January 2008 Archives

I seem to have caught the same suckety-suck-suckedness that plagued Loralee and Holli a few weeks ago. Oh, you poor dears. I had no idea. I feel like absolute and utter crap. (Should that be capitalized, because it feels like it should be.) Last night there were actually times that I just wanted to cry because my ears and throat and chest hurt so bad. It's been a long time since I felt that way.

The good thing is that I'm heading out to my mom's this weekend. I'm hoping she and my sister will be more than happy to take care of the girls while I pass out in the guest bedroom. The two-hour drive there will suck, but it will be worth it to have my Mommy take care of me. (OMG, did I just write that? I do feel awful. I don't think I ever called her "Mommy" when I was a kid.)

Oh, and in case you're wondering, I'm sure Bill would be more than obliging to help, but he's headed to LA this weekend to work the red carpet at the SAG Awards. Uh huh. How cool is that? You probably won't see him since he'll be doing more work behind the scenes, but I've Tivo'd everything related to SAG anyway. He also gets the chance to attend the party afterwards. Yes, I'm sending him with a list of autographs to get. Anyone I should add to the list?

PS. Join me next week when I recount how my kids have now caught whatever sickness is going around and Josie spends most of her 3-year birthday party lying on the couch watching "My Little Pony" movies. Hurrah! Seriously, though, is there anything I can do to help prevent them getting sick?

I want this coloring book for my kids. I want it for your kids. I want it for every damn person that keeps sending me idiotic emails about how every single person they pass on the street with a "foreign sounding" name is trying to kill them, about how Barack Obama is secretly trying to make all Americans convert to Islam, about how I am a horrible and evil person (and probably a terrorist) because I don't forward this email to everyone else I know.

Do I sound upset? Because I am. I am so incredibly sick of these types of emails. It's bad enough to know that this type of rationale runs rampant today, but to have it directly put in your path just makes me want to throw up. Even worse is that I keep getting these things sent to me by friends and family.

The first one I got made me so upset that I almost started crying. That's how deeply it affected me. It was an email talking about the supposed tenets of Islam, all of which were completely untrue. I'm no expert on religions, but even I knew that most of it was bullshit. There's no way I could sit back and let these false truths be passed on. In response, I very nicely replied to the email with information I cut and pasted directly from Belief.net regarding Islam. I made sure to counter each false point with a true one. Again, I did it as nicely as I could, with the idea in mind that I wanted to educate. I probably wouldn't change the person's overall beliefs, but that wasn't my goal. If there was anything I wanted to accomplish, it was that this person would know at least one nugget of truth about what they so desperately hated.

Since then, I have gotten even more emails. Not from the same person, but others. You would think that my reaction by now would be less, but that's not the case. Each one is just more upsetting. From the stupid Photoshopped pictures to the completely forehead-slapping original song about "Keepin' them terrorists out of America." I was told on more than one occasion that I shouldn't get upset. What was the point? What would change if I sent a response or a correction of the facts?

The answer is that I don't know. The fact that I'm not forwarding the stupid email does not mean that it's not getting forwarded by thousands of other people that very same day. But, if in my response one single person actually has a more open view about things, then that's enough, right?

Maybe this bothers me more now because I'm a parent. I can't watch the news anymore. It is incomprehensible to me that I might be raising my kids in a world that still thinks this way. More importantly, in a country as big and influential as ours.

I want to crawl in a corner and cover my eyes. I want to be able to open them and see that there really is rational thought in the world, that such stupidity doesn't exist, that our country isn't being led in the name of such grossly false truths.

I don't claim to be infallible myself, and there's no way this caucasian Midwestern girl is going to claim to have experienced any kind of racial or cultural prejudice, but I do have a brain and a heart and I refuse to stand by and let my kids adopt any of these thoughts about another human being.

I'll get off my soapbox now.

I met some old friends for lunch the other day. We all used to work together, and we make an effort to still meet up at least 2 or 3 times a year. As opposed to my current group of acquaintances, these two women are at very different stages in each of their lives. I'm usually around mothers of small children, so my insight into other people's lives is limited to one genre. Getting together with these women allowed me to see what else was going on in the world out there. Even I didn't understand how limited my view was until that lunch.

One of my friends asks, So, how are you doing, Alecia?

I proceeded to tell them how the girls are doing, what kinds of activities we participate in now, how it's nice to have Bill home for so many days this holiday season, and the like. (I can never think of anything to say when people I don't see often ask how I'm doing. I feel like saying, well, you should see me in my day-to-day routine, or just read one of my blogs.)

So I get done saying all this and my friend comments on the things I've said, and then she says,

Okay, but how are YOU doing?

Um, uh, didn't I just tell you? And then it hit me that I'd talked about how everyone in my life was faring except for myself. But my family is my life. My days revolve around taking care of them and spending my time with them. I stammered a little and tried to come up with something to say.

Well, I joined a bunco club, and I, uh, have been thinking a little about what career I'd like to have once the girls start school, and, uh...

{shrug}

And here I thought I was reaching a good point where I was finding myself again. I guess it's easy to fall back into the role of "___'s mommy" when you're not looking.

But what else can I say? Am I supposed to feel bad that raising these two little human beings is my life right now? I don't work outside the home. These little guys are my work right now. The same way that my friends were commenting on the challenges and successes of their jobs, I was commenting on my job. It just so happens that my job and my personal life are inexplicably intertwined right now.

And thinking about it now, I'm still at a loss for what to say in answer to that question. The interesting thing is, I'm not sure I'm overly concerned about it. On one hand, I realize that I need to expand the breadth of my experiences, become a little more multi-faceted. On the other, I'm not sure if there's time or motivation to do much more than what I'm doing now, than what is making me happy right now.

Sure, there are lots of things I would like to do, lots of future goals I'd like to accomplish. I'd love to volunteer more, but it's something that I think will come in time as the girls get older and can share that experience with me. A preschooler and a toddler don't exactly have the patience and ambition to help others -- I'm lucky to get them to help clean up their toys at the end of the day. I do have dreams about future careers, but they are things that I don't want to do right now. I know that I'll have plenty of time to tackle them in the future. I do want it all, just not at the same time. Otherwise, I'm pretty happy. How many others can say that?

I haven't done one of these challenges in at least 6 months, but I missed doing them so I'm determined to start up again in 2008.

January's theme is Celebration. Here's a pic of me celebrating with my daughters on Christmas Eve:

More self-portraits can be found here.

You know it's sad when you watch this and just keep nodding your head, "Yeah, that's pretty much it."

I have no conclusions. But I am thinking about the idea of GPS systems for life. Ones that can tell you "You have arrived" once you have arrived (sometimes we forget and cannot see ourselves clearly; we cannot recognize what we have achieved). Ones that can plot, step by step, how to get to where you want to go. (The hard part: figuring out where you want to go, n'est-ce pas?)

-ANP, January 2008