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A Random Update


The paperwork from Care2 arrived in my inbox last evening, so after I fill them out and fax them back I will officially be a freelancer under contract. And then I need to get to work on my first couple of posts. I am considering the following: the effect of state budget cuts on the classroom, what parents think needs reforming and trying to coerce a union rep I know into giving me her take on the current mood in terms of reform in the coming lean years. Compelling, eh? Probably only to people in the industry, politicos and anyone with a kid still in the public education arena.

I am also charged with making comparisons between the Canadian and U.S. systems and I am going to look at online delivery and home school. The latter two are, in my opinion, done much better here. Oh, and I am going to explain the funding system in Alberta. It’s different.

Wow, I just reread what I wrote and I have a ton of work to do. Especially in light of the fact that I promise a live NaNoWriMo for November and I am working on memoir.

November will be chick lit, by the way. I have decided to tell the whole story of Julie and Walt. FYI.

Memoir has been keeping me from the blog this past bit. Not that the words aren’t flowing. They are drenching pages. Every chapter I have worked on has doubled its word count. But I am mining that painful year and a half from hospice through meeting Rob. It’s not pretty stuff and I was not a wonderful person and I have harsh assessments of myself, my family, his family and friends and the whole process that surrounds dying, death and the aftermath. I am also startling myself. The rear view is an interesting one and I am beginning to see why people were either put off by me or marveled at my fortitude. I can see too now that my way was the right way for me. The widely held notion that there are givens/milestones in the process cripples more people than it helps – but that is just my opinion.

I will be glad to get to the chapters on Rob and I. Not that there weren’t obstacles or that what we did was easy. I think people get the impression that ours is some kind of fairy tale ending. That we are anomalies. Not so. Relationships don’t spring up from magic beans. And contrary to popular (widowed person) opinion that new love distracts from grieving, it more often highlights it and forces you to give heed.

Anyway, I am working. A lot.

Ranting Mamas


UPDATE: This post got me unfriended on Facebook by one of the mommies who inspired it. I’ll leave you to guess which one.

There is so much about the mommy blogosphere that I am out of step with. I don’t worship at the Buddha bellies of my offspring (who are too old to be Gerber baby round and Downy fresh anyway). I don’t believe motherhood fulfilled me in a Frodo-esque LOTR’s type of way. I am not terribly concerned about how much time other women put in or out of their homes. Blogging for the trinkets of the marketplace doesn’t interest me and, generally speaking, my husband is for snuggling, bragging about and thanking God for (if I inclined in that direction and mostly I don’t anymore).

I can rant with the best of them. I have ranted. My dear readers will happily step up and attest to it, but I will disclaim for honesty’s sake anyway.

But  there are some places that the mommies go that I just don’t get or can’t follow along with like these recent examples.

The woman who greatly embellished her recent TSA encounter for instance. Being no fan of heightened security in any of its forms in the United States, I feel her frustration, but she didn’t really tell the truth. In fact she was so over the top that the TSA actually deigned to defend itself in the form of releasing the actual footage of the incident the woman, Nic White, ranted about on her blog.

And there was the woman who went ballistic because her honor student daughter’s feelings were hurt when she was correctly busted for a dress code violation. While I agree that the VP in question needed schooling in bedside manner – and for the record not being polite is almost a prerequisite for being a VP in most of my experience – her child was in the wrong, and the fact that schools have big issues to take care of these days doesn’t mean they should ignore things like dress code violations even when the offender is a good kid with excellent grades. It’s really beside the point.

In my experience, far too many “good” kids are taught that their academics and overall nice personalities somehow put them above the rules that lesser children/students are held to. That’s simply not real world. What is real world are superiors who blow up at you for minor things out of the clear blue even though you are a good employee. Or being pulled over for being 5 miles over the legal limit even though you were being passed right and left and are an exemplary driver. And generally not being immune from the occasional self-esteem ding even though it’s widely acknowledged that you are so incredibly wonderful.

The first rant example apparently backfired to the point that Ms.White had to close comments. The second resulted in a disturbing yet typical hen-fest of sympathy where almost no one bothered to point out that perhaps being an honor student did not exempt a child from the rules that the trailer park set are subject to and on a common sense level, no one held forth with the radical idea that summer wear is as inappropriate to the school setting as it is in the workplace because the way things are going economically most of our kids are going to be wearing some version of a work smock anyway.

“I don’t get it,” I said to Rob. “When I venture into the mom’s realm, I read about women who find motherhood so overwhelming and under-stimulating that they need to drink daily, shop excessively, pop antidepressants and Xanax like Pez and believe that husbands are snark targets for the enjoyment of their readers.”

He didn’t comment. He didn’t have to. As I have noted before, I am not a mommy-blogger and therefore I don’t understand.

The Biggest Fear


The paperback edition of the book my heavily disguised widowed dating/remarriage experience appears in is coming out in several months and the author asked if I would be willing to complete a Proust questionnaire for the appendix. Aside from feeling honored, I always like to write about myself, experiences, and feelings.

But the first question stumped me. Rob says I am just being chicken, but I don’t think so. I really don’t know how to answer it.

What is your biggest fear?

I don’t have a bigger than another fear. I don’t think I even fear things as much as I worry incessantly and run worst case scenarios on a worn out loop in the worry corner of my mind.

I used to fear never having an opportunity to experience those milestone events that we are supposed to. Like love. Marriage. Motherhood. And then I feared failing.  At Everything. Whatever the situation or great life event – I would be a failure.

But I have had opportunities. Even back in the day when I was lamenting my lack of them, they were really there. I just didn’t see them through the haze of cultural expectations.

So once I had marriage and baby and career, I feared being outed as a fake. The discovery that I was only pretending to know what I was doing but it was all just so much smoke and strategic placement of mirrors would ruin me and sending me in search of the deepest darkest cave to live out my remaining days in shame.

And when that didn’t happen, then it was loss. I feared losing what I had. Husband and child and job and home and earthly possessions – most of which came from Target.

But at some point I looked around and realized most of the things I feared were silly or were beyond my ability to do anything other than simply live beyond them. Fear sort of subsided to worry at that point – which is a problem when it results in life halting inertia – but is actually quite manageable and survivable.

Now I just have knowledge. Not that I particularly want it. In some ways fear is better because it is a sign of innocence. My innocence is consigned to the past. Bad things have happened. Bad things will again. If the past is any indicator of my survival, I’ll deal as I have always done. Where is the fear then?

In 1995 I traveled out West with my folks to visit CB and his then wife. On the trip back we found ourselves in a tiny prop plane flying in circles over the Iowa cornfields in a vain attempt to go around a thunderstorm. At one point we hit some wicked turbulence, and the plane dropped like a dead duck. It felt like that initial stomach flop one experiences as the car heads over and down the first drop on a roller coaster. Only from much higher up. Mom was in tears and Dad had his arms around her, trying to calm her. I was in the seat across the aisle by myself, and he looked over and asked,

“Are you afraid?” which was strange because I think he knew that I wasn’t.

“It’s a little late for that,” I told him. Because it was. Fear is only useful if it keeps you out of potentially dangerous situations. We were on the plane. The storm was raging and rocking us about the dark clouds. Fear was less useful than paying attention and keeping one’s wits.

The same thing applies now. I have confronted most of the fears of my younger years at some point or another. It hasn’t cured my innate need to worry, but I don’t know that I am necessarily afraid of anything. And I wonder too. Are those things we label “fears” simply unknowns and would it make more sense to call them “worries”? Or, is fear more about our reactions than about the thing itself?

Damn you, Proust.