Donkeys and Elephants and God

HEEEYYYYYY! It's been over a month since I blogged. I've either been busy, lazy, uninspired, or forgetful. Probably all of them. But this is squishing my brain and I must get it off my chest. Or brain. [Noted: do not google images for "squished brain".]

I fear that I must enter into some brief politicking. Not at all professional, articulate, painstakingly researched and well-thought-out politicking, but I am just a little at a loss, so bear with me… Hopefully any readers are open-minded enough not to disown me for holding a different opinion than they may or may not hold.

Facebook. Oh facebook. You have been abuzz with politics—both intelligent, thought-provoking posts as well as uber-dumb ignoramus rants. K…mostly the latter. I am not above suspicion in this. I put some political stuff up during the election, and some of it was on the serious side, some on the silly side, or possibly the inflammatory side, but, but…I digress…

Recently I came across a page called Christians Against Obama’s Re-election, whose objective is to “Inform the Uninformed about Obama's Radical and Unconscionable Attacks on Christianity and Catholicism, and his Total Disregard for our Constitution.” [Also listed as a “church/religious organization” is Liberals: The Assholes of America, whose slogan is “waking up the people to how the mentally challenged liberals want a socialist society”, although they only have 27 likes. Suckers.]

At this point I am hearing/imagining SNL’s Seth and Amy going “REALLY?!”

Are you freaking kidding me, people? [Aside: stare at the word PEOPLE for awhile. It looks super duper weird to me right now. It looks like poeloepe. Or something.] Obama seems like a pretty openly Christian president to me. Attacks on Christianity? How so? Is it just the abortion and gay marriage issues? Why are Democrats historically thought of as non-Christian? Why is Republican the only acceptable way for “Christians” to vote? (On a mostly unrelated note, how does Mitt's Mormonism fit in there?)

Everyone seems to dern extreeeeeme. Extreme left or extreme right…I guess it’s the extremists who normally voice their opinion. Loudly and stupidly. On both sides. I am what some would call a moderate but I’ll say it: I voted Democrat. I’d love to vote Libertarian or Green or Anarchist or Please-Throw-Away-Your-Vote-ist, but, yeah. I don’t really want to discuss the things that made me vote that way, I’m only at a loss about the political/religious/cultural extremes. (Not to say there aren’t facebook groups for liberal Christians or Christian Democrats, because if it exists of facebook it’s obviously real and valid. Like everything on the innerweb is totes legit. Duh.)

I’m gonna post an excerpt from an article that is writ gooder than me on the subject:

 “When we hear some proclaim that voting ‘biblical values’ only means voting against abortion and same-sex marriage, we wonder what Bible they are reading. Apparently, not the one in our hands -- the one with 2,000 verses about the poor and marginalized, injunctions to regard the earth as God's precious gift to us that we must carefully steward, and appeals to the efficacy of peacemaking rather than the an idolatrous trust in military might -- all values that come from the Scriptures…”
 Read the rest of the article here

I don’t know of many people who are on the fence like I am, or maybe since we’re not extreme, we just don’t talk about it. Though I currently lean left, I am not pro-abortion. I am not anti-gun. I am also for the death penalty in many cases. I seldom go to church, but I am not an atheist or an agnostic. And I’m not Vegan. (Joking, people. Chill.) I don’t like how religious references have been forced out of Christmas.

I am, however, for equal pay and equal rights for women and minorities and, yes, homosexuals. I am also anti-war, in most cases. I am not opposed to evening the playing field and taxing richies more. I’d like for the rich-poor gap not to widen. I also feel like more importance ought to be placed on education, pre-K through college…our country is like 805^th in smarts, and kids get shot in school. Geeez. I’m not even opposed to borderline socialist (*GASP*) healthcare. It seems to work well for countries like Sweden and Canada. All I know is, healthcare and insurance could stand to be made more affordable, because it is reeeee-dic-u-lous. Also, even though I'm pro-life, I'm also a fan of other forms of birth control. And yeah, let’s hug a tree and save the environment and drive battery cars and stuff. Sounds sah-weeeeeet. Can we figure out how to drill oil domestically striving for oil independence and still enjoy solar panels and wind turbines?

 EVEN THOUGH…we own a big annoying diesel pickup and live in a very Republican-dominated rural area. Dooley is into rodeo. We have guns and dogs and horses. We are eating a delicious elk that he shot while hunting. He works for an American beer company. We believe in God (despite our absence from organized religion). YET…(cue sinister music)…we’re liberals. Sort of. With Dooley it’s kind of a gimme cuz his folks are lefties and very politically minded, but I was raised in a religious, Republican home…I think…we never really talked politics, but they’re definitely conservative… whatevs. So I'm a pro-life, pro-gun liberal.

Our condescending realtor thought it was a good idea to discuss WHO we voted for and WHY, and I was too much of a tard to avoid the topic. I’m also a super tard at verbalizing, period. I am famously bad at articulating my feelings via those things called WORDS, verbally. I’m still rather indirect in writing, but I feel like I make my point better than when I open my mouth. So even though I make no claims about being the most informed expert on politics, I have many good reasons for voting how I do, but cannot coherently state them when I’m on the spot, just like how I always lose arguments with Dooley cuz he’s all dumb and eloquent and full of many many many many words that say exactly what he wants to say exactly when he wants to say it, and I just stammer and cry. Even though I’m right. Always.
 
…Digression…

So thank you Christians Against Obama’s Re-election for forcing me into this rant. How some people call themselves Christians I will never understand. Religion as a weapon of bigotry. Nice. Just as I make no claim to being the most informed expert on politics, I make no claim to being an expert on religion, but didn’t Jesus preach love and acceptance and helping the poor and all that jazz? I’m 130% fine with people being against Obama, or any other politician or political platform, but for crap’s sake, don’t make it your own personal religious crusade. “God is not a Republican or a Democrat!” 

That said, I love all my conservative friends and family, and if you’re reading this, please know that I am not at all at all grouping you in with these few ignorant righties. In fact I would not at all mind a discussion on the topic, as long as you forgive me my slowstupidspeak.

Let’s end with a poop story to keep it real.

Dirt poops on the potty like a champ all the time now. Like a boss. He proudly shows me all of them. Some of them are massive, and then he is very very proud. Tuesday says “bay lutty” (very yucky). Sometimes I still take pictures when they are impressively adult-sized and send them to my husband and sister. If anyone else wants to join the poo mailing list, let me know.

I know it’s been well over a month since my last post, and I promise to get back to the normal mommy stuff soon. I also have some artist fodder coming up, as I am crunching to finish a badass horse painting by Thanksgiving (gulp) next week. Furthermore, I’d like to formally announce my candidacy (okay candidacy is the wrong word, cuz it’s bona fide—can anyone say “bona fide” without a southern accent?!) for gestational surrogate. For shizzle. Unless something goes awry, everything is in the works for a February embryo transfer. (How that fits into politics and religion I don't really know.)

Just so y’all know…I’ll have interesting things to discuss. And no, I will not be starting a separate blog for all of that different stuff, cuz that’s just too hard. So stay tuned. 

Why We Can't Have Nice Things (Just Dog Toys and Dildos)

The other day we went looking for Halloween costumes. Last year there were tons of brand-new adorable toddler costumes at Goodwill, so we went to check for this year. We go thrift/consignment shopping fairly often, and I’ve let the kids fall into the habit of assuming they get to pick out a new toy whenever we hit Goodwill. Tuesday selected a model horse toy (of course…what else IS there for a little girl?), and Dirt picked a rocket. I really tried convincing him that the cute green gorilla was a far superior choice, but to no avail. This is not the rocket I wanted him screaming through the store with (which he did, loudly and relentlessly), because this is not just any rocket. It is a heavy solid rubber/plastic blue and orange camo rocket, quite embarrassingly phallic in size and shape. So yeah, my kid is zooming around shrieking and blowing stuff up with a blue camouflage dildo. Aaawwwwesome.

I also recently bought them dog toys: rubber piggies that snort, quite realistically, when squeezed. When we were getting dog food, we played with the squeaky toys for fun, and I let them hold the pigs while we shopped. By the time we were about to check out, both kids were snuggling their pigs and saying “I love my piggy” so cutely that I had to buy them. The kids like to wrap their “babies” up in blankets and lie down on top of them, causing the toy pigs to emit long, distressed, howling, squealing snorts. Dirt’s pig is green and Tuesday’s pig is purple (“purpur”). We call them Bart and Penelope. 
Yeah, I let my kids play with dog toys and things that resemble sex toys. We are the epitome of class. Somehow we ended up with large grained sea salt instead of teeny tiny regular salt, and we keep it in a big green jar next to the bigger green jars of flour and sugar, because, duh, it won’t come out of a regular salt shaker. Dooley says it makes him feel like a fancy pants top chef to sprinkle pinches of salt onto food by hand. See? Class.

We also felt like real bigwigs when we could finally afford new kitchen appliances last year. A whole. New. Set. Yeah baby. You know how people say, “This is why we can’t have nice things”, usually pertaining to their pets or children? Well it’s also true for us. Yes, our pets and children ruin everything constantly, but we are no better. We, the responsible adults, each ruined a new appliance the moment they were installed. Thinking he was handyman of the year, Dooley messed with the door on the new dishwasher and masterfully broke it, and I used Goof Off on the new microwave to get the sticker residue off, masterfully (and permanently) damaging the shiny plastic. This was THE FIRST DAY we had them. The repair guy took care of the dishwasher, but our microwave will always have a rough patch on it. But that’s not all. I also managed to MELT aluminum foil in the bottom of the oven, and crack one of the plastic crisper drawers in the refrigerator when I closed the outside door on it. Recently the icemaker on the fridge quit working. Still within the one year manufacturer’s warranty, we called the repair guy aaaalllll the way out to our house, only to have him tell us the water hose was kinked and we needed to pull the fridge out from the wall. Embarrassing idiocy. 

When we first moved in, I went about repainting some walls and trim, and poured half a can of white paint on the carpet, which is a lovely dark shade of plum. The best part was that I didn’t realize it until it was too late. Way too late. Luckily it’s in a corner hidden behind a giant plant and a dog kennel, but it’s still there, hardened white paint, almost four years later. I would love to get rid of our purple floors, but I know the moment we installed beautiful new carpet, it would get trashed…kids mashing food into it, dogs and cats defecating and shedding everywhere, ma and pa spilling things…! Oh and Dirt is the ultimate destroyer of all toys, and Dooley has a fun new habit of accidentally kicking holes in the walls. At one time our coffee table and toy box were quite nice, and now they’re stippled with countless tiny pits, thanks to many many many toy horses and dinosaurs stampeding around on them every day. It’s hopeless. And then outside there’s the real horses stomping down fences to come eat the one square foot of lawn I have painstakingly nurtured to its relatively healthy state, and dogs jumping over fences just to pee and dig all over that very same square foot, despite having two acres of good peepee/digging space. Not to mention the trillion hoses doofus mutt has eaten through in an ongoing effort to prevent me from watering said lawn. This is why we can’t have nice things.

MUH. That’s my sound of the day. I first wanted to call it onomatopoeia, but seeing as I had to look up the spelling, I fear I’d misuse the meaning somehow. But if OINK is onomatopoeia, then MUH is my OINK. Why, you ask? I am in a perpetual state of feeling rudely and prematurely woken up, always stumbling around in my sweatpants seeking more coffee. MUH is kind of like UGH (is ugh onomatopoeia?), but the “M” sound is a lazier, more languid sound. Did you know that Tuesday has the most uncanny ability to wake up the very moment I fall into a deep, delicious sleep? Not even kidding a little bit. If I finally decide to go to bed at midnight, guess who wakes up crying the very freaking second I fall asleep? If I think I’ll try to take a nap once the boy is finally asleep for his nap…guess who’s done with her nap at that moment? Mean little girl.

On another note, winter weather is here at last (good-bye house flies! Hello cozy sweaters and cute boots!). Now I can just let the damn lawn die. But that also means I go even more stir crazy because I can’t just take the kids outside to play. Want to watch another movie? Sure thing! Want me to get off the couch? Out from all these cuddly blankets that I have wrestled into perfect position? No can do. You’d think being a full-time stay-at-home mom would mean I was more available to my kids and that we would have plentiful quality time, but I think it makes me more checked out than ever. And way more prone to random freak-outs, because patience and sanity are in short supply here, despite squishy loveable adorableness of children. I’ve realized you really need to get away from something to appreciate it. Like Dooley being gone all the time. I am a firm believer in “absence makes the heart grow fonder”, from both ends of the spectrum: overexposure to children and underexposure to husband. 

The fact that his work schedule is so random and crappy certainly doesn’t help me feel connected either. It doesn’t matter what day of the week it is, or even what time of day. It’s 11pm Saturday night and it may as well be 11am on a Tuesday. Can anyone relate? It’s so alienating. From reality and society, that is. We exist outside of space and time. And humanity. Stagnating. MMMMUUUH. I read the headline for an article that said working moms are healthier and happier than stay-at-home moms. I don’t know how they arrived at that conclusion, because I only read the headline, because it pissed me off. The end.

It’s not like we never ever leave the house. Even though we’re 30 minutes from anything, I’ve decided to motivate and just GO, even for silly errands. An hour of drive time to return some shoes? Why not? With gas prices so low and all…! An aside: just went for a jog and cracked open a beer. Feeling much better. Further aside: when I say “jog”, I mean I ran back to the house after feeding the horses cuz it’s “FEEZING TOAD”, as Tuesday says. Yes, yes, I know, I need to exercise. Be active! Be productive! Have purpose and motion! (MUH.) But seriously, I know that I feel better when I get a little exercise, or when I accomplish something beyond the day to day, but finding time, or more importantly, motivation, is challenging. Commas, commas, commas.

I am attempting productivity and purpose in my paintings. (Super alliteration, eh?) That’s something I haven’t discussed much in my little blog, but I am an artiste. (Oh yes, I’m ¼ French, so I can say artiste, and I can have my nose in the air when I say it. So there.) I may have mentioned that fine art is what I went to college for, but my artistic endeavors have been furloughed by children. Only recently have I been able to start painting again, having completed two paintings in the last few months—both commissions for friends, but still. Perhaps once I get bored with bitching about being bored in this blog, I can refocus a bit in that direction. (More alliteration? Daaay-um, girl.)  I have several paintings on the horizon, so I’ll try to keep my dear readers better informed in that regard. Unless we’re satisfied with being one of a bazillion random ranting mommy bloggers…? That's fine too. Here's the paintings anyway:

Mommy blogging is fun though. There’s a continuous supply of excellent stories to tell about the wee ones, although as the epic and profound series What Not to Wear has taught me, you need an identity outside of being a mommy. (Lol jk rofl…what other texting acronyms are there…?) ((Parentheses RULE!)) So here’s an icky mommy story, as IF there’s any other kind: my little boy still wears a diaper at night—cuz how the frick do you teach sleeping bladder control?!—and it is always super full of pee when he gets up. One morning recently it was more than super full. You know how some diapers are filled with those magic pee-absorbing tiny gel balls? You’d only know that if you’ve had a full pee diaper ripped open before. That’s what happened. Giant pile of tiny urine-filled gel balls exploded into my lap and all over the couch and floor. I’ll leave you contemplating that predicament, just as I sat there, stunned, wondering what my next move was. 

Obsessions of Old Blue Hair

Dooley and I are holding out on getting smart phones, like we don’t want to give in to the Man. The truth of the matter is we don’t want to pay the extra money for the required data or internet plan or whatever, and we don’t like being forced into things as if we have no choice. Pretty soon there will be no choice though. Like right now. Verizon doesn’t even sell flip phones anymore, do they? Plus if you have a flip phone of any kind, the cool kids will be mean and taunt you about your FossilPhone, because they think they’re so friggen cool with their InnerWeb Phones. Remember when the Razor was the coolest? (I mean RAZR. They’re that cool.) I had one in college. They are really terrible for talking hands free, squeezed between your ear and shoulder. I definitely don’t recommend trying it while you’re on the potty. Because it’s so dang thin. It slips right out and into the toilet bowl. So next time it’s 2004 and you buy the hot new phone, heed my warning. You’ll either get pee hand/phone, or a clogged toilet, or both; either way you’ll probably want a new Razr phone.

The other thing we were resisting together was satellite television. Or so I thought. We proudly told people we just had local channels and that we still had rabbit ears on our big ass TV (not big as in big screen—big as in deeper than it is wide), and then bit by bit, we were overtaken. First by an actual flat screen HD blah blah blah television, which came with a super sweet internet box, so we could stream Netflix and Hulu and Pandora, etc., etc., etc., which I actually do enjoy. We still had our local channels, and there was always plenty to watch. Then the fateful day arrived when Dooley joined a forking fantasy football league (whyyyyy???), and he wanted 24-7 access to all football. Imagine my excitement when he signed us up for a two-year contract where we will pay ridiculous amounts of money to get an asinine number of crappy channels Just. For. Football. Well, that and Rodeo stuff, and How It’s Made, and Storage Wars, and Pawn Stars, which are alright by me. But SERIOUSLY. There are less than ten channels that are worth a crap, and I, as foretold, spend the whole time scrolling the infinite menu of programming, and end up getting mad and  turning it off and sticking a VHS tape in our VCR. Yes we still use those. Guess how many stupid inputs we have on our TV now? FIVE. (TV, VCR, DVD, Internet Box, Satellite.) It is a little challenging to explain how to watch TV to our parents when they come over to babysit.

I am already an old man. Resenting the march of progress, lamenting the fact that things better back when. (You know, I was alive when gas cost $0.99/gallon!) But VHS tapes are just better than DVDs!!! They are so much more durable and long-lasting; they don’t get scratched or broken, so you can let your toddler handle them with minimal fear of instant destruction. And flip phones just seem more resilient than those touch screen things, so many of which I have seen shattered beyond repair. Like Humpty Dumpty. Plus people are all freaks about their smartphones. Like going out to dinner and sitting across from each other just looking at their phones all night, holding half-assed conversations because they're always distracted.
(That said, when I finally give in, I will probably be all over it too.)

I will also concede that the DVR is great, but only to record the shows I like which are on local channels anyway. (Or we could watch them on Hulu.) Of course, satellite TV does have What Not to Wear…because, you know, I need to keep my pajamas current and stuff.

I did cut my hair though. Really short again, which I like and don’t like. The last time I had hair this short was probably around ten years ago, give or take, which in and of itself is a depressing thought—thinking in decades—but the more depressing part of it is realizing how I’m not pulling it off as well as I did, cuz my face shape changed and I put on weight. I was telling a friend that on my fat ugly days I feel like a gross man. Makeup and accessories are my friend with hair this short, except I never leave the house so why would I do those things? Anyway, it’s actually a cute cut, brushed forward into longish bangs a la Justin Beiber, and I got purplish-blue highlights to make it more fun (except they’re still new and dark so the contrast is minimal and you can barely see them). I’d take a picture but I don’t have any makeup on. Kidding. But seriously. The shampoo foam turns blue in the shower, and if one blue hair falls onto the white porcelain of my sink, it leaves a blue line. So you'd THINK you could actually see that I have some blue hair...but no, only on closer inspection. Sadly.

But back to television. We are obsessed with the show Weeds. It’s funny and smart and gripping and it sucks you in bad. (Spoiler: *surprise!* it's about marijuana. Also there is bad language and sex. Don’t watch it with your kids or your mom…if she’s like my mom anyway.) We just discovered it, even though it’s in season 8 currently. We are in season 4 on Netflix, watching a few episodes at naptime every day, before Dooley goes to work for the night shift (he insists that I don’t watch ahead without him). The last show I watched fanatically on Netflix was Samantha Who, but there were only two seasons and I whipped right through it. I like Christina Applegate. And before that, our shared compulsion was Sons of Anarchy, which we are also behind on, and felt a gaping hole when we exhausted all three seasons that Netflix had to offer. 

I realized that I get sucked into these shows because they offer an escape to an entirely different existence, and when they are over I have emptiness and reality. And poop everywhere. Okay it’s not really quite that sad. I was also obsessed with a book series—now don’t judge, but it was about werewolves and vampires. I know! For shame! But it is NOT Twilight. It’s the “Parasol Protectorate” (as if that is less embarrassing) and it’s actually sort of clever and captivating…Jane Austen style/era comedy action mystery urban fantasy “steampunk” romance novel (see how good I’d be as a professional book critic?!) Yes, it is silly, but it was a very entertaining escape, and certainly to an entirely different reality. The point is, I keep getting sucked into series of things and tear through them only to be left with a big hole of boredom. I recently read Tina Fey’s autobiography “Bossy Pants”, which I loved; I just finished reading “Running with Scissors” and I’m in the middle of “1984”. While I enjoy both for very different reasons, neither of them really sucked me in. Any suggestions? Clearly I don't mind frivolity. Until I am *allowed* to watch Weeds alone, or if another season of S.O.A. is released (which I probably won’t be permitted to watch alone either), or until I get really into another book series, I will be forced to stay up all night blogging random rants like this one. At least while Dooley is working nights.

For anyone needing an escape, this is a fun read.