Well, it's official. I am no longer "Cool Mom." Oh, sure, I was cool enough when I was getting all four of the neighbor' kids juice and Cheerios when they played in my yard. But today I lost that status. Apparantly that's what you get for the following acts of cruelty:
1. Inform neighbor kids that it's totally not cool to stand at someone's screen door and scream into the house after climbing over the fence into the yard uninvited.
2. Reply, "What's the magic word?" to a demand for a drink (as I walked away, the kid sneered, "Geez, it's just water". Four years old. Yeah.)
3. ban the use of garden trowels as weapons against my three-year-old, and
4. make good on my promise to take said garden trowel away when my afore-stated rules were patently ignored.
Damn, I sure have turned into an unreasonable bitch. Next thing you know I'll be yelling at them to get off my lawn. Probably going to happen if they don't get the idea that you don't go onto other people's fenced property univited through their bratty little skulls. Maybe that's why we're the only family on the block that doesn't have a dog . . .
I’m a coward, and a hypocrite, and all before 8 in the morning. It’s gonna be a long day.
I always swore I was going to be direct with my child about matters of nature and death. I grew up hunting with my dad on one hand, and breeding cats with my mom on the other–I was never a child who had any illusions about animals, their place in the world or my dinner plate, or their deaths. I think I’m pretty healthy, so my husband and I decided we’d raise our daughter the same way.
Until the baby bunny, that is.
This past weekend our post-war suburban neighborhood underwent something of an unprompted, unofficial ritual, the First Mowing of Spring. It must have flushed out some wildlife, because yesterday evening we found a small juvenile rabbit crouching terrified in our lawn, not even enough instinct yet to run when people approached it. The neighborhood is overrun with large cats; he wouldn’t have lasted the night. And I have this thing about helpless infant creatures. So sue me.
We followed Operation Wildlife’s instructions, caught it with a towel, didn’t let the kid pet it, didn’t feed it, and closed it up in a box, which we put on top of the fridge, out of the way of curious three-year-old girls. Since their intake facility was closed when we called, we planned to take the poor thing in when my husband got home from work today.
Around 11 I was sitting in the living room enjoying a glass of wine and some Aqua Teen Hunger Force, when suddenly I look down and there’s a baby bunny on the floor. WTF? Checked the box–yeah, that’s our bunny. So I caught him again, put him back in his box, weighted the top down this time, and poked some airholes.
This morning Penny wakes up, and of course, wants to see the bunny first thing. I open the box and . . . dead bunny. Stiff, already. Oh, shit.
“The baby bunny’s sick right now, baby. We have to give him lots of quiet, so we can’t look at him now, okay?”
“Okay.”
Sick. Yeah. I wimped out. Instead of being Spartan Mom, and explaining to her about how sometimes animals we try to help just don’t make it, I told her it was sick. Then called my husband, and we conspired together. The bunny will be “sick” all day, and he will dispose of it while she’s napping this afternoon. When she wakes up, we’ll tell her Daddy had to take the bunny to the bunny hospital.
Well, hell. I feel bad enough already about the poor thing dying in my care without the kid going around all day brokenhearted. I’ll be Spartan Mom another day, perhaps with roadkill that wasn’t my fault.
I keep seeing sooo many blogs ridiculing that clip of the women from the LDS-breakoff compound in Texas. They’re robots, they’re brainwashed, they’re as interesting as oatmeal, they’re frumpy, they’re ugly, they’re dressed like Laura Ingalls, they sound coached . . . it just goes on. Many people are demonizing these women, but most are simply laughing their asses off at them.
Well, I’m not. I can’t see anything the least bit comical in that interview. What I see, instead, are three women who have been raised to be gentle, soft-spoken, modest, and kind, thrust into the glare of the public spotlight days after their children were taken from them at gunpoint and the safe insular world that’s all they’ve ever known was torn apart. I see three women standing up to that pressure with incredible grace and strength, doing everything in their power, from breaking their culture’s rules of personal modesty to parroting lawyer-penned lines, to show the world that they’re not child-raping freaks so that they can just get their babies back. I see a fucking TRAGEDY here, and my heart goes out to them.
I do not agree with the practices of the Poly-Mormons. Hell, I just don’t like Mormonism. I also am not a fan of child-rape. But that isn’t what happened there, and nobody seems to understand that.
Picture the scene. You’re a girl, you’re fifteen, you’ve been getting visits from the cardinal for a couple of years now. You live in a culture where there is no independent role for women outside the home. Your parents come to you and say they’ve found a man they’d like you to marry, an older man who is stable and can provide for you and your children and who will treat you kindly. They never say the words, “you have to”, but they’re implied—after all, you’ve been raised to obedience.
You’re not at a Mormon compound in Texas—you’re a free-born American farmgirl born in the year 1835. Or an English noblewoman born in 1532, or a Russian peasant born in 1746. Basically, you’re any girl born anywhere in the world before the twentieth century.
In our modern culture we seem to equate “marriage to underaged girls” with “brutal rape of babies.” Not so. These “children” were probably quite a bit less traumatized by their wedding night than I was by losing my virginity against my will at roughly the same age. Hell, they’re less traumatized than their male counterparts, countless of whom are exiled and abandoned because with the old men marrying multiple young girls, they have no prospects of a wife and family and therefore no place in their culture. But that’s another beef, for another time.
I’m not trying to defend the practices of these “cults”, although I could, to an extent. I’m defending Nancy, Esther, and Marie from the demonization that is being heaped upon their bowed heads. These women were not knowingly commending their daughters into the hands of slavering, abusive child-rapists. They were marrying them off to provider-husbands, as their culture believed. They’re not Koreshians sending their ten-year-old daughters off to a “spiritual marriage” with a slimy cult leader, they’re simply doing what their mothers did, what their grandmothers did, what YOUR great-great-grandmother probably did. They are living the life to which they were born in the best manner possible, and now that life has been torn out from under them. Imagine what you’d feel like if suddenly THEY were the majority, and came storming into your home and confiscated your children because you’d been a horribly abusive monster for letting your 17-year-old daughter dress like a hooker. Myself, I’d be a pissed-off, fire-spitting, enraged dragon-lady. I would not have the strength to sit in front of a camera and quietly, gently, and smilingly defend my way of life. I’d make an ass out of myself, and where would that get me?
Again, I’m not saying that I believe the way these people live is “right”. I’m also not saying it’s “wrong”. It’s most certainly different, but not so much so in a historical context. I’m just saying that no matter the findings of abuse that may or may not come out of the investigation, there is no call to humiliate these women further with public ridicule. They have suffered more in the past few weeks than you or I, G-d willing, will ever suffer in our entire lifetimes. They are terrified, they are lost, and they are despairing. And yet they still have the strength to go on a television program where they knew they were going to be torn apart for their beliefs, and answer questions calmly, gently, and smilingly. They have comported themselves with more grace than I could ever hope to. That’s not “brainwashing”, folks, that’s fucking CLASS. I admire these women for that. And that’s all I’m going to say on the subject.
It's going to get awfully lonely for the next two months.
Aside from being in a house-bliss coma, I've rediscovered my cooking skills. We haven't bought bread in a month, and I've lost close to fifteen pounds stuffing myself with carbs, simply because they don't come from a drive-through or a delivery guy.
And then on top of all of that, I'm going to be in a movie. Sure, the premier is going to be in a dive bar, and it'll probably never be seen by more than a hundred people, but it's going to be a blast. The screenplay is brilliant, and after meeting the actors involved this weekend, I have every confidence that this film is going to be awesome, in an early John-Waters-meets-Raymond-Chandler sort of way.
It's a murder mystery, and like every good story in its genre, it has a kick-ass detective. Husband-and-wife detective team, actually, only the husband is dead, and must communicate his end of the sleuthing through a Ouija board. The killer turns out to be an escaped mental patient who killed her own daughter and assumed her identity in order to wreak her vengeance on the husband who cheated on her with a famous spokesmodel transvestite.
I'm playing none of these. My character's even more fun: Doris Deluxe, the merry-widow heiress whose disgustingly rich husband died in a tragic accident involving a mobility scooter and a short pier. I can't decide which of these two is my favorite scenes:
INT. DORIS'S ROOM– NIGHT
Conrad straddles the mattress, completely naked, panting and restless. His face and chest gleam
with layers of sweat.
CONRAD: Doris, baby, you are one nasty lay...
POV: Doris, squirming in ecstacy, rubbing her face, looking up at him.
DORIS: That's right, daddy, that's right...
CONRAD: ... you're a sleazy, hard-core, triple-platinum fuck-o-phile...
DORIS: ...you got it, that's right...
CONRAD: ...but let me ask you something: Has anyone ever taught you how to MAKE LOVE?
Doris groans in revulsion. She reaches up to grab his cock.
DORIS: Just shut up and stick it in me, cowpoke...
EXT. DORIS'S ROOM– NIGHT
The crash and thunk of headboard-meeting-wall echo up and down the hallway, punctuated by
the orgasmic shrieks of Doris and Conrad.
CONRAD: Oh- Oh- Oh... Here comes the GRA-AAA-VYYY!!!!
Someone is lurking nearby, watching the door, breathing, waiting...
Or perhaps this one:
THE GROTTO– DAY
A balcony overlooking the swimming pool. Dolly O'Connor stands alone, looking over the
edge. The bright noontime sun blasts a halo through her hair.
POV: The swimming pool, down below. Doris is having some kind of altercation with the pool
boy, who we immediately recognize as the Young Man from an earlier bathroom scene.
Camera cuts in close– now we're right next to them, listening to every word of their
conversation.
YOUNG MAN: No, go on... Leave me alone!
Doris keeps trying to put her arms around him, to draw him closer to her body.
DORIS: Aw, come on, sugar... I thought maybe you and me could make some time later...
The Young Man shoves her violently away.
YOUNG MAN: I said NO, god dammit! You gave me crabs, you fucking skag!
DORIS: What? What a horrible thing to say!
Other poolside guests are watching them now, buzzing with eager gossip.
The Young Man stands up and points down at her.
YOUNG MAN: That's right– CRABS! All over my dick and my balls! And you gave ‘em to
me!
Doris sees everyone watching her and becomes frantic. She lowers her voice dramatically and
reaches for his leg.
DORIS: Please, darlin'... Can't we talk about this back in my room? You know, somewhere
more private?
He jerks his leg away, which causes her to fall on her face.
YOUNG MAN: No! No! No!
He pads away, fuming. He motions to his balls and points at her one more time.
YOUNG MAN: CRABS!
Doris is sobbing now.
DORIS: Please! Please...
She reaches out to him as he vanishes through the gate.
DORIS: Come back! I don't want to be alone!!!!
Cut back to the balcony– Dolly absorbs this scene with a wry smile on her face.
Oh, yeah. My film debut is going to be AMAZING.
***screenplay copyright Rob Gillaspie 2008, used with permission. 'Cause I gave him booze!!!!
No matter how badly I was lost, I should have known I was on Troost, just by the car in front of me.
'94, '95 maybe, Ford Festiva, patchy paint, shocks sagging comically on the driver's side. Well, no wonder, the woman behind the wheel must have been at least four hundred pounds, if her mammoth neck and sloping glacier shoulders were any indication.
The passenger was a man, average-sized, in do-rag and enough bling that it shone even at the back of his neck, from one car back. He was getting the ever-loving shit beaten out of him.
I was yelling obsceneties at the driver, probably cursing her to die of syphilis in a back alley of Calcutta, because of her driving. Once I saw exactly *why* she was driving like a retarded tweeker on sedatives, though, I just couldn't help but follow.
You'd think that such a violent argument would require her to make some movements of her head and body that didn't involve her right fist, but you'd be wrong. But no. Of course, maybe this wasn't an argument, maybe this is just how these two people pass the time on a Tuesday lunchtime drive through downtown.
Anyway, about twice, maybe three times per block, and nearly incessantly at red lights, that fist went. Pow. Pow. Pow. She looked like she knew what she was doing, like she did this a lot. Then again, so did he. Several times his head recoiled from her blows with such force that it rebounded off his window and hit her fist again of its own accord. At times she maintained a rhythm reminiscent of those balloon-on-a-rubber-band punching toys I loved so much as a child. No slapping, no grabbing, just punch, punch, punch to the side of his head, which, when it wasn't being buffeted about like a pinball, was bowed over his lap.
I finished the drive to my husband's work in a state of wonder. As in, I wonder if she supports him financially, or can suck the chrome off a trailer hitch, or even less likely, if he deserved it. And I wonder why, if I saw a woman being beaten like that, I'd have been on the phone to 911 before the second punch landed, but in this case, I just followed for half a dozen blocks like the scene before me was a particularly engaging television program.
Mostly, though, I just wonder what more ludicrous bits of street theatre this strange new city has in store for me.
So my mom doesn't think too great these days. Her thyroid was almost completely non-functional for a year before she went to a doctor; she was days away from a coma then, and not much better after eighteen months on Synthroid. A combination of nervous system damage from pernicious anemia during this period and a series of what we suspect were small strokes has left her with mental faculties that are spotty, at best. I'd like to say that she has days when she's back to her old self, but no. She's never going to be the same.
That, of course, hasn't stopped countless credit card companies from extending her credit limits in excess of ten grand apiece. Nor, unfortunately, has it stopped her from obsessing about leaving me an "inheritance" of "goodies" when she and my dad go. In fruit-loop land, this translates into numerous purchases from Jewelry TV, which had her convinced that she was buying valuable gold and gems at rock-bottom, we're-losing-our-shirts-here-we-must-be-CRAZY prices.
She intended to buy about eight thousand dollars' worth of home-shopping jewelry and leave it tucked away in shoeboxes in their attic, for me to find and be thrilled by. Insted, due to Jewelry TV's predatory fraud and/or an ongoing error in their automated ordering system, she now finds herself with 93,000 dollars worth of credit card charges and a house full of sparklies that the company won't take back. The purchase price of the house they live in was just under seventeen thousand dollars, to put that into a little perspective.
I'm currently trying to work with her county's attorney and the state AG's consumer protection division, but it's going to be an uphill battle. Since a kind operator at the JTV call center told her that she didn't need order confirmation numbers, and since her brain, most days, has the consistency of oatmeal, records on her end are sporadic, at best. If we recoup any of her losses, it's going to be because I am a ball-busting vindictive bitch with a few connections and nothing better to do than harrass the shit out of these assholes. Sure, my mom didn't keep the records she was supposed to, but the majority of these false charges and orders were made after she confided to a call-center rep that she and my dad were both disabled and her "memory wasn't what it used to be." Since then, every time she calls and gives her identifying information, she is hung up on. Every damn time. I tried it once myself, and the same thing happened to me.
I'm not going to be doing much during this next week. My own knowledge of my hormonal landscape tells me that I'll end up with charges of terrorist threats filed against me if I start in on this before the moon starts waxing again. But when I'm sane again . . . it's still going to get ugly, but I'm much less likely to land my ass in jail.
Or at least our TV. The list of shows I’ll no longer allow my kid to watch is growing daily. The latest program to get the boot (and the block, I heart my DVR) is "Max and Ruby".
Those of you out there with small children may have seen it, I’m pretty sure it airs on PBS Sprout, which blows my mind. It’s a quaintly-drawn little animation, very sweet and old-fashioned, starring cute little anthromorphic bunny rabbits. Max is the little brother, and Ruby, his older sister, was apparently left in charge of him that one day when Mommy went out for smokes and never came back--like many, many children’s shows, these tots don’t seem to have parents.
Anyway, if you actually watch a few episodes, you come to the conclusion that you’d rather have your kid watching pay-per-view porn. Or maybe that’s just me. Every episode revolves around the "aw, isn’t that cute?!" glorification of the younger child’s selfish, deceptive, and destructive behavior, while mocking the older child’s responsibility and quiet, constructive play. Max lies, sneaks, and busts his way through each show while the ever-patient Ruby tries to keep him from breaking his fool head off, only to end up with all of the supporting characters praising Max’s inadvertent creativity and chuckling condescendingly at his bumbling sister’s efforts to keep him in check.
I know that children’s TV isn’t perfect, but I’ll be damned if my three-year-old gets to watch a show where some sneaky little shit breaks into his sister’s room, destroys all her stuff, lies about it, and then gets rewarded at the end. And I’ll be damned if I want her viewing a program that sends the message that the kind, patient care-takers of the world are to be vilified and mocked.
At least when Trey lets her watch a UFC match, it teaches her that actions have consequences, dammit.
I'd like a few words with you. In keeping with the tone you take with me, whether you're trying to intimidate me or get me to show you my boobies, I'm going to try and pitch this somewhere between Hannah Montana and Sarah Connor:
"Listen, fucktards. You don't know me. You really don't.
I'm as well-armed as you.
I've killed and skinned and eaten as much game as you.
Shit, son, I've poached more than you. At my high school, absences on the first day of any significant season weren't counted, you know? Those days were for garage processing. I've blast-fished and spotlighted with the best of you, probably your cousins, even, while we were sipping Jack and getting away with breaking curfew because this was hunting, and Kansas, after all.
I'm probably as good a shot as you. I consistently out-shot grown men when I was fourteen, that was in '92 . . . owing for brain damage from the drugs and booze, I'm going to say I can at least hit you with what I'm shooting.
Which is another thing. I'm not Annie Oakley, and I know this. My firearm choices reflect that bit of self-awareness. I can take down a doe with a .22 magnum rifle, but if you are threatening me, the best you can hope for is a hollowpoint .38 slug to the torso—that's if you're lucky and catch me in the kitchen before I can get to the 12-gauge, and so on. I don't like small calibers, and I don't like anything I can't take apart and clean and put back together without dragging out the big toolbox.
Oh, and I know how to do all that, just like you.
I know as many back roads out of my city as you do yours, and I've only lived here a month.
My bugout bag is a thing of beauty.
I know how to steal a horse or a car or a heart, if it comes to that.
I am the paranoid child of a reluctant veteran.
I am a woman, and a mother.
I am a Libertarian.
I am a Jew.
I like black people. Brown ones, too. All sorts of colors, really; I think mutts are the prettiest, not to mention hardiest lines in any species.
I like girls that like other girls, and boys that take it up the butt. I smoke the marijuana. I'm pro-choice, and pro-family, and pro-Israel.
I don't believe in global warming; or more to the point, I believe in peak oil more.
I likes the nukyeler power.
I've worked phones at Immigraton, and therefore respect the ever-loving shit out of anyone who gets here by the book.
I don't think we really landed on the moon.
I'm teaching my kids to believe that gratitude, tolerance, and good manners will be enough to get them through both socially and spiritually, provided they own land and guns.
I'm not teaching them to believe that people are bad or wrong because of where or what color they were born, or what they like to wear, or whether or not they think Black Sabbath was better than the Stones (although that last one is really, *really* hard)--or at least, I'm not trying to.
I'm homeschooling them, but not because I don't want them tainted by the breath of Unbelievers and their blasphemous evolution, or mixing with the mud races at junior high dances.
I don't have an Ipod, but I do have pirated Charlie Daniels, Jr. tracks on my hard drive.
I have both "Red Dawn" and "Project Runway" on my TiVo. I could probably tap yours to record the same.
My daughter can say "thank you" in four languages, speaks Hebrew better than I, and looks like Hitler got to Photoshop Ava Braun into a propaganda poster.
I think I might be your worst nightmare."
Whew. So, we've got all our shit moved, and more importantly, re-established Internet service.
I live in Overland Park now. Which is kind of strange, considering that the first time I ever visited this town it gave me a panic attack, what with all those huge windows looking at you when you stepped into *any* backyard. Of course, no one was behind the windows watching you, since everyone in the house had to work three jobs to pay for the damn thing, but it was still creepy as fuck.
Luckily, we're in a much older, smaller, and gently shabbier section of town, quite close to Kansas City proper. The neighborhood is quiet and tree-choked, our backyard is huge and peppered with mature elms and oaks, and our neighbors seem quite unlikely to beat their girlfriends on our front porch, all of which is a big step up from our last residence.
So I'm running around in a disgusting flurry of unpacking and cleaning and generally getting house-high. We've spent the last three years in a ghetto townhouse with bad plumbing and holes in the roof; two years before that were spent in a spiffy but tiny condo surrounded by college students. An actual house, with hardwood floors and ceiling fans and windows *everywhere* . . . well, it's a little overwhelming for me at the moment. In a really good way, mind you, but still kind of overwhelming.
As is the realization that I've become my teenaged self's worst nightmare. Married to a stable man with a stable job, a stay-at-home mom, with a Volvo sedan in the driveway of a house with subtle mushroom and sage paint, smack dab in the suburb of Overland Park.
My teenaged self was a complete dumbass, though. I've most certainly had worse gigs, and the overwhelming sense of gratitude that's been pervading every moment of my days since we got here doesn't seem to be on its way out any time soon.
Besides, that fifteen-year-old shithead had no idea that you could do all of that and still have blue hair, put down a fifth of whiskey and walk a straight line, and be a writer all at the same time.
Oh, about that: I guess I get to call myself a professional writer, now. In addition to my gig at Lawrence.com, I've been hired on by ImperfectParent.com as a regular blogger, and there's a very good chance that I'm going to be hired by IWC (International Wrestling Conference) as a staff writer. Yay! Ever since the Weekly World News went belly-up, I've been despairing of ever getting hired to write the brand of ludicrous tackiness that I feel is my true calling. Writing wrestling plotlines, though . . . that's as close as I'll ever get to BatBoy, now, and I'll sure as hell take it.
So I'm sure the culture shock will set in soon, which should make for much entertainment here on the blog. In the meantime, though, be patient with me--I'm still at that stage where mopping my pretty new floors is grand fun, so the blogs may be a while in coming . . .
| You Are 45% Feminist |
 You generally think that women should be treated as equals, but you're not convinced the world should be gender neutral. |
So, I'm "45% Feminist", but the explanation reads, "But you're no feminist either." Which is it?
Damn female "logic". (Hey, I'm not saying I'm any better. It's just that I get seriously pissed off at myself when I get all girly and irrational because I know just how very stupid I'm being, but I just can't fucking HELP it. Do you have any idea how frustrating that is?)
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