ten thoughts in my head

1. I'm glad to have a job I generally enjoy and feel successful at, but sad that tomorrow my vacation ends and I have to go back to working for my monthly paychecks. Why can't they just send me my monthly paychecks without me having to go to work? I would continue to generally enjoy and feel successful at this job, and be glad to have it, and also I'd feel so much better rested. And my laundry would be folded and put away much more consistently.

   2. I saw INCEPTION yesterday and now I want to be a dream weaver, but only if Leonardo Dicaprio can be my sidekick. He has nice eyes, and I can't find one single example on the internet of where he's acted like a diva to any of his fans. Though I can find at least 30 various examples of his fans acting like divas toward him.

3. I also really like these actresses: Patricia Clarkson, Kate Winslet, Julianne Moore, Meryl Streep, and Bryce Dallas Howard. I would like to invite them out for coffee, so we can talk about motherhood and the state of the world. I don't think Britney Spears would be a good coffee date. I think if Britney Spears came to have coffee with Patricia, Kate, Julianne, Bryce, Meryl, and me, we'd spend a lot of time cheering her up, and then we'd shake our heads after she left and wonder about her. 

4. I spent 15 seconds this morning de-bunking a crazy-making email my mother sent me about some cap and trade bill in Congress right now. This email claimed we'd all have to have house licenses to sell our homes in the future, and Obama was trying to control who can and can't sell a house. It turns out the cap and trade bill does not have anything in it about house selling licenses, and it's only encouraging homeowners to install energy saving devices in their homes on a voluntary basis, not forcing anybody to do anything. Because installing energy saving devices in your home will protect the environment and save you money.

The words "cap and trade" make my eyes glaze over.

5. Then I spent 20 minutes trying to understand the ton of tax hike and anti-health care reform information that was forwarded to her. She's terrified after reading this, and I can see why: just a load of confusing words with no unbiased resources to back up anything that's in the email. And it's all written in twisted, angry words meant to frighten and confuse.

Taxes and money talk make my eyes glaze over. But I know twisted, angry writing when I see it, and I think as soon as Congress gets done taxing the poor and middle class and helping the rich, they should immediately outlaw twisted, angry writing in mass, forwarded emails.

6. Why is it so humid? WHY is it SO humid??

7. Did you know that Leonardo Dicaprio is only 5'11"? I really thought he was more like 6'1". There's a website HERE that debates how tall Leonardo Dicaprio is. It's really geeky.

8. One of our neighbors drives a school bus. Today, C and I went out for lunch. We saw our school bus neighbor eating lunch with some of his bus driver friends in the booth across from us. He was really excited about being awarded the Math Institute route this year--he gets to drive the math geeks to and from school every afternoon. I wondered if some of them ever argue about how tall celebrities are, on the internet.

Then I found THIS place and realized: nah.

9. I wish I had a really important, deeply wise, insanely helpful tip on motherhood to put here. A tip that would make this blog go viral, and maybe I could mass produce some t-shirts with my insanely helpful, deeply wise, really important mothering logo-tip on them that would put about $500,000 in my bank account. The government (according to my mother's crazy emails) would take 75% of this, which would still leave me with $250,000. I would pay off my house with that money. And get fresh highlights on my hair.

10. Right now, it's 4 PM. In 4 more hours Melissa will be taking a bath and going to bed. And then so will I. In 14 hours I will be cruelly woken up by an alarm, and will begin another school year. It's always a process, the beginning and ending of a school year. It's the middle that counts the most, I think.

Must remember this thought in 14 hours.

disjointed thoughts about privilege and poor behavior in hotels.

I just returned from a family trip to the funny, sunny Pocono Mountains where some animals were encountered, amusement park rides were ridden, I was able to visit family I haven't visited in far too many years.** But mostly there was a lot of time travel. I time traveled for about a week, and I'm still not sure what year I've returned to. But whichever year it is I must say it is amazing! The televisions have more than 13 channels! And I haven't seen a single piece of overly flowered wall paper circa 1982! I'm so glad to be here; quantum physics/time leaping can be so frightening when not used appropriately.

It was a 14 hour drive. My stepfather drove, and we proved my mother wrong: you CAN pack their minivan with 3,000 pounds of luggage. (Please note: only 300 of these pounds belonged to us, thus further reinforcing my claim my mother is a victim of severe over-dramatics.) Each way, we divided our trip in half and spent the night at a lovely Holiday Inn Express in Salem, Virginia before finishing the ride to and from.

I had one WOW! experience at this Holiday Inn Express and one REALLY? REALLY?? experience.

They are as follows:

Part 1, WOW!. Traveling to Pennsylvania, on the morning we checked out.

A very tanned lady, 45-ish, dressed in full Elly May Clampett costume complete with a brunette version of Elly May's braided hair (with plaid hair bows). Ran around the lobby giving loud orders to the girls' soccer team she was supervising (all looked half asleep) and then, when no one returned to the front desk to answer a ringing phone? She reached over and answered it herself. She proceeded to have an overly loud conversation with someone who appeared to be a hotel guest that went like this:

"I don't know. I'll write a note and leave it with the front desk person. No, I don't work here. I can't tell you who I am. I just answered the phone because no one was here. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know! Look, I just answered this phone to help out. No, I don't work here.  Because no one is here right now. I'm just a guest at the hotel. They're not paying me. I don't know. I can't tell you that. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know! No, I only answered because no one was behind the desk. I'll write your number down and leave them a note. I don't know. I don't know! I'm not telling you my name. Because it doesn't matter. I'm just trying to help. Do you want me to write a note or not? I don't know! Oh, wait! Here comes someone. Talk to her."

Meanwhile, her soccer team girls were running around eating all the bacon and eggs provided in the lobby, complaining about how tired they were, and they kept taking their shoes and socks on and off and I was kind of sad C wasn't around to witness that. C has issues with bare feet. (Did you know?)

Part 2, REALLY? REALLY??. Returning home.

Melissa, C, my mother and stepfather, and I were all enjoying eggs and bacon and cinnamon buns in the lobby/breakfast nook Sunday morning. A family of four sat nearby our table--a mom, a dad, an 8 year old, and her older sister. They kept looking our way. Finally, Melissa and I got up to throw away our plates, and the 8 year old yells: "But one of them is white."

At first I wasn't sure who the 8 year old was talking about. Because, really, the entire lobby/breakfast nook was filled with only white people at that point, except for C and half of Melissa. And then the 8 year old yelled it again, with more loud emphasis on the color word this time: "But one of them is WHITE!!" And I realized my daughter and I were being looked at and talked about and analyzed like animals. In a zoo.

The most upsetting thing about this to me wasn't what came out of the mouth of an 8 year old with no social filter; what upset me the most was the fact there were two adults at that table and not one of them said anything like: "Hey, kid. You're being rude." or "Please speak more softly." or "That's none of your business." or "So?"  They sat and stared at us, mouths open, thinking--I'm presuming--the same thing their kid was voicing.

I really wanted to punch that kid in the head. But is it really her fault she's growing up in a bubble of white/social privilege and clearly isn't being taught a single thing about appropriate situations to verbalize one's arrogant bigotry vs. inappropriate situations to show one's enormous ignorance? Which means I eventually decided to spend the rest of the ride home fantasizing me punching her parents in their heads.

For those who are unaware, let me illustrate with a handful of examples what white/social privilege is:

-when you walk into a roomful of any color of people, you never have to feel like you'll have to speak more eloquently, be more polite, work harder at being friendly so anyone who may have preconceived ideas and notions about people from your cultural or skin color background will (a) have those preconceived ideas and notions proven wrong at least this one time, and (b) feel more at ease with you.

-you can do well in a challenging situation and no one ever tells you or insinuates to you that you're a credit to your race.

-no one ever really focuses on your race, including you.

-you can easily buy books, cards, toys, and magazines featuring people of your ethnicity and cultural background. You never really have to search very hard for these items, and nobody has felt the need to invent a company exclusively catering these items to people of your ethnicity and cultural background due to the fact these items are never hard for people like you to find.

-you can take a job with an affirmative action employer, and nobody's going to get disgruntled about your presence, assuming you got the job based solely on your race or gender.

-you can think over and choose from many life options: political, social, educational, professional, creative and otherwise, without having to worry: would a person of my skin color or gender or sexual identity or linguistic or ethnic background be accepted at this?

-if you're in a position of leadership and find out you're incredibly bad at it, it's very unlikely someone will gossip about you behind your back, insinuating to others of like mind that you're failing because of your ethnic heritage, cultural or socioeconomic background, or your skin color.


 But mostly: privilege means never having to think about where you're at, who you're with, if a certain city will be safe or comfortable for you and your family to visit. Privilege is never having to wonder if someone is staring at you because they think your shirt is cute or are they secretly annoyed/grossed out/angry that interracial relationships are now legal? Privilege is kind of just knowing you have options and the system will eventually work in your favor, even if affirmative action still exists to piss you off. Privilege is getting to eat microwaved omelets in a hotel lobby without some snotty 8 year old and her family judging you and your family for something that isn't even remotely affecting their lives one single iota.

I'm writing all of this here because it's what I deeply wish I'd had the courage to say that kid and her family. If nothing else, I regret not walking over to them and saying what I say to a few of of the 6 year olds I work with who--at the beginning of each school year--inevitably want to know why I married Mr. C when his skin is brown and mine is white: "Because I loved Mr. C and Mr. C loved me. So we got married. And now we have a little girl, and she is both brown and white. Is it okay for people with different skin colors to live together and be a family?"

(For the record: I've never, ever had a child answer "No." They always (always) either have seen how silly their question was or recognized by the tone of my voice that their question was really inappropriate.)

Instead, I took Melissa back to the table and began my predictable process of passive aggression: pointing to the 8 year old and her family, saying something like, "You'd think in the year 2010 people would at least teach their children to filter the bigotry in public spaces." Shaking mad.

I don't know if anybody at the other table heard me. They were too astonished at the other interracial family that just walked into the lobby. And one of them was WHITE.

**Much lighter and far more amusing photoblog/documentary to follow.

thursday: a thought.

For true love is inexhaustible; the more you give, the more you have. And if you go to draw at the true fountainhead, the more water you draw, the more abundant is its flow.

~Antoine de Saint-Exupery

 Taking a brief blog break--back in 1 week.

broken people on sidewalks.

Ever since C and I moved out of Atlanta's Toco Hills area and into the suburbs, I've been lamenting the lack of verifiable crazy people to gawk at. You just can't find them out here like you can in town, unless you think Yankee yuppie transplants wearing 3 strands of pearls and stilettos to do their grocery shopping at Whole Foods is crazy.

To give you an idea of what I've been missing for the last 7 or so years: when I first started dating C, he was living off Ponce de Leon in Midtown, right across from Murder Kroger. Murder Kroger is exactly 500 feet from the East Ponce police station, which is exactly 1.5 blocks from the crackhead transvestite prostitute corner. I don't know that the people milling around this corner are actually crackheads and/or transvestites and/or prostitutes, I just know they mill around this corner at all hours of the day and night (heavy stress on night) and it's best to keep your doors locked and your car moving even if the traffic light is officially red. I'm going to let the name Murder Kroger speak for itself.

What was so odd about this setup is that C lived in some really, really nice apartments. And these nice apartments were across the street from some really, really nice older homes some people with big dreams in their hearts had turned into ridiculously overpriced real estate that I'm sure put fat wallets in their pockets. And all of this was located down the street from a stupendously nice neighborhood filled with houses offering nothing but many, many feet of great curb appeal.

It's one of the things that makes Atlanta such a great place for a curious people watcher to just hang out for awhile: take a walk around town one way and you'd swear you stepped through a time wormhole and somehow landed on LA's Rodeo Drive, circa 1950. One wrong left turn up the next block, and you're dodging drive by bullets and side stepping drunks urinating on the sidewalks.

Which is why I had both a giddy "man! You NEVER see THIS in THESE parts!!" kind of feeling and a sad "should I be concerned?" feeling all at once this morning when C and I went to meet the tow truck at the grocery store parking lot where my car sat all last night.

My car has issues. It's been having issues since April. First the emergency brake light kept popping on and off while driving. Then the key fob needed a new battery. Then the brake fluid needed replacing. And it stalled on me a month ago and needed to be jumped, but it wasn't a battery issue. Finally, yesterday, right after I ran into a store to get some macaroni & cheese, tampons, olive oil, dishwasher liquid, and challah bread it just died. Done. And I was so frustrated because (a) I don't want to know why or how a car goes, I just want it to go, consistently, and (b) now I was going to have to get on the phone and talk to Kevin, the person I'd taken my sick car to a month ago, and tell him (1) the brake light had never stopped popping on and off even though he'd told me it was doing that because of low brake fluid and (2) the car didn't die a month ago because the key fob needed a battery, the car died a month ago because Kevin and his mechanic friends didn't actually take a really good look at it like they swore up and down to me they had. And having to do THIS meant Kevin was going to be kind of snotty to me, much more so than he was a month ago when I took the car to him the first time and he kind of talked down to me after I told him I didn't think the car had brake fluid or key fob problems, I thought the car had much deeper issues. Kevin talked to me like I didn't know a thing about cars like he did. It was the kind of snotty that male car mechanics are with women who aren't Danika Patrick. Or, I don't know, maybe snotty male car mechanics are even snottier to women named Danika Patrick. Either way, I don't know what to say to them to convince them I have super psychic car powers they'll never ever possess and if they'd just shut up and listen to me, we can all be out of each other's hair in mere hours, never to meet ever again.

Anyway. The car is fine now--there was short in a fuse, and C ended up doing most of the talking to Kevin and Kevin wasn't snotty with him at all. Win-win.

The thing that gave me the giddy/sad feeling was what happened moments before and after we met the tow truck at the grocery store. Before heading over there, we stopped at a nearby Starbucks for coffee. C parked in a spot right in front of the door and waited for me to get the coffees. When I came out, he was gone. Gone! I was about to throw his frickin' decaf into a trash can, because I've done this joke before--when I was 15, with a learner's permit, and my mom left me unsupervised behind the wheel while she ran into the house to get something.

I backed the car out of the driveway and hid a few feet down the street, but not so far down I couldn't see the look of bewilderment, then fear, then terror, then rage on her face, mere nanoseconds between each look. The memory of it is making me giggle right now; she was deeply unamused for, like, a whole week, which is how long I was grounded. Which is why I was not amused when I couldn't find C in the Starbucks parking lot this morning; this joke is ONLY funny if you're the driver.

Then I saw him several feet away and he slowly crawled his car over to me.

"What the heck are you doing? Why did you move?" I'd gotten in the car, but the door wasn't officially closed yet; his coffee could have still hit the pavement if the answer was less than satisfactory.

"I had to. So I could see the fight!"

C pointed to a man, late 50's or 60's, salt and pepper hair, moustache, wearing all black, holding a jacket. He was wandering around the edge of the parking lot like he was lost.

"That dude right there just had a screaming fight with some other dude, " said C. See the jacket he's holding? The other dude was screaming something about suicide and then ripped that jacket and his shirt off. I thought he was going to pull a knife out but then he just turned around and took off running. Wait! Look! See? There he is! See him running?"

And sure enough, there was a very young skinny man, black hair, completely shirtless, sprinting across the parking lot on the other side of the street. My brain started concocting all kinds of crazy answers to all the Why's in my head: maybe the salt and pepper haired man had tried to kidnap him; maybe the boy was trying to get a coffee at Starbucks and the moustache man propositioned him; maybe that was a father and son meeting for the first time after many long years of estrangement. All kinds of stories were up there; C invalidated them all: "No way, man. That kid is hopped up on crack or something."

We drove by the boy on our way to the grocery store. At that point, he'd stopped running, and was sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk, arms on his knees, head on his arms, sobbing.

"C," I said, "We need to stop and ask if he needs help."

"What?!" said C, "Why??"

"Because. He's obviously in trouble and he needs help."

"And you want to help a crackhead by...how again?"

"Okay, fine. Then let's call the police."

"It's the police's job to help suicidal crackheads?"

"Uh, hello, yes. The police are here to protect and serve, even if you're a suicidal crackhead."

C wouldn't let me call the police. This is the last time I listen to C about things of this nature; next time I'm not even saying a word, just grabbing my phone and dialing 911 and here's why:

When we drove home about half an hour later, there was a police car, lights flashing, stopped on the road by the sidewalk the boy was on. The boy was up, his shirt was back on, and he had a friend with him--another young man who appeared to be clean and sober. The upset boy was gesturing wildly to police officer, he was sweaty, and he was incredibly distressed about something. But clearly, someone not named C had called the cops, who had come to help this troubled human being, even if he was hopped up on crack. Because, I told C later, that's what cops are supposed to do--protect people, and that includes from themselves. And then we got into a discussion, fueled by THE VIEW'S hot topics discussion about Mel Gibson's recent craziness that ended in an agreement about how police don't always protect some people as much as they protect others. But that's another blog post for another day.

Anyway. C wouldn't stop as we drove home so I could be nosy and ask the cop, the boy, and his friend what had happened. And was everybody okay? And the man with the salt and pepper hair/moustache was nowhere to be seen. Where did he go, and why?

And the reason I feel all giddy and sad at the same time is because I've spent so many years lamenting the lack of that kind of bizarre, random sighting while living in the suburbs...but this particular bizarre, random sighting took place right between Melissa's school and the one I teach in. It really put all those sad, what-the-heck-was-THAT-all-about-at-my-house-last-night stories I sometimes hear each year from wide-eyed, filter-less six year olds into perspective.

Because I feel pretty wide-eyed, what-the-heck-was-THAT-all-about right now myself. More sad, less giddy. I joke about my love of "people combing", looking for the craziest of the craziest while out and about, but I think there's a big difference between crazy that's crazy for the attention and seeing a troubled human being who needs help. Like, it's one thing to sit in the Hartsfield-Jackson airport, watching some stranger with an orange spray tan scoop up melted cheese with a taco and then lift his shirt to lick off dribblings and taco sauce while wondering almost out loud: "How did you get from the birth canal to THIS?" But it's a totally different thing to see another human being--crackhead or sober--in tremendous distress, and not know what to do for them or how best to help them. (I suppose this is the part where codependency rears its ugly head and C's role is to remind me I'm not here to save the world and don't want that kind of responsibility anyway.)

...Is it bad if I still hope the boy is okay right now, and not suicidal anymore? And that I'm hopeful the salt and pepper haired man was just trying to help and not part of the problem? And that if he was part of the problem it was sorted out or the cop went and got him and put him in jail? And that when school starts in a few weeks I don't see any of these people at Open House?

scooching and bogging and dairy addictions.

While pregnant, I craved all things dairy. Like, if I could have just bought a dairy cow, tethered her to one of my backyard trees, and drank straight from a teet hourly like a newborn calf, let me tell you: I'd have been too, too happy.

Sadly, I had no access to dairy cows but I did have access to an HOA that would have been knocking on my door the very nanosecond they heard the first "Moo!" or caught the first whiff of manure. They'd have all stood in front of me, arms crossed, feet tapping, holding copies of the neighborhood covenants in my face, and the part that goes NO FARM ANIMALS ALLOWED would have been highlighted in red. And Mr. M down the street would have sent out a mass email campaign through the neighborhood to have me evicted and I probably would have ended up on the 5 o'clock news.

So I was left to swigging hourly from gallons (please know: I was not kidding when I typed gallonS. That's gallon, with an S.) of full-fat, whole milk. I once stood in front of Kroger's dairy section debating whether or not to buy my regular full-fat, whole milk or just submit to the monster and start chugging the heavy cream. These dairy cravings also pushed me toward places like Dairy Queen and Bruster's Ice Cream, and one summer afternoon I will be completely honest and admit to anyone reading: I tweaked on an entire gallon of Edy's Rocky Road ice cream. While pregnant, I was totally eligible to be featured on A&E's Intervention and I was crying out for a trip to dairy rehab; I'm still a little perturbed no one in my family saw this.

Before I got pregnant, I would have reaped many health benefits and maybe even been able to shop in JC Penney's juniors section once again by losing 30 lbs. After Melissa was born, the dairy addiction went away on its own and I lost about 30 lbs of dairy addiction/baby weight/normal pregnancy weight gain with no effort. Here's the problem, though: I'm left with 50 lbs that weren't there to begin with. Or 30 that were there plus 20 dairy addiction pounds. Whichever. The point is: my body was simply not itself for an entire year after this pregnancy and I wasn't physically or mentally (heavy emphasis on the mentally) able to exercise or consume vegetables the way Dr. Oz suggests. Also I've been scouring the yellow pages looking for tummy tuck surgeons who take Mastercard. I don't think there's an abdominal crunch in the world that's going to fix what Melissa and rampant pregnancy dairy consumption did to that area.

So I joined Spark People the other day. On the account of I like looking at organized online progress trackers and it's free. Did I mention it's free? Here's how it's gone so far:

**I've joined teams, and said hello. My teams are: Spark Bookworms, 30-something moms, Runners/Walkers, and I Need Sleep!. I'm most active in I Need Sleep!. Please note the irony.

**I joined last Monday. I set up my profile on Tuesday. On Wednesday, I logged what I ate. I ate 400 calories more than I was supposed to, and apparently my potassium levels are atrociously not being addressed in my diet (my calcium levels are great, if you were wondering).

**On Thursday, I only ate 22 calories more than I should have. My potassium levels were still atrocious but seriously, spark people. Unless potassium levels are going to reverse the condition of my abdominal area, you can just shove your potassium level information.

**On Friday, I logged what I ate for breakfast. And then I went out to lunch at Joe's Crab Shack. I was all set to order a Cobb Salad with crab meat, but for some ungodly reason the words "Fish and Chips" came out of my mouth when it was my turn. And then C and I went and had ice cream at a really cute not-chain coffee shop downtown. I hope everyone is aware by now of my inability to say no to not-chain coffee shops. And ice cream.

**After fish and chips and ice cream, I didn't want to know what Spark People would have to say about my caloric intake on Friday. Or my poor sodium performance. Or my carb overload. I already knew what they'd say about Friday's potassium performance.

Also, for dinner, we had pizza.

**I haven't visited Spark People at all today. I think they're looking for me but I've been undercover all day at the Weight Watchers message boards.

To be fair to myself, I worked out--hard--Tuesday through Friday last week. I'm a good worker outer; it's just forcing my body to do what my brain says which is "Put on work out clothes and drive to the gym. Then, when you're in the gym, get on a machine. Begin moving. Stop playing with the gadgetry on the machine and move. Move faster, stop pretending like you're in pain. Go. Go! GO!!"

Once I get through all that, I'm great.

I'll begin again on Monday. My 1st favorite author Anne Lamott says progress is a scooch-scooch-bog process: you scooch forward, then you hang out and bog for awhile. Then maybe you scooch backward and bog. After that, you scooch forward five scooches. Then maybe back two. And then you bog. There's no abracadabra to life, but eventually you make it where you want to be.

Monday through Thursday last week I was scooching. Friday I scooched back one space. Now I'm bogging. I'll be okay.