Rocking My Camera-Part II
This is a nice photo, right? A portion of the New York skyline taken at dawn from Jersey City.
Would it surprise you to know that I took it from my hotel room one morning? Nah, at this point, probably not. OK, but might it surprise you to know that I took this lovely shot, not with my Nikon, but with my iPhone camera? Ah hah…I might have raised a few eyebrows with that one, right? How can a crappy cell phone camera take such a great shot?
Well the truth is that under the right conditions and with a little knowledge, you can truly rock your cell phone camera. I know, I know…it goes against the conventional wisdom that I blogged about last August. You know the belief that it’s all about the camera. Put a high end camera in anyone’s hand and s/he becomes a fabulous photographer, since the camera does all the heavy lifting. Insert eyeroll here.
Well as I said before It’s Not JUST the Camera. Just as getting a high end set of golf clubs doesn’t turn someone into Tiger Woods (though being a serial philanderer just might…), a tool works only as well as the person is able to make use of said tool. Me with a high end set of golf clubs will have something to use to smash the mushrooms that grow in my lawn. They will do little to improve skills I do not possess. Yet give me a Bic pen, a knitting needle and a person with a pneumothorax, and I’d be able to decompress the air in the chest cavity so that s/he can reinflate his/her lung. Of course after that someone better get this person to a damn hospital because I’ve got nothing with which to fashion a water seal and suction. MacGuyver I ain’t.
So anyway, since everyone into photography, whether hobbyist or pro gets the Wow, Your Camera Takes Great Pictures! comment at some time or another, the folks over at Clickin Moms decided to have a little contest on this very theme. The main task of the contest: taking fabulous photos using only your cell phone camera. Post processing was permitted, but as we all know, you can’t rescue a crap photo with Photoshop. There’s got to be some good stuff there to work with at the beginning. So to this end, I opted to enter my iPhone photo above.
Even in Photoshop it wasn’t messed with a ton. I used Photomerge for the first time to join the two photos I took into one panorama. Now that’s a cool function! I ran noise reduction, color pop and sharpening. The contrast and midtones were tweaked a tad because of my anal-retentive perfectionism. But ain’t it purty?
Of course it doesn’t hold a candle to the others that the ladies have posted for the contest. My goodness, what fabulous photos. I wish I could link to them but unfortunately the group is member only.
But here are a few others that were taken with the ol’ iPhone and were played with in Photoshop.
See, even more proof that it’s not JUST the camera. Though it doesn’t stop me from drooling over the Nikon D700.
Scott Taper Ain’t The Boss of Me
There seems to be a full moon tonight. I know that this was supposed to bring out werewolves and the crazy folk, but is it also a jackass attractant?
I know. You’re wondering where’s she going with this and who the heck is Scott Taper? Well I’m getting to the former and the latter is the jackass at the center of this story. Fine, fine…I’ll spill.
About a decade ago (gee, has it really been that long?) I encountered the pompous ass Scott Taper as just another name on the Black-Ivy listserv. Back when I was younger, single and childless, getting into deep conversations with the negrorati was one of my favorite pastimes. Since most of the listserv members were youngsters, I noticed Scott’s name simply because he was one of the few who was older than me, by at least a decade. If his posts stood out in my mind in a positive way, I’m unable to recall even one of note. Yet his reply to me on one occasion prompted the classic eye-rolling nausea that happens when faced with burning stupid.
I had written the list to process my dating philosophy with the brown eggheads. Was I being race-conscious or consciously stupid in having decided some time before that I would only date black men in order to model for my patients that there can be successful, positive, communicative, respectful relationships between brothas and sistas? The majority of my black patients did not believe such relationships existed, having never witnessed them in their almost two decades of life. Yet, at 37, I was still single and sleeping with my cats.
At the time I wrote my message to the list, my most recent relationship with a scary-smart brotha (who also happened to be broken and a tad nuts) had just ended. He was smart in a way that I hadn’t encountered well, in almost a decade. That relationship was making me question which should be higher on my list of “must haves” for a partner: scary-smart intellect or being black like me? It’d be great to find both, but perhaps if scary-smart is truly the most soul-elevating characteristic of the two, maybe I shouldn’t look for it in only one ethnic group. So with my black-only dating, was I being race conscious or consciously stupid?
Man that was a great discussion! The brown eggheads were weighing in with feeling. “Props to you for wanting to model something positive to our kids, but you don’t need to carry the weight of the race on your shoulders.” “Maybe it would be just as useful to model to them a successful partnership no matter what race your partner.” “You don’t need to martyr your happiness in order to be this type of role model.” Sure they were giving me permission, so to speak, to broaden my dating horizons, but it came with a thoughtfulness and not a knee-jerk reactivity sometimes found in the Blacker Than Thou Contingent*. And then Scott weighed in and it all came crashing down to earth.
I’m not going to directly quote his words (it was almost 10 years ago) but it came down essentially to this: You’re probably being too picky. You should lower your standards for brothas and date some janitors or garbagemen who never went to college. What’s important is their heart not their intelligence. Yeah forget dating outside your race. Just lower your standards. That’s the ticket. Eye-rolling nausea, I tell you. Not because I think I’m too good for a janitor or anything classist like that (which is where his little brain automatically went), but because our preferences for partnering should be left alone. It’s not for anyone else to judge another’s preferences. If you tell me that you only want to date people 4′2″ tall who play the mandolin, well you know what, that’s your preference and it’s none of my damn business.
So I had just finished saying that I’d come to realize that intellect was what got my juices going; how cool it was to be with someone who got me and didn’t ask, as so many men I’ve dated have, “do you have to think so much?” And this clown Scott decided to tell me that I shouldn’t want what I want. I should instead want what he feels I should want. Yeah Scott, when you come back reincarnated as me, you can date whoever the freak you want to date…until then…GTFOH
So honestly that’s all I remember of Scott. Nothing else was deep enough to resonate one way or the other. Yet we must have e-mailed each other off the list a couple of times because his name came up when I joined places like Plaxo and LinkedIn (or maybe he had added me…I don’t even remember, so little was the impression he made). The net of it is (and back to the point of the story) that Scott was a primary connection of mine on LinkedIn. At least until today.
I get to work today having spent yesterday up at West Point…yeah, the military academy, giving a presentation. I’m going through my thousand e-mails and found one from Thursday morning sent from LinkedIn. It was a comment in response to my tweets Wednesday about the Banana Splits (I must have been having mini-strokes to get the Banana Splits theme stuck in my head that day.) And yes, it was from the no-interaction-with-in-ages Scott Taper.
Scott Taper has just left a comment on your status, “This version’s better but starts after 28sec (he’s shows 45 image 1st on YTubeVid) The Banana Splits “The Tra La La Song” ? http://twt.fm/367622“
“Liana, this is not a chat forum. There are groups within linkedin where you can post comments about Utube and other observances.”
Now excuse the freak out of me, but when did Scott Taper become the hall monitor of LinkedIn? I, as a free adult of 46, chose, in full compliance with LinkedIn’s options, to use my Twitter updates as my LinkedIn updates. And if I want to tweet about the damned Banana Splits, that is my prerogative (as a free adult of 46). What would possess this jackass Scott Taper to decide that it was his role to inform me of what should or should not be in my status updates? Who the hell does he think he is?
If he disliked my tweets about the Banana Splits, there were many other options…better options that he could have chosen to employ. For example, he could have:
- Feigned selective blindness when my tweet appeared
- Posted a status update extolling the Monkees over the Banana Splits
- or, the best option: removed his connection to me entirely! Tweets about the Banana Splits are no more.
Yet this jackass (I keep returning to that descriptor) ignores the most obvious choice and instead displays egregious hubris by deciding to teach me what I should be doing with my tweets. Well Scott Taper let me tell you something. You’re not my boss, my father, the hall monitor or the president of LinkedIn. I will post whatever I deem fitting for my status updates without your vetting. And yes, I did something you didn’t possess the intellect to do: removed our connection. Now if you don’t mind (and even if you do), I’ve got some Banana Splits to watch. Tra la la…
ADDENDUM: This is just too funny not to add. Scott continues to send me supercilious e-mail replies justifying his jackassery in the face of my critiques. This last one was the most perfect (and I left in all the spelling errors):
I am starting to understand that the stuff you send out is relief vavle [sic] for the pressure of whatever your life is about. the pressure must be immense trying to appear on the top of your game all the time. It seems to me that there may be a traumatic event in your life that manifests itself in the abrpt behavoir [sic] that cahracteristic [sic] of PTSD [sic] patients, particularly those observed in returning military personnel from the recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. I would recommend that you seek some kind of treatment to temper the overeaction to comments by others. My initial comments to you were actually in the interest of helping you protect your professional image on LinkedIn which has many people who use it for recruiting and evaluation.
So according to Scott My SaviorTM, having an angry response to an unwelcome intrusion and unrequested paternalistic intervention from someone who is neither friend nor even acquaintance qualifies as a PTSD response. No, your saviorship, that response is a) letting you know how unwelcome your jackassery intervention was to me and b) setting a boundary that I would not tolerate such unwelcome behavior from you again. I realize that I was supposed to genuflect and say, “Thank you Scott My SaviorTM for saving me from myself.” But you know what? My professional reputation survives on one thing: a resume filled with unique education, training, degrees, positions, skills, and awards. Tweets about the Banana Splits have not deterred the myriad recruiter calls I get every week even though I am not looking for a job. Again Scott my would-be savior, I recommend that you STFU and MYOB.
Oh look, more Banana Splits!
*Blacker Than Thou Contingent: Those in the community who decide what is or is not officially black. And yes I am being tongue-in-cheek about this.
Conversations With Zizi: The Anatomy Lesson
I debated with myself all day about whether or not I should write this post. Doing so would probably cement my status as a mommy blogger from hell whose kid is going to end up on some therapist’s couch. I never wanted to be that mommy blogger… I never wanted to cross that line. Yet I’m told that after circulating the Making Poopy video when she was a few months old, the kid is already doomed to a lifetime of therapy thanks to Mommy Dearest. But last night’s little exchange was just too funny for words and I’m sorry, she’ll hate me for it in a few years, but this isn’t one I can keep to myself. Maybe I can beg her forgiveness later, or bribe her with shoes.
It started during our evening battle with her diaper change after she had made poopy. Though she knows how to make poop in the potty, somehow she just feels that it’s somehow much easier to just crap in her pull-up instead of stopping to take a break from watching Dora the Explorer and going to sit on the potty… unless of course we think to bring the potty out in front of the television so she can watch Dora and do her business at the same time.
So the kid has been pretty wiggy about getting that whole introital/vulval area cleaned for a while now. As parents, we’re not big fans of having crap contaminate and irritate what should be a poop-free zone. We try to wipe and she starts behaving like my old team patients afraid of the pelvic exam. Her hips start levitating in her legs start clenching. So many times I’ve almost said, “Relax and come back down to the table,” like I used to in my office for all those years. I’ve tried many other methods to get her to relax, but girlfriend just doesn’t want the cha-cha area wiped. (Before anybody goes there, there’s no badness going on. She just tends to be dramatic about many things.)
I then decided to take a different tack. “What’s the matter Z?” I asked, “don’t you want me to clean the poopy?”
“I don’t like it when you wipe me down there,” she whined.
“That’s not ‘down there’ Z. Those are your girl parts,” I explained. “Do you want to know what everything in your private area is called?”
“Yeah,” she said eagerly.
“Well give me your pointing figure and let me tell you.”
She handed me her little fist with her index finger pointing and I started the lesson, “this is your mons pubis. This is where hair is going to grow when you’re older. Can you say mons pubis?”
“Moms pubit,” she attempted.
“Good try. You were very close, but it’s mons and its pubis,” I repeated.
“Moms pubis!”
“Very good! Now these two places on the sides of your vagina (the vajajay has already been covered) are called the labia majora. That’s a hard one. Can you say labia majora?”
“Liana…”
“No honey,” I interrupted, “not Liana, it’s labia. Liana is Mommy’s name, remember?”
“Lay-be-yah,” she enunciated.
“Majora.”
“Mjora,” she tried.
“Excellent Z!”
“Look Mommy, there’s one on this side and there’s one on the other side,” she said pointing excitedly to her, well…labia.
“Absolutely sweetheart! You are so smart! And hiding underneath the labia majora are the little labia minora. They are very small and we can only feel them when we do frog leg position. Can you try saying labia minora?”
“Liana…”
“No, that’s Mommy’s name, again. It’s lay-be-a,” I enunciated for her.
“Major…minrora,” she finished.
“Excellent!” I said, noting that she hadn’t been flinching nearly as much during this anatomy lesson as she usually did with our wiping.
“And you know what this part is right here?” I continued.
She shook her head.
“That’s your clitoris,” I explained, “can you say clitoris?”
“Yes Mommy,” she said smiling, “Curious George!”
At which point I almost drew blood biting my tongue as I fought to keep from laughing. Clitoris and Curious George? I don’t know whether to get her a hearing test or decide she’s some sort of savant! I did correct her to complete our lesson. But good lord, every time I think about that little monkey, I’m on the floor hysterical.
AdoringHusband and I are begging, no, pleading with the fates to not have her bring home a boyfriend whose name is George because the minute she introduces him the two of us, we will collapse in a heap on the floor in histrionics, probably laughing ourselves into myocardial infarctions. Yet no one but us, and you my blog readers, will have any idea why.
Lines That Shouldn’t Be Crossed
I opted to write the lighthearted post that I did yesterday because I wasn’t able at the time to write the real post that I needed to get out. I was a bit too busy feeling both disgusted and heartsick. This time it was me who needed to be distracted.
The fact of the matter is that I’m 46 years old. No one would ever call me naïve or innocent. But I am still capable of being stunned by the displays of heartlessness we can express or show to each other as human beings. Actually no, that’s not completely accurate. The day-to-day expressions and demonstrations of hate, prejudice and me-ism that are increasingly common in our society are unpleasant but manageable, like disgusting odors that assault your nose without warning. You screw up your face, shake your head in disgust, but within a short time, your smell receptors accommodate and the stench becomes bearable. This accommodation allows you to move on with your day.
As you age and lose the idealism of your youth, you understand the basic egocentrism that drives so much of our populace. It becomes clear that many, many people believe that the universe does end at the tips of their noses. Yet even when the ego-cocoon is extended a bit further, there is still the divide of us versus them, we-the-good versus all the others. Human nature would have us divide, compete, judge, scorn, feel covetous of, and hate our fellows, rather than uniting for the betterment of all. Yes, I am 46. I do understand it. I don’t like it, but I recognize the veracity of the words.
Even still, I must retain a portion of my naïve or idealistic soul that makes me believe that there is a basic humanity in all of us that can and will come out during extreme circumstances. So much of the response we’ve seen to the Haitian tragedy validates this belief for me. However, when I see some continuing their me-first, narcissistic responses in the face of a tragedy of a magnitude so horrific, I still am able to be stunned to my core. I would think that this type of major disaster could even make Narcissus have some sympathy for the plight of others. I suppose that I am wrong…
Last night as I lay on the floor of my daughter’s room in the dark, hoping only to play a simple game or two of Bejeweled until she fell asleep (since we started using thumbsucking gloves, she’s needed us to be with her until she is asleep), I happened to come upon a Facebook notice that Pop Cap Games, the makers of Bejeweled, was planning to donate 100% of its sales on Saturday (today) to humanitarian efforts in Haiti. I saw that there were about 1500 likes for this announcement and about 190 comments. Instead of just going on to my game of Bejeweled like I should have, I decided to read the comments associated with this announcement. And that’s where the trouble started.
Thankfully the vast majority of the comments were supportive of this action. But right from the beginning of the comment thread were people whose comments essentially said, fuck them, what about me/us? Don’t help them! Help our own people. Why should we help those foreigners? Earthquake? So what? More and more xenophobic Americans chose to spout untruths such as how we always help everyone else in the world but no one helps us. And that after Katrina there was no humanitarian effort for us (hello, we are a rich and powerful First World nation not a Third World island where the majority of people are existing on $2 per day! Moreover, if one of these bozos had even bothered to do his or her homework then he or she would have discovered that 90 countries did offer humanitarian aid to us after Katrina). One true mental midget even went so far as to say that these people (one of my favorite descriptors, you must know) are stupid for living on an island that has so many natural disasters. They should just move somewhere better! (Yes, it is so freaking easy to move somewhere better on $2/day and restrictions on immigration.)
As my two-year-olds’ tossing and turning stilled into a calm sleep, both my muscles and mind were taut and enraged. Who are these people who are so egocentric and full of hate that they need crow their self-serving xenophobia in this public comment thread? Oh I know about free speech and the First Amendment and all that. But there are lines that our morals and our ethics and our very humanity should not let us cross. You think these things. They aren’t human ideas, but they can stay in your head. You decide to go further and speak them to your friends and family. Again, either your inhumanity is shared with other equally inhuman people or you reveal how inhuman you actually are. Maybe you decide to post on your blog or on your Facebook page. I don’t agree with promulgating such hatred but I respect your right to display your inhumanity in your tiny piece of the world.
But here’s the part that goes too far. A company is announcing its humanitarian efforts toward a tragedy the scale of which we have not seen in the United States. And you feel that its comment thread is your personal cesspool in which to share your evil inhumanity and callous disregard for the loss of life that is occurring on that island? And remember, this is not an anonymous troll, or someone hiding behind a nym online. This is Facebook where the vast majority of those posting are posting under their own names and own backgrounds. How dare you? There are lines that those of us who are human beings should know better than to cross.
To my surprise, I found myself having thoughts of vengeance peppered with my rage. This was surprising because I am not a vengeful person. I do not look to revenge and retribution. These acts do not heal wounds, alleviate pain or even the scales. They only keep you stuck like an old album that keeps skipping over the same 5 seconds of the song. There is no place for it in my head…generally.
But lying there in the dark I wanted nothing more than vengeance. Not the classic ass-kicking for assholes kind of vengeance that would be most simple. No, no, no. That would be too facile. What I wanted was to shine the greatest light possible on these roaches…a light that would show everyone in their worlds what inhuman dreck they truly are. I wanted to contact Chris’s (the “fuck them” guy) employer, co-workers, family, clergyperson, grocery store clerks, pizza delivery guys…everyone he interacts with and show them his words. I want neither him nor them to ever forget he said such a thing about thousands of dead human beings. It will be his Scarlett Letter of sorts, but unlike Hester Prynne, his shame will be well deserved. I want these jackasses who sit behind their computer monitors typing unforgivable crap to be held accountable for their words! That is the vengeance I fantasized about, as Zara slept peacefully. Yet I knew that I would not and could not act in such a manner. I am no avenging agent, no nemesis to punish the inhuman, for wouldn’t that only chip away at my own humanity?
I do not know what is happening to us as a people when we can feel nothing, nothing at all, in the face of a tragedy of such enormity. I fear for what we have already lost and for what our children’s world will look like decades from now. Because if we do not even retain a shred of compassion and humaneness for each other as human beings, we are indeed lost as a human race. Chris and his ilk are showing me that there are even more roaches than I had ever imagined. These roaches are choosing, with no hesitation or shame, to cross lines that should never be crossed.
If you treasure your humanity, perhaps you will weep, rage, or feel something with me now.
Thank you for reading.
Conversations with My Husband: #197
This is an actual conversation that transpired between me and my dear AdoringHusband.
First let me set the scene. For about the past, oh, 17,000 years I’ve been asking AdoringHusband to clean off the top of his chest in our bedroom. In addition to the standard detritus of coins, old receipts, wrappers from cough drops, and disease-ridden balled up tissues, there were also lovely items like old lollipops, empty blister packs, wrenches and screwdrivers, and other crap that could not be identified. Somehow last Sunday night, I finally had had enough of looking at that ugly mound of stuff that did not seem to be going anywhere anytime soon.
I chose to do what I usually do when I need AdoringHusband to put something away: I put the item or items on top of his side of the bed. Most of the time this works and he will put whatever it is away in order to get into the bed to go to sleep. But there have been times that he has been amazingly lazy and just either slept on top of whatever I’ve put on the bed or chose to move the item to the crap holder bench at the foot of the bed.
I was nice enough on Sunday to attempt to sort the landfill into manageable piles of crap for him to go through. Yet halfway through the task I found that I had collected so many coins from the surface that I had run out of room in my hand to hold them. I didn’t want to put them on the nightstand or on the bed since Zara is still insisting mouthing everything. Then I remembered that I had given him just the anniversary gift to deal with this clutch of coins: a leather valet. But where was it, that was the question.
I leaned over the railing on the second floor landing and called down to him as he watched football in the family room below.
“AdoringHusband, where’s that leather valet I gave you for our anniversary to hold your coins in on your nightstand?” I yelled down.
“Valet?” was his reply, as his eyes remained glued to the television set. (And before anybody says anything to me about interrupting a man and his football, let’s put aside the sexism and recognize that a) I love a great game of football as well; b) it was a sucky game anyway and c) he had been watching football the whole damn day long.)
“Yes,” I said with exasperation, drawing the word out until it sounded like the hiss of a tea kettle whistling, “the leather valet for your coins that I gave you for our anniversary? It’s black and it has your initials on it?”
“It’s not up sitting on my dresser?”
“No, it’s not on your dresser. I was just up in the bedroom. Don’t you think I checked there first?”
“Well it’s probably here somewhere,” he concluded.
“You think?” He was too far away to see my eyes rolling. “Might you be able to narrow down where that somewhere might be?”
“Maybe the garage or the basement? Somewhere.”
“Didn’t I bring it in from the garage several months ago where you had left it in a box gathering dust? I put it in your hand to take upstairs. What did you do with it?”
“Are you sure it’s not on my dresser?”
I fought the urge to throw the handful of coins down onto his head. “No it’s not on your dresser.”
“Then where is the valet?” he turned to me and asked.
“Did I not just start out this dialogue with that very question?! If I knew where the damn thing was, why would I come out here and ask you about it?!”
“Well, I thought you were testing me.”
I may have blacked out at that point. I may have thrown the coins. It’s all little fuzzy after that point, in truth.
I’ve got ask you, though, is there any wonder why I’m aging before my time? The man will drive me up the fecal creek, I tell you.
Distracting You
I don’t even know how to begin. It’s been so freaking long since my last post that it is nothing but embarrassing. Sure I thought of about 20 or so topics in my head, but between the holiday prep, designing our holiday cards, screwing up our holiday photo shoot, and then taking forever to get our holiday letter/website online, I’ve been up to my eyeballs in stuff.
And even after the holidays, there was entertaining Zara while daycare was closed (week between Christmas and New Years), the annual Liana and AdoringHusband New Year’s Spat TM, and having to go back to work (heavy sigh) at the beginning of the week.
This wouldn’t be half as bad if I had some deep, well thought out topic on which to restart blogging in 2010. But, uh, I forgot to take my sleeping pill last night and woke up at 3 AM. The old brain is a bit…well…fuzzy. (Menopause, or mental pause is a beeyotch!)
So in order to easy myself back into the blogging groove, I’m going to distract you from my prolonged absence with some photos of Zizi that I just used to create a 2010 photo calendar at Mpix. My hope is that you’ll be so distracted by the cuteness, that you’ll excuse my prolonged absence and will still come by to visit in the future when the real blogging starts again.
Cover
January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December
Proper Usage of “Oh My God!” For Those Who Might Be Confused
I’ve got something to teach you guys. I know that I’m supposed to be thinking about Thanksgiving preparation and all, but here’s a lesson that really bears repeating. First, let me set the stage.
I live in an area that’s probably considered traditionally suburban: lots of farmland that has been turned into your typical SUV-favored, McMansion-suffused, chain-restaurant heavy region that I never thought I’d live in on purpose. It’s a little more rustic than I’m used to, having grown up in LA (which, in truth, is a mass of suburbs hooked together by freeways). There are deer, bunnies, and that damn fox that ran onto my front lawn last summer scaring the crap out of me, much to AdoringHusband’s amusement. But it’s not like I’m out on hundred acres of hinterlands without a neighbor in sight.
That notwithstanding, I did grow up with a crazy, paranoid mother who honestly believed that if we let our vigilance down for one minute, somebody would come into our house and kill us all. Though she didn’t carry a formal diagnosis of paranoid personality disorder her behavior did make you wonder.
One time when I was in college, I was back home for summer vacation and needed to open the sliding glass doors in order to get some air. This proved to be tricky since there was an added security lock at the top of the door and the key was nowhere I could find. (Yes, even way back then we had a major alarm system with pressure sensors, window breach warnings and a bunch of other hoo-haa in place to make sure that no one came in to kill us all.) After looking in every known hidey-hole, I opted to call Mom at work to learn the location of her latest hiding place. So I’m all like, “Mom where’d you put the key for the sliding glass door?”
“Ask your brother,” she replied, almost suspiciously, “he’s in the house isn’t he?”
“Yeah, but he’s sleeping. Why can’t you tell me?” I asked, confused.
“Because they might be listening,” she answered with complete seriousness.
Though I didn’t dare say it for fear of getting my head smacked off when she got home, I couldn’t help but think, You know what Mom? If they are listening, they already know where the damn key is.
I point this all out to say that I come by my paranoia and fear of being mass murdered in my own home pretty honestly, I guess. As such, yes I have an alarm system, and we have enough wattage in front of our house to land a helicopter or small aircraft safely in our cul-de-sac. That notwithstanding, it’s still a pretty damn dark neighborhood at night. A safe one, to be sure, but dark nonetheless.
Now back to the present. Last Friday evening, Luda, my trainer and I, are headed out through the garage for my twice weekly jog/torture session. Actually it’s not so bad, as Luda after all this time is more babysitter than evil enforcer. We’ve become as close to friends as client and trainer can be. Having her show up at my door twice a week merely makes sure that I do exercise rather than doing let’s say, anything else more pleasurable, such as cutting my toenails.
It’s about 6:30 PM and dark. I’m futzing with my Nike training app on my iPhone, she’s turning on the flashing lights on my running vest (thank you, AdoringHusband) and we are blathering about plans for the weekend. We exit the garage. I’m turning to the right to head down the driveway, but she, I see out of the corner of my eye, looks left sharply toward the very dark rear of the house and exclaims, “Oh my god!“
I feel a sudden rush of adrenaline as fear overwhelms my brain. I know this all happened in just a split second, but in the moment before I whirled back to my left to assess the threat, I ran through options: run, fight, or have an instant myocardial infarction? And I considered, like any good doc making a fast differential diagnosis, what could this threat possibly be:
- A killer with a gun
- A killer with a knife
- A killer with a large stick
- Jason in a hockey mask along with Freddy Krueger
- A wild animal, like a bear
- A runaway moose
- The damn fox mutated to 50x his size
- A pack of wild dogs
- A passel of mutant feral cats
- My neighbor waiting to impale me with his flag
- My other neighbors turned into flesh eating zombies holding their hot peppers
- The neighborhood police department coming to arrest me for jogging while fat
- A fire breathing dragon
- Mutant bunnies (Night of the Lepus anyone?)
- One, or more, of my crazy ex-boyfriends dancing naked in the backyard
- Luda’s crazy-ass ex-husband whose ass I would have to kick on general principle, or
- My mother, visiting from the spirit world, to beat me about the headparts for driving a station wagon
So in that brief second, I became as taut as a violin string, ready to face whatever threat had dared show itself from the darkness of my backyard (as long as it wasn’t that damn snake from last summer again…I don’t do snakes!). I whirled around, arms bent, fists clenched, about to knock some mutant bunny’s ass only to find Luda looking off into the black shadows behind the house.
“What?!” I rasped. “What’s wrong?!”
“You cut down that big tree! I wasn’t expecting that,” she replied.
“That?! That’s what made you exclaim, ‘oh my god!‘? Seriously?” I blurted as my fight or flight response started to abate.
“Well it just surprised me,” she answered.
Friends, had I managed to continue adding to my list of possible reasons for Luda’s yelling, “oh my god!” as we exited the garage that night, I’m not sure I ever would have arrived at, “because the maple tree was cut down” as a contender. Even with possibilities such as mutant giraffe sitting on my house or lost toddler riding a feral cat and wielding a big stick, nope, I’m not sure I would ever have arrived at the cut maple tree option.
So let’s learn from this. If you are going to exclaim “oh my god” in the dark, especially around people who have been raised by paranoid parents that make us think killers are everywhere, make sure it’s about more than a damn tree! Well unless it is a mutant tree running around decapitating people…
That is all for my lesson today.
Happy Turkey Day!
This Kidlet
really had to write about this evening with my kid. It was at the end of another frustrating day where I didn’t manage to get enough work done, I wasn’t able to secure help with getting our kitty down to the city for her daily radiation therapy treatment for her adenocarcinoma, I had forgotten to find out what type of vision insurance we had, and my dear AdoringHusband had come up with some name like, VisionPlus, that I know didn’t exist. Then I had the bright idea to take Zara with me to LensCrafters to pick out a new pair of frames because the ones I’m wearing are held together with something that looks slightly better than Scotch tape, en route to a trip to her favorite place, Friendly’s. It wasn’t the greatest idea but the way my schedule’s been working out, it was the best I could come up with.
When I got to the center to pick her up, she asked like she always does, “Where’s me going, Mommy?”
I replied, “Mommy has to go and pick out some glasses but if you’re good we’ll go to Friendly’s for dinner.”
This immediately set her running toward the door to her room to tell all her friends and teachers that she was going to Friendly’s. “I’m going to Friendly’s Miss Alyssa! I’m going to Friendly’s Taylor!” Her happy announcement continued down the hallways as we walked out of the building.
As we drove to the mall, however, I made sure to reinforce the rules of engagement. Ever the parent determined to maintain order and proper comportment, I made sure that the rules were reviewed while we were still in the car.
“Now you know, Zara, that you will only go to Friendly’s if you behave while Mommy’s getting her glasses. Do you understand?”
“Uh-huh,” she replied nodding.
“And what happens if you don’t behave?”
“I go in the Naughty Corner!” she replied emphatically.
“And you don’t go to Friendly’s,” I added.
She nodded seriously. “I want to go to Friendly’s.”
We went over this a few more times for good measure and then started singing Alouette before we got to the mall. When we arrived at LensCrafters, I gave her my phone to play her games with and asked her to sit in a chair while I picked some glasses. This lasted all of approximately 60 seconds. Then she began to regale me with I don’t want to sit in the chair and I don’t want to play with the phone. We then had a reminder conversation, “Remember how we talked about what would happen if you didn’t behave? Remember how I said if you didn’t behave we wouldn’t go to Friendly’s?
“Yeah…” she said looking longingly at the glasses she wanted to pick up and throw.
“Well if you’ve already decided you’re not going to behave, then I guess we should leave now and go home and not go to Friendly’s.”
“I really want to go to Friendly’s,” she said plaintively.
“Then sit in the chair and behave.”
Of course she then proceeded to walk over to the lower display of glasses, reach in, and hand me a pair of frames saying, “Here Mommy, for you.” So I had to up the ante.
“Oh so we are really having trouble behaving. I guess we need to go home now and not go to Friendly’s. Let me go put these glasses back so we can leave.” I turned to move toward the eyeglass case to put down the frame I picked out.
“No Mommy! I want to go to Friendly’s!”
“Well then sit down in the chair and play your game while Mommy looks for glasses.”
And to my absolute surprise she actually did go back to the chair. And she stayed in the chair. She played her new favorite game Peekaboo Wild, the successor to Peekaboo Barn. She played Itsy-Bitsy Spider and Old MacDonald. Periodically she would yell over to me saying, “Look at this mommy!” holding up the phone laughing at the little pig running away on the screen. Even when she heard the four car holiday train they had in the mall whistling as it passed nearby, she stayed in the chair and yelled over to me saying, “Mommy, it’s the choo-choo train! I want to see it!” But she stayed in the chair. For a two and a half year old that was pretty damn good.
Yet I was still frazzled as we left the store. Though she was great in the chair, she still got a bit grabby when she came and sat with me as I got all the details straight with the frame I ordered. And then of course we have the situation of not having any idea what our vision insurance plan is called, the name AdoringHusband made up not seeming to be listed on their roster. Even though I tried to take care of this and get it done, there was still more to do and I was not happy about. So by the time I walked out the door of the store, my brain was just saying let’s get out of here. Unfortunately my child was saying, “Mommy lets go see the train! I want to see the choo-choo!”
“Zara we’re going to Friendly’s. We’re not going to see the choo-choo.”
“But I really want to see the choo-choo!” She began to whine.
“Well you have to decide. Either we go to see the choo-choo and no Friendly’s or no choo-choo and we go to Friendly’s. What do you want? Do you want to see the choo-choo or do you want to go to Friendly’s?”
“I want to see the choo-choo!” she said happily.
“Now you know this means that if you see the choo-choo we’re not going to Friendly’s?” I asked.
“No Friendly’s,” she responded, nodding her head.
“You really would rather just see the choo-choo instead of going to Friendly’s, because we’re not riding the choo-choo tonight? I think you want to go to Friendly’s more than riding the choo-choo.”
“No I want the choo-choo! No Friendly’s!”
“Are you sure?”
“Uh-huh,” she said nodding.
“Looking at the choo-choo instead of going to Friendly’s?”
“Yeah, I look with my eyes.”
“Zara I think that’s silly but if you want to look at the choo-choo and go home and eat dinner and not have ice cream, then that’s what we’ll do.”
“Yay!” She said happily. And we set off to see the choo-choo with her eyes. Sixty seconds later upon seeing the choo-choo sitting empty in front of the RadioShack, I said to her, “okay now that you’ve seen the choo-choo, we can to go home and have dinner.”
“But I want to go to Friendly’s! I have to!” she said pitifully.
And this is where I went off the rails. “Wait a minute! I just asked you if you wanted to see the choo-choo or go to Friendly’s and you told me that you wanted to see the choo-choo and not go to Friendly’s. I asked you a bunch of times Zara and you kept saying that you wanted to see the choo-choo and not go to Friendly’s and now you’re saying that you want to go to Friendly’s?”
“Yeah, now I want to go to Friendly’s,” she said nodding.
“Well that’s not how it works young lady. You make a decision and you have to stick with the consequences of what you choose. You said you wanted to see the choo-choo and not go to Friendly’s so that’s what we’re going to do.”
Somewhere in the back of my psychotic, menopausal, truly confounded brain a little voice of sanity was saying, hello, she’s only 2 1/2 years old, get a grip! I looked down at the little face squinching up for the big cry that was about to begin and managed to regain enough sanity to say, “Well this time I’ll let you change your mind but you have to learn to stick with your decisions.” And again that sane part of my brain was saying, what the hell is wrong with you?
So we drove to Friendly’s with me still grumbly but Zara happier and happier that she managed to work herself out of whatever the problem she had managed to get herself into that she didn’t really understand because her mother is a whack job. Inside Friendly’s she sat next to me in the booth telling me which color balloon she wanted (blue of course… it seems to be her new thing). She colors on her placemat, tells me she’s hungry, eats her dinner without prompting, wheedling, or cajoling and proceeds to be the cutest two and a half-year-old on the planet. My stressed menopausal depressive grump fest seemed to be lightening a tad when she decided to do some wiggling and managed to slide out of her booster seat. A fast grab from geriatric mommy kept her from falling to the floor.
Immediately I reverted to Grumpestra Mommy, “Now see, Zara, I told you to sit still in your booster seat so that you wouldn’t fall. Look what happened!”
She settled herself back and got ready to tuck back into her ice cream sundae when she looked at me, smiled and said, “Thank you, Mommy, for protecting me from hurting myself when I fell.”
And the floor should have opened up right then and swallowed me whole as punishment for being a total and complete shit to the best kid in the world.
This is the most amazing and incredible little girl. I am so not worthy of her. But her love and faith in me makes me keep trying to do better.
It’s Hard Being An Egalitarian
I don’t know whether or not this is normal, but it seems as if the older I get, the more I struggle with understanding or relating to those of my own sex. Sure, I’ve written about it before. A few times. This is not news. Yet old age and menopause seem to be causing me to lose the dispassionate whatever attitude I’ve had about my differences with many (dare I say most) women throughout my life.
Yes, I consider myself to be a feminist or womanist, yet both those terms often take on different connotations or meanings than the rather simplistic definition I use. Feminism has been defined as everything from women being allowed to make choices to women hating anything that has a penis (or should I say ‘womyn’). However, in my definition, I simply reject the sociological construct of gender, as in gender roles. I believe in parity, in egalitarianism, and no special protections based on sociological gender roles.
This is what I find so problematic about so much of the feminist dialogue today. There is a valid argument for equal pay for equal work, yet in the same breath, there is a desire for certain classes of women to get special consideration or special protections. The most oft mentioned of the special class women is the mother.
Mothers, it is felt, by dint of their being mothers, should get special protections. If they are poor, they should have programs that give them housing, healthcare, childcare, job training, etc. If middle to upper SES, then job protection, flexible work arrangements, or validation for being their child(ren)’s primary full-time caregiver (and yes, I realize the last one isn’t really a protection, but I think you get my drift).
Still I must ask, how egalitarian and truly feminist is that reasoning? Are we equal in some cases but not equal in others? This is what troubles me. And if the answer is that the benefits listed above are not so much for the mother per se, but are actually for the child(ren), then shouldn’t the protections be sought for parents and not for mothers? If we consider ourselves equal, then why bring gender into the equation at all?
Now I don’t put this out there to rag on mothers, parents, feminists or anyone in particular. I offer this as an example of how my brain works a bit differently in this regard. To me egalitarianism means that we don’t split things along gender lines. We’re all just people with different genitalia and physical attributes, but the who of who we are isn’t and shouldn’t be limited by our sociological gender roles. Yet approaching life this way as a woman is a difficult enterprise when our society remains entrenched in these male/female boxes.
Luckily I work in a place that has a large number of non-traditional women (I hate even typing “non-traditional” since it implies that acceptance of sociological gender roles is indeed the norm…I know that it is, but I hate having to recognize that when it goes so against my grain). These are women who have hyphenated their children’s names to reflect both theirs and their husbands, women who work while their husbands are primary caregivers at home and women who with their partners embody the model of equally shared homecare and parenting. They speak up in meetings and can tell you to STFU without any uterine guilt if necessary. It’s about strength, confidence, and the ability to be direct. Yet they also possess the “feminine” traits of warmth, nurturance, and giving.
Last week I watched one, who I will call Bridget, stand onstage in front of 1000 people delivering a message of challenge to one of our competitors. This woman, who is only a few years younger than me, and a mother of four, the youngest a year old, is going through chemo for breast cancer but still pushes through every day rocking one sharp headscarf after another. I’ve seen her on the bad days, the days when she looks like she is two steps away from having it all crashing down. I support her without supporting her, because I know that look…and I know the strength that makes her gut through another day. It doesn’t tolerate what feels like pity or help through weakness. Instead, I walk with her and listen to what she is willing to share. And she talks herself a notch stronger.
Work, cancer, motherhood…yet there she stood in the bright lights throwing down the gauntlet to thunderous applause and a standing ovation. The power, the confidence, the resolve…we should all enjoy these qualities in abundance. Yet Bridget, I’m afraid, is more the exception than the rule in my experience of womynkind.
Instead, more commonly seen is the woman looking for permission to claim her own power. As a perfect example, we have a posting from one of my photography boards from a woman looking for help standing up to her clients. I’ve edited the message for privacy.
I need some advice, and need somebody to pump me up lol to stand up for myself.
I recently started charging for sessions. I feel that I’m at that point but not at the point to charge what other area photographers are charging yet. I am charging a reasonable fee of $60 for a session that lasts an hour and in return as of right now the clients get a CD in return of the images.
There are two ladies that I know and have known for a long time. They are probably 20/21ish now. I know that both of them are flat broke and they have never had nice pictures taken. One of the sisters came to me and asked me what I charged for a family session and I told her $60, but I told her since I’ve known her for so long that I would do it for $40 with the CD. The first sister set a date and then her sister calls me and wants the same deal for her family. I give her the same deal as well. I told BOTH of the sisters that the money was due the day of the shoot. They live an hour away from me. The day of the shoot, I arrive at their house. Neither family is ready, and I even had to dress one of the kids so we could hurry along. When I get there, I was informed that neither had the money that day and that they would pay me the following week. Since I drove an hour, I went ahead and told them that I would do the session but I had to be paid before they got any of the pictures. The shoot was a week ago this past Sunday and I have yet to see any money. As I said before I arrived at 2:30pm, I did not finish with their session until almost 7pm that night. One of the sisters even got some maternity shots out of me (even though that’s a totally separate session) Now she is calling me daily asking me how the pictures are coming along. I keep telling her just fine because I don’t have the backbone to speak up and say “they’re not because you haven’t held up your end of the deal”…she called yesterday and I avoided her phone call.
Since I know this girl, how do I tell her in a firm, but not mean way that she needs to pay me for my service before she can even view her pictures? I just need someone to pump me up so I can tell her how it’s going to be, but need advice on how to do it without seeming like a cold rude snob.
Now I read this and immediately thought better of saying anything. I’ve found that my direct, clear, nontraditional advice seems more often than not, to really throw people off. I’m not one for the “oh that’s a tough one” pat on the back or the ever-present ((((hugs!)))). All I could think to myself is, you need help asking for the money you earned taking those pictures? What’s wrong with this picture?
Unfortunately, this illustrates the difficulty in being the type of egalitarian feminist/womanist that I am. As a woman, I’m supposed to be sympathetic and understanding about this type of thing, but my brain really wants me to say, no one needs to give you permission to stand up for yourself, no matter what genitalia you wear!
Sigh… And the struggle continues.
That’s Much Better
Last year’s Halloween photos:
This year’s photos:
I’d say this constitutes improvement!
Real post coming soon…I promise.