Stressssssss

Let me tell you about my Friday afternoon: at about 2:45 I was beginning the third hour of a support web-call which should have taken just about 15 minutes but, alas, didn't.  And things were going terribly wrong.  In the midst of this panic, a customer whom I'd meant to get back in touch with two hours earlier called.  This person is someone with whom I'm also really good friends and who is, coincidentally,  the person that for some reason I always go all incompetent and awkward in front of in professional settings (and, y'all know how self-fullfilling that shit is).  At 3:00, I was due another call which I thought was a one-on-one with another customer so I sent a quick email asking if I could put that back 15, at which point I learned that this call would actually be with a roomful of people I wasn't expecting.

At this point, I had headphones in for one call, the phone in my ear for another, and was managing the third via Skype.  I was choking back tears and trying very hard to come off as coolly professional.

And the worst part of it was the nagging voice in the back of my head shouting, "Good god, woman!  You're not curing cancer!"  It was this odd compounded feeling of being stressed and overwhelmed and feeling guilty that I felt so overwhelmed and guilty over things that aren't exactly life and death stuff.

In the meantime, it seems like parents are fleeing from Laney's school right and left for reasons I can't fathom.  I'm told it's likely down to the violence of city life, which makes me think I should feel worried about the violence.  But not only do I not perceive any more violence in the world, instead it feels like rather less than when I was coming up.  And this, of course, makes me feel stressed and guilty that I'm missing something fundamental about how Laney's getting educated.

And then there's all that debt that we're working so hard to pay off.  We're halfway there, so I should feel very proud and accomplished, but instead I just feel broke because even if I were perceiving levels of violence that made me want to move Laney to the burbs, we couldn't afford to do it.  And, to continue the theme, I feel guilty that I'm feeling stressed about something that we are, in fact, handling quite well.

On top of all of that. and despite believing that the world is less dangerous than it was (a fact which is, by the way, backed up by the data), we're still living in a world where the criminally stupid like these fucking idiots think that the only thing standing between themselves and tyranny is their right to show up in a crowd of people, people who DON'T KNOW WHO THEY ARE, with the same hardware described by Samuel L Jackson in Jackie Brown as "for when you absolutely positively GOT to kill every motherfucker in the room."

And that stresses me out.  And then makes me feel stressed out that I'm letting idiots like that stress me out.

But, here's what I think: being alive is stressful.  I reckon even Ann Romney, who is the Platonic idea of blithe entitlement, probably feels stressed out a lot.  I have lots of stress tools - I like a large whiskey at the end of the day (I acknowledge this is likely not the best stress-management tool).  I thought running would be good, but goddamn if my back and knees aren't ALWAYS killing me now.  Piano helps.  I like a good book.

But in the end, I feel like I could handle the stress if I could just let go of the notion that I *should* be handling the stress.  I can't let go of feeling like I should be able to just, you know, let go of feeling like I can let it go.

It is so weird in my head.

Let's Have Lunch.

I went to Au Bon Pain to get some soup since I haven't been to the grocery store since the pleistocene era.  Laney's only managed to survive since both Don and I always buy at least three boxes of pasta whenever we go to the grocery store, so we've stockpiled about 7000 boxes of whole wheat thin spaghetti. Only Laney eats the whole wheat kind.  Don and I think it's gross. This is either really good or really bad parenting.  Regardless, I went to Au Bon Pain for lunch in the hopes they would have their Corn and Green Chili bisque.  Which they did.  Score.

On the escalator going up at the Merchandise Mart, there was a woman behind me who was having one of those "Ohmigod!  I didn't see you! It's been so long!" conversations with a guy sitting at a table on the first floor.  He seemed to kind of expect her to come back down and chat but she demurred with "On my way to a business meeting."

Doesn't "business meeting" seem kind of redundant?  Are there other kinds of meetings still in the world?  So, I figured the guy at the table was one of her husband's friends and she was off to a engage in the tawdriest of lunchtime quickies with her luvaaaah.  And then I realized that the Merchandise Mart isn't probably the best place for a lunchtime quickie and also that there's a Weight Watchers meeting (see: MEETING) at the Apparel Center across the way so he was probably an ex-boyfriend and she was off to Weight Watchers.  I preferred the tawdry lunchtime quickie idea though.  Made me feel a little like an extra in a soap opera.

Remember soap operas?  I was a Guiding Light gal.  Now soap operas are gone and everyone just watches the goddamn Housewives.  I can't with those shows.  I barely tolerate amateur assholes.  Once they turn professional, I'm done.  I miss the Quartermaines*.

On the way back to my office I passed a lady who was wearing a long denim skirt and I thought she might have been a sister wife, but she was wearing too much makeup.  So, I guess there's no heinous fashion trend from the 80s that doesn't eventually make it back around.  I'm just going to start wearing my blush like Pat Benatar.

There.  Now it's just like we had lunch together!

*I know the Quartermaines were General Hospital.  But I couldn't think of the big family name on Guiding Light.  Or All My Children.  And, by god,  I watched them ALL.

Internet Down... Wrote This on my Phone

Shortly after my father died...

Look, I'm taking an aside to tell you this is not going to be one of those weepy introspective dead father posts. I aim neither to depress you nor impress you by waxing rhapsodic over the acmes of my grief. There will be no tears tonight. I haven't cried all week, as a matter of fact, which is some kind of record for me. Of course, it's my birthday week. That's right. I said "week." There's no crying during my birthday week. During my birthday week, everyone is supposed to tell me I'm pretty and buy me drinks. Good drinks, you understand? You can keep your Budweiser and off-brand vodka. I'll have something expensive, bitches! (I'm actually not sure how this migrated from reassuring my three readers that I'm not going to get all depressing to ordering them to buy me drinks. But, let's go with it because, hey, free drinks!).

Where was I?

...Ah yes.

Shortly after my father died, I went to his office to pick up some of his stuff. After we left, one of his colleagues walked us out to the car and stood patiently waiting for me to get a hold of myself (FYI: when your parent dies, people will stand patiently and wait until you're ready to wipe all the runny mascara and snot off your face. They will not even comment when you remain snotty). Once I was done, he said "I just wanted to tell you that your father always made time for the people he worked with. If someone came into his office with a question, he would stop and listen. He was a really good man and we're going to miss him a lot." (all right, I'm getting a little weepy now... but in a minute I'm turning this ship around to focus it back on me, and then we'll all be just delighted because it is my birthday week and you are constitutionally obliged to find me delightful. Look it up. I'm pretty sure it's in the same version of the Constitution that Michelle Bachman uses because that is one cuh-razy Constitution!)

Roger Ebert, who you know died yesterday, had a similarly kind, collegial reputation. Check out this great great great article about him from Will Leitch (http://deadspin.com/5482198/my-roger-ebert-story).

Both of those men really lived good lives. They both lived up to Charlotte's Web. Of course, you know what I'm talking about... that quote at the end that I like so much? You know. You don't know? Jesus Christ, you guys, I don't write this stuff for my health. I expect you to remember it. God. I bet you haven't bought my birthday drink yet either. I just don't know what .... Fine. Here's the quote:

"We're born, we live a little while, we die. A spider's life can't help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone's life can stand a little of that.”

(FYI - you just got a little taste of what it's like to live with me. You might want to buy Don a drink while you're at it)

I've thought about this a lot since I grew up (I grew up around 40... now I'm just growing out! HAHAHAHA! Middle-age jokes are the best): I'd really like to be in a profession where I'm lifting myself up by helping people. I often wish I were doing good, important work like my father did. Like Roger Ebert did. But instead I do a job in which I draw a salary that enables me to continue paying down the massive debt we accrued adopting Laney.

Poor, poor me, right?

Oof - so much bullshit, such slight bloggery! Because even if I'm not making my living taking care of the mentally ill like my father, or writing about art like Roger Ebert, or teaching like my mother did, I can still strive for honest collegiality. I can still aim to be kind and open and willing to help the people around me. We all can.

It's something I'll try harder to do. Next week. As I think I've made it abundantly clear that this week is my birthday week so it's on you to do the heavy lifting. And drink buying. I've heard good things about the Moscow Mule! Let's get on it! (http://www.esquire.com/drinks/moscow-mule-drink-recipe)

A Promise to Laney

God, the internet is just full of parents publishing their promises to their kids.  It's so tiresome, right?  Feel free to agree vis a vis the tiresomeness; it won't stop me from being tiresome.  I have good reasons to be tiresome. I am very insecure.  93% of all tiresomeness is born out of insecurity (I just made that up). I share thoughts and tips among parenty peers as a secondary bloggy pursuit.  Primary is reassuring myself via peer assessment that I don't totally suck at the whole thing.  Parenting is some seriously humiliating work, y'all.  And sometimes I blog about it and people suggest that I am amazeballs at the whole thing, which is an excellent counterpoint to how I feel entirely unequal to the task almost all the time.

Laney's been super sick with some kind of GI bug the past few days.  It's been a rough few days and I've spent a lot of time worried about how my girl is.  And laundry.  I've spent a lot of time worried about how my girl is and doing laundry.

Everyone knows what happens when you have a stomach bug.  We are all aware of the various ways the body expels cooties.  It is not, in a word, pleasant.  And during this particular round I turned into  the worst stereotype of a mother.  I was like a sitcom mother of an adult character on a Chuck Lorre sitcom.  I pried and asked dozens of inappropriate questions.  Laney would go to the bathroom and I (I swear I did this) would hover outside the door, urgently inquiring "Is everything OK in there?"  And then when she'd emerge, I'd ask "Are you OK?  What happened? Did you pee?  Was it diarrhea?"

Poor Laney.  I mean, not only does she have to suffer with a stomach flu, she's got to deal with me prying into the intimate details of her bathroom habits, which I do, of course, because that's what parents do.

Laney told me I was embarrassing her.  And, of course, I was embarrassing her.  I was being totally embarrassing.  I am her mother and still think nothing of licking my fingers and wiping dirt off her face.  I have grabbed boogers off her nose in public places.  I am AWFUL.

But there's a distant part of me that remembers what it was like to be embarrassed as a kid.  Do you remember how awful it was?  It's like how you enjoy eating spinach now.  But it legit tasted terrible when you were a kid.  And just because you you've been buying tampons like a boss for 30 years now, that bloodstain on your pants in 7th grade was still cripplingly embarrassing.

Let's face it: grown-ups don't have the same capacity for embarrassment that kids do.  Would that they did!  I bet that whole Iraq debacle wouldn't have happened if Dick Cheney and George Will were capable of shame.  But it is an excellent exercise to recall your own childhood capacity for embarrassment and afford your own child the respect of accepting that their feelings are real.

And so I have come to realize that is not funny to embarrass your kids.  And I will not do it (unless Laney really super duper has it coming).

Upon realizing that my bathroom questions were making Laney suffer even more, I made this deal with her: I told her that if she promised to tell me when she was sick, if she promised to be honest with me about things her body was doing that she didn't understand or that made her uncomfortable, that I wouldn't ask her embarrassing questions.

We'll fail at this.   Laney will not be able to stand telling me about some things without me leading her there.  And I won't be able pry myself away from the bathroom door the day after she gets IV fluids in the E.R.  But we'll try.  And it's the effort that'll give it meaning.

I won't Facebook Laney's stuff.  And I won't blog it.

This doesn't count, right?

It's Too Late for this But...

I just finished a typically excellent episode of Breaking Bad in which the last line of dialog was one character telling another character to "get the fuck out of here and never come back."  It was a shocking moment.  Not because he said "fuck."  This is a show for grown-ups.  It was shocking for [rest of sentence redacted for spoilers... but if you're caught up through episode 9 of season 4, let's fucking dish!]  Also, he didn't really say that because Breaking Bad is on basic cable, so he really said "Get the [inaudible]k out of here."

I am rarely if ever offended by swearing.  But even if you are, I doubt you'd have been here.  The word use was not at all gratuitous, completely in service of story and exactly what the character would have said.  If you'd made it to episode 9, season 4 (and if you have.... seriously, let's dish), you're not even a little bit likely to have noticed that it was an unusually naughty word for basic cable because you'd be too busy thinking about [redacted... spoilers].

This line of dialog followed a stunningly violent fight scene.  A fight scene that was, at least to me, genuinely upsetting.  But while upsetting,  this fight scene was not at all gratuitous, completely in service of story and exactly what those characters would have done.  It was meant to be upsetting.  And we saw every gory second of it. And then the delicate sensibilities of the basic cable viewer were protected from the word "fuck" by crafty, but still obvious sound editing.

So stupid, right? I mean, aside from the obvious fact that every single viewer of Breaking Bad is not only familiar with the word "fuck" but likely to have uttered that word that very day (my guess is that right after that line was delivered the entire BB viewership said, at once, "Holy fuck!").

Again, I know I'm shouting down the same well countless others have shouted down before, but why is it OK to show almost any level of violence on television, in movies, in video games, but bare a breast or let slip an f-bomb and suddenly the game changes?  The rating is different?

Sometimes, I swear it seems like the whole of American pop culture is basing its rules of conduct off of a handout the biggest asshole teacher in elementary school handed out in fifth grade homeroom.

Blog the Third: Just Call Yourself a Liberal, Already

The Villagers love to talk about Centrism.  I get the appeal of the concept.  In a tidy, sensible country, two powers from equal points away from the center push and pull against each other with equal might and vigor so that we as a nation would never move too far away from that sane, sensible middle.

But we do not live in that country. We live in a much much crazier country.  We live in a country where it is reasonable that people die from lack of health insurance and it is reasonable that corporate profits not be regulated in any meaningful way.  We live in a country where it is reasonable that a woman be forced to undergo a medically senseless transvaginal ultrasound before receiving a legal medical procedure and it is unreasonable to have any but the most toothless federal gun control legislation.  We live in a country where it is reasonable for 1% of the country to take home 24% of the national income and it is reasonable for 14% of American households live with food insecurity.

What I'm saying here is that the sane, sensible position is not smack in the middle of the current left and the current right.   What Bernie Sanders would do to America would make America a better place than what Paul Ryan would do.  Also, the area in the middle of what Bernie Sanders would do and what Paul Ryan would do is not a better, more sensible place than the Bernie Sanders place.  Also, our country is right now way more skewed to the Paul Ryan place than the Bernie Sanders place.

I get the appeal of the term: a centrist sounds like someone who isn't playing for a side, someone unswayed by talking points and soulless politicking.  But "centrism" has become a thing like electrolytes.  There are some scenarios, there was some time, in which it could be a boon to health (personal or social).  But now it's mostly used as a way to sell you crap.  And if you worship at the altar of centrism, soon enough all the plants will die:

Blogpost the Second: Why Are People so Mean?

In this Sunday blogpost, I am going to write about something that has been written a billion times since the Internet has become a thing.  Because what is the internet for if not endlessly rehashing the same issues?* 

Why are internet commenters so fucking mean?

Every Saturday, Gawker publishes a post by someone who is generally not a professional writer under the topic of "True Stories."  I really enjoy this series.  The writing is generally good and the topics, while sometimes lurid and confessional, are often fascinating, and never merely desperate-for-attention shocking.

Invariably, the first comment on these posts will be from someone complaining that the person who wrote it is either a terrible writer or a terrible person.  Almost every time.  And then the dogpile stars.  And it's always so fucking MEAN!

Here's an example of comments to an essay that I actually enjoyed a lot:




I get the buzz for feeling smarter than someone else.  And I understand that the commentariat at blogs like Gawker feel a more immediate ownership of the site than the commenters at something like CNN.com or HuffPo.  But why so ugly, why so mean?

No one reads my shitty blog.  I've gotten maybe 100 distinct views on my most popular posts.  But I think the days of wanting a vast readership are done.  I can't stand it when people come at me like that.  I've posted comments at blogs like Pajiba and Gawker and had people come at me like this; been called an idiot and a cunt.  And I just can't take it.  It hurts my feelings.

My friend Paul has written (much better) on this topic than I have here.  Go read it.  But despite his good advice, I can't seem to stand having my feelings hurt by mean people on the internet.

*The internet is really for hilarious videos of sloths.