Cynical Mom

And on the bleeding heart note...

I feel bad for Craig Kilborn. Does he always wonder "What if I'd stayed?"

I think I spend too much time feeling bad for other people.

14 Years

That's half of my life. I cannot imagine how I would feel had this happened to me or my husband or my child. Actually, I can imagine how it would make me feel if it happened to my child: it would turn me into a sniveling bowl of jelly incapable of piecing together words form sentences make good funny on blog. But 14 years later? Or even 5? I don't know.

But regarding this case, I don't presume to know how Michael is really feeling, or if Terry really is "gone", or what "gone" means, or any of the other issues surrounding it. I've seen too many times how the news leaves out information that would help me have an informed opinion, so I try to give the benefit of the doubt about information that isn't reported.

All I know is, I wish Congress hadn't got a bug up their ass about this one. It's a horribly complex issue where there's no clear right answer and the core of several people's lives are at the center of it, yes... and although I must admit didn't pay much attention in social studies[1], I don't believe worrying about this is something that Congress needs to be doing.

It's funny... there are a lot of paranoid people out there in the world whose fears are not grounded in reality. Michael is one of few people right now who can honestly say that the government is out to get him.

On a related note, at lunch yesterday, we were discussing politics. I made a bleeding-heart liberal statement which shocked a coworker, who explained that he'd thought I was republican. Somehow, that offended me more than just about anything else he could have said. Of course, he's republican, so I probably ended up offending him with my offended manner. Ah, well.

I hate that if you want your vote to count, you have to vote for who has a chance of winning, not necessarily who you agree the most. I hope that when Jared is an adult, it'll be better.

[1] These days, I get my news from The Daily Show. Yes, I'm one of those people.

ATTN: All cashiers

Please read this tip of the day:

When giving a customer their change, first place the coins in their hand, then the bills and receipt over them. This way, the coins will not slide off the bills, fall on the floor, annoy the customer, and hold up your line while the customer picks up the coins.

This has been a pet peeve of mine for years. I always feel so small for getting annoyed by this, but I don't understand how I figured this out as a cashier at age 16, and yet lifers who check me out at the grocery store and target still haven't figured this out. AUGH.

Seen in my house this evening

A young boy, holding on to the refrigerator for dear life, screaming "brokkri! brokkri!", his mother trying to pry him away while refusing to feed him his beloved broccoli.

Things I'd never thought I'd say to my son

"Jared, stop playing with choo-choo trains and go eat your cereal off the floor!"

Cross-purpose advice

Surely you've read it somewhere, in a marriage advice book, Dear Abby or just heard it from a friend: don't go to bed angry.

Tonight I was pondering the applicability of this advice to parenting as well. We had a trying afternoon. And by trying, I mean food throwing. We had several time-outs -- which, strangely enough, we did not enjoy very much -- but the food throwing continued. I finally dragged him upstairs to bed at 6 with his arms reaching out over my shoulders saying "pizza! pweez! pizza! pweez!" in a most pitiful tone. But I would have none of it, having spent the last half hour cleaning up from his escapades. Plus, he'd eaten an entire can of baby corn before the throwing started, so I knew he wasn't hungry.

So as I was putting him to bed, I was annoyed, more than a trifle. But then as we settled in to read his good-night story (you know, the one with the hidden gay agenda -- gasp!), he started giggling and piped up at all the right places, i.e.:

Me: "...and in goes Duck."
Jared: "Din-don!"
Me: "Ding dong! Who could that be at the door?"

and

Me: "Maisy runs downstairs to see who it is."
Jared: "Hewwo loolah!"
Me: "Hello Tallulah!"

And thus, I was not angry by the time I laid him down in his crib. Who could be, after that?

Brusha brusha brusha, getting ready for bed.

Will my son's kids have two daddies?

It's well known in my group of close mom friends that I am hoping that my son will turn out to be gay. There are two main reasons:

#1: He's less likely to leave me for a wife/girlfriend/female cohort... that is, only when he's old enough to leave his mother, around age 30.

#2: We have this fantastic staircase in our front hall that would look wonderful for sweeping down on prom night. But it is the way of the world that the boys go to the girls' houses to pick them up, and it's only in the girls' houses that you get the regal descent. So my only hope here is for A) him to be out & dating someone and B) the world is a cool enough place that he can take another guy to the prom.

Of course, you could turn #1 around and say that even in this day and age, daughters grow up and leave their parents but sons stick around. I live 20 minutes away from my parents-in-law, and 2000 miles away from my parents and the rest of my family, and it pains me. So perhaps there are some upsides if he turns out to be straight. But one day he will leave me somehow, and I'm already starting to fret.

On a more serious note, daddychip explains his thoughts on same-sex parents and raises an interesting point, comparing how "traditional gender roles" play a role in homophobia, and comparing that to "traditional gender roles" for fathers, i.e. bringing home the bacon and being the distant discipliner, certainly not the at-home dad or the openly affectionate father:

The issue of committed same-sex relationships does indeed challenge traditional gender roles and stereotypes. But of course any stay-at-home dad is also a direct challenge to this "traditional" definition of gender roles and of parenting. What could be more subversive of that definition than a dad who stays home full time with the kids and a mom who works full time bringing home the paycheck? Do those who claim to be protecting "traditional values" intend to outlaw stay-at-home dads?

...

Gender roles and expectations all too often stand in the way of healthy, happy families. They've prevented dads from expressing their love for their kids in tender ways, from trading off career and status for time with kids.

I have faith that as a society, the US is moving in a direction that is more tolerant of whatever roles, gender or otherwise, that people choose to take.

I was encouraged to read about Daddychip's children's experience, in that they have friends with same-sex parents... that was unheard of when I was a kid, but I am excited by the idea that by the time Jared is in school, that could be just a normal thing - different from his parents, but normal.

On the one hand, I want Jared to make up his own mind on things when he's old enough and form his own opinions based on the information around him. But on the other hand, I really hope that he ends up sharing my views on certain issues such as this one. I'll even let him be a fiscal republican if he wants, as long as he is socially liberal. :-)

My initiation into the PTA

My son is 21 months old this week. And last week, we had his first "parent teacher conference". This was supposed to be his second, but somehow we skirted out of the first one.

Side note: I am pretty sure that daycare thinks we are big slackers because we don't both take off work to go to every lunch celebration that they have ("It's Casimir Pulaski day, come on down and celebrate!!"), and we don't act excited enough when they give us his latest piece of artwork. So I suspect that ditching the first parent teacher conference is probably just one more notch in the special book about The Bad Parents.

At any rate, it was interesting. She opened up a huge binder of Information About Jared, with a variety of his artwork saved, pictures, and comments about his growth. First off, his main teacher does not speak English very well. And yet there's a section in the book where she comments on his language skills. Fortunately she said he was doing quite well verbally.

The book also spent some time cautioning us that "this is not a report card" but rather "a progress report" because of course "every child develops at his/her own rate". It made me wonder - when exactly is the switchover from "every child develops at his/her own rate" to "let's ensure our schools are good by testing the kids"?

I did learn something, however... she had saved some artwork from when he first joined the room at 15 months, and showed us how it was different compared to recent artwork. 6 months ago he drew a lot of dots rather than lines, whereas now he does lots of lines and random shapes. She explained that this was an example of his improved hand-eye coordination. Sounds good to me.

I love his teacher. So she can't speak English, sure (resulting in Jared calling his classmate Ben "Beh-beh" because that's what she calls him) and yet she's teaching my son new vocabulary words... but she obviously cares for him very strongly and is always on the floor actively engaged with the kids, unlike some of the other teachers. And plus, she had an entire book about him. That's pretty cool.

What's in a name?

One Good Thing relates the origin of her stripper name. She thanked her parents for giving her a good stripper name ("Trouble Knox") due to not allowing her to name the pet "Lollipop" as she wanted.

On my side of things, I was allowed to name the pet... but I do appreciate that my parents bought the house on the right street, when my mom was 8 months pregnant with me no less.

My stripper name: "Brownee Carlisle"

I got to name the dog. She was the darkest of the litter. I was not a particularly creative child. Apparently.