the ignorant and childless

So yesterday on facebook, a "friend" had the following status update...

Dear mom flying with your infant across the row from us:
Please try purchasing a passaphire for your screaming bundle of joy on future flights lasting over five minutes. Or how about just not flying after juniors bedtime period. Thanks!!!!
Love, Your 120 fellow JetBlue passengers

now I know that this person is a generally kind and tolerant person, I think they may even have children they love in their family. But I was still so offended on behalf of the poor woman on the plane and for myself that I felt the need to vent about it a little, so here are my rants...

1. Learn to spell pacifier.

2. Sure make rude faces and be frustrated because public forms of travel are all about YOU!

3. I'm sure that mother planned on her baby screaming because that's not embarrassing at all for her, not to mention music to a parent's ears.

4. What would have fixed that situation for you, oh harbinger of intolerance? Her whipping out a boob to feed the kid? I bet you would have found that weird. Drugging the child with benadryl to make them sleep? You would have found that deplorable. Ignoring the child completely? Selfish.

The thing that bugs me so much about this is that it is the poster slogan for how selfish we as a culture tend to be and yet are totally unaware of it. Our culture is belittling to parents regardless of how they are raising their children. Working moms don't put their families first, stay at home moms are dumb or wasting their time, spanking is cruel, not spanking means you're a tree-hugging weirdo. Working dads are work-a-holics, stay at home dads are eunuchs. We parents can't win. No matter what we do we cannot make the childless portion of the population happy.

So you know what, screw you.

I'm tired of my character and life choices being judged by people who are observing situations that are totally normal for a child (i.e. crying, being frustrated, saying something "inappropriate", wetting their pants, etc.) and labeling me a success or a failure as a person based on that. These things children experience are not "value" situations. That kid cussing at his mom, okay, she probably needs to step up, but you know what...who knows? You don't know that situation, what they're going through at home, or what stresses that family may be dealing with that happen to be exposing themselves in front of you at the moment. We have a culture that is so intent on hiding our problems and appearing perfect in every way that when we see reality it frightens and offends us. "From the mouths of babes..." applies not only to moments like, "Mommy says Daddy is a jackass" but also to how we interact with people on a daily basis. How sad that even in infancy we expect children to stifle their feelings, subject their own very real needs to keep total strangers comfortable, and blame the parents for any slips. The real tragedy is that we parents continue to buy into this lie and perpetuate the cycle. Crying is normal, being frustrated and even angry is okay, we cannot plan for every situation and we will make mistakes. It'd be nice if the one thing we could count on was compassion and help from our fellow adults, but apparently their mamas didn't raise them right.

Where is my jet pack!?

I have to laugh at myself sometimes, okay, a lot. Over the last week or so I've thought of about five different topics I want to blog about but I'm too lazy to get up and get the laptop out. Today I find myself sitting in front of the computer with time to spare and can't think of one of those topics. This is where Star Trek style living would come in really handy. If I could just say, "Computer, record..." I could walk around the house musing out loud all of my deep thoughts that the world is just dying to hear and would never miss a beat. Of course there would be constant interjections of "Stop that!" "Leave him alone!" and "No, being a woot-off does not automatically make it a good deal!" The question is whether those more accurate glimpses of my life would inspire warm feelings and admiration of my transparency or just out me as a loon.

I can't remember the last time I had a solid chunk of time to myself where I was able to follow one train of thought through to completion (in the course of writing this paragraph I've made two phone calls, held a baby, looked for instruments, sung the ABC song, and currently am listening to my kids' version of a marching band). I don't even remember where I wanted to end up when I started this post. As technology continues to make it "easier and faster" for me to communicate and express my thoughts I find myself longing more and more for paper and ink. To write with, to read. To be forced to complete a thought, to be forced to make time for silence, solitude and simplicity (I am now playing harmonica for the band as I type).

I love my kids and life and wouldn't trade a thing but I am challenged to continue to find time to be myself for myself because as Dr. Phil put it, "You can only give out what you've taken in." Time for me is coming, but right now we have to run out to see the garbage truck!!

RPGs and me

So being married to whom I am married and having two boys I have accepted and am even excited about the fact that video games will be an inevitable part of my experience over the next couple of decades, bare minimum. However I find it incredibly frustrating that skills in some games do not carry over into others. For example, I play a mean game of Mario Kart, I will put a hurt on you like you have not felt in a long time. I am also a pretty good "player 2" when it comes to games like Mario Galaxy, I can be observant and have great response time (same skills that help in the driving games) so my husband and I are a pretty formidable team when it comes to some of those RPGs. Then today we get the Lego Star Wars for the Wii and I have not been so frustrated by a game ever. The controls make no sense, there is no explanation of what in the world you're supposed to be doing, what the goals are, where to go...ack! Even my kids finally said, "Mom, we're done with this." Now I'm sure that as time goes on we'll learn more about the game and how to play it but it surprised me how bothered I was by not intuitively taking to the game. I see this pattern in other areas of my life as well, I hesitate to try things that I don't think I will excel at and I'm likely to quit if the going gets tough. I don't particularly like this about myself and I'm working on it but it's been thrown in my face recently with my oldest starting kindergarten. Suddenly I see her fighting against learning new skills, becoming easily frustrated when things don't come easily, and wanting to quit when the going gets tough. My husband says that I have not set an example for her in that, that I try to control myself and at least attempt to project the attitude of "if at first..." but I wonder. I wonder how this will effect her school experience not to mention life and I wonder what I will learn about myself by watching her.

So you're blogging now?

"So...you're blogging now?" This is my husband's response when I tell him I'm going to give this blogging thing a shot. I know that he is thinking about how stressed I've been with school starting and trying to figure out how to get all the kids to their respective schools and home again each day, the stacks of papers and projects that I am forever "almost done with," and the dishes in the sink that await him at the end of each day because "I'm just so busy." Why would I add one more thing to my plate? But bless his helpful techie heart he offers to help anyway and launches into a description of all kinds of custom software programs I could try, me, who was freaked out by google asking if I wanted to add any "gadgets" to this page (what the what?!). He's right to wonder what the balance sheet of risks and benefits for this endeavor will show but I feel like somehow this one is different. This I will finish and feel fulfilled by the journey. We'll see.