kdiddy.org

Still more rough days trying to get through this semester. Yeah, there’s light at the end of the tunnel, but there’s some old lawn furniture and a bear and some marbles and a field of sharpened bamboo between here and there.

But obviously, what I have to go through in the next few weeks is nothing compared to what other mamas have to go through the rest of their days. So, in recognizing how very, very lucky I am and how not even the greatest deed would make me worthy of my kid, I want to remember this goofy little moment that we shared earlier this evening that might otherwise be forgotten if I hadn’t gotten that harsh reminder to do whatever I can to relish it.

For Easter, we gave the baby a few books out of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, including the Do-It-Yourself Book. He was filling out the page on his predictions and got stuck on, “In twenty years, cars will run on ________.” The baby thought about this for awhile and finally said, “Cars will run on…sidewalks!”

Thanks, dude.

Back when a dude broke into our house, and after the initial shock wore off, the husband and I had some questions. Like, why would the guy take the cumbersome and not very valuable DVDs and not the lightweight and higher-street-value Wii? (By the way, ne’er-do-wells who may be reading, that is NOT an invitation to finish what that jackass started.) The cop chuckled and shook his head at our naivete.

“You would steal that because you have common sense. Criminals like this guy do NOT have common sense,” he explained.

A lack of common sense is probably responsible for the events that transpired earlier this evening.

The baby’s baseball practices started tonight. The husband and I were chilling on the bleachers, giggling at our scrawny kid rounding the bases. A mom behind me yelled at someone: “GO FIGHT SOMEWHERE ELSE! THERE’S KIDS HERE!” I jerked around and saw two young men, one no longer wearing a shirt, walking toward their cars and continuing to argue. The husband and I shook our heads at their stupidity and went back to watching the practice.

I turned around again to see if they were still arguing and noticed that one of the guys was pointing something at the other guy. Something silver. And shiny.

“Hey,” I said to the husband. “Does that guy have a gun?”

In retrospect, my reaction to this new information was really puzzling. I turned back around and went back to watching the practice, not really concerned that someone was brandishing a firearm just a few yards from where my son was. Luckily, the other parents had their BAD THING thinking caps on and yelled at the coaches to get the kids out of the immediate area and started calling 911.

I turned back around and watched the rest of the events unfold. From what I could gather, the two guys were fighting over a woman and there may have been some custody issues. Other parents went over to yell at the guy, but I tend to stay away from people with guns. Yosemite Sam’s girlfriend became irritated with the confrontational parents and whined, “He put the gun away! Gawd! What’s your problem?”

No common sense. I don’t know who shows up at a kids’ baseball practice to start some shit. I don’t know who brings a gun to a kids’ baseball practice. I don’t know who draws a gun at a kids’ baseball practice. And I really don’t know who asks such a dumb fucking question as, “What’s your problem?” when a gun is pulled with 50 kids, including presumably one of their own, nearby.

I got a bag of coffee beans from a local roaster in my CSA box last week. I was really looking forward to trying them and yesterday morning I ground them up and brewed my morning medicine, that which fuels me to actually get out of the house each morning.

I poured my cup and took a sip. It sucked. It was bitter and tasted like the stuff that sits on burners all day at the 7-11. I was upset. And it all went downhill from there.

My kid has been a real pain in the ass lately about getting ready for school. He dawdles and whines about how he doesn’t want to go. As far as I can ascertain, there’s no real problem causing him anxiety, no bullies or anything, he just doesn’t want to go because, “all we do is LEARN.”

So he was pulling out all the stops yesterday. Whining. Stomping his feet. Trying to slap my hands away when I dragged him out of bed. Screaming back when I told him for the sixth time that he needed to eat his breakfast. Far too much for me to deal with on a half cup of shite coffee.

While I was explaining to him that, “What do you mean why do you need to put your socks on? You need to put your socks on because WE. NEED. TO. LEAVE!” the sleeping husband peeled open an eye a little and mumbled, “What’s his problem?”

I stomped out of the house with the baby and put him on the bus. When I got home I started working on getting the husband up and out of bed in a reasonable amount of time. Around 8:20, I told him to get out of bed for the third time, and he snapped at me, “I KNOW! I HAVE A FUCKING EXAM TODAY! LEAVE ME ALONE!”

I hated both of them in that moment. I couldn’t believe that I had to endure both of them getting pissed at me for trying to get them off to where they needed to go, especially when they just had to go to school while I had to go to work and school and deal with situations at my job that, frankly, aren’t always that fun or easy to deal with. Plus, the nagging anxiety that my husband is graduating from college in the midst of the shittiest economy ever and it’s possible that the thin financial string that we’ve been hanging by the past few years will have to sustain us even longer, provided nothing catastrophic happens like me getting laid off.

And the people who were so terrible at their jobs that our economy is now in the state that it is not only are guaranteed to keep their jobs, they get millions of dollars in bonuses.

That thought set me off and I went on this misanthropic spiral thinking about all of the utterly shitty people in the world and how they go on to create shittier copies of themselves and how I wished I had some superpower where I could drop 2 liter bottles of Coke on the toes of people I hated without consequence. And it’s not that we need to start regulating the number of children that people have but there does need to be some kind of social shift in the face of biological imperatives that it’s okay to not want to have kids but goddammit why do some of the most vocal proponents of the childfree movement have to be such a-holes and it’s not that I’m a total nihilist because I’ve felt something real when I’ve been in the presence of my family.

Oh and THEN I read this article that pissed me off even more. I mean, it’s not that it’s hard to draw parallels between Pittsburgh and Detroit but they’re two totally different places and what works in one place won’t necessarily work in the other. And I must have been looking for things to make me angry because then I went and read the comments which just made it worse because I hate people and all of their stupid “thoughts” and “opinions.”

I don’t know. Maybe I should go back on anti-depressants.

Or spike my coffee once I get better beans.

I was pissy throughout the day. I think my little family is at its worst when we convince ourselves that we’re not in this together. That we’re the only ones bogged down in our struggles and the other two members simply don’t understand what we go through day to day. I don’t know how to fix that.

I was instantly awestruck when the nurse in the OR first handed my son to me. I think I was still reeling from the crazy emergency that became his birth and too doped up on medication to recognize the feelings washing over me at first. But as things settled down (and I came down) I started to notice the heart-wrenching love that I felt for him. It’s hard to describe. It was new and different but at the same time it felt familiar, like it had been there all along. I just didn’t realize that I could feel that way about someone.

When I first saw him, it was like everything slowed to a complete stop for just an instant, but an instant that seemed to stretch on forever. Everything that I understood about life and time and love ended. And when the earth started spinning again a few milliseconds later it was in a new direction or had switched tracks. Even in the next few weeks, when things got really dark inside my head, that feeling was my touchstone.

I know that not everyone has that same experience. I know that for some people, for whatever reason, that love takes time to make itself known and for others it never really materializes or it takes on a different form. That’s just how things go.

Occasionally, I wonder what it would take for that feeling to end. What would be the one thing that my son could do that would damage or destroy the love that I have for him. I’ve come up blank so far, even when I’ve imagined some really horrible things. It’s just not possible for me to excise something that has been a part of me as long as I’ve been ME.

But apparently for some, that love, or the sheen of it anyway, is something tacked on. Perhaps clicked into place like a Lego piece, relatively easy to remove, or perhaps a brick set in place with chewing gum.

I don’t understand it. I don’t understand how a person gets to such a lonely place. I don’t understand how a person can witness true love and the desire to extend that love and be so fucking terrified of being judged by some outside group of people that can’t possibly know your relationship with your child that they’ll push it away.

The ugly words that those parents said to their child sound like giant pickaxes hacking away at their very essence. The tears that they cried while saying it…I don’t think they’re the tears of martyrs doing what must be done in the name of their hateful god. I think they’re the tears of someone being ripped apart. But to admit that to their child and to themselves would be weak, unfaithful. And suddenly what they’ve been told to believe over what they know of themselves and of love doesn’t make any sense at all. And how frightening must that be.

I’m not a better mother because I can’t imagine ever having that conversation with my child. I’m not a better mother than anyone. I don’t know what it would take, but I would certainly know if I was selling myself out.

Schmutzie invited me to participate in Grace in Small Things. It’s taken me a few days to get started, but I was just reminded what today is, so it seems like a fitting way to begin such a project. And we’re supposed to do five things but I think today I’ll just do this one, since it’s a biggie.

Today is Blog for Choice day, which honors the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade ruling. So my first positive thing for Grace in Small Things is my reproductive freedom.

I was not always pro-choice. From the time that I was old enough to know what abortion was, I was staunchly pro-life. My very Catholic schools made a point of telling us, especially the girls, how wrong it was. This stayed with me until my teen years when I started rethinking a lot of things, as teenagers tend to do, including my feelings on women being able to decide when they have children, even if that decision includes terminating a pregnancy. I timidly changed my position to pro-choice but not pro-abortion.

A few more years of maturity and realizing that I don’t like people to insert themselves into my personal struggles and maybe I felt the same way toward others put me into pro-choice but kind of ambivalent about the whole thing territory.

Until I got pregnant.

To be fair, I had a lot of supportive people around me and they were all people that I sought comfort and advice from. But there was still a decent dose of pressure. Being as far up shit creek as I was, I didn’t know what exactly to do about my pregnancy, but I knew for sure that I was the one who was going to live with whatever I decided.

I got as far as the doctor’s office and making my appointment and arranging everything when it finally became clear to me that having an abortion was not what I wanted to do.

Ultimately, I obviously decided to continue with the pregnancy, but the experience solidified me as a pro-choice person. I wanted to have my baby, but I could definitely understand not wanting to continue a pregnancy. And I couldn’t imagine being forced in either direction. It’s a hard thing to try to explain to someone who hasn’t been through that situation. But having my rights over my own body and my own life transformed me profoundly.

If you don’t feel the same way that I do, I do not say these things to offend you or to be combative. I only hope to give a little insight in my weird little life and maybe gain some understanding along the way.

Also: good start, dude.

This is a picture of Aretha Franklin singing at yesterday’s inauguration. And that is her hat. And I am here to tell you both the simple and complex reasons why that hat is awesome.

1) It’s grey, which is perfect for a cold, January day.
2) When she was walking to the podium, I wasn’t sure if the hat was decorated with a sculpture of a bird or a bow. Any time I have to struggle with that distinction, that is a fashion win in my book.
3) It has Swarovski crystals on the bow. Nice.
4) It’s on Aretha Motherfuckin Franklin’s head.
5) It was made by milliner Jason Song of Mr. Song Millinery of Detroit, Michigan.

Whether or not Aretha is aware of how symbolic this suddenly makes her hat for me doesn’t really matter.

As I’ve no doubt mentioned here before, I love Detroit. I go there once a year in May for the electronic music festival. Granted, that weekend is tourist-heavy and I’m sure things are different the other 51 weekends of the year. But it’s truly a great city.

Telling people that I like Detroit and that I vacation there (teehee), always elicits bewildered responses. “Detroit??!?! Like, Detroit, Michigan? That Detroit?” Yes, that Detroit. True, Detroit has had it rough for years. And there’s plenty to be depressed about when you look around the city. Factories are abandoned, whole neighborhoods give off a post-apocalyptic vibe, hotels are bombed out shells of their former grandeur. But the city is very much alive.

There’s a palpable sense that Detroit will never die, even if every drop of industry disappears from the 313, even with the already wheezing automakers begging for a bailout. Detroit has music and where there is music, there is life. There is hope. There is a reason to stick your chest out and declare, “This my music, this is my city, this is my country, goddammit. I made it, I breathe it, I sing it and you can never take it from me.”

Driving along Detroit’s long and flat streets you will see plenty of boarded up buildings, but you will also see countless small businesses, including milliners like Mr. Song’s. These businesses make hats for ladies and gentlemen who wear them to parties and events and church. Pass by a church in Detroit on Sunday and you will see a dazzling array of hats on the heads of ladies. The hats make fitting crowns for these ladies who, despite seeing the heart of economic collapse around them, sing in praise of their faith in a higher being and, more importantly, their faith in themselves and their survival, even as the rest of the world turns their back to focus on carving Detroit’s epitaph.

Aretha Franklin moved to Detroit as a child and was/is, of course, one of the brightest stars to come out of Motown. She’s a legend. The only reason that she is The Aretha Franklin is because of her life experiences, which includes growing up in Detroit.

A lot of people have poked fun at her hat, at how over-the-top it was. But I think it’s extremely fitting that a hat from Detroit went to the inauguration and crowned Aretha’s performance. In a way, it’s a symbol of the struggles and perseverance of people in places like The Rust Belt, a reminder that we’re still here, no matter who is in the White House, no matter what corrupt businesspeople do. We’re still here, and we look damn fine in our hats, thank you very much.

Today is supposedly the most depressing day of the year, but I have to say…I’m not feeling it.

I worked and had class today, so it was easy to momentarily forget about all that was going on. Today is, of course, Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The baby asked us the other day if we celebrate MLK and it took me a minute to know how to respond. I mean, we don’t celebrate it like we do other holidays. There isn’t a feast or decorations associated with it, but it is one of those days that we pause to acknowledge that there isn’t just one day for compassion and understanding and battling ignorance, but that we must continue to do so every moment. The husband and I explained this to the baby and told him about other people who have spoken out in the face of injustice, whose words and actions, even their most controversial, we must continue to wear as armor in the war against hate and oppression…Malcolm X, Angela Davis, Nat Turner, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass.

Tomorrow, of course, we inaugurate Barack Obama. As the hours of George W. Bush’s presidency tick toward their last, I find myself reflecting a lot on how I feel about him as a person. Many times during the last eight years, I said that I hated him, that he made me furious, that he was evil. But I watched video of him the other day in which he answered questions about his presidency and how he felt about it now that it was coming to an end. I realized that I didn’t hate him. I listened to the way he listed the things he regards as “disappointments:” the lack of weapons of mass destruction, never capturing Bin Laden, plastering up that “Mission Accomplished” sign, the extent of the devastation of Katrina, his “inheritance” of an economy in recession. It occurred to me that he doesn’t understand what happened. Thousands and thousands of people died. Whole families were destroyed. These are not disappointments. These are catastrophes that would haunt most people until the end of time. But W., I think, is simply unaware of the reality that we live in under him. He is an unwitting tool of some project steeped in privilege and entitlement, a project that is hopefully gasping its last breaths.

Ultimately, W. is responsible for his actions as president, but the blame (and my rage) can not rest solely on his shoulders. I hope that it will be the legacy of a way of thinking and behaving, that there are people who simply don’t matter, that will die as the books close on W.’s term.

Hope.

It’s such a strange thing, isn’t it? It’s so thrilling but carries with it such an uneasy feeling. Obama doesn’t owe anyone anything and the task of making things right at this time is a job surely far too immense for a couple of measly presidential terms. Honestly, he’s proving a bit too centrist for me and some of his cabinet appointments make me very uncomfortable. But I can wait and see.

That’s my son, right after I let him push the button that cast our vote for Obama and the whole world might as well reside in that blue iris, the same way the President-elect can see the universe in the eyes of his daughters. We have your back, Barack. Show us what you we can do.

With such heavy things pressing on our minds, it’s wonderful to turn to something where the stakes are considerably lower.

Indeed, the Pittsburgh Steelers are going to the Super Bowl. Plenty has been written about how football fans, particularly Steelers fans, are an inexplicably rabid bunch. But I would argue that the anti-football folks are far more rabid. Several seemingly innocent interactions online yesterday quickly turned ugly when folks felt the need to inform me that I am stupid and/or insane for liking football.

I can understand the kneejerk defensiveness. Football is mainstream and we all know how Americans tend to react to behavior that is outside the mainstream. But oddly enough growing up and living in artistic and intellectual circles, my devotion to the Steelers was seen as, at best, a quaint remnant of my blue-collar roots or, at worst, a hint toward my true nature of hideous yinzer Morlock, something to be shed along with my grating and offensive accent and my scandalous desire to simply have fun rather than devoting every waking moment to the elusive goal of enlightenment. This belief that artistic or academic interests are mutually exclusive to football fanaticism is just…stupid.

And besides, I can wax the hell out of some eloquence when it comes to the Steelers and what they mean to Pittsburghers like me. I just know that opening the door last night and hearing the cheers of unbridled joy of people who aren’t even in the game is an amazing experience. And I know that celebrating their Super Bowl XL win on my normally silent main street is something that will flash in my mind right before I die. It’s not really The Win, you see. It’s getting the chance to see people who you normally pass on the street and maybe grunt at just…happy.

I seriously can not get over this shit.

First off, I apologize in advance for a post that’s generally a downer at a time when folks are trying to focus on happiness, but I have to get this off my chest.

The other day, Tracey sent this link to the MamaPop writers. A group of teenagers in Ukraine brutally murdered people and took video of themselves in the act. A brief discussion among us followed, mostly expressing disgust at the actions of the teenagers and at the details that were available. Everyone mentioned reading a bit of the transcript, but not being able to look at the video that was included.

I looked.

Only for a few seconds, but long enough to realize what I was watching and what I was doing by watching.

I’m fascinated by death and particularly by deaths that are wrapped in crime. One of my favorite books is Shots in the Dark and I think post-mortem photography in general is an incredible art form. I’m not sure why. I’ve pored over those pictures and contemplated how peaceful the subjects look, even if their deaths were violent. Everything in their life led up to that moment and we all share that fate. We will all be stared at by people looking down at us and we will be unable to change their perception.

I’m also a huge fan of all manner of fucked up movies. I have my limits, of course…I’m thinking specifically of Audition and Japanese horror in general. Something about that type of cinema just doesn’t sit right with me. But I’ve seen some rather unspeakable things thanks to movies.

Somehow, looking at still images, especially in black and white, and watching films of actors, even if they’re based on a true story, is extremely different than watching that video. Perhaps the crime photos seem more kosher since they’re taken by a third party who is actually performing a service.

I told Tracey that I didn’t even know why I watched it. Morbid curiosity. Voyeuristic temptation. And I think, prior to clicking “play,” I didn’t totally believe it was what it was purported to be. What did I stand to gain by watching such a thing? Validation that such things, unimaginable as they may be, actually occur? Scratching some unacceptable itch?

I’ve always been fascinated and terrified by serial killers and people who murder for no apparent reason, at random. They set their own criteria, identify those who sin in their eyes, and deal them their punishment. From the time that I understood what these people did and how they did it, I’ve always been at least a little afraid that I would end up one of those random people. Our house being burgled last year by a man who crept into our house while we slept just a few feet above only exacerbated those fears. I’m still not able to watch my fucked up movies without feeling at least a little bit of panic.

The things that I saw in those seconds of jerky, cellphone video. I saw the nauseating glee. I saw beings who resembled humans and maybe once, a long time and a different reality ago, were humans that went grocery shopping and paid bills and stopped at red lights. And I saw…a face. Or something, a bloody, desecrated, disgusting, violated mess that used to be a face. And I could still see the question of, “Why?” running through a mind that was soon to stop functioning completely. And I could hear the echo of, “Why not me? Yet?” in the back of my brain.

It disturbed me in a way that I didn’t know possible. My worst nightmare came true for someone else and I watched it happen. I didn’t wield that hammer, but I might as well have stood there, in that cold, bleak forest, and watched it unfold.

By the time my brain said, “No. Stop,” I hadn’t assured myself of the slim chances of this ever happening to me or someone I know. I hadn’t cured myself of my paranoia. And I didn’t feel like I had a deeper understanding of how messed up this world is.

I had only accomplished one thing: watching someone be murdered.

Maybe I was stroking that part of my mortality that tries to deny itself, the part that likes to believe that I will call the shots, and if I cannot, I will call the shots for someone else. What separates me from Them?

I suppose what separates me is that I felt the urge to apologize after I chose to silence the giddy foreign language and the moist gargling breaths and the crunching leaves and the plastic bags. When I stopped, a different ending was still possible. Media feeds me truth and lies and joy and pain. And the brutal epiphany that reality and my place in it is more fluid than I’d like to admit. I’m sorry.

Long live the new flesh.

Oh my god, I had a waitressing nightmare last night. I haven’t had a waitressing nightmare since…well, since I was a waitress. When I was slinging baskets of bread and water with lemon slices and panko-encrusted salmon, I used to have such nightmares all the time. They were always pretty terrific, too. Classic scenarios included suddenly becoming paralyzed from the neck down and crumpling into a pile in the doorway of the kitchen and getting bitched at by the fellow waitstaff for not getting the fuck out of the way, or forgetting about a table so long that when I finally remembered them, I would find the patrons had starved to death and that would come out of my tips somehow.

Last night’s horror was that I had to get a waitressing job because we were just SO broke (not exactly unrealistic, unfortunately) and my first table was an 8-top. Of course, I was kind of a shitty waitress even after I had been doing it awhile, but after 10 years of retirement I was a disaster. And, of course, the people were snooty assholes with bad kids. After I totally screwed up in every conceivable way, the man at the table made some remark about women not being able to do anything correctly because they don’t ever take on any responsibility…or some similarly vague sexist and condescending remark that was the culmination of all the little pieces of bullshit that I put up with from assholes on a fairly regular basis. I didn’t hold back though and told the guy that I was a fucking badass and listed all of the shit that I do well on a daily basis when all I had seen him do in the time we’d known each other was sit on his ass, complain, and judge.

It felt good, even if it was a dream. I’m all about having cathartic outbursts however I can get them.

Anyway, how’ve you been? I’ve been feeling pretty bad lately that I haven’t been writing here. I’m still constipated in a bloggy way. I can’t think of anything that I want to write about so in a way I guess it’s good that I had that ridiculous nightmare. I’ve generally been not very “here” when I’m on the internet. I can’t tell if it’s a cyclical thing or if I’m growing apart from this…place altogether. I used to spend an additional hour or two online at home in the evenings and now I barely touch my computer.

It’s been nice, though. I guess I’ve been kind of needing a break and surprisingly spending time away from here has been good for my head. I’m feeling generally very calm and able to handle things, or at the very least okay with NOT handling things. I have mental…stuff. I know this. And I can handle it most of the time. When I can’t, I won’t and it’ll be alright. It’s a very new thing in my world and I don’t know how I got here. I’ll take it, though.