No More Dye For Me!

I've always wanted red hair. And I've dyed it for the last 13 years, not counting while pregnant twice. And, with my HS reunion coming up (I'm completely Romy & Michelle about it too) I had to dye it. SO last weekend I popped open a couple bottles and poured it on. Now, I have super-thick hair so two bottles is not as much as it might sound, and it turned out to not be quite enough. After I finished and rinsed it out and it dried, I had missed spots. Last night I realized that, I can't go to my reunion with spotty color so I took a third bottle and dumped it on just the top, to cover the roots and the brownish spots. I've done this before and been fine. But not this time.

I rinsed it and dried it and . . . I look like someone painted the top of my head Crayola red! So today I had to go uptown in a ball cap and confess my idiocy to my hairdresser. So she re-dyed me. Then she darkened the length of it. Then she lightened the roots. And now I have perfectly even haircolor. Approximately the same shade as a brand new penny. Under orange lighting. Ugh. But it's even, and the Ronald McDonald-ness is gone.

I am choosing to read this as a sign from God. I am going to embrace my gray roots and age gracefully. Hair color is not meant for me. It was a good run, until the end, but no more for me. Mousy brown and gray may just be my fate, and I will have to accept it.

It's about freaking time!

I smoked for almost 20 years and the absolute worst part of it, worse than the coughing or the expense or being told to go outside in sub-zero temperatures, was getting health lectures from tan people. I hate tans now, and for good reason. Tan people who scowl at smokers are all hypocrites.

The tanning industry, that means tanning beds and lotions and even the fake tan guys with their sprays and lotions, is just as bad as the tobacco industry ever was. They promote tanning to kids, they promote tanning as glamorous and beautiful, and they perpetuate the myth of the "healthy" tan. The fake bake guys still promote the idea that pale is ugly and tan is the way to be and if they can take candy cigarettes off the shelf then the bronzers have to go too. They need to be held accountable. And now, it seems, they might be.

A recent study has found tanning beds to be as deadly as arsenic. The radiation they put out is carcinogenic, no two ways about it. And if some clever lawyer can prove that the tanning bed companies knew about this and didn't tell anyone, then there's a class-action suit in the future. I can't wait.

I read somewhere that the movie ratings people were considering giving an automatic R rating to any movie where a person smokes. That means that the old 101 Dalmations cartoon movie, if made today, would be given an R rating because of Cruella's cigarette. I think that eventually the same should be said for tans. If a naturally pale person like Scarlet Johanson has a tan in a movie, there should be, at the least, public outrage. Skin cancers are ridiculously prevalent in our society, precisely because people (women especially) are embarrassed to be seen with a natural skin color. Even me. I'm pale and I don't wear shorts because of how pale my legs are. And I wear spf 85 when I go out!

Say what you will about men in black eyeliner and nail polish, or women with black hair and blond roots, the goth movement at least brought pale back. I too, like Martin Luther King Jr., have a dream where people are no longer judged by their skin color. Especially when the alternative seems to be irradiating teenagers for prom.

I wish I were better at the housewife thing.

I wish I were better than I am. I know what I want to do, but I can't ever seem to remember to do any of it, or find the motivation to. I envy people who wake up with a full to-do list in their head and then just commence doing it. Me, I can't even remember the date, and I keep trying to check my watch for it when I haven't worn a watch that gave the date in almost 20 years. Here are just a few things I want to do, but never seem able to.

I want to plan meals out ahead of time, so that I'll actually have all of the required ingredients, or maybe just have the food thawed. I would love to go to the grocery store and buy all the things, and only the tings, I need to make specific meals for the week. But I just end up buying the things I wrote on the grocery list, which means the things we have run out of during the week. Unfortunately that means that I often don't have enough of an ingredient because I haven't yet run out to buy more. I need a cup of parmesan to make pesto sauce, so as long as I have half a cup left I forget to buy more and can't eat pesto sauce.

I want to vacuume twice a week. I even wrote out a schedule where vacuuming was listed twice. But then Tuesday came around and the floors looked fine, and the baby needed lunch and then Ryan came home and I had to get on her about her homework, and then it was time to figure out what I could make for dinner with nothing thawed out and only half a pantry of stuff, so it got put off. Vacuuming is just so easy to put off!

I want to be the sort of mom who remembers every week to go through the house and empty the various trash cans on garbage day, but I am not. I end up with a waste basket overflowing with multi-colored lint beside the washing machine and a can in the bathroom with empty cardboard tubes sprouting out the top, the day after the trash gets picked up.

And while I'm at it, my potholders are filthy. I want to somehow be able to remember on laundry day to go through the house and collect all the rag rugs and potholders and wash them too, but I never do. I barely ever remember to go get the week's bibs from the kitchen.

How do other people remember to do all these things? Is it that they had more organized mothers themselves? Is it a role model thing? Or is it just some ingrained character flaw that I don't think to dust any higher than I can see or to clean off the tops of my ceiling fan blades? What exactly is wrong with me that I don't know to do these things?

Fertility gods

Years ago, when I was a young rebellious teen with more money that sense, and not much money, I decided that I wanted to have a baby. I specifically wanted to have a baby with the boy I was seeing at the time. I call him a boy because he was not then, nor is he now, nor will he likely ever be, a man in all but the physical sense. And so, to spiritually enhance my fertility, and to rebelliously marr my body, I had an ankh tattooed below my navel, over my womb. I had read that it was a fertility symbol, and i did like the tattoos, but let me tell you, after one pregnancy (let alone two), a tattoo right below the navel looks much like a deflated balloon. It's all dis-proportioned and really just wonky. Don't ever do it. One year later, though, I got pregnant with Ryan.

many less years ago, after a painful and expensive vasectomy reversal, I decided (duh) to get pregnant again. I went on Amazon.com and found, for less than ten dollars, a coral ring I liked, coral being a fertility symbol for the more New Age of us out there. I bought it and wore it and quickly became pregnant with Tommy.


Now, I want to become pregnant again. Logic would dictate that I just put the old coral ring back on, but sadly, I cannot. My finger is now too big for it, and a largely sentimental part of me thinks that someday Tommy and his wife may want to have a child and I can then give them the ring that gave me him. I want a new heirloom (yes, a ten dollar ring from Amazon.com can be an heirloom!) for this baby. I ignore the fact that I'd have to be skinned to give Ryan an heirloom. So, I need a new ring. Or pendant or earrings or whatever. But, despite wanting a specific fertility symbol, I'm picky enough not to want a giant penis statue to set on my nightstand and someday bequeath to my daughter-in-law. So I again look for coral. And guess what. The price
has gone up! A lot!. At least for rings I like, anyway. And the earrings are all dangly, too uncomfortable to wear 24/7 for 9+ months. And the necklaces are either heavy and chunky or elastic and made of tiny chips, and I can too easily imagine those breaking in my bed and filling it with shards of dead sea-life. No, I need something heirloom and daughter-in-law ready (I know my next will be another boy, so I'm probably already pregnant with a girl, knowing my luck), preferably cheap enough that Tom will let me buy it.

But also, what can I give Ryan, since her crazy voodoo symbol was tattoo? I know kids don't need any conception aid from their mothers, but if one kid gets it the rest should too.

Random thoughts

I have never really liked Kate Gosselin. Ive envied her organization and her ambition to clean (on her knees scrubbing the floor daily?!) but she's always treated her husband like one of the kids, but worse. That's always kind of irritated me. Apparently it hasn't sat too well with him either, because they're getting divorced now. On this week's episode she was all splotchy-faced and tear-streaked saying she didn't want it, and he said how he was excited because it's a new chapter in his life and he's only 32. Funny how I now hate him.

I hate haircuts. For one thing, I have really fucked up hair. I have enough hair for 3 people, so if i cut it short it poofs out horribly and when it's long it's like wearing a sweater down my back. And also, it's wavy at the bottom but it's so heavy that it pulls itself straight at the top, so I look like I have a perm growing out but I don't. I don't think I've ever really gotten a good haircut, just varying degrees of bad, and now I have to go get another one tomorrow, to try to fix a terrible one I got last week. Get this: I told the lady (no names, to protect my ass) I wanted maybe 2 inches cut off and she said "Nope, not what I'm doing" and cut off about 5 inches, then told me she had compromised. And when it poofed, she blamed my shampoo; it seems I need more moisture to avoid a consequence I told her would come to pass. And the left side is longer than the right and it's shorter in the front than in the back and I want to cry because it's going to take at least a year to grow back out and . . . .

I have a high school reunion coming up. I should be completely past it since my high school career was just one embarrassment after another, but I'm all Romy and Michelle about it and now I'm carrying 30 pounds of baby weight AND I have a bad hair cut, but I'm wondering also what I will wear. I don't really have good clothes, certainly nothing to impress anyone in. I have one pair of jeans and a few tops, and ill-fitting nursing bras. But since I thrive on worry, this will do for the summer, at least after tomorrow's haircut.

Tommy turns one in August. I have to plan a birthday party. I don't want to; I want him to still be my little baby. He started walking last week. I need a new one. Hey, maybe I'm knocked up already! That'll help me explain the flab at the reunion. But then i won't be able to drink the pain away while jackasses reminisce about that time I walked the entire length of the freshman hallway with my skirt in the back of my underwear. Ahh, good times.

Goals for my house

1. Dry-Lock the basement.
2. Carpet the living room
3. Paint the kitchen . . . but what color?
   
4. Put in a back patio
5. Put river rock in the front flower beds
6. Get a lilac bush
7. Put hooks in the porch and deck roofs for hanging flower basket
   

. . . . to be continued

Wii would like to play

I'm opposed to video games. Not the games themselves, because I remember fondly the antiquated concept of the arcade, but the systems that bring them into homes. I'm opposed to video games for the same reason I'm opposed to legalizing pot; because too many people get hooked and become mindless zombies sitting in front of TVs, never going outside or doing much of anything.

That said, Ryan wants a Wii. Of course she does. Her friends have them and the technology is new and shiny and seductive, and the damn thing costs almost $300, not including balance boards and dance mats and extra controllers in nifty shapes. So when she told me last year, before her tenth birthday, that all she wanted in the whole world was a Wii, I told her. . .

"Buy it yourself and I'll let you have one, but I won't let anyone buy one for you because I'm against them." I am the meanest mom in the world, aren't I.

So I drew up a thermometer goal chart like charities have and notched it from zero to three hundred, and labeled a plastic recipe card box with the words "Wii fund" and told her to start saving. In the last thirteen months she has washed cars, saved birthday and Christmas card money, set up Kool-Aid stands, and taken donations from family friends impressed with her determination. And finally, she made it. Her Wii, complete with wii-mote, nun chuck, and Wii Sports game, is in transit from Amazon to here. And even though I dread the fights, me wanting her to go outside and her wanting to play just one more game, I admire her. At her age I couldn't save up for a new Poison tape without spending the money on candy bars first. But she stuck with it and saved $250 in change, bills, and one amazon gift card. I am so proud of her.

Is it time yet?

It would almost certainly involve that godawful diabetes diet. And injections too, now that I walk among the ranks of the insured. I would be exhausted from hormones and late night pees, but still have to wake up with a baby. It would involve what they call "tandem nursing". I would get even fatter than I already am.

But part of me, a small but LOUD part, wants another baby. Wants to get pregnant this month if not sooner, as a matter of fact. When I was growing up, kids were 18-24 months apart. When you were in sixth grade your sibling was somewhere from forth to eighth. Now people wait until baby number one is three before having baby number two. Well, I did the waiting. My oldest is in sixth grade this fall, for gods' sakes. Now I want to do it the normal way, close together. And also, part of it is the pregnancy, regardless of the baby. (Not that I want anything to go wrong with the baby, just that pregnancy is a whole experience in itself.) I want new maternity clothes (my ass outgrew the old ones), and I want weekly email updates on what's forming today. I want to think about names, and try to guess sex based on heart rate. I want to feel kicks and cravings and to be able to not suck in my stomach when people can see me in profile.

I saw Ryan with a baby when she was little and I remember feeling sad that she would never be a big sister at that age. I want Tommy to get to be a big brother at the age when he's a "big boy" about it rather than seeing it for the spit-up and dirty diapers side of it. And I really don't want to be 40 and pregnant with my next one. I want to be pregnant NOW. I wonder if I can talk Tom into it.

Romy & Michelle

My fifteen year class reunion is this summer. I didn't even know there was such a thing, but I guess when your class skips the ten year, you go for fifteen.
I think in this era of facebook, reunions might be redundant, but I still plan on going and I don't know why. Well, there is always the obvious; the desire to see the jocks all old and fat and poor. Perhaps this is why Tom hasn't ever been to a high school reunion. He was a jock, and I'll say no more. :)

I went to my five year reunion, and it was a bust. It was a keg party in some guy's Mom's front yard. (That guy is, for two more days, my daughter's school principle. LOL) The jerks from high school were still jerks, but this time they were drunk jerks. I got a half hour smoking lecture from a health nut so tan you could count the carcinomas. And there were no "What are you doing these days?" updates because everyone was either just starting out after college or, like me, working some schlub job with nothing interesting to say.

Why do I want to go to this thing? I'm fat now and I've aged poorly. For the past 6 months I've been letting the dye grow out of my hair, wearing my grays with pride. And the other night, when faced with tiny facebook profile pictures of classmates who still look 23, I dyed it again. This is going to be like my thirtieth birthday all over again: nerve-wracking and anticipatory but ultimately anticlimactic. Maybe I'd feel differently if I had any old high school friends. Or if I had even had any back when I actually attended high school.

I need to be Claritin clear!

I have seasonal allergies. Every spring and fall since infancy, I have announced to whoever was nearby that I am, in fact, dying. I get the itchy watery eyes, the runny and stuffed up nose, the sore throat from post-nasal drip, and exhaustion made worse by Benadryl and Sudafed. But one thing that really makes the hay fever worse, is when people tell me it's not that bad.

"Oh you're not sick; it's just allergies."
I don't care if it's pollen or a virus, my body is waging the same war and it's wearing me out. Aside from the fact that allergic reactions can be fatal, proving that allergies in general do have the potential to do some real damage, that dismissive attitude is rude and inaccurate. I AM sick, and to say that it's "just" allergies so it doesn't count is like saying "Oh you're not really worn out from that 10 mile ride. It's just a stationary bike." You can get worn out on a "fake" bike and I can get truly sick from a "fake" threat to my immune system.

I think I'm going to go to the doctor about this for the first time ever. Even the innerwebs say allergies are worse this year and I think I need something more effective and less drowsy than Benadryl. I'm going to ask for Claritin. I just can't keep up with Tommy as it is now. I'm so exhausted that for dinner tonight he got one jar of beef and half a pudding cup. That's not a good dinner.

Freecycle

Freecycle sounds so good when you first hear about it. Instead of just throwing stuff away or going through the hassle of a yard sale just for a few dollars, you give it away. People give and take and it's all very hippy commune like. But in reality it seem to be a bunch of illiterate mooches begging for stuff. I've always heard that beggars can't be choosers, but apparently on freecycle they can. So now, here are some of my favorite gems culled from my local freecycle. Enjoy.

1. Looking for tan colored bricks chip are ok as long as they are in tacked can pick up. (I added the emphasis)
2. rail road tiles for drive only need 4 tired of people drivin thur yard thanks in advance my son can pick up just e-mail me (Tiles? How about rail road ties instead?)
3. Need a good working frost free refigerator asap. I live on fixes fixed income and cannot afford to buy one. Must be in good working order and not all marked up. Thank you in advance. (The important thing is that it not be marked up. People on fixed incomes who beg for free refrigerators from strangers on the internet need to have nice things.)
4. my sister is looking for a 4-5 month old husky/shepard mix puppy there is a kennel that goes with it just email me if you are interested in it. (What the hell does this even mean? They're asking for a puppy or offering a kennel, but I can't tell which.)
5. 
   if you get that info can you pass it along to us as well? we have a john deere gator, that the bat cost a small fortune. (I thought un reguards was funny. I can only translate it to me not guarding again. And what bat cost a small fortune, baseball or flying mammal?)
   
6. Still wanting an ALL WHITE MALE KITTEN, PREFER SHORT-HAIRED. (If you need something that apecific, you're going to have to pay for it. Free kittnes are a take what you get kind of deal. And this woman's been posting this same request for over a month now.)
7. I am taking up a collection for my residance well there not mine but they are were i work lol (I don't know what he just said but he seems to think it was funny.)
8. I AM LOOKING FOR A FREEZER, HAVE YET TO LEARN HOW TO SHELF STORE HAMBURGER MEAT. (Sarcasm doesn't help your case, lady.)
9. i know this is a long shot but my hard drive broke on my lab top and i need a new hard drive for a tobash i know i speeled that wrong or iam looking for a old labtop that has wifi so i cant get online and do research things (Do you mean a Toshiba? And I think they're called laptops, since they sit on your lap and not on your lab. And if it helps, you can not get online just fine without the wifi.)

More to come, I'm sure

on Octomom

Yes she's a plastic surgery nightmare. Yes she has some mental health issues which require her to be the center of attention and to create her own audience. Yes she is on welfare; like it or not food stamps are welfare, even if disability payments are up for interpretation. Yes she needs help, with the babies and the underlying need for them which will have God-knows-what effect on her now that there are no more embryoes and no more babies to be bad. But I really wish all the zero population growth people would just shut up. People have more than one or two babies all the time and I'm sorry if I don't believe that the future of the planet really depends on the uterus of one psycho in California. Plus, how do you determine zero population growth anyway?

Tom had twins when I met him, and I had one child. Does mine replace the father or me? And let's just pretend Tom's twins were just one kid, does that kid replace him or the mother? The mother has 7 other kids so who do they replace? If Ryan replaced her father, who had another child already when she was born, then Tommy replaces either me or Tom. But my ex's ex has another kid now too, so that kid replaces either his mother is the first one is my ex's, or his father if the first is the mother's. And still there's an abbey of monks somewhere being replaced by the children of Tom's litter0bearing (yeah, I said it) ex.

See? The "two kids, one for you and one for your husband/wife" theory is gone in today's world of step-siblings and half-siblings and unknown by-blows. So the people who blame Nadya Suleman for a population bloom can stfu. Should she have had all those kids? Probably not. But should you have had your kids, or me mine, or Tom's ex whose birthday is the reason millions of people get drunk on Cinco de Mayo have birthed her own soccer team? Like with marriage equality 9see, I didn't say gay marriage), the form your family takes should be no one else's business.

that said, I worry about these kids of Octomom's. Not only are there so many she'll be legally required to live in a house the shape of a shoe, but she's proven herself in numerous interviews to be completely batshit insane. I can't wait for the TLC series, or at least the one hour specials. "Completely crazy, the Octomom story"

Ooh, sounds like a Lifetime movie.

Jim Carrey's not a doctor! Or a parent!

I've been reading a lot lately about the vaccination debate, and I have some pretty strong opinions (shocking!) on the subject. If refusing to vaccinate your child only affected your child, I wouldn't care who did or didn't get any shots at all. But not all vaccines take, and by refusing to vaccinate your kids at all, you put others who were vaccinated at risk too.

Say you have an elementary school with 1000 kids, and 70 of them aren't immune to measles because their vaccines didn't work. If a fifth grader gets measles from a vacation to someplace with an epidemic, there's a chance that it won't spread far - the odds are that that one child won't come into contact with all 69 other vulnerable kids. But if there are 200 other kids who weren't immunized in the first place, the odds go up that all 70 kids will get measles, plus any babies they might come into contact with too young to have gotten their shots yet. It's called herd immunity. Smallpox was wiped out because of vaccines. Polio is on its way too. But if I were to ever lose a child to these or any other vaccine-available diseases just because some idiot chose to get their medical information from Ace Ventura and a Playboy model, I'd be arrested for murder 1.

If you don't want to immunize your kids, then fine. But they shouldn't be allowed in public schools. It's your parental privilege to make that choice, but for the common good that choice should have consequences.

For another thing, I wonder about all this autism in the first place. "Autism rates are skyrocketing!" Are we sure abotu that? Or is it just as likely (or more) that autism diagnoses are skyrocketing. It's a lot like the SIDS rate, but in reverse.* Jenny MCarthy's son (from what I understand from reading articles she herself has written) was diagnosed with autism because he flapped his arms when agitages and refused to make eye contact. He is now considered to be high functioning because he can speak, listen, and follow directions. Twenty years ago this would have been a kid with eccentricities and a nervous habit, but now he's autistic. My daughter was almost diagnosed with Asperger's once because she is painfully shy and over-sensitive to criticism. If you even raised your voice to her she would cringe. Now that she's getting a little of that adolescent attitude she's less likely to cringe than to roll her eyes though, so I guess estrogen is the new cure for Asperger's, huh. Asperger's had, until recently, very strict diagnostic criteria. A patient had to present a certain number of symptoms in order to be considered a candidate for an Asperger's diagnosis, just like any other illness or syndrome. But now it's just tossed around like ADHD was five or ten years ago. Brown is the new black.

I feel for the parent who takes their normal, smiling, talking child to the doctor for shots one day and wakes up the next with an unresponsive stranger who would rather rock in a corner than look at them and who doesn't talk or hug them anymore. But it's coincidental. Autism presents very suddenly around the first birthday, which is also one of the times kids get shots. To link the two is no more factual than to say that birthday cake causes autism. I'm sorry, but it's not.



*SIDS rates are falling, but suffocation rates are rising. The "Back To Sleep" campaign lowered SIDS rates by 40%, but only because now every baby who dies in the crib while on his belly gets an automatic suffocation diagnosis, same with co-sleeping. Infant mortality remains the same while "SIDS" kills less kids every year.

innerwebz hates me

Google results for "I love Tom": about 158,000

Google results for "I love Charlie": about 43,800

More people on the internet love my husband than me.

Post-Columbine

Well, another Columbine anniversary has come and gone. It's been a decade now since 2 bullied and disenfranchised teens were pushed too far and changed everything. Not that they were justified- nothing justifies violence and the randomness of it went beyond mere revenge - but a lot of bullied and formerly bullied people understood that day. I am so glad I went to school before Columbine, back when you could be quiet and wear all black and glare at jocks without people thinking you were about to blow up the cafeteria. Now all it takes to get a school closed down for an hour is a threatening note dropped in the bathroom. Kids who write violent stories (didn't we all have that notebook and hate the cheerleaders?) are arrested or expelled or both. At first I thought the post-Columbine world would be one which valued conformity a little less, one in which bullies got called out for their actions. But that was all talk and so, ten years later, the high school experience is (from what I've heard) basically the same.

Ugh! Neighbors.

I have 2 loud neighbors across the street. One has a drag racing car and he revs it for about 2 hours every Friday. I don't live next to a drag strip so I occasionally forget about the noise and open the windows on nice Fridays. This guy repays my stupidity by occasionally forgetting which day is Friday and revving the jet engine car on other surprise days. The other guy likes to hangout in his garage and play music. Loud music. Louder than the grandstand I live behind ever has. I should go ask him to turn it down but I fear confrontation and it seems to me that playing ten year old country songs on a PA system in your garage is confrontational in and of itself. I can't believe that he thinks the rest of the neighborhood appreciates this, or even that we don't mind. So I'm pretty sure that if I were to walk over there, bowed down into the wind from his speakers, that he'd have an attitude about it. And in my experience, people who sit in their garages drinking beer and being loud and playing ten year old country songs on Sunday afternoons are just begging for fights.

If I ever move, it will be to the middle of nowhere, surrounded by trees, with no neighbors to speak of. Ahhh, what a nice dream.

RIP Lawrence Kutner, etc.

I watched this week's episode of House and it was bad. Kutner killed himself and no one knew why. The guy who played Kutner got a job in the Obama administration so that's all good, but irrelevant to the show.

There's a thinly veiled parallel to reality here. When Kutner was found, everyone was shocked. No one had seen it coming, no one had known to try to help. He hadn't reached out to anyone. But what if he had? What if he'd called everyone he knew over and over threatening to kill himself, for years? What if he had been so filled with self-pity that nothing had helped? What if he had alienated everyone with his abject refusal to do anything more than drink, call people, and cry out, "Why me?" to anyone within ear shot, about common problems he had brought on himself? Kutner had no romantic interest written into the show. What if he'd driven away every romantic interest he'd had until no one would have him? What if everyone he'd known had, for their own sanity, been forced to let him go long before he killed himself? What if instead of, "We didn't know, we never saw it coming, he never told us," it had been that everyone saw it coming, everyone knew, and he told everyone, but nothing had changed? What if every person in Kutner's life had tried to help, had listened and given advice until they had no more to give? How would the writers invent a tomorrow for people who had just had to let him go?

Play nice without God

Invisible friend, invisible man in the sky, fairy tale book, fairy godmother in the sky. In the past few weeks I have noticed a disturbing online trend. Atheists, those folks who choose not to believe in any gods or supernatural powers like fate or whatnot, have become supremely condescending. I get that the whole point is to let logic and science run the show. That you are an intellectual and don't believe in anything that can't be proven. I understand that and I respect it. But can you not at least let the rest of the population believe what they want to believe without harassing and insulting them? Even if you are right and they are all weak-willed sheep who can't think for themselves, as long as they're not hurting anyone leave them be.
I also understand that a lot of people seem to think that religion is hurting people, but I disagree. Religion is a crutch. Even if your one particular belief system is true, it's still a crutch. Religion helps people who can't conceive of their own mortality, who need to believe that they and the people they care about will live on after death. It also helps in uncertain times to feel less alone in the universe if you believe there is some force out there looking out for you. I can't say that there is or isn't, but the belief in it seems to make millions of people feel better. The problem only comes in when a person's belief system tries to claim king of the hill status. No harm comes from "I believe in God," but rather in "My belief is right and yours is wrong and it's my job to set you straight."
Calling religious people weak and mocking their religious beliefs doesn't help anyone./ It's merely the flip side to the same coin they've been using for years. It's bullying, plain and simple. It's saying that what you believe is right and what they believe is wrong and that they need to be set straight. Whether it's Christians saying it to Jews, Catholics to Protestants, or atheists to everyone else, it's still bullying and it's bullshit.
So cut it out, whatever side of the fence you may be on. Let people pray when they want to and keep your prayers to yourself. Believe in whatever god you like but don't tell me mine is any worse than yours or even that I need one. And if you don't believe in one at all, please stop mocking the ones that do believe. Sometimes people who use crutches actually need them.

Stupid things I take from movies (and one book)

1. I can't eat strawberry pie, just in case a gypsy put a curse into it. Thank you, Stephen King's Thinner.
2. I can't use four pronged faucet handles because there's a chance that Freddy Krueger might turn them into hands and slit my wrists. Thank you, Nightmare On Elm Street 3.
3. I can't eat shrimp cocktail that's hung around the outside of a cup because it reminds me of the dinner scene in Beetlejuice.
4. I can't spray myself in the face with anything because the spray bottles in Patricia Cornwell's novel, Unnatural Exposure were laced with smallpox.
5. I have never once been able to look into a mirror and say "Bloody Mary" three times. Better safe than sorry.
6. I can't use an automatic garage door opener unless I am safely inside either a locked car or house because of Scream.

. . . to be continued

Damn You, Sparkly Edward!

My daughter reads Twilight. I am having a very hard time with this. SHe was all obsessed with Harry Potter for a long time, but I think that's almost a generational thing. Then she was searching for a new series and since Twilight is freaking everywhere these days she got pulled in. I was fine with it (I was a vampire fan back in the day myself) but since then I've heard more about these books that worries me.

She read the first book in one day. She got it at 5:00 pm and finished it at 3:30 am. She never read a Harry Potter book that fast and we stood in a Borders for 6 hours waiting for the last one. Then she went to the library her in town and read book 2 in the series and is now eagerly awaiting book 3, which is 3 weeks overdue at the library and which she is third in line to check out anyway. What worries me about these books is not the violence (I'm not an idiot, vampire books by definition have violence in them) but the sexuality. Not that there's sex, because I've been told that there isn't. But they're all passion and romance and "Edward is so sparkly and beautiful." And Ryan reads this and doesn't give a childlike "Yuck!" in response. She doesn't roll her eyes at Bella's melodramatic professing of undying teenage love. She doesn't question a sixteen year old's eagerness to become an undead blood drinker just to be with a guy she's only known a few months. She doesn't declare Edward's angst-ridden passions to be "gross". And that can only mean one thing.

Ryan is turning into a teenager. Not numerically speaking of course; she's not even eleven yet. But emotionally she's entering the years of overreactions and heartfelt hyperbole. My wonderfully delightfully nonconformist daughter is at the cusp of puberty. That means all sorts of sparkly and beautiful Edwards of her own. That means ten household rules broken for every one she gets caught at. That means a first kiss I may never even find out about. It means me getting shut out while all the bad influences get let in. It means carefully hidden shaving cuts on her bony little legs, red and swollen over-plucked eyebrows, and underwear buying based solely on what she sees in the PE locker room.

Ryan will be entering sixth grade next year, and in this town that means junior high. I remember junior high and while I'm sure it's not exactly the same (the AquaNet haze has probably lifted by now) it's probably kept some of the same themes. Boys, pimple-stress, cliques, peer pressure, fashion obsession. And while it was "Like A Virgin" when I was eleven it's "If You Seek Amy" now. (Say it out loud fast.) I am not ready for this. I am so completely not ready for the day Ryan wakes up and puts on a turtleneck in warm weather, convinced that I'm a blind idiot. And what's worse, I will know what she's planning when she picks out a turtleneck while school clothes shopping, and I will buy it for her in a conscious choice to remain ignorant. Probably not anytime really soon, but not too terribly far over the horizon.

I'm not ready for an adolescent daughter. I want my little girl back.