Sarah Palin is the Devil

Why is it nobody can see this? I am confused by this. Well, maybe not the devil, but she is one scary broad. I was listening to an interview with someone who had decided to vote for her, but not McCain apparently, because of her positions and views and her insightful comments?????? McCain, we all know is older, and has some health issues, so this 39(?) year old woman is positioned a heartbeat (as they say) away from the presidency and she doesn't know what NATO is??? My high school student knows, at least the purpose of it. So, she is finally interviewed sort of seriously and not only doesn't know the prime doctrine of the republican sitting president but seems not to actually know the platform and positions of her own presidential candidate. (She isn't running alone?) It is not that I disagree with her "positions", I do; it is not that I dislike her lifestyle (insofar as it includes guns, etc.), I do; it is that she is ignorant and appears to be uneducated (at least undereducated) and has less experience at anything than a marshmallow. For some reason, some of the so-called "liberal" press finds humor in this, Saturday Night Life does a skit in which Tina Fey so accurately portrays her that it is scary. Everybody laughs. but it isn't funny; the very fact that she is the centerpiece of SNL means that she is the news cycle, not the issues, not Obama. This is a woman who believes that we should not only oppose abortion, not only pass laws to prevent abortion, but that we should actually amend the Constitution of the United States (a document I hold particularly dear) to permanently deprive women of the right to choose. This, by the way, is one of the only concrete positions I have been able to adequately identify and ascribe to her other than the right to own guns, shoot moose and drill for oil indiscriminately. This was to be the election the Democrats couldn't lose? How could they be doing it so handily?

Self-Centered? Or Lazy?

So, what a ridiculous amount of time I have neglected this. And so much goes on in the world, and my life. I thought nobody was reading it (except my mom, thanks mom) and so I let other things become more important. That's the self-centered part. The lazy part is, well, I let other things become more important. What I forgot is that I write this because I like to, because it is good for me and the heck with you all. Self-centeredness is a scourge, every time things go bizarro, it is about that. If we all just spent five minutes a day thinking about the welfare of others the world would be a much better place. Of course as a mom, the flip side is that I probably spend too much time thinking about my kid and what might happen to him. Genuine compassion, empathy and altruism are not the same as insane anxiety. So, for what its worth, I am back. I will try to keep this up. Better to keep trying than not to do it at all, even if I flop!

What is Important?

As I grow older, I have a very different view of what is important. When I was a child, getting older was important. When I was a young woman, the attention of men was important. Now that I am middle aged, not only is the attention of men hard to come by, it is much less important. I find that the attention of men generally adds little to my general well-being; it is nice for a moment, gives a little flush of pleasure which is fleeting at best. The attention of women is more often real attention. It means real listening, real comfort, real help. We are taught to exercise our intellects in the company of men and our emotions in the company of women, but that does us a disservice. Men don't appreciate my intellect, often, and my emotions need little more exercise; they get plenty. Women, like it or not will tell you the truth generally. Men will often tell you what you want to hear. I used to prefer the sugar-coated version, today I prefer the truth.

Resolution

So, for my two or three faithful readers, I have become a grave disappointment. Life overtakes me and my resolution goes right out the window! I made a resolution this year, something I don't usually do. But my resoution was not to lose weight, it was not to look younger, act different, clean the house, etc.; it was none of the typical resolutions. Rather, I resolved to be consistent. It is harder than you think. Groceries, laundry, meals, work, teenage homework, school projects, house of worship commitments, parents, brothers, husband looking for work; wow time just runs out. But that is an excuse. I love writing this blog and of course, I always put myself on the bottom of the list. I should be able to find five minutes a day for myself; this might even lead to going back to voice lessons or having massages or some of the other things I love and do just for myself. So, I am climbing back on the consistency horse. God knows the world provides more than enough to write about. Hopefully I will still have an interested reader or two. Comment, criticize, post, e-mail. I would love to know you are out there. But if you are not, I will write anyway; I do it for myself.

Where the Fat Girls Shop

This is not a politically correct title, I know. But I was in a store. It didn't take me long to realize that this was a store where only people who were a junior size 1, 3 or 5 should shop, certainly not womanly people of a certain age. As I was glancing aound I realized there were a large number of obese teenagers or young adult women. They were all wearing junior size 1, 3 or 5. They were all exceeding obese. These junior sizes did not, on them, cover everything the designer intended them to cover, and then some. The skin showing was not the intended tight stomach or sexy navel, it was saggy, bulging excess. We see these girls/women everywhere. I often think, as I go about, don't people own mirrors, don't they use them? Don't people care how they look? Or are we all so arrogant and oblivious that we think that our flab looks good or attractive when squeezed out of clothes many sizes too small. Our body image in this country is so weird and distorted. Young women feel the need to starve themselves (and increasingly young men too) to be small enough to be "attractive". We nip and tuck ourselves to death, sometimes literally. People get gastric bypass operations and die because they can't stop eating. And then, the other side of the coin, morbidly fat people who believe themselves to be attractive and healthy. It is all quite scary. At least now I know where the fat girls shop.

Self-Help?

Americans have become obsessed with two things in the last few years - self-help books and reality tv. I am equally mystified by most of both. Not that I don't think helping yourself isn't a good thing, it is, but all this fatuous instruction by people with virtually no credentials that I can discern is a little hard to take. I think I am at least as smart as most of them, so why should I listen to them? Do I believe in the power of positive thinking, you bet. Do I think I can make a million dollars by visualizing myself as wealthy, not on your life. We have become such a weird nuts and fruitsy people that we have stopped believing in hard work as a pathway to success. On the other hand, we will volunteer to eat spiders, get dunked in dung, run barefoot through China and generally air our neuroses to millions of people for a few minutes of notoriety. I won't call it fame because I doubt most people can name the "contestants" on most of the reality shows five minutes after they are over. There is one type of reality show I do like; those shows on which people who are truly talented compete to live a dream through that talent. My two favorites are American Idol and Project Runway. Real people, with real talent, with real dreams; working hard. I like that.

How many places can you hide a sock?

So I have this child, and he is not naturally neat. As he has become a teenager, his propensity to heaps of garbage has grown, along with the heaps of garbage. Even as a small child, he was a pack rat, a hoarder of everything; bits of paper, rocks, sticks, trash of any kind. His greatest feat, however, is his ability to "leave" his socks, or distribute his socks, in places almost impossible to fathom. As a baby, there was no possible way to keep shoes on his feet. People would follow along after me saying politely "ma'am, I think this is yours", a tiny shoe in their hands. It was almost as difficult to keep socks on his feet; we had one of everything. As soon as he was old enough to actually take his socks off purposefully, he would roll them off, creating a little ball, and then toss them (at least that's what I assume he did). Since that time we have found socks in every conceivable place: behind books in the bookshelf, inside the vcr, under sofa cushions, in the sink, in the shower, in a bucket of electronics, in his school backpack, in the backseat of my car, in the yard and in any other weird place you can conjure up. He has always had a kind of blindness about trash, dirty clothes and clutter generally. As it piles up in his room, he just sits on top of it, he has always done this. If clean laundry finds its way into his room, he just puts it in a pile on the floor which gradually merges with the dirty laundry on the floor and then ends up right back in the laundry. We keep a fairly tidy house, and then there is his room. I can only hope that seeing the rest of the house will place images in his subconscious that will resurface someday, particularly if he hopes to marry. For now, I just close the door.

Women's Work

So, all two of you who read this regularly will see that I have changed the template! I cheated, it is offered as a stock template by this blog site. But all that pink was really getting on my nerves. Just because something is primarily intended for women (not exclusively mind you) doesn't mean it should be pink. So I think I will try this one for a few minutes and see what I think. Today was the day that decided me to lose the pink. I am mostly over the issue of people treating me in certain ways because I am a woman. When I became a lawyer I wasn't allowed to wear pants in the courtroom, doesn't that make a lot of other things seem minor? I had a judge yell at me "girl, go make some copies", the slights of the current marketplace pale by comparison. But, some days, it just gets to you. First, I am dealing with a company by phone and of course they assume I am a secretary. So no big. But tonight I attend a board meeting for an organization; I sit on the board. There are two women in attendance. One takes notes, one notices that nobody has put the food away; nobody else cares about either thing. Some days it is just annoying. But today I can wear whatever I want and I only make copies for myself.

I'm getting too old for this?

Well, I promised myself I would post to this blog consistently. And its only February and I am falling down on the job. I have been sick Let me tell you, being sick is not what it used to be! Twenty years ago (maybe less?) I got sick, I got well, it just didn't last too long. Now, good grief, it seems to last forever. So being sick joins the list of things I think, sometimes, I am too old for. I'm not really, many of those things I just don't want to have to learn, re-learn or do again. I finally master hooking up the computer, all those crazy wires and then I had to learn how to set up a wireless network. I just about have that down and then I have to figure out how to get the printer to work on the wireless; haven't got that one so everyone in the house has to print in my office. I love this of course since the teenager leaves foodwrappers and juice boxes in a swath everywhere he sits. Now I am trying to master the whole internet marketing thing, yikes! The hardest part is finding someone to explain it to you that speaks english rather than geek. I would like to change the template of this blog, for instance, to one not preset on blogspot, can't do it; but I will. It is just tiring having to learn all this new stuff, I prefer some days to exercise my tired brain cells by doing the New York Times Sunday Crossword Puzzle (they say this will keep my brain young?) I still can't fix the dryer or the air conditioning, but I'm not really too old, just unwilling. It's good to be back.