Just a Shortie

I was thinking about someone today.  An authority figure from way back when.  She was great, had a real way with kids.  While I knew her pretty well, I pulled back rather than becoming truly close, because--well, because my sister fancied herself close, and every time I mentioned the woman's  name, I got a whole bucket-load of "I know her better than you do/I was more important to her than you are."  At the time, I was just a kid and still let that crap affect my choices.

Anyway, this woman was gay.  Absolutely, not a doubt about it.  At 17, my "gaydar" was finely tuned, and she set all the bells and klaxons to sounding.  Sadly, she'd grown up in Utah, and was firmly in the clutches of the predominant faith.  And so she was single for most of her life, though there was one sad, very short, failed marriage punctuating her middle age.

And then there was that period of time she broke free.

For a couple of years, she threw caution to the wind and moved a few hundred miles away with a GIRLFRIEND.

I was so happy for her!  I never said anything, of course, because she denied.  She insisted that the woman just a "friend."  But my crazy, late friend/ex-roommate lived with these women for half a year, and they were absolutely lovers.

I imagined a long, happy life for these women.  I imagined that finally, joyously, my old friend would have the existence she deserved--one where she got to be who she was, and got to be with the person she loved.

And then it ended.  I don't know how or why, all I know is that she's now a much loved aunt and friend and mentor who is . . . alone.  For decades, alone.  She's in her mid-sixties now, and she is firmly under the foot of that faith that, to be absolutely blunt, robbed her of her life.

Anyway, this isn't meant as a condemnation of the Mormon Church (though I'll gladly offer those up upon request, along with any other joy-sapping, cash-slurping, paternalistic ideological sinkhole mythology-house you wanna discuss), but rather a lament.  60+ years old, and never really free to be.  Does she regret it?  Is she angry?  Resentful?  Or worse, is she just completely cowed and doesn't realize that she could have shaken off the mythology and been happy at any time she dared?

Being who she is and and seeing how she was reared, could she have dared?

She was always a terrifically kind and concerned woman who made a career of doing what she could to help kids.  She deserved better.

So when you see another state fall to the "scourge" of marriage equality, think of her.  Think of what her life could have been, had she grown up in a culture that embraced and nourished rather than stomped down and constrained.  When you see another child being bullied by kids looking to enforce their parents' faith and cultural norms, remember her.  And imagine, like I always have, just how different, how wonderful, how kind and beautiful her existence could have been, had she not been trapped in a society full of bullies who, like grit in a tumbler, make it their life's work to grind away the edges and curves that make us who we are meant to be.

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An update here:  the landlord is booting us, has given us 60 days notice to vacate.  This isn't an eviction--he says we're the best tenants he's ever had, has offered a glowing reference.  But he's selling, and he needs us out so he can do that.  Which leaves us utterly screwed and possibly facing homelessness.  Truly.  So please.

Low Salt, Low Carb, Low Calorie, and Low BS

So, in the midst of trying to save money, trying to pay things down, we've been screwing up a bit.  A JUICER here, a new crock pot there.  The juicer, while nice, isn't a necessity, and I'm really beginning to feel we shouldn't have gotten it just now--maybe saved that purchase for down the road a bit.  But hubby was inspired, he really wanted to try it, and it was pretty majorly on sale.  But still.  Now I feel obligated to push him to make juices because, otherwise, it's just a lump of cash on the counter, one of a million "used for a few weeks" juicers out there.

If you're in the market, it's a Cuisinart, and it does make super-nice juice, with pretty dry pulp.  No, I'm not trying to sell this one, just saying that if you're looking for a juicer and you can't afford a 600 dollar Breville, this one's good.  Here's a more DETAILED REVIEW.

The crock pot I feel better about.  While it won't save us any money on spaghetti sauce (in fact, it costs more to make at home), it does knock the sodium back by 75% over jarred sauce.  That's important to me, because I really struggle with keeping my sodium under 2,000 mg a day.  Plus, making our own Mexican beans at home IS markedly cheaper.  Make them in the crock pot, spice them up, then freeze them.  They're muy tasty, and a whole lot less expensive.

The gadget counter.  Funny, they all look very small in this picture.

Notice the dirty spoon?  That's for stirring the drastically lower-sodium homemade primavera/arrabiata sauce.  Here's a list of the ingredients and their nutritional information (we entered it as a recipe last night on My Fitness Pal so we can use it repeatedly without having to re-enter the information).  You can, of course, add whatever you want, but try not to add salt--sort of defeats the purpose:

Also, watch those red pepper flakes--they can heat up a vat of sauce in a big hurry!  Remember--less is more, you can always add more later.

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Our boy is feeling very self-conscious about his weight and appearance, specifically when it comes to going to the pool.  While he's certainly not obese (like his mom), he could stand to lose 20 lbs according to his doctor, and I agree.  However, it's hard to get a 15 year old to stop eating the crap--or, more specifically, it's hard to get him to start eating the good stuff.  The sheer volume of food we wind up throwing away because he only picks at it?  Upsetting.  But we keep trying, because it's important.  You see, he was a freakishly picky child--so picky that we couldn't even take him to restaurants because he wouldn't eat anything on the menu.  No beef (that's okay), no pork (that's okay), no chicken unless it was breaded and baked or fried (but had to be REAL chicken, no parts-is-parts chicken), no green veggies, no beans, no rice.  He would eat bread and fruit.  And, as a result, he was incredibly skinny (like boney-skinny) until he was 11 years old.

When he finally decided that he actually liked pizza.

And we, in our foolish joy that he was suddenly able to eat at birthday parties and the like, encouraged him!  Try pizza with this, try it with that!  Try THIS--it's pasta, and it's really just pizza in noodle form!  

Boy, aren't we stupid?

Anyway, he announced last night that he wants to go to the pool alone.  And that brings with it new worries.  Because those ratty children in this neighborhood scare me.  What if they follow him?  What if they hassle him?  

Or follow him to the pool and ridicule him?

What if they attack him?  No, I'm not overreacting, one of the rat children attacked another boy just a couple of weeks ago, beat him and strangled him.  

I think I'll let him walk up, call me when he gets there so I know he made it okay, and then his dad can pick him up on his way home from work.  That will put our boy at the pool later in the day, which will reduce his sun exposure (skin cancer mommy doesn't like him getting baked), and it will have him NOT walking home later in the day.  

Oh, and before you think I'm being completely smothering, the pool is over a mile away.  It's not like I'm worried about him walking around the corner.  

I think he's hoping to make friends, and, while that would be great, I really fear that the rats in the neighborhood will spoil that pretty quickly.  It's happened before--the new kids turns out to know the rats, and they pressure him to stop hanging with our boy.  One kid in the face of a group of bullies?  Not many will brave those bullies to hang out with the "loner."  Who is only a loner because he's been excluded and put outside.  

Well, and because he doesn't want to hang out with kids who kill small animals and beat the hell out of other kids.  

We'll see.  Cross your fingers.

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Saw a ridiculous meme come across my wall today:  

Okay, first off--seriously?  Let's be real here--Christ isn't the default position (if you think it is, look at India, the Middle East, or many Asian countries some time).  Children don't need to be taught NOT to believe in Jesus because that is the natural state-- NOT believing is normal, natural, and how we're built.  In order to produce people who don't embrace a particular mythology, all you have to do is avoid teaching that mythology as "fact."

Like they say--if you don't indoctrinate them by the age of seven, you almost certainly won't be able to.  My wonderful boy?  I read the bible to him, Old and New, before he was ten.  When I got to the story of Moses and the burning bush, he said, "Hang on--now God's a BUSH that's on FIRE and TALKS?  PLEASE!"  He demanded to see the book, thought for sure I was making it up.  After reading it, he looked up and said, "Nobody really believes this, do they?"

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And that's about it, I guess.  Time to wake that boy up and find out who stole my dark chocolate bars.  

Here.  Have something ugly!

Wow.

Music, Murder, and Modern Parenting

I love music.  I'm not a particularly skilled musician (used to play a little guitar a long time ago), but I have a wickedly good ear and a special skill for keeping on key, vocally, and knowing (via an odd buzzing sensation at the base of my skull) when someone else isn't on key. 

My real talent?

Linking specific music to specific memories or events in my life.  When I hear, say, Bad Company or Billy Squier, I'm transported back to my teenage boulevard days.  When I hear John Denver, I'm lying in the grass next to a bubbling spring in the Wasatch Range, bees trundling lazily about, a horse snuffling my neck while I giggle.  Beatles?  I'm flat on my back on the living room floor, headphones on, listening to my Dad's LPs.

Don't ask me where I am when John Mayer, Avril Lavigne, or certain Maroon 5 songs play.  Just know it's a bad, sad, devastating place to be.  Made worse because I always assume that others have this same "talent."  So when John Mayer or Avril are meandering through the speakers, I assume everyone else is taking a stroll down memory lane, too.  And it tears my heart out.

This past two weeks I've been listening to a lot of My Chemical Romance.  Specifically, "The Black Parade."  One song in particular has been on me for these two weeks--it's called "Teenagers," and it strikes me as a cautionary/Columbine-type song.  It definitely strikes a chord with me, with its chorus:

They say that
Teenagers scare the living shit out of me
They could care less, so long as someone'll bleed
So darken your clothes
Or strike a violent pose
Maybe they'll leave you alone, but not me

The second verse, already dark in its Columbine-esque tone, hit me especially hard yesterday.  I was sitting in the car outside our boy's Hapkido studio, watching the Mockingbirds school the Blue Jays in the towering oak near the fence, when it came on the stereo:

The boys and girls in the clique
The awful names that they stick
You're never gonna fit in much, kid
But if you're troubled and hurt
What you got under your shirt
Will make them pay for the things that they did

We're probably not ever going to know what was going on in Adam Lanza's whirling, screwed-up head.  And no, he wasn't, officially, a teenager any more, but close enough.  Maybe he wasn't bullied or ostracized.  Maybe he didn't feel abused or outside the crowd. 

Maybe.

But that doesn't change just how screwed up our kids are today. Not individually--no, as individuals, they seem about as well-or-maladjusted as ever.  But in groups?

Packs?

I've been thinking a lot about this.  What happened?  What changed, aside from the pervasive, astounding violence thrown at kids from all angles and packaged as good, American fun?

I think we did.  The parents.

See, somehow, in some pretty important ways, we failed to grow up.  Instead of being the gatekeepers and authority figures, we've become the playmates, the competition.  Instead of punishing rudeness, we're encouraging it, laughing at it, even giving lessons on how to better deliver it.  Parents used to step in and discipline when their child was mean, rude, or destructive.  Now they step in and defend their child's actions and level their anger at the victims or accusers.  I remember when I was a kid, I dreaded bringing home a bad grade because I knew my father would look at ME and ask what the hell was wrong with ME.  Now?  Now the parent marches into the classroom, corners the TEACHER, and wags a righteous finger in her face, demanding to know what the hell is wrong with HER.  I remember always knowing that, if I screwed up, my parents didn't HAVE to see it happen--ANY adult in the neighborhood would step in, stop me, then drag me home to my parents.  Who would dare do that now?  Who wouldn't fear being met at the door by an angry, potentially violent parent? 

Obviously, I'm speaking in generalities--we're not ALL like this, but I believe enough of us are that we've created a childhood culture where rudeness, mob action, and even gun violence are valued.  If not always valued by adults, these things are definitely held in high esteem by other kids as often as not. 

I don't have a solution.  Ditching my entire generation AND the children we've produced and starting again from scratch isn't possible.  Apparently, intelligent, reasoned gun laws that reflect the realities of 2012 (rather than 1789) are also impossible.  Obviously--how else to explain  61 mass murders perpetrated with firearms since 1982 and THIRTY-ONE school shootings since Columbine, yet our gun laws remain stubbornly unchanged? 

I'm not sure where I'm going with this.  It's a sort of blue-skying, wandering journey.  A free-association fest.  Did I mention that the parents of one of those poor, beautiful children in Sandy Hook went to my high school?  That their older siblings and cousins were my classmates?  That their sweetheart was born in the town we just moved from?  That, in fact, they, too just recently moved to the east coast? 

Something has GOT to change.  We have GOT to get some sort of grip and stop letting the gun lobby subvert our political process with mega-cash and BS claims.  I'm not talking about banning guns--rarely is anyone saying that.  I'm talking about better, more thorough background checks, meaningful, in-depth sharing of information about psychiatric ailments (not just hospitals, but individual practitioners sharing pertinent information with state agencies), more attention paid to others living in the home of gun owners, and periodic re-registration of firearms with new background/psych checks.  And people can squeal that, no, it's not the guns, it's the mental illness, but that's a tub of garbage.  Mental illness can't take me out at 50 feet.  Mental illness can't perch on a clock tower and pick off terrified students.  Mental illness can't speed down a residential street killing innocent children in a burst of gang-related vengeance.  Mental illness can't storm through the halls of an elementary school and end 20 perfect hearts (and their brave defenders). 

Not without a firearm, anyway. 

We live in a country where it is easier to buy ammunition than it is to buy decongestants.  Don't believe me?  Head over to Walmart and buy a box of ammo for a .22.  And then buy five bottles of Robitussin.  See which one presents a greater challenge. 

And today?  Today Santa came through the neighborhood, tossing candy from atop a wailing fire engine.  And the rats across the street and the creepy child of drug addicts behind us ran along, scooping up all the candy before the other, younger neighborhood kids had a chance.  They did this as the rat children's mother looked on. 

And I didn't do a damned thing.  I didn't, the woman next door didn't, the folks who live next door to the rats didn't.  We just shook our heads, looked on in disgust.  And that, my friends, makes me and my neighbors part of the problem.

Hapkido and Misfit Children

So, even though we absolutely cannot afford it, we've enrolled our boy in Hapkido.  He did a few years of martial arts when younger, and he was really quite taken with it.  This is three nights a week, and I'm pleased with the lack of edge and attitude from the Master/Sensei.  I'm not getting the "badass" vibe you often get off martial arts places.  That's good--we're not after badass.  We're after self-confidence, improved concentration, and an ability to effectively defend himself.  That there are four or five other teens in Hapkido is good, too.

Speaking of self-defense, it would appear that all the friendships on the street are over for him.  The one household that still had much to do with him (though he was the "friend of last resort") has become suspect.  DJ, the younger of the two boys, has taken to spending all his free time with the animal-killing, lie-telling, thieving kids across the street.  You know, the ones not permitted in our house because they steal and tell big, whopper, dangerous lies?  He only comes to our door in their presence now--always late/after dark, and always asking if our boy can come outside to "hang out."  That child has NEVER asked if Sean can come out--he's always come here and asked to come IN so they can play video games or Nerf.  But suddenly he wants Sean outside in the presence of the rat kids and Armen.  No way.  Our boy feels certain it's a trap, and I agree--they've gotten bold enough that they stand down the street and chant his name, ridiculing and hassling him.  I think they're looking to get him outside and alone in the dark and possibly do him harm.

Oh, and speaking of the rat kids, the cops were on the street last night.  Four cop cars, all in front of their house.  After a few minutes, they went to the end of the circle and parked in front of DJ's house.  We're thinking maybe Armen is in trouble--after all, he's already got a record at 13 years old, he and the rat kids are bad for being out and about at 1 am, his parents and all older siblings are drug addicts (and his mother's a prostitute, to boot), and he's the only kid around here who hangs out at both the rat kids's and DJ's.  Can't be sure, but if it turned out he'd gotten up to something awful, no one here would be surprised. 

And one more "speaking of"--speaking of getting up to something awful, I think we're going to have to install a security camera outside.  We feel pretty sure that, if we put up our extensive Halloween decorations, those kids will tear them to bits.  They're just that type.  So, if we can't afford the camera (I found a good one for $160), we're going to have to wait and put up our decorations on Halloween night.  Which is sad.  But the alternative is having our stuff bashed to hell by the neighborhood rats. 

Goodness.