It all just sucks so much

I can keep my shit together, pounds and pounds of outward pressure held together with string, 99% of the time. But the 1% of the time when it spills into someone else's radar I'm suddenly a mess who needs to get her shit together or get the fuck out.  I get it, nobody wants to see my breakdowns. I don’t want to see my breakdowns. But 3 hours of some lady crying,, or asleep in an emotional coma, within your range of vision isn't shit.  Trust me. I live with this and if you didn't trip over a corpse, you didn't see shit.

The Irony of Middle Age

1. Losing weight easily is now more worrisome than thrilling.

2. My "happy pills" bottle in my purse is now just for digestive problems. Pepto, Imodium, Gas-X, you get the picture.

3. The natural highlights I wanted when I was young have finally come in, in white.

4. I finally learned how to walk in heels and now my ankles are weak.

5. It took me a decade to lose the baby weight enough to go out without Spanx, but now I need shapewear for my upper arms.

6. The saying about women hitting their sexual peak in their 40s has come true, but I seem to have hit my 'getting tired at 8pm' peak at the same time.

7. I can finally afford to buy drugs but the only ones I seem to want are ibuprofen and digestive pills.

8. I've finally grown into my looks, at an age where I feel ridiculous if I dress sexy.

9. I can now afford cute hoodies and sweaters but all I can wear are cardigans and flannels because hot flashes.

10. I finally figured out how to style my hair / what the best cut is for my hair, and it's changing in texture and I have to use women's Rogaine at the roots.

...to be continued 

I broke my little girl's heart

I have a 12 year old daughter. A beautiful, spunky, smart, strong, determined daughter. And she has a penis, which is nobody's business but hers yet is relevant to this story.

Last weekend we went school clothes shopping across the river because Iowa has an annual sales tax free weekend. This will be her first year in junior high and her first year wearing girl clothes to school. She was SO EXCITED to pick out her new wardrobe. Gold shoes, pink sneakers, flip flops with flowers, and so many dresses. I loved watching her develop her own style because until now its been UnderArmor t shirts and warm up pants. Just to go shopping she wore a dress and a pair of gold glitter high tops. She looked beautiful and her happiness was contagious. 

Our last stop was Target, where we needed camis and jeans. And right there, by the jeans, were the Harry Potter shirts. She found two she loved -- a grey tee with a Hermione Granger quote on it and a red and white tie dye hoodie with a matching scrunchie. She's been a huge Harry Potter fan since she was a little boy. Something about the kid who never quite fit in becoming magical and being looked up to struck a chord in my little girl. And she wanted these tops. And we could afford these tops. So I laid them across the pile in the cart and then made a difficult decision. I told her that if we bought them, JK Rowling would get some of the money, probably only a few pe nies, but some money nonetheless. She smiled and said okay. Then I told her that it might be a little complicated because JK Rowling had recently been making a lot of statements against transgender women, specifically that they aren't real women and that they hurt the feminist cause. And my daughter's face fell. I explained that an author's personal thoughts didn't change what they'd written and that I, for one, was not about to let such ignorance and stupidity take Harry Potter away from me, but that I wasn't sure if we should give her any money. I asked my daughter what she wanted to do. She told me to put the tops back. I said I would still buy them for her and they'd still look good on her and that none of this had anything to do with Harry or Hermione or anyone else in the stories, but she said no. She didn't want to support anyone who thought she wasn't real, who thought she was bad for other girls and women, and who said she couldn't be a feminist.  She said she was done with JK Rowling forever.

I suppose I could have just not told her anything about Rowling's statements or opinions. I could have bought the shirts and let her proudly wear them to school. I'm sure that's what a lot of parents are doing and it would have saved my kid some heartache.  But she deserved to know. She deserved to know that by getting the shirts we would be lining the pockets of a woman who spreads hate directed, in a very real sense, at her. She already knew that we don't eat Chik Fil A, we don't shop at Hobby Lobby, and we don't get our pizza from Papa John's, and I wanted her to decide if she wanted to do the same with Harry Potter merchandise. 

I wonder if Jo Rowling knows that she makes kids like my daughter cry. I wonder if she realizes that for some, all of the strong female character role models in the world can't make up for the hateful example she herself sets. And I wonder if she sees that in this world, she's a Dursley. She's the one looking down on the different sisters and nephews just because she doesn't understand their magic.

 Ms. Rowling, in this story, you are the villain.

Recent News

Police have difficult time getting into the Chop! (Capitol Hill Occupied Protest area,  informally known as a no-police area.) SHOCKING!

Pancake syrup company decides that selling its product in a literally slave-shaped bottle is in poor taste. (Mrs. Butterworth's) SHOCKING!

Juneteenth is a holiday, as many privileged white people finally learn. Turns out the South didn't happily free all slaves upon hearing the Emancipation Proclamation. (Wait until they find out that Kentucky didn't ratify the 13th amendment until 1976!) SHOCKING!

White people who deny existence concept of unconscious racism are offended by Ubcle Ben's  company decision to remove black house slave mascot from product packaging. SHOCKING!

George Floyd Protests

I've known cops. I've dated a cop. I am not anti-lock. What I am, is anti anyone in a position of authority being on a power trip, whether it's a kindergarten teacher or an older sibling or a prison guard. I am not anti-kindergarten teacher, anti-older sibling, or anti-prison guard.

Right now there are protests, and riots, all over the country bringing attention to the FACT that black people are killed at a much higher rate than white people during what should be simple interactions with police. For what it's worth, I dont believe that the protesters are rioting, nor that the rioters are protesting. I think that anarchists, vandals, and thieves will use any excuse to hide in a crowd and do their thing. I do have one big question, though.

Why, during a time when police brutality is in the national spotlight and everyone has video cameras and access to upload on their person all the time, are there cops out there doing the horrible things that we see on the news every day now? Pulling a protester's mask off to pepper spray him from 6 inches away. Pepper spraying a child. Shooting a man in the face with a tear gas canister. Pulling people stuck in traffic out of their car and beating them. Knocking elderly men to the ground. Tear gassing people as they stand on their own porch. Smashing peaceful protesters' water bottles and milk jugs (for rinsing teargas out of the eyes) on the ground. Shooting members of the press with rubber bullets.

And they know they're on camera. They know there will be documented evidence of their behavior. And they keep upping the ante. Police fired tear gas and rubber bullets into a crowd of protesters who were lying on the ground with their arms up, posing no threat. Why? Why would they not even try to hide this behavior?

Novel Coronavirus Covid19

Day 1 of the quarantine. Spent the day with my kids. Drank 2 mimosas, put Bailey's in my coffee, and I am now at the bar. Trying to maintain 6ft social distance but the people seem to mock me. A man who lives with his elderly mother says "Bring it on; I'm young!" A woman wipes her hands all over my face and jacket while declaring this, "not even as bad as the flu." [I get flu shots annually.]  A man I barely know keeps crowding me with his dancing and laughing at my attempts to turtle my head into my coat. The morons are playing Men At Work because they believe it to be an Irish band. Happy St Patrick's Day to all who survive.

Day 3. Yesterday I went to a friend's house. We sat on opposite sides of the room and talked. It was nice that she humored me even though she doesn't isolate herself.  Today is my husband's birthday and I am debating whether or not to go buy him a cake and some ice cream. The gifts Danny bought for him are supposed to arrive today but who knows. Amazon is focusing on toilet paper and medical supplies so a t shirt that says "My wife is psycHOTic" may not make the cut.  

We all have cabin fever and while I want the kids to learn while they're out of school, they are turning feral and I fear they may bite if I try to hand them anything educational. Since the stores have no medical supplies,  I could succumb to infection and die. I'm still weighing my options.

Day 6.  I'm an atheist (though not anti theist), but a lot of my friends and loved ones are Christian,  and many are devout. I hadn't thought about it, but at the same time they are praying more than ever, they cannot attend church. I understand how this can cause them extra fear and stress, and fear and stress help no one during an emergency.  So, in an attempt to feel useful during this period in which I feel so helpless, and to bring a little comfort to my friends, today I spent the money I normally would have spent at the bar for the next week or so, on prepackaged communion to hand out to my churchgoing friends. Hopefully it arrives relatively soon. I have a few people in mind to gift a couple week's worth to, but I'm sure I can think of some more. I hope so. I've got a hundred plastic shot glasses of wine and crackers to unload. 

Day 13. I make stock. I collect chicken bones and carcasses, Thanksgiving turkey carcasses and necks, whatever I can find, and I freeze them until I have enough for a batch of stock. This averages out to about 3 rotisserie chicken carcasses, or 2 medium Thanksgiving turkeys, or just a hodge podge of whatever I have. Then I put the birds in my biggest stockpot (mine came in a set of 3) with half a bag of carrots cut in half, half a bunch of celery cut in half, an onion cut in quarters, and half a package of fresh parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme. Plus a head of garlic, crushed, 9 or 10 whole peppercorns, and enough water to cover it all. If I have raw meat/bones, I'll roast the veg and meat/bones first. I bring it to a boil, skim off the foam,  then bring to a low simmer and leave it alone for 24-48 hours. After that I strain it into my next largest stockpot and stick that into a cooler full of ice or, if possible, a snowbank, overnight. After that I just remove the layer of fat on top and ladle it into Ziplock quart freezer bags. My last batch made 9 quarts. I boil noodles in this when my family gets sick, I use this in my potato and cheese soups, and one batch usually lasts us a year. 

I like to make stock. It's easy, delicious, and it gives me a sense of accomplishment to see all of those bags of brown goodness in my freezer.  And it is brown. This isnt pale piss yellow broth from a can

 This has the flavor from the roasted meat still left on the bone, the herbs and veggies already in it. It's more soup than both. Its thicker than broth, too. But I do it because it makes me happy and, especially in this helpless, worrisome, scary time of quarantine,  it soothes me. So that's what i did last week. I started the stock on Sunday, Tom didn't make it home Monday at all and I cant lift it so it cooked until Tuesday evening,  then it sat in the cooler outside with one of the big bags of gas station ice until Thursday evening (he was out again overnight Wednesday), and then it was in the fridge until today when we bagged it up. (If you take it off the stove and put it straight into the fridge, it will cook everything in the fridge. You need to cool it first, hence the cooler of ice.) Tonight is pizza night but tomorrow I'll boil noodles in a couple quarts, just to taste test. Lol