Well it's Friday, I was cleaning, I had weird dreams so it just seems like I should be writing a blog.
The problem is that nothing is coalescing into a cohesive post. Stop laughing, I do too make cohesive posts! Not all the time, but often! Or at least sometimes. Okay, they make sense to me at least.
So instead of a nice tidy little blog you are going to get a few paragraphs of randomness put together on the page. Call it blog goulash!
First off...have you ever read a book where you just didn't like the main character? Ahem, Twilight, ahem. They were just unpleasant in some way. Maybe whiny or vacant or vague. Maybe something in the character reminded you of people you know and don't like so you couldn't ever find that bond with the character, that sympathy or empathy or just feeling of well being for them that you know should be there. Or maybe it's a character that you normally like and they took an odd turn. Harry Potter, I'm looking at you here. You were very likable for most of the books but there was one in there that I started rooting for Voldemort, I didn't like pouty teens when I was a teen, didn't like spending time with one any more as an adult. Katniss Everdeen, don't you start snickering now, you know you had a personality transplant in book 3 and went from "tough girl in a tough spot doing the best you can" to "petulant, whiny, crybaby with a vindictive streak who is unhelpful at best and intolerable at worst" but I still liked you enough to over look it all. To know that if there had been a book 4 you would have bounced back just like Harry did.
But what do you think the writers feel? Do you think they know that the character is unlikable? Or being unlikable? And if you write what do you do when you have one of these people in your head forming? Someone shrill and spoiled and not really likable. And what if they are insistent that they have a story that needs told? Yes, you know where I am going with this. I have this character that has been popping up more and more. She hasn't fully formed yet, she hasn't given me a lot to work with but she's there. And she's really unpleasant. Spoiled child is what I am getting from her. I know it sounds weird but this is the way stories form in my head. The people start showing up. Sometimes they have a fully formed story that is just ready to come out. Sometimes they are waiting for the rest of their crew to show up. They go in to notes and wait. But the more I write out pieces of this woman's story the more I don't like her. What am I going to do with her?
Next...last night I dreamt that I was at a party a friend was holding. I didn't know anyone there but the hostess. One of the guests started talking about how he was going to get shock therapy for his daughter. He kept asking people what they thought about it and I finally spoke up. I told him that it was in no way shape or form okay to get shock therapy for an 8 year old child. I kept trying to get him to tell me what he thought was so wrong with the child she needed this. He wouldn't tell me, just said she was going to be "better" after the treatment. Then in the dream everyone at the party got mad at me for calling him out on this because his daughter was at the party and I shouldn't have questioned his parenting in front of her. They were all uncomfortable and were going to leave the party because of it. I tried saying that I would go so they could all stay but no, they all lined up to leave. I knew they were going someplace else to continue the party but couldn't convince them to stay and just let me leave.
Then as Brent, C and I were waiting to take the Max home they went to stand further down the platform so they could get on a different train than me. They were embarrassed to be with me after my bad behavior at the party. In the dream I couldn't figure out if everyone had gone crazy or if I had. In what world was I the bad one for saying the child was fine and he was okay for saying she needed shock therapy? It was one of those dreams that sticks to you when you wake up. I wanted to ask Brent why he wouldn't ride on the Max with me even though I knew it was a dream. When I told him about the dream this morning he said he was sure there was more to the story than I was telling him if he and C were shunning me as well. Harumph....
And lastly...
Dusting. I hate dusting. One of the really good things about living in a rain forest area is that you only have to dust every other week or so and your house looks fine. Usually. They are doing construction across the street right now and with the windows open for summer I am getting a layer of grit on everything all the time. Instead of dusting every two weeks I am dusting every two days. And it's not enough. And it's driving me nuts. I dusted the main room this morning and this afternoon as I was rinsing something in the sink I looked over at the dining table and....*sigh*... it's covered again. I can't keep up. I know laundry is this way for a lot of people. There is no end to it. As soon as you get all of the dirty clothes clean there is another load that pops up ready to go again. It's never ending.
Okay well after that brain dump let's see if there is room in there for a story or a blog to come together. Or maybe for less odd dreams.
Wait one more bit of randomness for the day...C just shouted downstairs that there is a wasp in his room. It's in the window on the cross frame. I asked what he wanted me to do and said he wasn't sure if there was a plan or not. Now I am wondering if we should have a wasp removal plan. I told him to trap it and kill it. That's all I've got for a plan. That and I am planning on freaking out a little that a wasp got in the house.
Happy Friday, everyone!
Friday, August 10, 2012
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
In the cold light of day...
Laying in bed early this morning I came up with just the best idea for a book. It was seriously genius. I was so pleased with myself over it I almost jumped up and started writing right then. But I waited. I tried to go back to sleep, then finally it was time to get up. I brushed my teeth, threw on some clothes, had some breakfast, got Brent to work and me back home, and sat down to start writing up my notes on this fabulous story idea. And....
...well....
...ummm....
It's really kind of weird. And maybe not all that great. And possibly unreadable.
Don't you hate when that happens? When you get what is absolutely the best freaking idea in the world at 2 AM but then in the bright light of day you realize it was only good because you were sleep deprived? I cannot tell you how many best selling novel ideas I have had at 2 AM that when looked at again at 8 AM turned out to be..."And then the fish says what?" How many times I have thought up a PLAN a PERFECT PLAN for life only to be reminded the next day that I can neither fly nor have access to millions of dollars.
Being a chronic insomniac I do spend a lot of time thinking in the middle of the night. And often I really do come up with good ideas and plans for the next day. But these are always just the good ideas the really brilliant ones are the ones that you wake up with in your head. The ones that are coming to you fully formed because you were dreaming about them as you woke up. And because you were dreaming about them they make perfect sense to you. That is until you fully wake up. Then you realized that maybe your idea to market eggs with the bacon inside the shell so you could get a hard boiled bacon egg (though genius for sure) was probably not exactly well...possible.
That's not to say that I haven't had good story ideas come from dreams, I have. But those I always know were a dream when I am thinking about them the next day. I think to myself what a weird dream...that would make an excellent story. But the ones where I think I am fully awake, the ones where I am just coming out from under....those are the ones that I am sure are brilliant but are really whack-a-doodle. It's an odd time that twilight sleep. When you are awake(ish) and asleep(ish) and both parts of your mind are talking to each other. And they think they understand each other but they don't, not really.
It's like two drunks having a conversation. Have you ever been the sober one listening to that? They think they are making perfect sense, they are pretty sure they are communicating and understanding each other, but really it's a lot of:
"Hey, hey, hey, do you remember....."
"Oh yeah....that was....hey, did I ever tell you about that time when...."
"Hey, hey, hey, do you remember....."
"You just asked me that.....we are talking about that other time now...you know with that guy..."
"Oh yeah....that guy."
and both together..."Good times"
That's what that twilight sleep is like for me. When I am just falling asleep and the ideas are coming fast and furious and they get pulled down in to the dreams where my brain then twists and turns them into weird fantastic scenes and schemes. Or when I am just coming out from under and the dream is still clinging to me coming up to the surface of my brain where the awake side takes over and tries to make sense of the hard boiled bacon egg (the more I say it the more you see how brilliant it is right?) and you end up with a really rational plan for a really irrational idea.
Though the more I think about my brilliant story idea from last night the more I think there might just be something to it. There might really be a fabulous story in there...or I might just need more coffee....
...well....
...ummm....
It's really kind of weird. And maybe not all that great. And possibly unreadable.
Don't you hate when that happens? When you get what is absolutely the best freaking idea in the world at 2 AM but then in the bright light of day you realize it was only good because you were sleep deprived? I cannot tell you how many best selling novel ideas I have had at 2 AM that when looked at again at 8 AM turned out to be..."And then the fish says what?" How many times I have thought up a PLAN a PERFECT PLAN for life only to be reminded the next day that I can neither fly nor have access to millions of dollars.
Being a chronic insomniac I do spend a lot of time thinking in the middle of the night. And often I really do come up with good ideas and plans for the next day. But these are always just the good ideas the really brilliant ones are the ones that you wake up with in your head. The ones that are coming to you fully formed because you were dreaming about them as you woke up. And because you were dreaming about them they make perfect sense to you. That is until you fully wake up. Then you realized that maybe your idea to market eggs with the bacon inside the shell so you could get a hard boiled bacon egg (though genius for sure) was probably not exactly well...possible.
That's not to say that I haven't had good story ideas come from dreams, I have. But those I always know were a dream when I am thinking about them the next day. I think to myself what a weird dream...that would make an excellent story. But the ones where I think I am fully awake, the ones where I am just coming out from under....those are the ones that I am sure are brilliant but are really whack-a-doodle. It's an odd time that twilight sleep. When you are awake(ish) and asleep(ish) and both parts of your mind are talking to each other. And they think they understand each other but they don't, not really.
It's like two drunks having a conversation. Have you ever been the sober one listening to that? They think they are making perfect sense, they are pretty sure they are communicating and understanding each other, but really it's a lot of:
"Hey, hey, hey, do you remember....."
"Oh yeah....that was....hey, did I ever tell you about that time when...."
"Hey, hey, hey, do you remember....."
"You just asked me that.....we are talking about that other time now...you know with that guy..."
"Oh yeah....that guy."
and both together..."Good times"
That's what that twilight sleep is like for me. When I am just falling asleep and the ideas are coming fast and furious and they get pulled down in to the dreams where my brain then twists and turns them into weird fantastic scenes and schemes. Or when I am just coming out from under and the dream is still clinging to me coming up to the surface of my brain where the awake side takes over and tries to make sense of the hard boiled bacon egg (the more I say it the more you see how brilliant it is right?) and you end up with a really rational plan for a really irrational idea.
Though the more I think about my brilliant story idea from last night the more I think there might just be something to it. There might really be a fabulous story in there...or I might just need more coffee....
Sunday, August 5, 2012
There's a moral to this story....
...actually there are two.
Okay, so today is story from my past time. I think I need some sort of way back machine music when I go in to the "days gone by" stories, don't you? Not sure what it would be, but something to signify that this is an old lady talking about her childhood story. Anyway...
It's the ring finger on my left hand compared to the ring finger on my right. Today you get the story about why they look so different. And the moral of that story as presented by my mother. And then the moral of that story as thought of by me. And then the true meaning of the story, or at least what I've taken to be the true meaning of the story anyway.
So when I was either 4 or 5 I wanted to go with my mother when she was going shopping and my mother wanted to go by herself. I can't remember exactly how old I was, I know my oldest brother was not yet married so I couldn't have been any older than 5 1/2 but I could have been as young as 4 But anyway, I was very young. So my mother was going out to run some errands and I wanted to go with her, she didn't want to take me she wanted to go by herself. Parents can understand this, you can get done three times as many things in half the time on your own as you can when taking the kids along. But I was having none of it. So when she decided to leave me at home I decided that I would not kiss her good bye.
I honestly believe I was thinking if I didn't kiss her she wouldn't leave. Well you know what? She left anyway! She got in her car and was getting ready to pull out without giving me a kiss good bye! So in the logical, rational mind of a late toddler young child I freaked out! She had to kiss me good bye! So I went to the front door, opened it and was getting ready to go out to get my kiss good bye. So I got the door opened, and was holding it open with my left hand when the cross breeze from the back door also being opened hit the front door with full effect. Being a little thing and only having a loose grip on the door I didn't stand a chance. Maybe in today's day and age of hollow core doors, but in the early 70s with a big solid wood door? No way. Slam! The door shut...
...on my left ring finger. I remember the next parts in clips because, as I said, I was really young, but the clips I still have are super clear. First off, I have no idea how much it hurt. I know it much have been a lot because I can remember doing that shocked silent build up to the scream. I don't know when my sister appeared, if she had been next to me the whole time I was heading out to kiss my mother or if the slam brought her running, but I know as soon as the door slammed she was there and freaking out as well. Which she would have been 11 or 12 at the time so you can see she might not have been prepared for what came next either.
Which was opening the door. If you look at the picture I posted and you trace a line from the top of the nail bed on the right finger over to the left you can kind of make out a V shaped scar in the nail bed. That scar runs all the way around my finger except for about a 1/8 of an inch on the back. That 1/8 inch of skin was all that was holding the top of my finger to the bottom when we opened the door. And then the blood started. I was pouring blood all over the throw rug in front of the door. I remember thinking about how much trouble I was going to be in for making that mess.
I'm not sure if my mother knew there was something wrong from the difference in "I'm coming out to kiss you, wait!" to the door slamming, if she could hear me screaming or if my sister got her attention but she was back in the house pretty quickly and yelling upstairs to my oldest brother to bring her a white washcloth. Now when I got older I decided that I must have been remembering this wrong and she must have been calling for a wet washcloth but when I asked my mother about it she said, that no I was right, it was a white one. She wanted to make sure that no dyes would get in to the wound so wanted a white washcloth.
I can remember John standing at the top of the stairs, obviously just rolling out of bed, looking confused at the shouting and my mother shouting again to get a white washcloth and hurry up. He registered the blood and panic and was back down with a couple cloths pretty quickly. The next thing I remember is the ride to the hospital. I remember sitting on my brother's lap in the front seat of the car and just wanting to take a nap. He wouldn't let me go to sleep, kept telling me jokes and pushing my head back up when I would lay it down "for just a second." I still don't remember it hurting though it must have. I am guessing my brain just blocked that away from me. But I remember getting angry with John for keeping me awake when all I wanted to do was sleep. Of course, I know now, that he was keeping me from passing out.
I don't remember the hospital visit much. I remember the elaborate wrapping I had done to the finger, the hand and partway up my arm as it healed. I remember getting the stitches out. That part did hurt. They had grown in to the finger and getting them pulled out was a much more complicated thing than they had thought when they first let the intern try and ended up with another doctor finishing up the job.
When they were sewing up my finger they let my mother know that due to the severity of the wound and the fact that it wasn't a clean slice but a slice/smash combo the odds were that my fingertip wouldn't reattach. What they were really worried about was infection and possibly losing the entire finger. They gave it a try at reattaching because I got to the hospital so quickly, I was young and really why the heck not, but there was a better chance I would lose the tip than that it would reattach.
Well as you can see (and as they found out when they removed the stitches) not only did it reattach, but it grew extra. I have short nail beds that end well before the tips of my fingers on all of my other fingers. On this finger I have this gorgeous long oval nail bed that almost reaches the end of my finger. Which means that to grow my nails out past my finger tips on any other finger takes a lot of growing so long glorious real nails were always out of my reach. If all of my nail beds looked like my left ring finger this wouldn't be the case. It's also probably a 1/4 inch longer than the finger on my right side. If all of my fingers were like this I would have the long graceful fingers of a piano player instead of the short squatty hands of a potato farmer. I spent a lot of time wishing all of my fingers looked like my left ring finger.
Now I have a permanent reminder of that day. I have images tied in my head to that entire event. Pieces of my life from when I was very young that will always stick with me. And sometimes when I am trying to make a big decision in life I look at my left finger. If I press on the finger tip you can see the scar clearly. You can see that the color of the nail bed below the scar is one color and above it's another. I have a scar on my right ring finger as well (different story, different lesson though they work together like Two-Face's coin in helping me make decisions. They also both work together to make me literally queasy when watching a movie or TV show where someone gets a cut on their hand or loses a finger). Anyway...what is the moral of this story you ask? Well you might not really be asking that, but if I ended the blog right now at some later point you might remember the whole point of the blog was to get to the moral of the story...
The moral of the story (if you ask my mother) is that you shouldn't throw fits. That bad behavior on my part caused the whole chain of events and that if I hadn't thrown a fit I wouldn't have slammed my finger in the door.
My moral? Don't try to do something without me. See, my mother never made it shopping that day did she? If she had just taken me we could have all avoided this ugly mess. It could be why I have such a love of Maleficent. She wasn't bad, not really, she just wanted to be invited to the party. If they had only invited her in the first place the whole ugly curse thing could have been avoided...Scared yet?
Yeah, my moral is more of a joke, but it makes me laugh.
The real moral of the story for me is two parts. First off, you need to understand that everything you do has consequences, but the thing is we never know what they are going to be until they happen. I didn't want to kiss my mother good bye thinking she wouldn't go without a kiss. She still did. So then I realized that I really did want to kiss her good bye. When push came to shove kissing her good bye was more important than being a baby about not going. Opening a door is usually not a big deal, but not realizing there was a wind tunnel effect in the house made it one. Always have a firm grip on things. My soft touch on the door made it able to slam shut with my finger still in the door. And even if it looks really bad, like there is not going to be a recovery from a mistake, sometimes you end up with a better looking finger out of it. The whole mistakes make us stronger principle.
So make sure you really know what you want when you are making a stand. And secondly understand that even when have made what looks like a mistake to everyone else you can recover and possibly just possibly end up better than you were before. Even when everyone else is giving you little chance for recovery you can still end up okay.
That and when I say I want to go with you someplace, you should probably take me....
Okay, so today is story from my past time. I think I need some sort of way back machine music when I go in to the "days gone by" stories, don't you? Not sure what it would be, but something to signify that this is an old lady talking about her childhood story. Anyway...
See this picture?
It's the ring finger on my left hand compared to the ring finger on my right. Today you get the story about why they look so different. And the moral of that story as presented by my mother. And then the moral of that story as thought of by me. And then the true meaning of the story, or at least what I've taken to be the true meaning of the story anyway.
So when I was either 4 or 5 I wanted to go with my mother when she was going shopping and my mother wanted to go by herself. I can't remember exactly how old I was, I know my oldest brother was not yet married so I couldn't have been any older than 5 1/2 but I could have been as young as 4 But anyway, I was very young. So my mother was going out to run some errands and I wanted to go with her, she didn't want to take me she wanted to go by herself. Parents can understand this, you can get done three times as many things in half the time on your own as you can when taking the kids along. But I was having none of it. So when she decided to leave me at home I decided that I would not kiss her good bye.
I honestly believe I was thinking if I didn't kiss her she wouldn't leave. Well you know what? She left anyway! She got in her car and was getting ready to pull out without giving me a kiss good bye! So in the logical, rational mind of a late toddler young child I freaked out! She had to kiss me good bye! So I went to the front door, opened it and was getting ready to go out to get my kiss good bye. So I got the door opened, and was holding it open with my left hand when the cross breeze from the back door also being opened hit the front door with full effect. Being a little thing and only having a loose grip on the door I didn't stand a chance. Maybe in today's day and age of hollow core doors, but in the early 70s with a big solid wood door? No way. Slam! The door shut...
...on my left ring finger. I remember the next parts in clips because, as I said, I was really young, but the clips I still have are super clear. First off, I have no idea how much it hurt. I know it much have been a lot because I can remember doing that shocked silent build up to the scream. I don't know when my sister appeared, if she had been next to me the whole time I was heading out to kiss my mother or if the slam brought her running, but I know as soon as the door slammed she was there and freaking out as well. Which she would have been 11 or 12 at the time so you can see she might not have been prepared for what came next either.
Which was opening the door. If you look at the picture I posted and you trace a line from the top of the nail bed on the right finger over to the left you can kind of make out a V shaped scar in the nail bed. That scar runs all the way around my finger except for about a 1/8 of an inch on the back. That 1/8 inch of skin was all that was holding the top of my finger to the bottom when we opened the door. And then the blood started. I was pouring blood all over the throw rug in front of the door. I remember thinking about how much trouble I was going to be in for making that mess.
I'm not sure if my mother knew there was something wrong from the difference in "I'm coming out to kiss you, wait!" to the door slamming, if she could hear me screaming or if my sister got her attention but she was back in the house pretty quickly and yelling upstairs to my oldest brother to bring her a white washcloth. Now when I got older I decided that I must have been remembering this wrong and she must have been calling for a wet washcloth but when I asked my mother about it she said, that no I was right, it was a white one. She wanted to make sure that no dyes would get in to the wound so wanted a white washcloth.
I can remember John standing at the top of the stairs, obviously just rolling out of bed, looking confused at the shouting and my mother shouting again to get a white washcloth and hurry up. He registered the blood and panic and was back down with a couple cloths pretty quickly. The next thing I remember is the ride to the hospital. I remember sitting on my brother's lap in the front seat of the car and just wanting to take a nap. He wouldn't let me go to sleep, kept telling me jokes and pushing my head back up when I would lay it down "for just a second." I still don't remember it hurting though it must have. I am guessing my brain just blocked that away from me. But I remember getting angry with John for keeping me awake when all I wanted to do was sleep. Of course, I know now, that he was keeping me from passing out.
I don't remember the hospital visit much. I remember the elaborate wrapping I had done to the finger, the hand and partway up my arm as it healed. I remember getting the stitches out. That part did hurt. They had grown in to the finger and getting them pulled out was a much more complicated thing than they had thought when they first let the intern try and ended up with another doctor finishing up the job.
When they were sewing up my finger they let my mother know that due to the severity of the wound and the fact that it wasn't a clean slice but a slice/smash combo the odds were that my fingertip wouldn't reattach. What they were really worried about was infection and possibly losing the entire finger. They gave it a try at reattaching because I got to the hospital so quickly, I was young and really why the heck not, but there was a better chance I would lose the tip than that it would reattach.
Well as you can see (and as they found out when they removed the stitches) not only did it reattach, but it grew extra. I have short nail beds that end well before the tips of my fingers on all of my other fingers. On this finger I have this gorgeous long oval nail bed that almost reaches the end of my finger. Which means that to grow my nails out past my finger tips on any other finger takes a lot of growing so long glorious real nails were always out of my reach. If all of my nail beds looked like my left ring finger this wouldn't be the case. It's also probably a 1/4 inch longer than the finger on my right side. If all of my fingers were like this I would have the long graceful fingers of a piano player instead of the short squatty hands of a potato farmer. I spent a lot of time wishing all of my fingers looked like my left ring finger.
Now I have a permanent reminder of that day. I have images tied in my head to that entire event. Pieces of my life from when I was very young that will always stick with me. And sometimes when I am trying to make a big decision in life I look at my left finger. If I press on the finger tip you can see the scar clearly. You can see that the color of the nail bed below the scar is one color and above it's another. I have a scar on my right ring finger as well (different story, different lesson though they work together like Two-Face's coin in helping me make decisions. They also both work together to make me literally queasy when watching a movie or TV show where someone gets a cut on their hand or loses a finger). Anyway...what is the moral of this story you ask? Well you might not really be asking that, but if I ended the blog right now at some later point you might remember the whole point of the blog was to get to the moral of the story...
The moral of the story (if you ask my mother) is that you shouldn't throw fits. That bad behavior on my part caused the whole chain of events and that if I hadn't thrown a fit I wouldn't have slammed my finger in the door.
My moral? Don't try to do something without me. See, my mother never made it shopping that day did she? If she had just taken me we could have all avoided this ugly mess. It could be why I have such a love of Maleficent. She wasn't bad, not really, she just wanted to be invited to the party. If they had only invited her in the first place the whole ugly curse thing could have been avoided...Scared yet?
Yeah, my moral is more of a joke, but it makes me laugh.
The real moral of the story for me is two parts. First off, you need to understand that everything you do has consequences, but the thing is we never know what they are going to be until they happen. I didn't want to kiss my mother good bye thinking she wouldn't go without a kiss. She still did. So then I realized that I really did want to kiss her good bye. When push came to shove kissing her good bye was more important than being a baby about not going. Opening a door is usually not a big deal, but not realizing there was a wind tunnel effect in the house made it one. Always have a firm grip on things. My soft touch on the door made it able to slam shut with my finger still in the door. And even if it looks really bad, like there is not going to be a recovery from a mistake, sometimes you end up with a better looking finger out of it. The whole mistakes make us stronger principle.
So make sure you really know what you want when you are making a stand. And secondly understand that even when have made what looks like a mistake to everyone else you can recover and possibly just possibly end up better than you were before. Even when everyone else is giving you little chance for recovery you can still end up okay.
That and when I say I want to go with you someplace, you should probably take me....
Friday, August 3, 2012
Okay, I'm not done after all....
So yesterday when I posted the link to this wonderfully written blog I said it was the last I was going to talk about CFA. My son told me, "No it's not." He knows me very well. But I feel like I need to clarify something. I'm not going to talk specifically to the CFA brouhaha anymore. I've said my piece on that and the blog I linked to earlier put it even better than I could, but that doesn't mean I will stop writing and speaking my mind about equal rights. The issue right now is that the CFA discussions are still going strong and so sometimes something I've read or heard or been asked about that subject is going to spark another round of my ranting. This is one of those times...
So as the whole CFA thing is still simmering and people are still talking about it I had someone I know ask me what my nephew thinks of the whole thing. I told them I had no idea as we hadn't talked about it. They couldn't believe it. They were shocked. And then asked me how I could be so offended by the whole issue when he might not even care. My only answer for them was that I honestly don't care what he thinks about this issue. Okay, well that's untrue. I would love to know what he thinks only because I love him and I love talking to him and if he wanted to share with me what he thought about this whole deal I would listen and be thrilled for the conversation. But what I mean is what he thinks about it has absolutely no bearing on what I think about it.
See here's the thing, the last time I checked Brian wasn't the card carrying spokesman for the entire homosexual population. People do this thing where they think they have the pulse of a group because they asked their, "gay friend" or "black friend" or "female friend" or "republican friend" about it and so they obviously know what every one in that group thinks. Why do they do this? Why do people assume that every group with one thing in common has everything in common?
During my sister Susan's first marriage her husband regularly hit her. So when Rihanna had the shit knocked out of her by Chris Brown I guess I should have first called my sister to see what she thought about it all before I formed my opinion? Is that the way this logic works? Or is it that when you see something that is wrong, you know it's wrong. And even if other people aren't bothered by it (my sister stayed with her husband for a very long time, Rihanna reconciled with Brown) it still doesn't make it okay. Even if they have something in common with the person that the injustice happened to.
I know how my niece feels about it, since she posted about it. I know how my sister Ann feels about it since she posted. But I don't know how my nephew feels about it. I know how some of my gay friends feel about it. I know how some of my straight friends feel about it. I know how some of my religious friends feel about it. I know how some of my non-religious friends feel about it. Everyone who has weighed in and posted about the issue I know how they feel. And even the ones with one thing in common don't all feel the same way on this issue. And none of these opinions change what I feel about it.
I've had an opinion on this issue and issues relating to other gay rights and equality for all for a very long time. Before Brian ever came out. Before he ever knew what being gay was. My position has evolved and changed over the years but from the time I was 16 and the realization that what my church had taught me about homosexuality was just wrong (religion blog way back here) I have known that the way our society has treated gay people in the name of religious freedom is wrong. Since I've felt this way for as long as I have I have a lot of arguments and counter arguments to make. I can keep my calm for the most part and I can stand my ground. Part of that is because the people I have fought the hardest over issues like these have been family members. And when you are arguing with family members over dinner you have to learn how to make better points than, "you are an idiot" and you have to make them calmly enough that nobody gets disowned by dessert.
I want to share with you all the story of my nephew coming out to me because there is a lesson in there for all of you who talk about your "gay friend feels this way so it must be true."
Like I said in the blog I linked up there about religion I knew from the time Brian was 4 that when he reached the age where he was starting to think about dating it was going to be boys, not girls he was interested in. Sometimes there are stereotypes for a reason and my nephew has been stereo-typically gay since he was too little to know what gay was. Now this actually worried me quite a bit. I know what it's like to hold a different opinion about religion than your family. I know what it's like to completely disagree with them. I know what it's like to have your mother tell you that she is praying for you so you don't go to hell. Because I chose to leave the church because I didn't believe a lot of the teachings anymore. But what worried me is that Brian was going to be raised in the same church. And it wasn't going to be him realizing that he disagreed with the teachings they had about other people, it was going to be him listening to teachings about how who he was was wrong.
Long before the "It Gets Better" movement, long before the media coverage of gay teen suicides there were gay teen suicides. Growing up gay in a conservative Christian family is difficult at best and heartbreaking at worst. And all I knew about it was from the outside looking in. I knew how hard it was for me to leave and to be honest about leaving the church. But it was my choice. Brian was who he was by birth. There is no choice there. And he was going to have to deal with it all. So I did my years of telling him that he was great no matter what. That who he was was perfect. That he didn't need to change for anyone. But I did all of that never mentioning the word gay. The church and family he was being raised in said being gay was a sin so I wasn't going to force him to come out to me until he was ready. But I was definitely going to try my hardest to let him know that he was great, just the way he was, and hope he got my not so subtle code.
So fast forward to him turning 18. We were emailing each other and I was telling him about my 18th birthday. I spent part of it with a friend of mine who I share the birthday with and who happens to be gay. I told Brian he was gay because it's part of the very funny story about the birthday, a cake, a case of mistaken sexual identity and being friends with a couple who share the same first name. So anyway, after I tell him the story he emails me back and tells me that he is proud of me for having gay friends. I had a choice to make right then on how to handle that statement and I went with what I would have said to any other member of my family or my friend circle who said it. I emailed him back and told him that unless he was proud of me for having straight friends or any friends at all that he shouldn't be proud of me for having gay friends. That friends are friends and sexual orientation has nothing to do with it.
He then emailed me back and let me know that I was right, and that he was glad to hear me say that and he let me know that he was in fact a gay man. I emailed him back that I was thrilled he finally felt like he could tell me but that I had known since he was 4. And then we talked about why I felt like I knew that, we talked about how he had actually been the final piece of the puzzle for me to see that people are born the way they are born. That there is no choice that is made in which sex you are attracted to, that it's part of you from birth. I think we were both very relieved. Me for finally not having to bite my tongue and him for having a family member not only be fine with the fact that he is gay, but not be shocked or even phased at all by it. His coming out to everyone else didn't go as smoothly and we talked about that as well. Now that people have had quite a few years to get used to the idea they are starting to come around.
But even though he is gay, though I knew that he was gay, I couldn't sit back and say, "Yes, good for me for having gay friends!" Because that's just silly. I have friends. Some of them are gay. Some of them aren't. It doesn't matter to me. And it doesn't mean that I need to consult with them on issues about the gay or straight community before I form my opinions on them. So when you tell me that you talked to your gay friend and they are fine with CFA or you talked to your black friend and they are super cool with getting rid of the NAACP or you talked to your female friend and she thinks Planned Parenthood is a scam please know that the first thing I am going to think of is your posing like Stephen Colbert with your said friends and the second thing I am going to think is I wonder if I am your liberal friend? Or am I your ridiculously good looking friend? Or your OMG she's totally a genius friend? Hmmmm....probably your snarky friend....
And yes, C won. I'm not done. Not even by a long shot. Sadly. Because I'll only be done when people are given the same rights no matter who they are attracted to. Even Rihanna....
So as the whole CFA thing is still simmering and people are still talking about it I had someone I know ask me what my nephew thinks of the whole thing. I told them I had no idea as we hadn't talked about it. They couldn't believe it. They were shocked. And then asked me how I could be so offended by the whole issue when he might not even care. My only answer for them was that I honestly don't care what he thinks about this issue. Okay, well that's untrue. I would love to know what he thinks only because I love him and I love talking to him and if he wanted to share with me what he thought about this whole deal I would listen and be thrilled for the conversation. But what I mean is what he thinks about it has absolutely no bearing on what I think about it.
See here's the thing, the last time I checked Brian wasn't the card carrying spokesman for the entire homosexual population. People do this thing where they think they have the pulse of a group because they asked their, "gay friend" or "black friend" or "female friend" or "republican friend" about it and so they obviously know what every one in that group thinks. Why do they do this? Why do people assume that every group with one thing in common has everything in common?
During my sister Susan's first marriage her husband regularly hit her. So when Rihanna had the shit knocked out of her by Chris Brown I guess I should have first called my sister to see what she thought about it all before I formed my opinion? Is that the way this logic works? Or is it that when you see something that is wrong, you know it's wrong. And even if other people aren't bothered by it (my sister stayed with her husband for a very long time, Rihanna reconciled with Brown) it still doesn't make it okay. Even if they have something in common with the person that the injustice happened to.
I know how my niece feels about it, since she posted about it. I know how my sister Ann feels about it since she posted. But I don't know how my nephew feels about it. I know how some of my gay friends feel about it. I know how some of my straight friends feel about it. I know how some of my religious friends feel about it. I know how some of my non-religious friends feel about it. Everyone who has weighed in and posted about the issue I know how they feel. And even the ones with one thing in common don't all feel the same way on this issue. And none of these opinions change what I feel about it.
I've had an opinion on this issue and issues relating to other gay rights and equality for all for a very long time. Before Brian ever came out. Before he ever knew what being gay was. My position has evolved and changed over the years but from the time I was 16 and the realization that what my church had taught me about homosexuality was just wrong (religion blog way back here) I have known that the way our society has treated gay people in the name of religious freedom is wrong. Since I've felt this way for as long as I have I have a lot of arguments and counter arguments to make. I can keep my calm for the most part and I can stand my ground. Part of that is because the people I have fought the hardest over issues like these have been family members. And when you are arguing with family members over dinner you have to learn how to make better points than, "you are an idiot" and you have to make them calmly enough that nobody gets disowned by dessert.
I want to share with you all the story of my nephew coming out to me because there is a lesson in there for all of you who talk about your "gay friend feels this way so it must be true."
Like I said in the blog I linked up there about religion I knew from the time Brian was 4 that when he reached the age where he was starting to think about dating it was going to be boys, not girls he was interested in. Sometimes there are stereotypes for a reason and my nephew has been stereo-typically gay since he was too little to know what gay was. Now this actually worried me quite a bit. I know what it's like to hold a different opinion about religion than your family. I know what it's like to completely disagree with them. I know what it's like to have your mother tell you that she is praying for you so you don't go to hell. Because I chose to leave the church because I didn't believe a lot of the teachings anymore. But what worried me is that Brian was going to be raised in the same church. And it wasn't going to be him realizing that he disagreed with the teachings they had about other people, it was going to be him listening to teachings about how who he was was wrong.
Long before the "It Gets Better" movement, long before the media coverage of gay teen suicides there were gay teen suicides. Growing up gay in a conservative Christian family is difficult at best and heartbreaking at worst. And all I knew about it was from the outside looking in. I knew how hard it was for me to leave and to be honest about leaving the church. But it was my choice. Brian was who he was by birth. There is no choice there. And he was going to have to deal with it all. So I did my years of telling him that he was great no matter what. That who he was was perfect. That he didn't need to change for anyone. But I did all of that never mentioning the word gay. The church and family he was being raised in said being gay was a sin so I wasn't going to force him to come out to me until he was ready. But I was definitely going to try my hardest to let him know that he was great, just the way he was, and hope he got my not so subtle code.
So fast forward to him turning 18. We were emailing each other and I was telling him about my 18th birthday. I spent part of it with a friend of mine who I share the birthday with and who happens to be gay. I told Brian he was gay because it's part of the very funny story about the birthday, a cake, a case of mistaken sexual identity and being friends with a couple who share the same first name. So anyway, after I tell him the story he emails me back and tells me that he is proud of me for having gay friends. I had a choice to make right then on how to handle that statement and I went with what I would have said to any other member of my family or my friend circle who said it. I emailed him back and told him that unless he was proud of me for having straight friends or any friends at all that he shouldn't be proud of me for having gay friends. That friends are friends and sexual orientation has nothing to do with it.
He then emailed me back and let me know that I was right, and that he was glad to hear me say that and he let me know that he was in fact a gay man. I emailed him back that I was thrilled he finally felt like he could tell me but that I had known since he was 4. And then we talked about why I felt like I knew that, we talked about how he had actually been the final piece of the puzzle for me to see that people are born the way they are born. That there is no choice that is made in which sex you are attracted to, that it's part of you from birth. I think we were both very relieved. Me for finally not having to bite my tongue and him for having a family member not only be fine with the fact that he is gay, but not be shocked or even phased at all by it. His coming out to everyone else didn't go as smoothly and we talked about that as well. Now that people have had quite a few years to get used to the idea they are starting to come around.
But even though he is gay, though I knew that he was gay, I couldn't sit back and say, "Yes, good for me for having gay friends!" Because that's just silly. I have friends. Some of them are gay. Some of them aren't. It doesn't matter to me. And it doesn't mean that I need to consult with them on issues about the gay or straight community before I form my opinions on them. So when you tell me that you talked to your gay friend and they are fine with CFA or you talked to your black friend and they are super cool with getting rid of the NAACP or you talked to your female friend and she thinks Planned Parenthood is a scam please know that the first thing I am going to think of is your posing like Stephen Colbert with your said friends and the second thing I am going to think is I wonder if I am your liberal friend? Or am I your ridiculously good looking friend? Or your OMG she's totally a genius friend? Hmmmm....probably your snarky friend....
And yes, C won. I'm not done. Not even by a long shot. Sadly. Because I'll only be done when people are given the same rights no matter who they are attracted to. Even Rihanna....
Thursday, August 2, 2012
Well isn't that sinister....
Today while I was cleaning the bathroom (yes this is a cleaning fumes blog, haven't you missed those?) I was having a hard time getting the angle right on a corner of the tub I was scrubbing. See I made a mistake when I bought my new scrub brush, I didn't hold it in my hand at the store to see how it fit. And I ended up buying a brush that was angled for right handed people. Ugh. I hate that.
Yes, I'm a leftie. A southpaw. A left handed girl in a right handed world. I am not as strongly left handed as others. I can do a lot with my right hand. I use right handed scissors. I bowl and hit a ball equally well (which means not at all) with both my right and left hands. When I wore a watch I wore it on my left wrist instead of my right like many lefties do. I don't do that weird hand wrap thing when I write. Though I do have truly awful handwriting. And when I realized the reason I couldn't get the angle right was because of my left I switched hands and kept scrubbing.
Only 7-10 percent of the population is left handed. And the majority of lefties are men so being a left-handed female is fairly rare. When I meet another left handed woman we always share that "Hey! I'm left handed too!" moment of recognition. When I am watching a movie or TV show or the first time a President signs a document I always watch to see what hand they use, and I'm always thrilled when it's the left one. Eight US Presidents have been southpaws, by the way.
I can remember the first time I was in a shop that specialized in left handed products. We were in San Diego at Seaport Village and there was a little lefties boutique. My dad was with me and we are both lefties. It was like a kid in a candy store moment for both of us. Look! Soup ladles for lefties! Notebooks with the binder on the right hand side! Scrub brushes that are angled to be held in the left hand! For me it was a novelty, for my dad it was even more.
See in my family it is my Aunt Dorothy, one brother and one of my nephews that are left handed, and my father was left handed. Family dinners are orchestrated things of who sits next to whom. It doesn't matter with Brent and I, we have been married for a long time and neither of us wings our arms out so we can sit on either side of each other, but if you are a lefty sitting next to a winging righty eating becomes a combat sport. My dad and my aunt though are both of an age where being left handed wasn't just an inconvenience at the dinner table, it was something to be fixed.
The first time I can remember my Aunt Dorothy talking about being left handed it was to ask me if I had gotten any grief in school about it. I said no, of course not, why would I? Then she told me stories about her school experience. Of teachers tying her arm to her side to try to force her to use her right instead of her left. Of getting whacked in the knuckles with a ruler if she reached with her left hand first instead of her right. I thought she was making it up but my dad said he had the same experiences. Being left handed wasn't okay, it was something that needed fixed. So they could be normal. Well my Aunt Dorothy was stubborn enough that she persevered and my dad was so strongly left handed that they finally gave up so they both made it out of their childhoods with their left handedness intact.
By the time I hit school it wasn't something that needed fixed anymore. It was something they didn't really know how to deal with, but not something they needed to fix. Remember those little elementary school desks? Those are designed for right handed kids. You got to rest your right arm on the desk while you wrote while I got to have my arm flapping in the wind. Though sometimes there would be one or two left handed desks. which was great except usually some right handed kid took it because it "looked cool" or if you did get it when everyone was getting in and out of desks you got out to the "wrong" side making a traffic jam in the aisle. And finding left handed scissors that didn't suck? Forget about it. I just learned to cut with my right. Though I still can't cut a straight line, I wonder if I could blame the scissors? Oh and writing papers. First off most teachers are right handed so even learning how to write, especially cursive, was a chore. Then actually writing. Check the left hand of any lefty in school and you will see the tell tale smudge of ink from pinky to wrist. See when we write we then drag our hands across what we just wrote smearing the ink and smudging our hands.
And I already mentioned that weird wrapping thing that lefties do when the write. You've all seen it. Either the page gets turned almost perpendicular or the hand is wrapped around the top of the page and you end up writing almost upside down. We do that because right handed people trying to tell us how to write don't make sense. It's all backwards. The angles are all wrong. MC Escher was a lefty and I swear that left handed wrap is how he came up with the ideas for most of his pictures!
The world is designed for right handed people, as a lefty you learn to adapt. And you learn to not be offended when someone is offered a left handed compliment; when something is described as gauche or even better, sinister; when you discover that there are 25 negative references in the bible about being left handed or having something on the left. Compare that to the 6 negative references to homosexuality and I am amazed that I was allowed in to my private Baptist school at all.
But though I am in the minority I am thrilled at how far we have come. When my father and my aunt were kids they were treated poorly because of their handedness. People tried to fix them. When I was in school nobody tried to fix me, they just didn't make it easy for me to be left handed. Now kids have computers and type with both hands and can use a mouse with either their left or their right with just a flip of a switch. It gets better. Each generation figures out a little more. People are born the way they are born and even if they are in the minority they are still people just like you. Left handed or right.
Yes, I'm a leftie. A southpaw. A left handed girl in a right handed world. I am not as strongly left handed as others. I can do a lot with my right hand. I use right handed scissors. I bowl and hit a ball equally well (which means not at all) with both my right and left hands. When I wore a watch I wore it on my left wrist instead of my right like many lefties do. I don't do that weird hand wrap thing when I write. Though I do have truly awful handwriting. And when I realized the reason I couldn't get the angle right was because of my left I switched hands and kept scrubbing.
Only 7-10 percent of the population is left handed. And the majority of lefties are men so being a left-handed female is fairly rare. When I meet another left handed woman we always share that "Hey! I'm left handed too!" moment of recognition. When I am watching a movie or TV show or the first time a President signs a document I always watch to see what hand they use, and I'm always thrilled when it's the left one. Eight US Presidents have been southpaws, by the way.
I can remember the first time I was in a shop that specialized in left handed products. We were in San Diego at Seaport Village and there was a little lefties boutique. My dad was with me and we are both lefties. It was like a kid in a candy store moment for both of us. Look! Soup ladles for lefties! Notebooks with the binder on the right hand side! Scrub brushes that are angled to be held in the left hand! For me it was a novelty, for my dad it was even more.
See in my family it is my Aunt Dorothy, one brother and one of my nephews that are left handed, and my father was left handed. Family dinners are orchestrated things of who sits next to whom. It doesn't matter with Brent and I, we have been married for a long time and neither of us wings our arms out so we can sit on either side of each other, but if you are a lefty sitting next to a winging righty eating becomes a combat sport. My dad and my aunt though are both of an age where being left handed wasn't just an inconvenience at the dinner table, it was something to be fixed.
The first time I can remember my Aunt Dorothy talking about being left handed it was to ask me if I had gotten any grief in school about it. I said no, of course not, why would I? Then she told me stories about her school experience. Of teachers tying her arm to her side to try to force her to use her right instead of her left. Of getting whacked in the knuckles with a ruler if she reached with her left hand first instead of her right. I thought she was making it up but my dad said he had the same experiences. Being left handed wasn't okay, it was something that needed fixed. So they could be normal. Well my Aunt Dorothy was stubborn enough that she persevered and my dad was so strongly left handed that they finally gave up so they both made it out of their childhoods with their left handedness intact.
By the time I hit school it wasn't something that needed fixed anymore. It was something they didn't really know how to deal with, but not something they needed to fix. Remember those little elementary school desks? Those are designed for right handed kids. You got to rest your right arm on the desk while you wrote while I got to have my arm flapping in the wind. Though sometimes there would be one or two left handed desks. which was great except usually some right handed kid took it because it "looked cool" or if you did get it when everyone was getting in and out of desks you got out to the "wrong" side making a traffic jam in the aisle. And finding left handed scissors that didn't suck? Forget about it. I just learned to cut with my right. Though I still can't cut a straight line, I wonder if I could blame the scissors? Oh and writing papers. First off most teachers are right handed so even learning how to write, especially cursive, was a chore. Then actually writing. Check the left hand of any lefty in school and you will see the tell tale smudge of ink from pinky to wrist. See when we write we then drag our hands across what we just wrote smearing the ink and smudging our hands.
And I already mentioned that weird wrapping thing that lefties do when the write. You've all seen it. Either the page gets turned almost perpendicular or the hand is wrapped around the top of the page and you end up writing almost upside down. We do that because right handed people trying to tell us how to write don't make sense. It's all backwards. The angles are all wrong. MC Escher was a lefty and I swear that left handed wrap is how he came up with the ideas for most of his pictures!
The world is designed for right handed people, as a lefty you learn to adapt. And you learn to not be offended when someone is offered a left handed compliment; when something is described as gauche or even better, sinister; when you discover that there are 25 negative references in the bible about being left handed or having something on the left. Compare that to the 6 negative references to homosexuality and I am amazed that I was allowed in to my private Baptist school at all.
But though I am in the minority I am thrilled at how far we have come. When my father and my aunt were kids they were treated poorly because of their handedness. People tried to fix them. When I was in school nobody tried to fix me, they just didn't make it easy for me to be left handed. Now kids have computers and type with both hands and can use a mouse with either their left or their right with just a flip of a switch. It gets better. Each generation figures out a little more. People are born the way they are born and even if they are in the minority they are still people just like you. Left handed or right.
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
Perspective? I've got your perspective right here!
Okay, I promise soon I will walk away from politics and hissy fits and move on to fluffy bunny posts and some more fiction and fun stuff. But I have another one here that needs to get out before that happens...
After the name calling slows down or sometimes in the middle of the name calling portion of any debate there is always the "get some perspective" portion. This one is a difficult one for me because on one hand I hate it when people say such things, it makes you sound condescending at best and like a sanctimonious douche-bag at worst. And then on the other hand I have been guilty of it myself which as soon as I post something like that I think oh god you sound like a condescending, sanctimonious douche-bag!
You all know what I am talking about right? Like when a celebrity dies and people are posting about how it makes them sad and then someone else comes in and says, "You know 1,000 children died from starvation yesterday and you didn't shed a single tear." Don't you want to just reach through the computer screen and slap people when they do that? What's the point of it? To show how much more concerned they are, because we are assuming they cried over those deaths? Or to show that because we don't mourn the many we have no right to mourn the few?
Right now I sort of feel like that OPEC argument in the CFA debates is venturing into this territory. The whole, "You are protesting marriage rights yet condone death?" Well, no. It's not that simple. One, I have little to no control over where the US gets their crude oil from but I have complete control over where I get my chicken sandwich from. And two, because I drive a car doesn't mean I condone anything. I would love to be able to change the laws in those countries, but just because I can't that doesn't mean that I shouldn't speak my mind in my country.
There is a psychological part to the mass death vs. single death scenario. Part of it is that humans have a very difficult time imagining large numbers. You can picture 5 people. You can picture 20. You might be able to picture a few thousand, say by thinking about a concert or event. But when you get higher than that you have a hard time visualizing it. And then when you try to add in the concept of them dying? To imagine each one of those lives and the families of each one of those people? You sort of have to stop. Your brain says, nope, this is too much for me so we will think in groups and depersonalize this or you will drive me crazy and I won't have that.
But one or two deaths? We can imagine that. A celebrity that has touched our lives in some way? Even if it's just that you know their name. We can picture that loss. We know how it feels for their families. And yes, if we are fans of their work we can feel that we will miss them as well. People we watch on TV, whose music we listen to, whose movies we watch, they are part of our lives even if we aren't part of theirs. Brent and I watch Deadliest Catch and there is a guy on there, Jake Anderson, he has had a rough life but he seems likes just the nicest kid and has the best smile and you root for him to succeed. Brent and I have both said it, we want good things for this guy. Now we don't know him other than what we've seen over the years watching the show. He has no idea who we are, but if something happened to him I would be sad. From the same show, when Captain Phil Harris died I mourned for him. I was sad for his family, I worried about his boys. And I wasn't the only one. Fans of the show from all over were devastated and grieved. Did we know him? Do we know his boys? Not really. But the grief was still there.
To take it down to a more personal level when my dad died I know that weekend thousand of other people died. I know that somewhere children were starving. I know that we were still fighting two wars and I know that there was a group of our military men and women who didn't make it through the weekend. But did it make the loss of my father any less devastating to me? Did I even think about those other deaths and those other families? I didn't. When I was at my father-in-law's funeral surrounded by hundreds of men and women in uniform, looking at pictures of him in Afghanistan, listening to the volley of shots being fired, thanking the Patriot Guard for being on hand in case the Westboro Bastards showed up did I spend a lot of time thinking about the hundreds of other military funerals they had all gone to? The fact that his unit was getting ready to ship out again and that some of them might not make it back? No I didn't. On both of those occasions I thought only of my grief. Of my family's grief. Of our loss. Would you have dared tell me that I had lost perspective?
It all reminds me too much of when I was a child and my parents would tell me to stop crying or they would give me something to cry about. Even as a child this just pissed me right the fuck off. Now, I would never have told my parents that they pissed me right the fuck off because then I would have gotten something else to cry about in addition to what I was already crying about. But if I was crying I obviously felt I had something worth crying about. How dare anyone tell you that your feelings aren't valid because there are worse problems? I never used that phrase on C while he was growing up. That's how much I hated it as a child it didn't slip in and become one of those "you just turned into your parents moments" I just banished it from my mind. If he was crying I might try to jolly him out of it, but I never told him that what he felt wasn't worth feeling. That his frustration over not being able to tie his shoe was silly and that if he wanted a real reason to cry I would give him one. I just suggested that he do something else for awhile to calm down.
We've all heard the opening to the Serenity Prayer, God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference. Even if you aren't religious it's a pretty good base to start from. Know what you can change, work towards that. Know what you can't change and let it go. And keep in mind that both are in the world. And please refrain from pointing out to people that they shouldn't be upset about the smaller things if they aren't fighting against the bigger. That they shouldn't mourn the one when they don't mourn the many. Control what you can, let go of the rest and don't be a condescending, sanctimonious douche-bag over someone else's choices.
After the name calling slows down or sometimes in the middle of the name calling portion of any debate there is always the "get some perspective" portion. This one is a difficult one for me because on one hand I hate it when people say such things, it makes you sound condescending at best and like a sanctimonious douche-bag at worst. And then on the other hand I have been guilty of it myself which as soon as I post something like that I think oh god you sound like a condescending, sanctimonious douche-bag!
You all know what I am talking about right? Like when a celebrity dies and people are posting about how it makes them sad and then someone else comes in and says, "You know 1,000 children died from starvation yesterday and you didn't shed a single tear." Don't you want to just reach through the computer screen and slap people when they do that? What's the point of it? To show how much more concerned they are, because we are assuming they cried over those deaths? Or to show that because we don't mourn the many we have no right to mourn the few?
Right now I sort of feel like that OPEC argument in the CFA debates is venturing into this territory. The whole, "You are protesting marriage rights yet condone death?" Well, no. It's not that simple. One, I have little to no control over where the US gets their crude oil from but I have complete control over where I get my chicken sandwich from. And two, because I drive a car doesn't mean I condone anything. I would love to be able to change the laws in those countries, but just because I can't that doesn't mean that I shouldn't speak my mind in my country.
There is a psychological part to the mass death vs. single death scenario. Part of it is that humans have a very difficult time imagining large numbers. You can picture 5 people. You can picture 20. You might be able to picture a few thousand, say by thinking about a concert or event. But when you get higher than that you have a hard time visualizing it. And then when you try to add in the concept of them dying? To imagine each one of those lives and the families of each one of those people? You sort of have to stop. Your brain says, nope, this is too much for me so we will think in groups and depersonalize this or you will drive me crazy and I won't have that.
But one or two deaths? We can imagine that. A celebrity that has touched our lives in some way? Even if it's just that you know their name. We can picture that loss. We know how it feels for their families. And yes, if we are fans of their work we can feel that we will miss them as well. People we watch on TV, whose music we listen to, whose movies we watch, they are part of our lives even if we aren't part of theirs. Brent and I watch Deadliest Catch and there is a guy on there, Jake Anderson, he has had a rough life but he seems likes just the nicest kid and has the best smile and you root for him to succeed. Brent and I have both said it, we want good things for this guy. Now we don't know him other than what we've seen over the years watching the show. He has no idea who we are, but if something happened to him I would be sad. From the same show, when Captain Phil Harris died I mourned for him. I was sad for his family, I worried about his boys. And I wasn't the only one. Fans of the show from all over were devastated and grieved. Did we know him? Do we know his boys? Not really. But the grief was still there.
To take it down to a more personal level when my dad died I know that weekend thousand of other people died. I know that somewhere children were starving. I know that we were still fighting two wars and I know that there was a group of our military men and women who didn't make it through the weekend. But did it make the loss of my father any less devastating to me? Did I even think about those other deaths and those other families? I didn't. When I was at my father-in-law's funeral surrounded by hundreds of men and women in uniform, looking at pictures of him in Afghanistan, listening to the volley of shots being fired, thanking the Patriot Guard for being on hand in case the Westboro Bastards showed up did I spend a lot of time thinking about the hundreds of other military funerals they had all gone to? The fact that his unit was getting ready to ship out again and that some of them might not make it back? No I didn't. On both of those occasions I thought only of my grief. Of my family's grief. Of our loss. Would you have dared tell me that I had lost perspective?
It all reminds me too much of when I was a child and my parents would tell me to stop crying or they would give me something to cry about. Even as a child this just pissed me right the fuck off. Now, I would never have told my parents that they pissed me right the fuck off because then I would have gotten something else to cry about in addition to what I was already crying about. But if I was crying I obviously felt I had something worth crying about. How dare anyone tell you that your feelings aren't valid because there are worse problems? I never used that phrase on C while he was growing up. That's how much I hated it as a child it didn't slip in and become one of those "you just turned into your parents moments" I just banished it from my mind. If he was crying I might try to jolly him out of it, but I never told him that what he felt wasn't worth feeling. That his frustration over not being able to tie his shoe was silly and that if he wanted a real reason to cry I would give him one. I just suggested that he do something else for awhile to calm down.
We've all heard the opening to the Serenity Prayer, God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference. Even if you aren't religious it's a pretty good base to start from. Know what you can change, work towards that. Know what you can't change and let it go. And keep in mind that both are in the world. And please refrain from pointing out to people that they shouldn't be upset about the smaller things if they aren't fighting against the bigger. That they shouldn't mourn the one when they don't mourn the many. Control what you can, let go of the rest and don't be a condescending, sanctimonious douche-bag over someone else's choices.
And it's August...
First off HAPPY BIRTHDAY MONTH EVERYONE!! Okay, now we can move on...
So today is day one of operation Facebook Phase Out. It's 8 AM and I haven't been on Facebook yet today. I answered email, wrote some replies to my CFA blog, deleted a few more, let's call them colorful, comments that came in about the same blog and am now writing this. But no Facebook, not yet. I will log on to post this blog when it's complete, spend a brief amount of time catching up with people then log off again until this evening when I have a fabulous picture of the day to post.
I know a lot of you are thinking, it's 8 AM. How big of a deal is this really? Well, by this point in time I have usually been on Facebook for a few hours. Not constantly. But it's one of the first things I do in the morning and I check and recheck pretty consistently from there on out. I made some changes to help reinforce my phase out. I deleted bookmarks off of my phone, I moved the Facebook app icon into a sub-folder so I wouldn't just press it by habit. I put my phone in my purse on the drive in to work (Brent drives not me) instead of keeping it out. I know from when I quit smoking that it's the automatic things that do you in. You can only consciously hold the thought of change for so long and then BOOM! you find yourself clicking the icon that you always click and you are back online.
So today after I post this and make a sweep of Facebook (which will be done with a timer set so I have a physical reminder to log back off) I will do a variety of things. I will do some housework, I will go to the gym, I will go to the grocery store, I am hoping to get a short story written and I will read. That's the plan anyway. But I would guess what I will do most of the day is hold my hands together and force myself to think of other things besides "I wonder what everyone online is doing?" Breaking any habit is hard. I know this. Breaking one that has been a feedback loop of contact will be even harder for me. But I also know that I quit smoking 20+ years ago with another smoker in the house and if I can do that, I can do anything.
Nicotine or Facebook? Which is the more addictive? I am betting it was nicotine...I hope I am right!
Okay, I promise that every blog over the next few days will not just be a timer of how long it's been since I last Facebooked. Just wanted to put it out there today that I did start like I said I would. Oh and to remind you all that IT'S BIRTHDAY MONTH! Woot!!
So today is day one of operation Facebook Phase Out. It's 8 AM and I haven't been on Facebook yet today. I answered email, wrote some replies to my CFA blog, deleted a few more, let's call them colorful, comments that came in about the same blog and am now writing this. But no Facebook, not yet. I will log on to post this blog when it's complete, spend a brief amount of time catching up with people then log off again until this evening when I have a fabulous picture of the day to post.
I know a lot of you are thinking, it's 8 AM. How big of a deal is this really? Well, by this point in time I have usually been on Facebook for a few hours. Not constantly. But it's one of the first things I do in the morning and I check and recheck pretty consistently from there on out. I made some changes to help reinforce my phase out. I deleted bookmarks off of my phone, I moved the Facebook app icon into a sub-folder so I wouldn't just press it by habit. I put my phone in my purse on the drive in to work (Brent drives not me) instead of keeping it out. I know from when I quit smoking that it's the automatic things that do you in. You can only consciously hold the thought of change for so long and then BOOM! you find yourself clicking the icon that you always click and you are back online.
So today after I post this and make a sweep of Facebook (which will be done with a timer set so I have a physical reminder to log back off) I will do a variety of things. I will do some housework, I will go to the gym, I will go to the grocery store, I am hoping to get a short story written and I will read. That's the plan anyway. But I would guess what I will do most of the day is hold my hands together and force myself to think of other things besides "I wonder what everyone online is doing?" Breaking any habit is hard. I know this. Breaking one that has been a feedback loop of contact will be even harder for me. But I also know that I quit smoking 20+ years ago with another smoker in the house and if I can do that, I can do anything.
Nicotine or Facebook? Which is the more addictive? I am betting it was nicotine...I hope I am right!
Okay, I promise that every blog over the next few days will not just be a timer of how long it's been since I last Facebooked. Just wanted to put it out there today that I did start like I said I would. Oh and to remind you all that IT'S BIRTHDAY MONTH! Woot!!
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