I am a #RealAmericanBlogger

I am human. Sometimes I win, and sometimes I fail. I am a wife, mother, employee, friend, daughter, smartass, and writer.

I am a Heinz 57 of ancestral backgrounds. I have wide hips and thick legs and high cheekbones and round cheeks (either pair). I am not blond, blue-eyed, skinny, young, or looking to be.

I am a mother. I have the c-section pooch and the stretch marks to prove it. Oh, yes, and the natives. Mustn’t forget the children.

I’ve heard/read the word multiple times, but never cared enough to know what ‘chevron’ truly was, until this week.

I’ve never owned a maxi skirt. I don’t own a fedora. I get my beachy waves by wearing my hair knotted up in multiple ponytail holders, and then refusing to actually brush it.  

I do own a home in the suburbs. Nothing in it really matches. It’s never—and I mean NEVER – truly clean. I don’t own throw pillows. I do have a desk, but the children have stolen it from me for Minecraft, so the vast majority of my writing is done from my phone, with Siri’s help.

I like Pinterest, but mostly for funny shit, and many, many Doctor Who references. I love social media. I have found my tribe there. And I think the blogging community is wonderful—it’s witty and diverse and teaches me things I would otherwise not encounter.

I am a nerd, both academically and otherwise. I revel in the fact that I am raising nerds. We don’t take Easter pictures together dressed in our Spring best and with our manicured lawn in the background. We take pictures of one another playing Scrabble and participating in cosplay.

And I am a blogger. It’s not the only type of writing I do (not in the least). I have wrestled with the greater musings regarding our overall existence, and I’ve wrestled with what blogging means to me and to the blogging community. I do not fault anyone who wonders about it themselves, and seeks to find their place at the table.

I am, however, NOT represented by the new movie trailer for American Blogger, and that saddens me, deeply. It saddens me that so many of my tribe, my community (men, people of color, middle-aged of all types and sexes, nerd bloggers, humor bloggers, and all the rest) are not to be seen anywhere in that trailer. Because CHANGE is actually garnered when we show multiple perspectives and possibilities, not reinforce standing stereotypes.

I am a Real American Blogger. I know you are, too. I hope this helps you to understand why so many of us feel ignored. 

I wrote this post in response to the following trailer: 

New Gig, New Look, Renewed Blogging

I seriously thought about giving it up. 

2013 was a rough year, with my grandfather passing, my being ill, moving to our new house, and all the rest of that daily life which crops up. Most evenings, all I wanted to do was eat, collapse on the couch, and watch mindless television until I fell asleep. And yet…

Something was missing. That something was writing. I wasn’t in the head space to actually accomplish regular writing, but damn if I didn’t miss it.

So, for the last few weeks, I’ve pondered and considered and waffled and finally, picked myself up and decided to begin again. This, in the midst of others shutting down and stopping; Sprocket Ink, Schmutzie, and others you may or may not have heard about.

I’ll leave others to meander around the idea of whether blogging is dying. I’m still narcissistic enough to continue. Plus, there’s so much I still want to document. We have K in the house for about 18 more months, and I’m certain shenanigans will ensue as we visit schools and he fills out college applications. Plus, writing about it for you is much healthier than finding a corner and curling up in the fetal position to ride it out, I’m sure.

To that end, I thought it was time for a new, simple, clean look. Voila! I now have one. And while I cut down on many of my writing obligations, I also picked up a new one: Lefty Pop. A brand new site, in its first week, and my first post pops up today.  You should totally go and check them out. I even have a cute new button over on the right.

Later on, I will write more about how my endocrine system tried to kill me, and how I’ve given it a shockabuku. I will write about J’s nefarious plan to make me cook all the things. I’ll update you on Ant, aka, Ferdinand the Bull, and the second season of basketball. I’ll, of course, do some whining about winter weather. There’s much to talk about, but baby steps, baby steps.

I hope you’ll stick around for the ride.

This is What the Norm Looks Like

Waiting in the waiting room, with the forms that detailed every tiny bit of my pathetic life and a small paper number in hand, was the most humiliating experience of my life. I sat there, feeling sorry for myself in a way that many 19-year-olds never have to experience.

I finally worked up the courage to look at the others around me. They were women. They had children. They were cold; keeping jackets and sometimes gloves on in the frigid waiting room. They were there because their employers had cut health insurance. They were there because their ex-husband wouldn’t pay his child support and they didn’t have the money for a lawyer. They were there because they lost their jobs and couldn’t keep the lights on or feed their children. They were there because he walked out one night after 15 years of marriage and there was no way they were going to get a job with a 16-year gap in their resume without going back to school.

It was then I realized that everything I had been taught about welfare was wrong. These women and their children weren’t dirty. I didn’t see anyone there with more than three children. They weren’t lazy or joking about all of the free money they would be receiving. Not a single one of them looked drugged out of their minds. They weren’t stupid. Most of them kept their heads down, staring at their laps, just as I had done. They were ashamed, embarrassed. They were wishing to be anywhere other than here.

I grew up poor. It was hard for me to acknowledge this for the longest time, because so many around me grew up poor as well. It’s hard to tell that you’re living in poverty when nearly all of your classmates are also living in poverty. And those who weren’t technically living in poverty? Their parents were still living from paycheck to paycheck. I remember the Christmas where my mother told me we had $18 for the holiday. We bought a present for each of us at Wal-Mart and the makings for spaghetti for Christmas dinner, and felt very proud of ourselves for making the money stretch that far. My mother worked 60 hours a week and had health insurance. We had a huge garden each year. We gathered the walnuts that fell in my great-grandmother’s yard each year and sold them. We lived off well water and wood heat and spotty electricity. My mother struck a deal with the dance teacher in order for me to take dance lessons with my friends. We made it work because my mother was too proud to go on welfare, but I firmly believe now that we should have been in that damn office asking for assistance. My mother made herself ill working so hard. She and I both were severely underweight. There were so many things that an extra hundred dollars a month and some commodity food could have done for us.

But, all of this is to say that I was used to making-do. I was used to going without. I was used to entering the high school football games at halftime so I didn’t have to ask my mom for the price of a ticket.

I went to college with a GED, a baby on my hip, and a scholarship that paid for it all. I took out student loans to keep gas in the car I bought for $750 and my son in preschool while I was in class. I knew how to budget, and I even had a job in the vice-president of the university’s office, working part-time. I took 15-18 credit hours each term to finish up early. I placed myself on student health insurance through the university to save my mother some of her paycheck. Then I got sick—cancerous cells in my reproductive tract—and student health insurance dropped me, and I was pre-existing now, so I couldn’t go back to my mom’s insurance, and the only option left for me to get treatment—TO LIVE—was to get Medicaid.

The system is horrific and intrusive and shameful. I won’t bore with you all of the details, but I think anyone who’s ever had to deal with this can tell you that it’s not easy, it’s not fun, and it’s something you want to put behind you as fast as you can. There’s nothing like a government office questioning every decision you make in your life in order for you to get health insurance and daycare assistance (so I could pay some of the medical bills I had already racked up). I’m not the only one to feel this way, apparently—two additional women have written about their experiences with poverty and welfare this week (and in light of the drastic SNAP cuts Congress has recently passed).

So, I can tell you, when I see the vitriol and ignorance on my Facebook feed, I seethe. When I see people who have never had to struggle for more than a matter of a few weeks, or maybe a couple of months, pass judgment on the large chunk of our citizenry who struggles for years on end, I want to rant and curse and scream. Because, I am not out of the norm. I AM THE NORM. The people who accept assistance often look like me, and look like the others who’ve written on the subject recently. Don’t believe me? Then look up the numbers for how many people have actually been denied assistance for failing the mandatory drug testing in your state. And then look up the lifetime maximum for benefits in your state. I think you’ll be surprised.

You need to educate yourself. You need to hear stories like mine. You need to understand that without assistance, I would be dead. I would not have been able to finish my college education, go on to get a graduate degree, get a great job with a pension and buy a nice house and entertain the thought of sending that baby on my hip to an Ivy League school. You need to understand that assistance is there for a reason, and I am that reason.

The ACT

There’s something we’ve been avoiding at all costs in this house. And by ‘we’, I mean me. And by avoiding, I mean every time my older child brings up the subject, I sigh, and shake my head, and leave the room as quickly as physically possible.

It’s time for my older son, who is a junior in high school, to take the ACT for the first time. Of course, he needs parental assistance to register for the ACT. This assistance is problematic, however, because it requires me to accept the fact that in roughly 20 months, I will be escorting my child to his college of choice in order for him to begin his freshman year.

Oh? You’ve never felt the urge to hide behind the couch in an effort to avoid your teenage son and his repeated requests to sign up for a standardized test? I feel sorry for you…

Note from J: He would like to remind all involved at this time that we are very fortunate in the fact we convinced K to complete his senior year, even though he will have enough high school credits to graduate on the college prep track at the end of this year.

The other night, I could no longer refuse him. It was the deadline for him to register for the December sitting of the ACT. The time was now; I had procrastinated all I could, so he and I sat down in front of the computer to fill out the registration and questionnaires together.

And by together, I mean he did all of it while I sat there and sighed and made pitiful-looking faces in his general direction. Well, until the point where I began to question all of my parenting choices and wonder at the level of damaging weirdness I appear to have passed along to my son. The moment of this transition occurred rather quickly; the first warning signs presented itself during the process of creating a login. Let me give you a few examples:

The Login: K decides against my advice to pick something very easy to remember (because how often are we going to actually use this login? Please, for the love of all things good, let’s not have to use this login more than two or three times, okay?) for his login and decides to go with something more amusing to him—DeathDevilCatz666.* He giggles like a small child while typing this in. I begin to wonder if a user’s account login is part of the score report that is sent to the schools he will later choose…

Institutional Preferences: Despite listing himself as male in the basic demographic data section, the questionnaire allows him to select that he would prefer to attend an all-female school for college (as opposed to co-ed or all-male). I don’t blame this one on him as much as I do the company that administers the ACT. Folks, you are dealing with adolescent boys here. Did you think this wouldn’t happen time and again?

Ethnicity: It has become apparent that the standard response J and I always give the boys about ethnicity in an effort to promote tolerance for all people (“Ah, we’re mutts. We probably have a little bit of everything in us!”) has been taken in the most literal sense as my son clicks every ethnicity option available to him, including ‘other’.  Again, I blame the questionnaire more than my son on this option. Firstly, why do allow all of the options to be selected? There’s like, 30 options! And what do you really mean by ‘other’? When you have 30 options previous to the ‘other’ at the bottom of the question, the only things that could remain as potential ‘others’ are panda bear and alien!

The Picture: Long gone are the days of ACT registration where you filled out a half-page form in the counselor’s office at school, and threw twenty bucks at them. Oh, no. In addition to the questionnaires that took roughly 15 hours to answer, you now must upload a picture of the test-taker, to be compared to both their physical appearance and their photo ID, on test day. This is an effort curb any impropriety by those who may be swayed into having a smart kid take the test for them. That’s fine; I understand your reasoning and this is a very simple request. That being said, dear company, you are dealing with adolescent males, and you should expect a certain level of shenanigans when it comes to the selfie taken on the phone or computer and uploaded for identification purposes on test day. And why, WHY would you even consider posting that photo to the score reports you send to their selected schools? The urge to be original/creative/creepy/humorous in a way that only appeals to other teenage boys becomes overwhelming to the young males in question, and you WILL get the oddest selfies taken by humans. I took no less than 56 pictures of my son making some of the oddest faces known to man. Seriously, some of these poses will haunt my dreams for years to come. Why did he feel the urge to throw his head back, shrink his neck (how does he even do this? Is my child some type of constrictor?) to virtual nonexistence, and stick out the tip of his tongue? Why does he feel the need to take a photo of himself demonstrating exactly how wide a human being’s eyes can open? Why did he feel the need to wear an ugly Christmas sweater in the photo (the sweater in question features a cat, and says “Meowy Christmas” on it)? WHY? I finally selected a slightly blurry photo that only ranked at about 42% on the creepiness scale when I lost all parental authority and doubled over in stomach-pain-inducing laughter for so long I was afraid the registration was going to time out and we would have to start the 15 hour process all over again.

There are several things I learned from this registration experience, but two items are significant enough to note here. First and foremost, there is no doubt that this is, in fact, MY child, and obviously, all the weirdness I thought I had handily hidden away in the recesses of my mind where no one can see has been quietly seeping out, unbeknownst to me, in ways that my children have been able to observe and model.  Second, and I don’t know how I am going to accomplish this quite yet (thank goodness I still have some time), I am going to need to be better prepared when it’s actually time to apply to the colleges themselves and to financial aid. I have a feeling it’s going to involve copious amounts of wine.

*That’s not his actual login. I have substituted a login name made up by me. I cannot actually match the oddness of his login. This feels important to note.

Vignettes: Back to School

 

Photo Source

Me, at work: Hey, are we having issues with email?

Everyone: Yes!

All of us: Darn students.

***

Me, to J: So, who’s Ant’s teacher this year?

J: Well…

Me: What?

J: You are going to think you’re angry when I say, but you need to hear me out.

Me: Who? WHO?

J: Mr. M. Now, I know you said you wanted Ant in a classroom with a younger…

Me: A man? Again? That didn’t work out so well the last time! And I told them I wanted him to have a female, preferably young and energetic!
J: Now, Sarah, hear me out. He has Mr. M, and the first thing I thought when I went in the class room, is ‘Oh, Sarah is not going to like this.’ This guy is laid back and…

Me: You’re right! I do not like this at all!

J: AND THEN…

Me; Yes, okay. Sigh.

J: Mr. M saw Ant come through with his Doctor Who shirt and the first thing he said to him was, ‘Who is your favorite Doctor, Ant? Mine is Tom Baker!’

Me: Oy!

J: I know.

Me: Oh, this guy is a keeper. Ant’s going to have a great year!

J: I haven’t even told you the Star Wars part yet…

***

Me, at work: Hey, are we having issues with internet and wifi?

Everyone: Yes!

All of us: Darn students.

***

First day of school and I have Ant on the bus, am on my way to work, and generally thinking how awesome this morning went, given it’s the first day and all. I’m stopped at a light when the motorcycle rear ends me. It wasn’t a big hit, so at first, I’m not even certain I’ve been hit. So, I roll down the window and ask the cyclist behind me if he hit me. He flips me off.

Oh. Oh, it’s on.

I throw the brake on, get out, and go back to address him properly. The woman in the lane beside us rolls down her window so she can better hear what’s happening.

Me: I asked if you hit me.

Him, looking all of 12, and obviously going to school with his backpack on his back: My tire rolled into your car, yes.

Me: Oh, and is your tire attached to your bike? Which you were in control of when you hit me?

Him: What of it, lady?

Me: Oh, honey. HONEY. That’s not how we say we’re sorry. Let’s try it the right way…

Him: There’s not even a freaking mark on your bumper!

Me: I know. Be thankful for that, or you’d be late to your first class, and that  officer two cars ahead of me would be asking about your motorcycle license and insurance right about now. Let’s try it again, ‘I’m sorry for hitting you…’

Him: What are you, my mother?

Me: Well, I’m old enough to be your mother and I’m tired of your attitude, so yes, let’s just say I’m proxy for your mother right now.

By this time, the lady next to us is shaking with laughter and getting her phone out of her purse. I know I made her morning.

***

Student: Hey, is Blackboard down?

Everyone: Yes!

All of us: Darn students.

Me: Hey! Wait a minute…