed. I was *this* close to a bikini for the first time since…oh my god…since Fred Flintstone pedaled a car with his feet.
And I blew it.
Wait a minute. Why do I even care? I just ate the best brownies in the world, that I made from scratch. Did you hear that? FROM SCRATCH. In this age of boxed, processed, dump and stir cooking, that’s a lost art, people.
Any floozy can wear a bikini.
Only God’s Anointed can successfully bake brownies from scratch.
Summer vacation started out with grandiose ideas of child slave labor, with my children learning the value of doing chores and making their mother’s cocktails. Two weeks into it and it has not gone as planned, to say the least.
Instead, I’m failing miserably at hostage negotiations for my computer. Little heathens have absconded with it to ToonTown (again!) and I’m forced to type this blog on our 8-year-old G4 Mac desktop. Oh, the humanity!
(I swear to you the computer gave itself a hernia simply trying to load my blog. )
Obviously I suck at mediation and why I need your help. See, Wally and I had a fight this morning. And when I say “fight,” I mean I am right and Wally is wrong but he doesn’t realize he is wrong, thus the fight.
Well, that’s usually how it goes. This time is different because I don’t know if I’m actually right, another reason for a mediator. I’m usually so fucking sure of myself that I don’t need input from anyone. But not this time.
(I scared myself typing that. Me? Not sure of myself? OMFG.)
See, I bought a dress last summer. But I was borderline too pudgy to wear it at the time, my legs too jiggly for the length of the hem. It hung in my closet until now, a year after doing the 30-Day Shred and turning my legs from Mrs. Jiggly McThighRubber to Mrs. CouldChokeTheLifeOutOfYouInALegLock.
Pardon me if I say so, but my legs are damn sexy now. After 14 months of squats and leg bends, I think I’ve earned the right to say it.
But do you know what else I have this year that I didn’t have last year? More fine lines around the eyes. The vague beginnings of age spots on my hands. Another year added to my age that puts me on the downhill side to 40.
I fear I am too old for a dress this short.
There’s nothing I find more pitiful than a woman dressing too young for her age. I loathe to be that woman; the one who grasps for the last vestiges of youth instead of aging with style and grace. I mean, I have the sense to not attempt ultra low-rise jeans, or even get close enough to a Hollister’s door to breathe the dark, putrid air of teenage hormones and bony hips.
Have I lost my sense with this dress, though? I don’t know! Which is worse than knowing! If I knew, I could do something about it, like wear the fucking dress or take it to Goodwill. I guess I’m going to have to show it to you so we can resolve this terrible problem in my life.
Please, pay NO attention to the Le Creuset braiser on the stove and focus on me instead. I know it’s hard, because, my God, Heather’s famous LE CREUSET. I’ve already done you a favor by cutting my head off since it was wrapped in a towel, waiting to be dried, and I knew that hot sexiness would completely obliterate your ability to focus on the hem of the dress. So try to focus.
After putting on the little summer tunic dress, I asked Wally if it was too short. It felt too short. Of course, I married a fucking saint, so he says no, it’s absolutely not too short, I look hot.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure.”
“But do you think the girls in your office will look at me and think, gah, look at her, she’s too old now to wear something that short.”
When your husband works in an office full of young, twentysomething hotties whose stomachs have not been jellified through pregnancy, much less a beluga whale pup pregnancy like mine, these are the thoughts that go through your head.
Wally’s response: Silence. With the lifting of eyebrows, as if to say, oh shit, they probably will.
My age paranoia grows exponentially. How else is a grown woman to respond to such a slight than with histrionics and a temper tantrum?
So I’m sitting here, 10 o’clock with errands to run and haven’t stepped foot out of my house in this dress.
Be honest with me, because this is just between you and me and God. And the internet.
Look, I’m having a terrible case of, well, not writers block. It’s more like can’t give a damn block. Who cares about writing and blogging? There are jobs to be done, sun to soak up, flowers to plant, and kids to revel in. I find myself less and less in my own head and more and more in the moment. Warning: this “present in the moment” bullshit doesn’t bode well for a blogger. Fodder will flitter into your head, then flitter right out. But, who cares, right?
Megan and I talked about this lingering problem of mine, but what we discovered (that it probably is caused by a low inventory in my liquor cabinet) isn’t the point. Megan asked me a completely unrelated question during our phone call.
“So, what does Payton think of the oil spill?”
I didn’t know what to tell her.
Not because I’m not aware of my kids, or of what Payton thinks of this environmental mess. Come on, the kid who is highly opinionated on all (and I do mean ALL) things environmental? The one who wants to buy a bullhorn so he can organize a neighborhood march and yell “PLANT MURDERER!” to the construction crews as they transform yet another section of woods into the barren, mindless bliss that is a suburban yard.
Surely Payton has thoughts on the oil spill!
He has amazingly adult thoughts on the oil spill. And by that, I mean he’s speechless too, just like us adults.
What can you say about something like this?
Of course, there are people saying things about it. Of course there are! And it’s so funny! I can hear the brown pelicans and great blue herons laughing it up RIGHT NOW!
Just like I’m sure the citizens of Louisiana and Mississippi laughed it up at the Hurricane Katrina jokes.
And the Haitians laugh at the earthquake jokes.
Let’s say a toxic chemical contaminated an entire city’s drinking water and kept contaminating it for weeks and weeks, with no end in sight. I’m sure the people in that city would laugh at the jokes too, wouldn’t they?
Listen to me. I sound like a old hag whose disappointment with life has turned her bitter and caused an early demise to her sense of humor. Gah. I should stop considering my blog a humor blog.
I guess even my sarcasm and cynicism has its limit. And even though I believe in the healing power of laughter, I can’t find it in me to laugh at a sea turtle’s expense, or a baby manatee’s, or even a bull shark, no matter how witty and humorous the tweet. But something close to 100,000 people can. Gah, indeed.
I don’t want to debase BP either. At least not yet. I don’t want to believe they are immoral, uncaring people. Goddamn, so much is riding on them being caring people, on them being just as horrified at the loss of life and ecological disaster as the rest of us. I want to believe they are doing everything humanly possible to stop this oil leak.
Don’t mistake a fundamental belief in good people as naiveté. I know BP did something wrong somewhere. They cut one corner too many, or maybe five too many. Maybe a hundred. They pressured a contractor to work too fast, to ignore one safeguard too many. Their contractor didn’t stand by principle and caved to the pressure, knowing it was wrong. Something. A lot of things. Obviously it went wrong somewhere.
There are businesses that are culpable, alright. I’m sure we’ll make them pay, one way or another. Money, of course. Social media spankings, another. Hell, let’s get real American with these Brits and tar and feather them. It’ll be like the good ol’ days!
But what about our own culpability? Yours and mine. You didn’t think we were exempt from accountability for this, did you?
Look at this picture of Wally and the boys at the beach. Click on it to enlarge if you need to. Look along the horizon. Do you see the four tiny gray dots? Those are oil rigs. That’s just a small sample of the number you can see from our coast in Alabama.
And it’s all in the American name of the cheapest possible gas price.
Oh yes, we’re accountable too. Who is making the demands for the product?
But it’s much easier to blame someone else and laugh at snarky tweets than own it. It makes it that much easier to dismiss the part you and I have played in this. Why do we need to be a part of the solution when we didn’t cause the problem, right?
I don’t know what is going to come from this disaster, but I want to believe it will be something good. (Again, it’s my Jedi training in a fundamental belief of good over evil.)
Could it be that this, combined with the Great Recession, can change the trajectory of our American society? We begin to turn inwards for happiness, not outwards in consumerism. That it will finally push us to look for a truly viable alternative source of energy.
That, little by little, you and I change our mindset: one drop, then another, until the ripple reaches every shore.
One reusable water bottle replaces 24 plastic bottles, which contain oil. Imagine if the 99,000 Twitter followers of that satirical BP Public Relations put some action behind their laughing and made that change? One reusable shopping bag replaces 5 plastic bags, which contain oil. One smaller car replaces an SUV.
One by one, then two by two. It’s no accident that numbers are infinite.
We can be a part of the solution, every single day. It’s easier than you think. But first, we have to change how we believe.
Whoever put modeling clay into my first grader’s end-of-school treat bucket? I’m going to kick your ass come August. I just spent 15 minutes scrubbing its residue off of my table and that was after I hunted down a playdough spatula to scrape the clay up.
SOS! It’s the first day of summer vacation. I’m pretty sure I’ll blow my entire wad of KEEP KIDS BUSY activities by the end of the day. Then it’ll be a downhill life of referring fights over video games ALL SUMMER LONG. God, I love this time of year.
Have you heard the news? Kelcey had her twins last week! However, I’m disappointed she didn’t pick Payton and Parker’s favorite names: FartBreath and ButtFace. It’s what they call each other ALL OF THE TIME, so I assume those are their favorite names. The Mouthy Housewives had some hilarious people give Kelcey advice on raising twins, biological or Irish. And how convenient, I’m giving advice over there today too. Don’t let your husband boss you or your fallopian tubes around! Feel free to add your opinion. Fallopian tubes and/or uterus not required.
I must admit to you that I have been horrible at reading and commenting on other blogs lately. (I told you I was a blog asshole.) Do you have any news? Better tell me know before I lose my ever-living mind this summer and am incapable of coherent thought. Or at least thoughts that don’t involve words like “buttface” and “fartbreath.” I invite you to violate the Blog Etiquette Book and put a link in your comment (you are going to comment, right?) for me to read. Please. You’ll be doing your part to save my sanity, and just think how many points that will score you with God.
God, I am SUCH a blog asshole. Last week I wrote that post about NPR with a note at the end that I had more to say about it. And then I didn’t say it. See, blog asshole.
I can explain, though! It went something like this…
Sunday/Monday – Parker terribly sick with high fever/sore throat virus.
Tuesday – Heather sick with a sort of bad but short-lived stomach virus.
Tuesday afternoon/Wednesday – called to pick Payton up from school. He comes down with horrible high fever/sore throat virus.
Thursday/Friday – Heather sick with horrible high fever/sore throat virus.
I said something on Facebook about everyone being sick and no one cared about the scourge plaguing our house, so I assumed no one would care over here. But, I suppose if I posted something about blue jeans on FB, like an old school friend of mine, 17 people would care about that.
I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with people.
And on that note, let’s get down to this second point I wanted to make about Krista Tippet’s show on autism. Because it ties in neatly with this question of what the fuck is wrong with people.
(Did I just drop the F Bomb in reference to the sophisticated, tranquil-voiced NPR. Oh my fucking god, I did. Is that even legal? Will I and my crassness be banned from listening to NPR now? And where would that leave me? Getting my news from Jon Stewart & Stephen Colbert. Which I already do.)
Krista brings up in the show how some autistic kids identify with the characters of Dr. Spock and Data from Star Trek and The Next Generation. (For the love of God, I don’t want to offend Trekkies and get hate mail because I didn’t distinguish between the two.)
As an example, I guess of the common characteristics between Aspies and Spock, they played a sound bite from one of the movies. I will try to summarize it quickly as possible.
Spock, Kirk, and Dr. Bones are around a campfire, and Spock suggests they sing campfire songs because he read somewhere it is a human tradition. Kirk gets very excited and suggests Row, Row, Row Your Boat. Spock doesn’t know it, but Kirk tells him not to worry, it’s easy and they will cue him in when to start.
Dr. Bones & Kirk begin the staggered stanza singing of the song. (I don’t know about you, but that drives me INSANE. I can never ever keep within my own verse with someone else singing two verses ahead of me.)
Spock does not jump in when cued. Kirk gets upset and wants to know why Spock didn’t join in.
“I was trying to understand the meaning of the words.”
Kirk has an apoplectic fit, telling Spock there is no meaning to the words, you JUST SING THEM, for Pete’s sake!
Do you see what I mean? The hell with this Spock/autism thing, what the fuck is wrong with Captain Kirk? And don’t try to tell me there is nothing wrong with him. THERE IS.
I find LOADS of meaning in Row, Row, Row Your Boat.
Row, row, row your boat
Gently down the stream.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily
Life is but a dream.
Please, all the other Vulcans who read my blog, let’s stand together on this. Tell me you see the deep spiritual meaning between the lines too.
Maybe it was just a less than stellar choice of example by Ms. Tippet, but I FAIL TO SEE what’s autistic-like about his behavior.
Putting my positive perspective aside for a few moments, I actually do understand the parallel they are attempting to draw between Spock and autistic children.
Do you think I don’t know? This is the mother who receives wooden hugs from her oldest son 90% of the time, among other seemingly detached behaviors I won’t list here.
I get the analogy.
But from my perspective and life experiences, it’s quite ridiculous and shallow to focus on that aspect of my son and gnash it around in my teeth long enough to make something out of it.
His emotions are there and they are expressed, just differently.
When he discovers something new about an insect and then he sees me after school, he literally jumps up and down in excitement to share his discovery with me.
The deep passion he feels for conservation, for land preservation, for animal protection.
And this is not an uncommon theme in Aspie kids – for their deep interest to be in insects, animals, nature, etc. In fact, I recently met one whose interest is also marine science.
With oil endlessly spewing into our Gulf, now invading our wetlands, our pelicans, their nesting grounds, with dolphins washing ashore, dead and coated in oil, with turtles gasping for air as rescuers pull oil out of their nostrils, what do you think this planet needs?
More people who just sing along with everyone else?
Or those who stop and look for deeper meaning?
This is no disorder. This is Mother Nature righting herself.
I'm Heather, and I'm both politically and grammatically incorrect. This blog kicks ass because I write only the truth. And the truth is always funnier than fiction.
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