Whoa.

I logged in with the intention of making my fingers say something compelling, but WordPress went and changed everything up while I was out and WHOA! It looks all different and junk.

Things are good here. Supafine and such. More later, I’m sure.

 

Is it child abuse to have children you can’t afford? I say no.

Karen has started a discussion about raising healthy kids. In her post, she says:

Yesterday, the author of Violent Acres wrote this amazing post as a follow up to another one, both based on the fact that it is child abuse to have children you can’t afford. Her example was indicative of part of what is wrong with our society. Hello Queen of Obvious, once again, you hit the nail on the head.

I would like to address this idea:

…it is child abuse to have children you can’t afford.

There are several things wrong with this argument. First, it’s abstract. How much income is enough to afford having a child? When posed it this way, and including a very generous weekly grocery budget ($150 for Karen’s family of four), one immediately excludes a large portion of the population.

Second, abuse is abuse. I refuse to accept the labeling of WIC recipients as child abusers. I also won’t accept that the majority of people on government assistance are “deadbeats”. I won’t deny that some may be taking advantage and could do more on their own, but pointing at extreme examples to make this point is wrong.

There are people who work very hard at labor-intensive jobs who don’t earn a fair living wage. THAT is the underlying problem here. We should value the work people do and pay them accordingly. It should pay as much to get your hands dirty as it does to suffer an occasional paper cut. A family should be able to support themselves on one full-time income. Two full-time incomes should be the exception, not the rule.

Violent Acres argues that parents who qualify for and receive government assistance are nothing more than babysitters. She also wants parents to work their asses off to provide for their children.

But wait. Who is minding the children while these parents are out there working their asses off? Babysitters! Huh? What? Insult someone for being nothing more than a babysitter and then insist they HIRE ONE.

Also, while working your ass off to support your kids, you need to plan healthy meals with expensive and highly perishable food. Work more, make more trips to the grocer, cook food that takes longer to prep and make sure you have quality time with your kids so you’re not just being a babysitter.

All of this is so insulting to people who work hard but are still struggling to make the ends meet. I wish everyone had enough to eat and didn’t have to choose between groceries and rent, but that is not reality. Violent Acres insists this is not a class issue. But how can it not be? Someone tell me how it’s not.

 

Grief

I’ve been hanging out the last week with this bitch named Weepy. She’s mostly around during the day and at night Sleeping Pill Bill holds down the fort. I like Sleeping Pill Bill. He is all melllllllow and is allllll about snacks. I like it! But that Weepy is a drag. I mean, she’s alright… no, not really. Weepy makes me feel empty of anything good and stuffed right full of bad and Screaming tends to check in on me and Weepy from time to time to see if we need her services which we do, thank you very much. SCREAMING BANSHEE HERE YOU GO GET IT ALL OUT. But it doesn’t all come out.

I don’t know how to not feel so unbelievably shitty about my grandma being dead in a coffin in the ground where nobody’s going to put fresh lipstick on her before the next round of guests arrives, which is okay, I suppose, because did you see the glossy one? It just…didn’t look like her lips with the glossy one. (I was happy when Grandpa kissed it off before saying “G’night Mom.”) I watched my family members brought to their knees with grief, my father repeating, “I just wasn’t ready for her to go. I just wasn’t ready for her to go.” Another, “I’ll see you in the morning, Mom.”

I wanted to be a vapor. There enough that Grandma would know, maybe I could have talked to her there in the mist. But not more than a vapor. A haze at the top or back of the room. There for me and there for her but not there for you and you and especially you.

But there I sit in a cold, hard pew, watching my son sleep and feeling your presence in the room. Your movements making the air thicker, heavier, oppressive with grief and loss and desperation and panic. Swinging your loop around the room and coming to a stop in my line of sight. I didn’t wouldn’t couldn’t won’t look up but you stand so long. I have to look up and you say it. You say, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” and I cover my mouth to keep from saying anything I’ll regret? vomiting? screaming? crying? I nod quickly and stop looking and you walk away and I sit there alone, almost crying, wrenching, begging for a savior to lift me up and out and high above. Where is he? Drive faster drive so fast. Get here now.

I hide with my kid and play a card game in a corner. We look up and smile and I hear myself being introduced as his daughter and look at how natural it looks and look how normal it looks. Pulling it off. Song and dance. Perhaps we’ll buy you all a drink later.

Then the questions: “Where is your mother? Will your mother be coming? How is your mother?” And “I don’t know.” and “I think Sister can better answer that for you.” But not, “Unfortunately, I’m not yet speaking to my mother. We’re taking a break, I suppose. No no no. Of course she didn’t molest me. She just didn’t protect me. Didn’t give me the tools I needed to protect myself. You should ask my sister how our mother is doing. I hope you have a nice time.”

Then the Little Guy who’s seen me cry an inexcusable number of times in the last year, “Mommy, why you cryin’? Mommy, don’t cry. Stop cryin’.” I stop. Someone squeezes my shoulder, “Your aunt is glad you’re here. You made her day.” And then crying and being scolded for crying again. Aunt hugging me, making me cry while my boy jabs tissues at my eyeballs.

The sinking, the undeniable this is it of the closed casket. Draped with a beautiful cloth and covered in roses. So pretty, so horrifying, so gut-achingly sad.

At the house. Can I go in the house? Will sanity crumble like dry mud pie when I step inside? Is being in the house an insinuation of truce between he and me? The wrong person - THE MOST wrong person sitting in Grandma’s chair causing me to trip over my right toe and haphazardly flap across the living room where I see it: Grandma was behind in pictures of my kids. The act of my heart breaking is audible. Why didn’t I make sure she had newest pictures? My heart hurts. Why didn’t I make sure? I want her to come back so she can see the pictures. Know they were for her. Come back and see the pictures. Please come back you have to see them.

I hear the people talking in the other rooms. Busy, careful, sometimes funny. Bustling. I remember the forest of legs during holidays in this house. Thinking so many people! I can’t move without spilling. And walking about on those legs was not one person who would protect me. I weep and then sob and shudder until I’m sure I’ll turn myself inside out. Why didn’t they save me? Why don’t they ask me now? Why won’t she say, “I know honey. I’m sorry.”

The weight of all this a cement block in my chest - everything swells around it and burns and aches. And I wish I could talk to her one more time. Wish she could tell me about the year she insisted on a store bought coat instead of the usual coat her mother made her. The winter she’d thought she’d freeze to death in that stupid coat, the one she’d had to have. To see her gag at the suggestion of pancakes for breakfast. To hear her complain about finding shoes with a very narrow heel. To see her week-long hair-do brushed out crazy the night before her hair appointment. To watch her crochet and fall asleep in front of Days of Our Lives and laugh at Johnny Carson. To open one more bulky, soft Christmas package with a handmade afghan inside. To actually get one of the scraps afghans (might resort to thievery). To hear her laugh. To see her smile at my children. To see her horrible handwriting in my son’s birthday card a month from now. To hear, “Okay, honey. Love you now.” on the other end of the phone.

 

Links for Loralee

Loralee requested her readers share their favorite blogs. My comment got long and linkalicious. So I’m making her come here. HA! Tricked you, Loralee.

Essential Reading:

small hands
My most favorite blog of all time. First weblog I read beginning to end.

Confessions of a Pioneer Woman
How was I not reading this forever? Love. her.

Everything Is Wrong With Me
Hilarious.

ReadySteadyGo.
She hooked me with this post. Go.

Here In Idaho
Cracks.me.up.

 

True Mom Confessions

I left mine.

Somebody said, “me too.”

 

God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” - Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night

 

Sometimes I say things that are monumentally stupid.

Jen’s mother’s comments reminded me of this exchange between me and my mother a few years ago.

Mom: Your grandparents are really impressed with your children. They think you’re a great mother.

Me: Thanks. I learned it all from the internet.

 

Some Day My Prince Will Come

Found on YouTube via BlogHer (linked in my Google Reader Clips):

Before I had a television-watching child, I swore I wouldn’t “do” Disney. I had a list of reasons why we would be mouse free. It didn’t work out that way and I can’t remember more than one or two of the reasons I would have rattled off to you back then. We have stacks of Disney movies and things. I could say I feel like I failed in this aspect, but mostly I decided this wasn’t a battle I wanted to fight. I do think it is important to point those things out to my kids when we’re watching. Some of those questions:

Would you give up your voice for a man?

If strong and powerful man doesn’t want you, can you be happy or free?

Who is the hero in this story? The man or the woman? Who one is weak? Who is powerful?

Who is the “bad guy”? What does he or she look like? Blue eyes? Blond hair? Fat? Attractive? Why are they drawn that way?

If your brother doesn’t stop coughing and leaking snot, would you mind if I fed him to the hyenas?

(Title from this song.)

 

Holiday Hangover

I didn’t have a drop of alcohol yesterday, but I feel like I should have rubbed lemon in my armpits before going to bed last night. My brain is trying to gnaw through the front of my head. Every time my little guy cough-barks, I want to peel my face off and set my chomping brain free. I’m not sure I’ll make it to noon.

In order to survive Easter and its lilies, I have to take allergy medicine. It made me cranky and tired and I’m sure everyone had a grand time hanging out with my snarling self yesterday.

We did have a reasonably pleasant holiday with early morning egg hunting in our living room followed by breakfast at church and lunch at Grandma’s.

Blah blah blah.

Last week or the week before, I followed a link from one blog to another and found this idea for filling a long, shallow box with rice for an indoor “sand” box. I spent an hour this morning trying to track down that link, so if you know where I saw it, holla. Thanks.

Edit: Toddler Planet’s whymommy remembered where I saw it. I clicked from her blog to Girl Gone Wild. I even commented on that entry.

This is what my littlest one got for Easter:

 

Would I even want to be June Cleaver?

• Nordette at BlogHer asks

…do we see ourselves realistically or do we compare ourselves to some Super Parent figment of our imaginations, a myth, that makes us seem like failures?

I’m guilty of comparing myself to my perception of other parents. Even when I’m logging a lot of hours with my kids at school or helping at church, the nag in the back of my brain accuses me of not doing enough. “The other parents do more. They’re better parents. They’re more organized. They’re not selfish like I am.” The worst part? I’m thinking all those things when I’m THERE helping and participating. I minimize my involvement and exaggerate other parents’ good behavior. Where does this come from? Why do I allow it to continue? Do you entertain these thoughts or have you succeeded in knocking them out of your head?

(Comment here or log into BlogHer to share your thoughts with Nordette.)