Becoming the Nice Person I Used to Be

My mom keeps doing nice things, saying nice things, inviting people that she has disliked for 30 or so years to visit because "it'd be fun". Why all this niceness? She keeps saying "Somethings changing, I'm becoming the nice person I used to be." And I'm thinking the change of life usually does the opposite, makes you cranky. Do I suggest she sees a doctor? Changes in mood usually signify a brain tumor.

So does this mean that she's going to be perpetually nice? She hasn't asked about my rent yet this month, I left it in my car, for a week. She thought my snarky email to my grandmother in response to her whining about her age was a bit rude. All I said was that I, too, am aging everyday.  The woman told me I need to visit her, and I have to tell you she lives in a backward place and is a backward person and I out of respect for my elders I can only stand the woman for about two hours a year. I did promise that if I made it to her neck of the woods (a seven-ish hour drive) I'd take an extra day to visit. It was a sincere promise.

My new-nice-person-mom would visit her, if she didn't more or less hate the old bag as much as I do. Maybe that will be the straw that turns my mom into the callus role model I need.

Here's to hoping.

I've Been Doing Something Wrong

It is safe to say that I have never had a boyfriend. I've dated plenty but I've never been bound to someone by labels. In some ways this is good (so I've been told) and other ways not so good. We're all quite aware of my stunted social skills but there has yet to be a scientific study that proves correlation, let alone causation, when it comes to stunted social skills and lack o' boyfriends.

It hasn't even bugged me until lately. And the fact that it's bugging me now, is bugging me. So let us examine this a little deeper shall we.

I have a sister who is a serial monogamist, or something like it, basically she traps boys in to hanging on for a long time, then breaks up with them, says super nasty things about the girls they date next and then pretends they are friends again. This seems like a fairly typical scenario, I've seen some chick-flicks so I would know. But what is so intriguing about her whole set up is this whole gift thing. Almost without fail any serious ex-boyfriend starts giving her expensive gifts about a year or so after they break up. Like a TV. And that's after they've broken up!

So, issue number 1: Gifts. I want gifts, and not selfish I want things things, and not a TV, but gifts like, "Oh yeah I saw this trinket and thought of you!" gifts.

Also there is a rash of engagements and weddings. I would like one of those. And I am well aware that not all cultures require a boyfriend prior to engagement, in fact, I can think of a few that discourage such behavior but alas I am not a part of any of these cultures. And don't give me that "but people are waiting longer to get married" stuff. I know they are. I only know one or two people who were married before they were 20, though both my grandmothers and my mother were married before they were 20, so yeah waiting until you're 23 is like so waiting!

Issue 2: I'm being left in the dust.

I'm not really in a place socially or economically to have a boyfriend, so yeah throwing a wedding won't be happening anytime soon either. I live with my mother. I live with my mother 10 miles from the nearest town. I live with my mom 10 miles from the nearest town which is yet another 10 miles from anything to do. All that and I have two jobs and very little money.

Issue 3: I am a socially unattractive boomerang living in the boondocks. It weighs on me to type that sentence.

All issues aside, I'm lacking in confidence at the moment, and by moment I mean the last say seven years have lent their hands to this undermining feeling of inadequacy. I need a coach. And a therapist. And new shoes (this being the most pressing of the three, of course).

A little help?

I'm a Mom!

Yesterday, via the mail, I became a mother. I know, it's rather unexpected, I wasn't pregnant (I thought), I don't know who the father is, I'm even unsure of my child's race.

But Similac made me a mom and a mom I shall be.

I sent announcement texts to my closest confidants. Some were not so pleased. Kristen called me a whore, Melissa didn't see the pic so she was a bit confused and everyone else just accepted my new status as a mother. I guess I'll have a belated shower sooner or later, as soon as someone plans one, look, I'm a new mom, I don't have the time for party planning!

Just because I don't know who the father of my probably Indian baby is, I have asked my friend Logan to be his godfather. Logan has obliged given one one condition: that I name my child Shadow 3, after my late dog Shadow and Kat's late dog Max or Shadow 2. I can't have my poor child growing up without a male role model, especially because I think my child might be a boy because it is wearing blue.

I do love Shadow 3. I hope you will too. Please don't judge me and my single mother status. I didn't ask for this, it just kind of happened.

How Cool Am I?

I was driving today thinking about how I contribute to the world. It is decided, I am the coolest cat in town. I know this because after I left my super-slacker job where I super-lacked and talked about fat arms with people, I drove my kind-of-beater car 20 miles to the house I live in where I rent a room from my mother. And on top of it all I was eating Black Currant chocolate (marry me Lindt!) and listening to Iron and Wine.

Seriously, how much more hipster can I get. I just need skinny jeans and Mumford and Sons, maybe an Irish sweater and fringe.

Oh, wait! We can call that all a check, even though I'm getting a bit down on Mumford, not their fault entirely but I could use a new CD in my car which is equipped for XM radio (which I'm totally not going to ever pay for) but won't play FM.

Also I bought Kate Miller Heidke's (thank you Nora) album last night on the iTunes, which I know is so super main stream of me but I don't have a vinyl player... also I don't think Target is carrying anything that has "Are you F*cking Kidding Me?" contained anywhere in it (though who knows they do carry those books about the Navy officer and boinking his wife's secretary, also I need to jump on that cash cow!) And after buying said music I shared it with my younger sister who now thinks I'm every super cooler than she thought I was before (not hard to do.)

In my cool streak I have to add that I didn't wear hoes today. I know, it was freeezing. But as I said to my boss after she snorted "Of course you're cold you never wear hoes." I reminded her that at my real person job (which I've had for two weeks) I wear hoes everyday so she can suck it.*

And before you shake your head and say that I'm feeling sorry for myself blah blah blah, this post was not written sarcasticly. I'm in high spirits. I don't even feel bad for pussing out on Wednesday and not making it to work. Apparently, everyone did that, or they have hell stories from their drive home.

Have a bit of music!



*So that last bit I said after she walked away but you know.

Why My Mom is a Polygamist

Today, I was telling my mom's boyfriend about the time when after watching about 15 minutes of "Sister Wives," TLC's reality polygamy show, my mother stood over me and with her long pointy finger with its long pointy fingernail telling me that she will never be a polygamist, she doesn't believe it it blah blah blah. This wasn't something I thought she would be into because she's Catholic, and historically Catholics only take one spouse. While driving to the target it somehow came up that my mom married a man who's first marriage had not been annulled by the Catholic Church. I now live in a cloud of confusion.

My mom is a polygamist?

Ok no, but that was my first thought. Good times.

Update: Mother just proclaimed that Polyandry is a-ok.

Fearing Feminism: A Disappointment to my Mother

I am a woman, though I probably wouldn't classify myself as a feminist. Feminism is a dirty word, on that means that I hate me and want saggy tits (yes, I said tits) because bras are men's invention to confine a woman, put her in her place, coerce her into sex and threaten her life and the lives of the children.

Before you're panties get too bunched up, the ugly stuff is no joke. I have a problem with women who have been afforded every opportunity in life and come up believing that because they posess a vagina/uterus combo the world owes them more. Their plight is disgusting. Their entitlement is considerably more disgusting.

I grew up in an upper-middle class type situation, I went to one of the better public schools out there, I went to an excellent public university, I have never been for want of food, I have never had an illness go untreated and I wear a bra because in day to day activities the support is more comfortable plus, my clothes look better.

Lately my mother, who I live with and is a labor and delivery nurse, has been reading about the atrocities that occur around the world to women. She's up on all the stoning, the use of rape as a weapon, female circumcision and the sex trade. I'm not sure when it started, this need to read about the horrors and then spew them on the world, sharing the stories in the books she's reading before passing the books off as must reads. It's killing me slowly. I don't want to read about the 10 year-old who has been raped by every man in the village because her father owes another man money, I don't want to read about women paying with their lives with sexual affairs when their male counterparts see no consequences. I don't care to know how many people need to witness a rape for it to be an actual rape.

Again, I sound insensitive. These people she's reading about are in need of help, awareness is the only way to stop this time of thing and the ranting college educated white woman from the burbs is doing the rest of femininity, or humanity for that matter.

My reasoning for not wanting to delve deeper into these things is complicated, selfish, as well I suppose, and I have yet to make her understand. So I'll try you. I know of the horrors and I avoid them. I spent my breaks during college working for a local group of midwives. Most of the phone calls I answered were about setting up yearly gynecological exams and women trilled with positive pregnancy tests. A few calls a week would be women seeking abortions, most of them were not "I'm a stupid irresponsible human being and I think its easier to get rid of this than to face it" calls, they were desperate women who begged me not to judge them.

Some days the 15 year-olds with their more or less brain dead boyfriends were too much, their mothers made me sick. The day a woman signed at me and asked me if I had kids, all I could do was smile and tell her not yet, her kid wouldn't even fill out her own paperwork. I don't think the pregnant girls decided to kill their mothers slowly, but they do it every day. But what killed me was the one call I didn't take, a teen girl's neighbor called. Not her mother or father, not herself but her neighbor. The girl needed prenatal care but she was already past the point in which the practice I worked for would take her, she had been to the free clinic once and had been treated poorly, which is one of those things that sadly is to be expected and the neighbor didn't want to make the girl return to the clinic. As the neighbor pleaded explaining that the girl's family had kicked her out and she had been homeless for the majority of her pregnancy until the neighbor found out and took her in, that the girl couldn't get decent care, that she didn't have a job, couldn't get a job and was more or less a child herself all the secretary said to her was that she was sorry but there was nothing that she could do.

She was wrong. I made a Rolodex that had all the names of public agencies and safe houses for women in this girl's situation but the secretary spent nearly a half  hour explaining that she couldn't help instead of giving out the names and numbers of people who could. Hell, Child Protective Services would have been an option but "I'm sorry we can't help you" was all she could say.

It is not that I don't see the bad, its that after having my heart broken by all the bad in my own community I don't have faith in people. They don't care enough about each other unless there is something in it for them. If people with money and time can't fix the bad in their backyards why would they care about people halfway around the world. They're busy fighting about who should and should pay for the public schools and roads and bitching about "wasteful" social services.

So I apologize that at 23 I've given up and choose not to know the horrific details.

10 Reasons My Mother is Not a Polygamist

1. She doesn't share her man.
2. She doesn't share her man.
3. She doesn't share her man.
4. She doesn't share her man.
5. She doesn't share her man.
6. She doesn't share her man.
7. She doesn't share her man.
8. She doesn't share her man.
9. She doesn't share her man.
10. She doesn't share her man.


I'm not sure you understand. She stood over me while I was typing a nonsense something and was doing the scary finger pointing thing she does and had her serious face on. Then she asked if I understood. But on the plus side having women kin folk would be nice. And that is where I have to disagree, I don't like too many women, cycles get messy and feelings get hurt. Plus I'm kind of a bitch and as Lauren from work says, "You're mean, but you're like that everyday so it's ok." I don't think women and I would make good kin. So I agree with mom, without the pointing finger thing.