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: 

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.

Unmentioned

Photo Source

 These are the things that are never discussed; not in public, not between ourselves.

We do not speak of how the wasting now lets us see the curvature of the metacarpals in your hands, how I can see the fine variations and concaves of your skull through your paper-thin skin.

We never talk about the fact we can see your heart beating through your frail chest or your pulse quickening through the veins in your wrists.

We never mention the intrusion of noise the bed makes as it repeatedly adjusts the pressure in the air mattress under your body—the last resort against the breakdown of the integrity of your skin—a never-won war.

We do not how to respond as your breath slows, drags, trips, stops and then lunges painfully forward again. When your breath stops, ours does as well—waiting to see if your body will involuntarily jerk itself back into the rhythm of breathing, this time.

At some point, it just won’t. I asked the nurse.

I sit here and think of blood and piss and shit and drool. I think of watching another sleep and of trying to guess what a non-verbal person needs or wants. How mothers bouncing cranky infants at playgroup or story time will compare battle wounds and horror stories, but when it comes to the end of life (and not the beginnings of it) we are silent.

Deathly silent.

These end-of-life truths, so similar to the care we each require in our infancy, they are things of which we do not want to speak. We’ll tell everyone about birth plans and spit up and blowouts and the overwhelming emotions of the major life-changing event of birth, but the facts of death go unmentioned.

On This Day…

Photo Source

There is a card in my dresser from ten years ago that was never signed, never sealed, and never given. It was a great find—a Far Side card where the apricot-filled candy-- the last one left in the box-- is taking field notes on what he has experienced as all of his compatriots have been brutally taken from their box home. I’m pretty proud of that card (although the one I found last year that said I would totally shiv someone in prison for the one I love was another exceptional find), but it will permanently remain in its place of dresser limbo. It—in and of itself—is a reminder of why I could not present that card to my husband on that day.

***

Before ‘the year 2000’ (Yes, that was totally a Conan reference; I’m a nerd, remember? He is our king.) if you had asked me what I thought about Valentine’s Day, I would have given you a snarky answer. And that’s if I was feeling polite.

I wasn’t big on Valentine’s, you might say.

The weekend of Valentine’s Day in 2000, however, is the first time I went out with J (after months of him asking me; he finally wore me down. Seriously. He’d been asking since September). It was awkward, as first dates usually are, and doubly so because it was so close to Valentine’s. And then there was the fact that he won a Victoria’s Secret gift card during the night, and was presented with the “Do I keep this and look like a creeper, or do I give this to her, and look like a creeper on a first date?” scenario. It was fun to watch him squirm. We’ve basically been inseparable since then.

***

That wasn’t the most exciting Valentine’s Day I’ve ever experienced, however. Ten years ago today, in the wee hours of the morning, I awoke to realize that I was (FINALLY) in labor with Ant.

I patiently waited until J awoke at six to go to work to tell him what was up—so that he could call in. We patiently took K to school, so he could attend his Valentine’s party. I patiently waited for my 9am OB appointment (given how far past my due date I was, they’d started seeing me twice a week). After my appointment, I decided to do some more patient waiting at home. With a bacon cheeseburger and some onion rings (last meal before ice chip hell). By 1pm, I started thinking about going to the hospital again—mainly because the blizzard had started. We got eight or nine inches of snow the night Ant was born. By 3pm I was settled in my L&D room. And by about 10pm, I thought we were going to finally see the little man who was a miracle—the baby that wasn’t supposed to be possible to conceive. The baby that I almost lost at 17 weeks.

Ant has always been a strong-willed child. He had other plans. He’s also a daredevil who likes to scare the crap out of me. We finally got to meet him on February 15^th, at 1:32 am, thanks to the chief of staff and an emergency c-section and an amazing pediatric team. Apparently my moderated activity prescription had worked a little too well. The baby that tried to be born too small ended up being way too large—at ten pounds, eleven ounces, at birth.

So, one could say that I forgot about the Valentine’s card I had purchased for J because I was a little occupied that day. A week later, when we finally got home, I found it on the dresser, we laughed about it, I placed in the dresser, and then I promptly found a comfortable spot on my own bed and took a nap. That card will remain in my dresser for the rest of my life.

***

Since 2000 and especially since 2003, Valentine’s has taken a completely new meaning for me. Yes, I still think it’s a bit too consumerist, and think a lot of the symbolism has been lost, I don’t need roses, per se, yada, yada, yada. Yet… now the day is full of excitement, remembrances, and anticipation for tomorrow. Tomorrow, my younger child will hit the double digits. I will have children who are 15 and 10, respectively. In my mind, it officially marks the end of our time of having small children. While I know that there will be no dramatic shift in the world’s gravitational pull tomorrow morning, and Ant will appear the same as he does today, for me… Valentine’s Day today just feels as if it is the end of one chapter and the beginning of another. 

This post written for the Mama Kat’s prompt: A Valentine's Day you remember.

Observe. Interpret. Chronicle. Might I Add Repeat?

Over the past few months, whenever I needed to go back to the well, so to speak (God, I wish I still had well-water in my life—Jesse and I have decided that lead tasted wonderful and we were only marginally diminished), I’ve caught up on my Maynard James Keenan reading.

Yeah, you read that right. Not only does that man front some of my favorite bands and make a kick ass bottle of wine (and some pasta my husband is desperately trying to convince me to eat, STAT), but he also writes a column. Insert contented sigh of admiration and hero-worship here.

After we tried what J termed my ‘rock star wine’ (Caduceus: Anubis) and found it delicious, my husband looked squarely in my eyes and said, “Some people have too much talent stuffed into one body.” Don’t I wish I had that problem. Don’t we all?

Yeah, the other thing you’re reading right is that I have another hero-worship thing going on besides The Bloggess. Don’t judge. I excel at hero-worship. There’s more than enough to go around.

One of the little tidbits of reflection I read today brought the point I need brought home. I’d seen him allude to this line of thinking once during a concert, but the written word is more resonant for me. In the post he speaks of the time when the mundane and the creative were more closely aligned. He speaks of how important the creative was to each and every one of our ancestors. It allowed them to live. It allowed them to think of ways to survive the threats of their world. It allowed them to transmit their cultural knowledge to younger generations. They did this by using the three steps listed in the title of this post. They did not limit creativity, block off time for it, or create compartmentalized encampments in their mind between the ‘real things’ to be done and the creative things to be done.

I tend to be guilty of all of the above.

As of late, the creative has been lacking a bit in my life. Know what? My life has sucked a bit for the lack of it. Granted, yes, there’s been school shootings and elementary school lockdowns (Ant was in one this week; his report of the event is heartbreaking, and I cannot write about it yet) and broken furnaces and holiday retail hours and all the other crap that can drag a girl down… but I think the fact that creative time for Momma has dropped off the family calendar altogether has taken the largest toll. Hard to brainstorm around a broken furnace when your mind lives in this constant state of to-do list.

We’ve already established that Momma ain’t spending enough time on herself, now haven’t we? Although I’m happy to report that I broke the ugly UGG cycle and have lost the clip (the ponytail band is a bit harder to relinquish, but I did yesterday; today is second-day hair, and all bets are off) and even put on lipstick, just as Liz Taylor intended…

You can't see the lipstick here. Mainly because I've had
three cups of coffee at this point. And yes, that's a
legitimate SWEATER...

So there’s some movement there. I need to make sure there’s movement on the creative front as well.

I am a very fortunate woman. I have a supportive husband and older children capable of entertaining themselves and an amazing boss who demands we take the time off we need. I also have 16 days of vacation, starting today. There will be holiday machinations during this time off, to be sure, but there will also be days and days of unfilled time in which I can be creative to my heart’s content. I’m really looking forward to it.

At this time, I’m placing no limits on myself. I tend to do this. I tend to tell myself things like, “Well, you should at least catch up on laundry while you’re off” or “Why don’t you write several posts and schedule them?” or “Why are you even thinking of a new project? You have so many other things you’ve never finished!” No limits allowed this time around. I’ll do what strikes me when it strikes me, and if it appears in blog posts or short stories or finishing a project or just plain crafting, that’s fine. That’s what I am doing. It’s important work, after all—allowing the creative juices to flow, allowing the problem-solving channels to become unblocked, allowing serendipity to walk in and do its thing.