Old issues

Apparently my thighs have always been a problem area. Thanks for the pic Mom!

Oh Sandy

Another kind of Sandy. Maybe just as bad. Imagine just going in Walmart for some chips and sour cream and being told your bikini top was not enough coverage.  I like that the reporter kept a straight face. Click the link to go to the whole story.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/lady-kicked-out-of-walmart-for-wearing-a-string-bi

Zebras are jerks

extremely-rare-spotted-zebra-lives-on-his-own-and-hates-your-guts/

I love how they describe this zebra. Isolated. Angry. Always pissed off.

Well I suppose he should be. He's not like the other zebras and it turns out zebras are close-minded assholes. The wildlife photographer in Kenya says his physical differences (he's more like a donkey and he even has SPOTS on his back) are vast compared to the usual, simple striped differences amongst zebras.  He has scars probably from all the times he's tried to insert himself into a community that consistently rejects him over differences that he didn't elect. He never gets laid.

As a member of an evolved and superior species, I went AWWWWW.  Did you?  Those other zebras are jerks.  I think that my instinctive sad and sorry feeling for this ostracized fella is about having enough perspective to know that his GLORIOUS spots are a rare and beautiful sight and that the other zebras are idiots.  His differences are of a genetic origin that has a cosmetic consequence, but his culture imposes much, much more judgement than just having spots would warrant. I'm sure it's some evolutionary coded instinct that causes them to reject any animal that might risk the survival of the species.  From a scientific perspective, however, this genetic anomaly perceived through a larger lens might have served to strengthen the line somehow, but zebras are known for not valuing the big picture and don't have genetic counseling so they shun instead.  Jerks.

You know they aren't the only species that has an extreme reaction to difference - all of them do it.  Watch Animal Planet and then get all smug about how we are superior because of our big brains and opposable thumbs, but don't kid yourself into thinking we make use of those big ol' brains.   We have an instinct that says leaving that zebra out is wrong and that's A HUGE difference between us and other animals - not that we have that instinct, but that we ignore our instincts.  You won't see a dog second guess his gut about a person. Or a zebra I guess.  Funny how anthropological knowledge and an endorsement of our own superiority (which we usually attribute to our capacity for morality) as a species doesn't translate into empathy or inclusion in our own community, where bullying among children and adults, venom over politics and a complete disregard for civility over differences are clearly a problem.  Something to think about maybe.

Not sure it could be worse

He's not getting out of this one.

Your refrigerator is running

All I wanted was a simple answer to a question. I had a missed call in the middle of the night last week and didn't recognize the number.  Because the area code was the same as my sister's, I later wondered if maybe one of her kids had needed me (as an aunt, I want to be available to them) and I knew it was possible that I didn't have all of their current numbers loaded in my phone. So I call her and tell her I'm going to text this number to her and she can tell me which one of them called me in the night. I did NOT ask her to call the number. Just tell me if you recognize it, sis.  SIMPLE REQUEST.  Or maybe not.

I didn't get a call back so I finally called her and she's giggling so I'm pretty sure she's probably called the number.  Of course she called the number. Look, I don't call numbers back that I don't recognize specifically because I don't want to talk on the phone to someone I don't already know well enough to have in my contact list (unless it's my niece or nephews).  AND because I don't want to call and harass someone who simply mis-dialed me in the first place.  You never know who you might piss off by calling someone and accusing them of calling you. Just imagine the suspicion that could cause in a volatile relationship.  But you know how if you touch a phone number in a text your iphone will call that number? My giggling accomplice missed that lesson apparently.

I used to make what they call pretext calls for a private investigator's office. It's lucrative for a young person and pretty simple work if you don't mind lying and can think on your feet. Mostly I was lying to folks who were being investigated for fraud so I didn't feel that badly about calling them, but I never felt 100% comfortable either.  My sister, on the other hand, is like most people. She CAN lie, but gets really giggly and nervous so she gives herself away.

Here's a transcript of their conversation:

TOTAL Stranger (who now has Mel's phone number):  Hello?

Mel: oh crap I dialed it. Hee hee. Hello?  Is, um.... Mike there?  (see, she picked this name real smooth out of her head).

COULD BE ANYBODY Stranger:  No, he's not at this number, but if you see him, will you please tell him I've been getting some of his mail?

---WHAT ARE THE CHANCES I'M ASKING YOU???? That my quick thinking sister has actually chosen a name of a person who at least at some point must have RESIDED at this house she has called.

Mel:  wow. oh, um, well I don't really know him that well. I just got his number from someone.

MIGHT BE A STALKER Stranger: Well I've been getting a lot of calls for him since I got this number.

Mel:  Oh.  What's your name? (again with the smooth because the goal was actually to find out the caller's name).

Complete STRANGER:  R---.  Who's calling again? (I can't believe it's taken her this long to get suspicious)

Mel:  Um, well, um I gotta go.

click.


Well at least the mystery of the midnight mis-dialer is solved and my sister has a new friend.  Sorry, Mel, for letting everyone know how to tell when you are lying.  Call me.

L

When in doubt, pinkies out

A lesson in classiness.

Not tonight Arby's!!

So we don't talk much about how I feel about food and that's probably because I mostly feel weird about it, but I think we can all agree that fast food isn't something you ought to ingest.  Pretty much ever.  I'll admit that a McDonald's french fry can be heaven during some hormonal spikes, but we all know that if you can avoid it, you should.  You can thank me later for not going into great detail about whether what you're ingesting even qualifies as actual food (I'll loan you the book). The MEAT, dear GOD, the meat. Just don't make me show you about it.

As it happens, one of my "will never ever eat at" restaurants is Arby's.  And when I say never I mean not even if I am dying of something that only horsey sauce can cure.   So when I saw Arby's in the headlines, I just happily clicked on it, certain that their evil was being exposed in yet another article, but it wasn't what I thought.  This article is about an employee of 23 years who was fired because she had the sense to escape a robbery through the drive-thru window so now we know for sure that Arby's doesn't treat ANYONE well.  What struck me was her fantastic quote: "I'm not going to die in Arby's tonight."  Me either. Now let's find this woman a new job.

/arbys-employee-fired-after-fleeing-armed-robbery-im-not-going-to-die-in-arbys-tonight

I need a superhero

I'm sorry I haven't written to you lately.  To be honest, I am weighed down because lately I've seen way too many ways that humans find to injure one another and also I never can stand how nasty folks get in an election season.  Anyway, I can't stop how other folks behave, but I would very much like to challenge you to help me find any evidence of kindness or courage in the world to maybe act as a counterbalance to all the icky stuff around us.

I found this today and wanted to share it with you.

New favorite idea

Everyone wants to be a musician. Love this.

Here's what happy looks like

Proof!

That anything can happen. It's possible to go from being this guy to being voted Sexiest Man Alive. Here's George Clooney's yearbook picture.

In which I almost got my ass beat at Target

I know how much you love to hear when I run into trouble, so while I don't go searching for trouble, I don't hesitate to share the instant something interesting happens.  Here goes:

Olivia and I were out shopping in the Atlanta area today and happened into Target for one last t-shirt search.  We were tired already and I needed my afternoon green tea, so I'll admit that my judgement might have been impaired.  We could hear a 2 year old child screaming not far from the entrance and, because I am a magnet for trouble, this child and her mother naturally surfaced not far from us in the ladies department.  This child is clearly miserable and so is her mom.  I can hear mom using her outside voice while she shouts at the little one that she will just be putting this and that back and to SHUT UP.  Now, people lose their tempers. People who have kids lose their tempers and people who are exhausted and have two year olds especially lose their tempers.  I get it. I've been there and I remember thinking that shouting was an option and that maybe even spanking was an option (even though the one time I attempted that turned out to be completely ineffective and left me crying more than Olivia).  

I'm staying close because her language is offensive enough that a reasonable mother starts to wonder if she ought to offer a little comfort or kindness in order to defuse a situation.  From out of nowhere, however, another couple approaches and the mom here begins to inform the Lunatic Mom that she's abused her child (I discovered later that our entrance was AFTER the spanking incident which caused the crying in the first place at another part of the store).  It has never made much sense to me to SCREAM at a person to stop screaming, but you know, WHATEVER, and these two strangers are face to face, 2 inches apart while they scream. I'm thinking this is going to get more physical in about 1.2 seconds.   

Now there's a moment in every crisis where a person asks herself if she ought to get involved and there were two factors racing through my head as the number of witnesses started to gather.  First, my daughter is watching.  She's fast approaching the time in her life where she may have to publicly announce to someone that their behavior is a really dangerous thing.  She needs an example of how to do that diplomatically (and hopefully without getting her ass beat).  Second, no 2 year old baby needs to see grown ups fight like this and no baby needs to believe that constant physical intimidation and emotional berating are the only way that people communicate.  I don't know if she fights dirty, but I would lose some hair or take a shiner for a 2 year old to know that some adult would stick up for her (even if she might not ever remember it).

So my shining moment mostly involved me waving my arms and using my mom-voice to say, "Hey, hey, hey, ladies this is no way to talk to one another" (kind of a move akin to trying to distract a bear with something shiny) and "Girls, we are upsetting the baby doing this." Incidentally, the child is now sitting SILENT with mouth agape (probably dreading her upcoming afternoon).  Olivia is retreating while I move closer to try to get between them. The approacher's husband is standing by like a chump (probably secretly hoping to see his wife in a cat fight FINALLY) in his converse tennies and sweater, but boy is he willing for me to get in the mix.  Some of the bystanders start chiming in that this woman is abusive and when the employees start to circle, mom and baby head furiously towards the door, but not before she turned to me with her crazy eyes and demanded, "YOU GOT SOMETHING TO SAY TO ME?"

I have a lot to say (I kept that in my head), but what came out was this: "I'm just so sorry that you have to shout at your child." I winced because this would be the moment, I thought, where she'd hit me too if she was going to do it.  She just turned and booked it out of there before the security guard came and the lynch mob could get any closer.  When I looked back at Olivia's stricken face I wondered if I'd done the right thing to involve myself at all. I certainly didn't really DO anything, but I couldn't get right with NOT saying anything at all, that's for sure.  

I'd just been thinking a few days ago about how many friends I have who actually shout very regularly at their children and how much it bothers me anytime someone is unhappy enough to raise their voice in anger at the people they claim to love most.  I know lots of people just communicate that way, but I refuse to think it's acceptable.  I think that if you are frequently resorting to screaming at people who are a lot smaller than you the problem is most likely YOU because as the (presumably smarter) adult surely you could have thought of a better way to get what you need from a child. And soon enough your child is going to be bigger than you and a hell of a lot more willing to be louder than you and that's not going to end well, I think.  Roll your eyes at my commitment to not screaming (I haven't always succeeded, mind you) if you want, but I'm not going to argue with you about this.

So I was trying to communicate to this woman of whom I know nothing else about really - that I'm sorry for whatever circumstances led her to think it would fix things if she were to hit and scream at her child. I can imagine that she's lots of things - maybe exhausted and miserable and maybe just a bully who procreated and I'm sorry, unbelievably sorry, that this is the day she's choosing to give her child.  This mom job is a hard one.  Having to be responsible for every aspect of someone's present day and laying the groundwork for their future is an unbelievable weight and it's easy to get focused on the awful frustration of things like crayons on the wall and temper tantrums and that shit is REAL so I get it.  

I'm not foolish. I doubt any Target confrontation could change a person's disposition that much, but I did do two things - I gave MY daughter the day she needed to have because she saw that you don't have to turn your head when you have a chance to bring peace to a difficult situation and that 2 year old heard some stranger woman look at her out of control mother and calmly wish for more for her. 

Pay attention

This is what it looks like when you care about your community.  How much does a donkey cost? Because I just may buy Luis a new one.  You won't regret watching.

I'm no Mother Teresa

This is a long one, but I am a horrible editor. Skip to the end if you are too busy today.

If you know me you can count on this one thing: I believe you are better than you really are and I'll do a hell of a lot to make sure you believe I am better than I truly am too.  I can't help it. Probably I started shining you up from the moment we met.  I have beautiful friends who make it look natural, but in reality they are probably anxiously plucking and tweezing and buffing in secret til all hours of the night. If you don't believe how invested we girls are in passing ourselves off as better versions of ourselves, check out the revenue that SPANX is bringing in yearly.

Believe me, I've learned many times over the dangers of allowing my imaginative you to have a more prominent position in my life than the actual you.  You can bet that lots of relationships ended with me feeling like this:

So I planned to talk about the value of Living in Reality for a few posts and when I say I'm making you up to be so much better than you are, I'm not saying anything bad about YOU. I'm asking that you see how this filter I have keeps me from actually, really seeing the real wonderful or maybe not at all wonderful YOU. And I'm asking you to look at me without any filters or lenses also. Anyway, I've been thinking a lot about how we sometimes really prefer not living in reality in regard to the people we love and the people we don't even know that we admire and whether that's a good thing or not and to tell you the truth, I'm pretty sure it's not.

Here's something that I've been thinking about that you (being awesome in my head) probably already knew.  Mother Teresa heard Jesus (literally) when she was 38 years old and received instruction from him to leave the Sisters of Loreto in Calcutta after her already 20 years there and begin the work that we are all familiar with among the "poorest of the poor."  She described this instruction and God's closeness in all its intensity in her letters (the word she used was "violent") and she immediately set out gathering support for her mission to comfort the least of these. After her death in 1997, her letters were revealed, letters that she had instructed her friend and confidant to burn (not sure why he didn't honor that request).  These letters showed a very different, very desolate Teresa who had never heard the voice of God again during her remaining 50 years of work.  She wrote, "Jesus has a very special love for you. But as for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great, that I look and do not see- listen and do not hear - the tongue moves (in prayer) but does not speak."  And later, "What do I labor for? If there be no God - there can be no soul - if there be no soul, then Jesus - You are also not true."  She described her condition as "darkness" and "torture" and this estrangement lasted for the rest of her life. That she wrote, "Please pray for me - for there is such terrible darkness within me, as if everything was dead" isn't the worst part of it to me.  That she pleaded with her advisor to hear her anguish and pray for her relief isn't the worst part either - really, I admire that she could be honest with someone about it. What's the saddest part is that she recognized the great inconsistency in her public persona and her private one and that she felt fraudulent because of it.  Here's how she described this discrepancy to her confidant: "The smile is a mask or a cloak that covers everything.  I spoke as if my heart was in love with God. If you were there, you would have said, 'What hypocrisy.'" 

  

Mother Teresa hid her agony, her isolation from God for almost 50 years. Sleeping, eating, helping even the LEPERS in India - having to use GOD KNOWS WHAT to go to the bathroom (I am just bathroom sensitive), and stumbling to her bed every night exhausted, spent from using her own hands to offer kindness to people suffering in ways you and I cannot imagine, dumbfounded probably from an up-close view of the absolute worst that humans can do to one another, raising ridiculous amounts of money and awareness to the least of these, Mother Teresa closed her eyes each night feeling disconnected from God and abandoned.  Not to get into a debate about it, but some folks say that her crisis of faith actually makes her MORE saintly (she did the work God asked her to do in spite of his subsequent silence) while others say it disqualifies her from sainthood. I'm interested in that, but MORE interested in discussing this desire, even among the best of folks to hide our realities from one another.  

Mother Teresa had pretty good reasons to keep these inconsistencies between public and private quiet. In her correspondence, it sounds as if she feared those revelations might cause another's crisis of faith and undermine the work God had asked of her - and regardless of where she stood in her faith, it was GOOD work to do.  But here's my point and it's the thing you probably already know:  I'm no Mother Teresa. My reasons (and yours) for promoting our own public personas aren't anywhere near as noble. I do it so I am not embarrassed, not exposed as imperfect I think, and because we humans are just pretty prideful.  I'm not trying to secure millions of dollars in relief money, I'm just trying no make sure nobody knows that sometimes we shout at each other on the way to church on Sundays and that we've not always been as happy as we are now.  I'd rather you not know how often I forget to shave one leg and that I have all manner of social anxieties and that there's never, ever going to be a session of trying on jeans or bathing suits that doesn't end in cursing and self loathing. The weird part is, when people have shown me their imperfections, I've always found that I like them MORE. 

Imagine what relief it must have been for Mother Teresa to write her agonies to her friend, to show just one person her despair.  You are not Mother Teresa, but I understand if you feel the weight of exposure and I'm telling you, in writing, that I think I'd like you even better if you trusted me a little with your reality.  Talk soon. I'm off to shave BOTH legs now.