Why Are There Shows on Headline News?

I seriously hate it. I don't want there to be shows. Can't freaking Nancy Grace and Jane Valez-Whatever and Inigo Montoya or whomever else has some sort of talk show/crime busting show/panel of guests who pontificate go onto another channel? I mean SHIT Ted Turner owns a ton of tv channels.

What I want is that at ANY time of the day is to flip on CNN Headline News and see a smiling face reading me the news in 30 minute rotations. I want this 24 hours a day. Like a lot of Americans,between working a full time professional job and having a family and SOME personal free time,the old news slots of 7pm and 11pm just don't WORK for me. I don't want to watch the local news anyway. All the news in Atlanta is robberies and shootings anyway.

I want to watch CNN HEADLINE NEWS. I want a short recap of everything happening in the world. I want a quick snap of the weather.And then 30 minutes later I want it to start over.

Come on Ted. You're like my own personal deity. Can't you slap these "shows" on TNT or TBS or some other channel you own that I'm forgetting?

See I've seen the future, CNN HEADLINE NEWS. And what I see is this. In 10 years we'll all be saying "Man,remember when they used to do the news on CNN Headline News?"

No? You don't believe me?

Remember when they used to play videos on MTV?

My Money Is On Marvin The Martian

Okay seriously, Marvin the Martian vs. Daffy Duck vs. Daleks? What the hell is going on here?

Cats and Goat Cheese

When I was in High School my class took a field trip to Chicago for a long weekend. We did all the touristy stuff, Sears Tower,Art Institute,Shedd Aquarium - all the must see's for tourists to the Windy City.
The highlight of the trip was that we were going to see CATS (it was the early 80s shut up)- it was playing at some fancy theater and we were all going to THE GREEK ISLANDS and then to see CATS.

So there I am, all dressed up in my 1984 Couture - hair piled high thanks to Aquanet. White silk blouse and a long black skirt- I am fairly sure that the shirt had RIGHTEOUS shoulder pads if memory serves.

The rest of my classmates were there, and we were having a pretty good time for twenty something odd teenagers who had only two adults riding herd on us. Plus most of us were excited to have greek food as it was something we liked.

And then the SAGANAKI arrived.

I remember the OPA! Being shouted.....and thinking YAY Saganaki!

And then "Oh watch out!"

and then the waiter, who was directly behind me, tipped his tray full of flaming cheese on top of my head. Singing my hair,and spilling hot burning goat cheese into my hair and all down my back.

They brought over wet towels and wiped me off.

But then, you'd think someone might take me back over to the hotel for a quick change and freshen.

No.

Then we all went to CATS. Me with my hair flat,singed and missing in some places, covered in greasy goat cheese. The songs from CATS still evoke the scent of burned aquanet and saganaki.

I was reminded of this story, because Cats is coming to Atlanta.

And now, I suddenly would like some saganaki........

I Think You Heard Me

Anybody else miss Futurama as much as we did?

She Recognized A Meat Eater, I'm Sure

The Oldest Boy is holding the baby, and asks me to hand him a dinosaur off the table. He takes the velociraptor and is shaking it in her face, talking to her in a baby talk voice telling her all about it. "See this is a velociraptor. Blah blah blah.......hunt in packs blah blah blah"....and as she's screwing up her face to cry because he's continually shaking this toy in her face I said-
"Umm, sweetie, I think you are scaring her with that."
To which he says."Oh Baby I'm sorry! Mom, hand me a plant eater........"

Yeah. That was the problem.

Contentment

I was driving home today, or rather sitting on the highway outside of Atlanta, in the 100 degree heat. My SUV was jam packed with a swing set recently acquired from FREECYCLE. Swinging from one of the poles, that will one day very soon support swings or a glider or a slide, was a long strand of gossamer......and swaying in the hot wind was a very small spider. Since the cars weren't actually moving, I sat and watched it. It was trying its best to get UP the strand,but the wind which was coming from HELL itself apparently was keeping it from making proper progress.

I realized watching it that just a very few weeks ago I was a lot like that spider.

I couldn't progress. I couldn't get off the couch and get dressed. I couldn't get into the shower.

I was swinging at the end of a gossamer thread that I didn't really even know I was there.

I have had a lot of people ask me about my "depression" and it feels so odd, just a few weeks later, to have forgotten that helplessness, that hopelessness that was driving me then. Within days of returning to work my sense of purpose returned, my joy came back and I felt like me again.

Yes, it's hard to have a new baby and two special needs children and an older child who also wants my attention PLUS work full time. But it was harder to be here and completely ineffectual in every action I took. I wasn't a good Mom to anyone. I wasn't a good friend, or much of a good anything.

So at 2am, when she won't sleep I've got my copy of AMERICAN GODS next to the bed and I know that I'm going to be tired tomorrow. And I'll read while she wiggles and finds her comfy spot in my arms, and then when she finally decides she can sleep I'll deposit her in her bed and return to mine.

And I'm great with that.

How's my depression? What depression?

The Period Without A Point

I got my period when I was ten years old. It was sooner than anyone else I knew, except my best friend who was also a giant girl in height, also cursed with real boobs when everyone else was still strutting around in "training bras."

I had my last period in July of 2009 and then I got pregnant with the Princess I have been spamming you to death with since then.

When she was born I also had my tubes tied.

Which means that I am now in the process of having my first period without a point.

When I was in college we joked that we always knew who was getting laid, cuz girls who were getting laid were thrilled to get their periods (sometimes waving bloodied panties and running up and down the dorm halls) and the others were bummed and annoyed.

As an adult married woman I watched for it for years, wondering if this month was the month. Did it happen? Am I pregnant? Month after month I was disappointed, during the times I was trying. Except for three times.

Three awesome, amazing times.

But this time, as Aunt Martha's Big Red Bus of Joy is pulling into the station, I'm full of emo considerations. Thoughts of babies lost, babies that will never be.

And don't get me wrong. I am 41 years old. I have FOUR children. I do NOT want more children. But as someone who always struggled to achieve pregnancy, it seems odd and out of place that I elected to sterilize myself.

I feel a little less female, unable to reproduce. I've lost some spark of girliness that resided in me. The spark of hope, of babies, of the POWER to create life. I've been rendered powerless. I have nothing left to give. I can no longer foster my own immortality but spinning more of my DNA out into the universe.

I don't like the feeling.

I do not regret having my tubes tied.

I regret the way it makes me feel.

I should eat more gelato. It makes me cheery - eh?

Parenting /WIN

I'm watching this show on Nickelodeon with the oldest boy. The show is called BIG TIME RUSH and if you haven't seen it, it's a boy band show. It has random,not funny jokes and too beautiful people and the guys can sing but they'll never be stars because they are on a crappy show.


I see this show like every day. And it's not funny like iCarly which YEAH I DO THINK IS FUNNY and will watch by myself. There I said it.


Anyway, BIG TIME RUSH is just maybe awright on a good day. However, yesterday, the episode had one character getting "Hollywood Fever" and spray tanning himself into an icky orange tan mess. The entire show centered on getting him back to "normal"...with a lot of predictable gags and jokes and bad writing.


About halfway through the show, my boy pauses it and says,"I don't understand why this matters."


I answered that the recording company didn't want him to look like that, that he looked crazy and wouldn't be popular with fans/girls etc.


And that was when I got my parenting WIN of the day. He says,"But his friends are being really mean to him. He's the same person. It doesn't matter what someone looks like. If they are a nice person, or are a good singer, they're still the same person. I think his friends are being jerks. It doesn't make sense."



Man. I think we did something right.

I am Better At This The Third Time Around

The first time, he was the FIRST. He was the one they told me wouldn't ever be. So he was wondrous, and precious....and everything about him was a mystery. He was catered to like a newborn prince and I fretted over him constantly.I READ everything. I constantly second guessed myself.

The second time - there were two of them. And while I might've been better had it been only one, with it being a double set of joy - it was overwhelming. The joy that you might have normally is replaced with the hell of sleep deprivation and the 24/7 man to man operation of newborn care X2. It was epic suck until they were about six months old. It's still not easy. But we've got a groove six years later and have learned to deal.

But now - the third time......what a difference.

There were things about this time that were amazingly WORSE for me. The C-section. The post-partum. The recovery. But the baby?

The baby is a cake walk.

I'd like to say she's a super laid back baby - and that's partially true. But I think that this time around, we're more laid back parents. I don't think I have to hold her all the time,but when I do I really really enjoy it. I'm learning not to flip out when she is denying me sleep, as a matter of fact at 1am or later when she just won't sleep - I'm just opening AMERICAN GODS and re-reading it while she squirms in my arms. It's a win because I get to relax and read,and she is being held which is what she wants. Suddenly she's zonked, and we can both go to bed.

It's a pity that we don't, as humans, have our babies later in life when we are more mature, more stable and better to handle stress.

I know I would've been SHIT as a parent in my twenties. I was too selfish. But now?

I'm still selfish. But I can give up my selfishness for them without resenting them.

My mom always says my brother Matt had a better mom than I did. I finally figured out what she means.

Yup - those are my kids running around like loonies having fun. I love it.

To The Jerks Robbing Our Neighborhood

I have an important message to the robbers who are terrorized my neighborhood over the past 9 days by breaking in and ransacking houses.

You are going to get shot.

See, it's like this.

My cracker neighbors are ALL armed. The Marines at the end of the street can pretty much be counted on to have an ARSENAL and well, the men of my street are not amused by you.

You can count on this.

So between the Marines at the end of the street, the Navy guy next door and every other cracker IN the neighborhood having a weapon and now, you are their #1 Interest.

If it were me, I might go rob someone elses houses. You might get out alive. Or not.

It's Georgia after all.