Minnesotans are a hardy bunch, they can take the cold better than extreme heat and, in a way, almost rise above the winter. I have one friend, originally from Chile, who wears short sleeves, sandals and short pants year round. He is my age and has been in Minnesota about forty years. He carries a coat with him in the car to shut other people up. He is on the hardiest end of the spectrum. People with lower internal thermostats are on the other. Most of us fall somewhere in-between.
I remember visiting friends in Brooklyn when the girls were about four and eight. The mother of the family was simply appalled that I didn't make them wear undershirts in what she considered very cold weather. To me, it was above freezing, and if they kept a hood on outside, I was quite happy. You have to know how to pick your battles and undershirts weren't on my list.
Yesterday, though, I got a little frustrated with a father who did not know when to pick his battle. All day long I saw teenagers and older come into the store wearing just a sweatshirt. I thought ten degrees deserved more than that, but hey, if their parents, wearing only light jackets themselves, approved... Then I saw a cart with two little children, maybe three and four, a boy and a girl. They were stopped right by me. The little boy was appropriately dressed but the little girl was not. Remember it was only ten degrees. She was wearing a little dress and a jacket. Her legs were bare and she was not wearing socks or tights or pants. I asked where her pants were and dad answered she didn't like to wear pants. I looked at him. It was ten degrees out! I said it was quite cold. Well, he didn't like to fight with her.
Children are wonderful, sometimes irrational, and sometimes downright stupid beings. That is why they have parents to take make protective choices for them. I had friends who said their six week old didn't like the car seat so they let her make the decision and held her instead. Then there are situations where child safety is not an issue. I have a friend whose son could not tolerate socks and closed shoes when he was younger. They lived in a moderate climate and compromised on sturdy sandals. My daughter hated bibs. Rather than fight with her, I let her clothes get dirty. It was easier for me to wash the little garments than fight with her. But letting a small child go out in ten degree weather with nothing on her lower body is not the kind of battle to admit defeat. It is cold out, you can't go without the proper clothing. Period. Be the parent and insist.
To everyone who reads this: Treat each other with love and laughter in the coming year. Take good care of your health, get rest, and have a wonderful new year. I'm serious, and I insist!
Monday, December 31, 2012
Saturday, December 29, 2012
What we think and what others see
Like most people I have an image of myself. Like most people, it is skewed. Sometimes it is skewed in a flattering way, sometimes it ignores the warts. Today I showed someone the way I see myself, and they showed me the warts. I apologized but my immediate reaction is defensive. Those aren't warts... those are, oh, beauty marks, or unusual plumage. Or sarcastic, so sorry I haven't lived up to your expectations; you who are so perfect.
I like to think I am a social person and enjoy being around others. But I am not so sure. I don't like long telephone calls except to my nearest friends and family. I'm not good hanging out at a bar or a dance. I've been known to tell my company, "OK, time to go now," and will herd them out the door. If someone at work stops to chew the fat for a long time, I make up needing the ladies room to get away.
I think I want to meet a nice guy and have had quite a few coffee dates. The auditioning is exhausting. I want someone to see me, find me fascinating, and feel like we can talk about anything. Hasn't happened yet. I wonder what I project and what they see? Sometimes I make a lot of effort, sometimes not. As Popeye put it, I yam what I yam.
Today's mail had a chance to win a pre-paid cremation; quite a practical sweepstakes if you think about it. Enclosed in the offer was a quote from Eleanor Roosevelt. "Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, and today is a gift; that's why they call it the present."
I've made a decision. Apologize for what needs an apology, forgive myself for being human and give myself permission to stop feeling bad for the past. I only have today to be who I want to be, showing who I think I am, embracing the gift of the present.
Friday, December 28, 2012
Life in this modern world
Verbatim text message:
-is your brothers name Paul?
-Who is this?
-i dont know i can't c u. give me a hint
-You asked me if I have a brother Paul. So who are YOU?
-im Robb and you?
-Carol
-hey carol i thought this was my brother in laws cell his brother is a cpa I wonderred if his name was paul cause i saw paul reiters name
-Sorry. Have a good one.
***********
Verbatim Facebook messages:
-Carol thanks for the laugh, update, I got a job hurray for me, it is temporary and it is on Staten Island and it is only $17 an hr but after 4 yrs it is a paycheck. I am a secretary/admin asst to a Superintendent of the Bd Of Ed. which btw has no $ so no future either but once you get in with this agency Gd Temps they can continue to place you. Larry is a mess in total meltdown mode in trouble with his job (we will probably lose the house) but not sure if there is anything I can do, he refuses to take meds, refuses to go away to get help (btw NYS law unless he is volunteering to go away he can sign himself out in 36 hrs.) After 30 yrs of killing myself he has destroyed everything in less then 3 months. I am just numb waking up everyday with panic attacks and just putting one foot in front of the other. to be continued but I must tell you looking great these days really Carol I love your new look. thanks being here for me. Happy New Year sweetie love you talk soon.
-(((HUGS))) Who ever thought we'd be 60 and in this position? I feel like a stereotype.
-I know and also a jerk.
***********
First off, what I mean about being 60 and in this position. I am much luckier than my friend because I do have a home that is secure thanks to loving in-laws. But I too am sixty and under employed. I was unemployed for five years after losing a good job. I don't know if at my age I will ever make good money again. It is a stereotype, but true, that older women of divorce go into retirement at a disadvantage. But having a long marriage crumble and being alone? That is the hardest part. I am luckier than my friend in that my ex is supportive and a very responsible man. He subsidizes my health insurance which is a huge deal, indeed, in this modern world.
On Christmas Day I saw the movie Les Miserables, The Miserable. Life in the earlier part of the 1800's was pretty awful for anyone without means. The dirt, the filth, the lack of dignity, the hopelessness of the poor and oppressed was staggering. I know that dramatic license made things look even more horrifying, but it was based on what is known. For the past few days I have been listening to Isabel Allende's Island Beneath the Sea, which is about slavery and the revolt in Haiti two hundred years ago. The opening scene in Les Miserables shows prisoners with neck and wrist shackles trying to haul a huge boat into dock. They are slaves. I hope life is much better for most of us in this modern world.
The other night I watched a documentary on the PBS show POV (Point of View). It was about a program that takes smart, but impoverished women from different parts of the world and brings them to India to "Barefoot College". There, illiterate women from Africa, South America and the Mid East learn in six months to be what they call engineers. We would call them assembly workers. They teach them to make solar collectors and the hardware to run them for electricity and light. The philosophy being to make them supervisors who will teach others. They train women because they know that women will take their new found skill and improve their villages where they have family. (Men might take their new found skills to the city.) The film followed two women from a desert community in Jordan.
It knocked me out to see the hopelessness of the lives of the people there. No work, and for women, no education over the age of ten. It was a hard sell to allow one of the women to go to India. She lived in a tent with four daughters, the oldest fourteen. Her husband was a liar. He would agree with the Minister of Labor that it was a good thing, and that he would take care of his children, and then turn and threaten his wife if she went. She went anyway but was called back because one of the children was ill. After another conference with the Minister she wants to go back to India and finish the course, the husband vows to allow her, and then threatens her again if she goes. She finally tells him that he can take the children back to his first wife, but she is going. It is a great scene when she plugs in a solar light that she has made herself in a small house with a roof.
So! Progress, yes? But it seems for every step forward, there is another one or two back. The stories of sexual and other slavery in this modern world are being brought into the light. And I recently read a story of childhood death in Chad. There is huge malnutrition in this Sub Saharan country. Add ignorance and it is a recipe for disaster. The government has set up feeding stations where parents can bring their malnourished children who can get the nutrients they need and thrive. But superstition and custom has parents bringing their starving children to a local person who performs surgery with a dirty screwdriver to knock out their teeth and cut off their uvula. Of course this pain makes it impossible to eat and most of the children die. Aieee!! Makes me kind of crazy. What good is a child nutrition program that is not being used due to ignorance? Is this the second decade of the twenty-first century or are we back in the stone age? As I fed my cats their dry and wet food this morning I wondered if their food was more nutritious than what much of the world subsists on.
Part of me wants to go back to bed and hide under the comfy covers. I want to see a comedy and laugh. I want to eat ice cream and dream of warm places near white sand beaches. Instead, I will try to be a good person and sign another petition. One day, I will find a real way to help make this a better modern world.
-is your brothers name Paul?
-Who is this?
-i dont know i can't c u. give me a hint
-You asked me if I have a brother Paul. So who are YOU?
-im Robb and you?
-Carol
-hey carol i thought this was my brother in laws cell his brother is a cpa I wonderred if his name was paul cause i saw paul reiters name
-Sorry. Have a good one.
***********
Verbatim Facebook messages:
-Carol thanks for the laugh, update, I got a job hurray for me, it is temporary and it is on Staten Island and it is only $17 an hr but after 4 yrs it is a paycheck. I am a secretary/admin asst to a Superintendent of the Bd Of Ed. which btw has no $ so no future either but once you get in with this agency Gd Temps they can continue to place you. Larry is a mess in total meltdown mode in trouble with his job (we will probably lose the house) but not sure if there is anything I can do, he refuses to take meds, refuses to go away to get help (btw NYS law unless he is volunteering to go away he can sign himself out in 36 hrs.) After 30 yrs of killing myself he has destroyed everything in less then 3 months. I am just numb waking up everyday with panic attacks and just putting one foot in front of the other. to be continued but I must tell you looking great these days really Carol I love your new look. thanks being here for me. Happy New Year sweetie love you talk soon.
-(((HUGS))) Who ever thought we'd be 60 and in this position? I feel like a stereotype.
-I know and also a jerk.
***********
First off, what I mean about being 60 and in this position. I am much luckier than my friend because I do have a home that is secure thanks to loving in-laws. But I too am sixty and under employed. I was unemployed for five years after losing a good job. I don't know if at my age I will ever make good money again. It is a stereotype, but true, that older women of divorce go into retirement at a disadvantage. But having a long marriage crumble and being alone? That is the hardest part. I am luckier than my friend in that my ex is supportive and a very responsible man. He subsidizes my health insurance which is a huge deal, indeed, in this modern world.
On Christmas Day I saw the movie Les Miserables, The Miserable. Life in the earlier part of the 1800's was pretty awful for anyone without means. The dirt, the filth, the lack of dignity, the hopelessness of the poor and oppressed was staggering. I know that dramatic license made things look even more horrifying, but it was based on what is known. For the past few days I have been listening to Isabel Allende's Island Beneath the Sea, which is about slavery and the revolt in Haiti two hundred years ago. The opening scene in Les Miserables shows prisoners with neck and wrist shackles trying to haul a huge boat into dock. They are slaves. I hope life is much better for most of us in this modern world.
The other night I watched a documentary on the PBS show POV (Point of View). It was about a program that takes smart, but impoverished women from different parts of the world and brings them to India to "Barefoot College". There, illiterate women from Africa, South America and the Mid East learn in six months to be what they call engineers. We would call them assembly workers. They teach them to make solar collectors and the hardware to run them for electricity and light. The philosophy being to make them supervisors who will teach others. They train women because they know that women will take their new found skill and improve their villages where they have family. (Men might take their new found skills to the city.) The film followed two women from a desert community in Jordan.
It knocked me out to see the hopelessness of the lives of the people there. No work, and for women, no education over the age of ten. It was a hard sell to allow one of the women to go to India. She lived in a tent with four daughters, the oldest fourteen. Her husband was a liar. He would agree with the Minister of Labor that it was a good thing, and that he would take care of his children, and then turn and threaten his wife if she went. She went anyway but was called back because one of the children was ill. After another conference with the Minister she wants to go back to India and finish the course, the husband vows to allow her, and then threatens her again if she goes. She finally tells him that he can take the children back to his first wife, but she is going. It is a great scene when she plugs in a solar light that she has made herself in a small house with a roof.
So! Progress, yes? But it seems for every step forward, there is another one or two back. The stories of sexual and other slavery in this modern world are being brought into the light. And I recently read a story of childhood death in Chad. There is huge malnutrition in this Sub Saharan country. Add ignorance and it is a recipe for disaster. The government has set up feeding stations where parents can bring their malnourished children who can get the nutrients they need and thrive. But superstition and custom has parents bringing their starving children to a local person who performs surgery with a dirty screwdriver to knock out their teeth and cut off their uvula. Of course this pain makes it impossible to eat and most of the children die. Aieee!! Makes me kind of crazy. What good is a child nutrition program that is not being used due to ignorance? Is this the second decade of the twenty-first century or are we back in the stone age? As I fed my cats their dry and wet food this morning I wondered if their food was more nutritious than what much of the world subsists on.
Part of me wants to go back to bed and hide under the comfy covers. I want to see a comedy and laugh. I want to eat ice cream and dream of warm places near white sand beaches. Instead, I will try to be a good person and sign another petition. One day, I will find a real way to help make this a better modern world.
Monday, December 3, 2012
Words have consequences
Forgive me for this rant, but I just heard something that made my blood boil. There is a smarmy little comedian named Daniel Tosh. There was a promo for one of his shows where he says something to the effect that adopted children used to be homeless then people adopted them to have sex. Oh, ha ha ha! What a scream! What a joker! For some adopted children, there is so much to deal with. They do not need that kind of nasty joke. I'm not talking about being politically correct, I am talking about being mean on purpose for a laugh. I love to laugh, but I did not find that funny. In fact, his whole act and show is about how stupid other people are.
Some years ago I worked with a woman who commented about a co-worker, "He's too stupid to live." I replied that there were worse things than being stupid and she asked, "What?" I said, "Being mean." And I meant it then as I do now.
I do not like mean spirited comedians. I prefer Craig Ferguson's type of humor because he riffs on his own self. I don't think there is a joke on earth about Lindsay Lohan that I could laugh about. Kicking people who are down, or sad, or broken or pathetic isn't funny. Making fun of people who put themselves above others can be funny, though. Call me a hypocrite, but I think joking about a politician who touts "family values" and then serves his wife divorce papers while she is in the hospital being treated for cancer so he can marry his mistress, makes him fair game.
I have followed the career of Joan Rivers since the 60's when she first appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show. I read her first book and know she is a very intelligent woman. She can be scathingly funny, but these days she is going for the mean laugh and shock value. There are so many good lines she could use, so why does she have to say nasty things about an actress' vagina? Not funny. Just shocking and I really think it demeans her.
Remember Madonna's song Papa Don't Preach? When she was told that young girls emulate her and look up to her and she influenced them, she pooh-poohed it. She could do what she wanted and didn't ask to be a role model. Some people say that Rush Limbaugh is just putting on an act, that he says the things he says just for ratings. But the type of hate he spews is contagious to people who don't think and look up to him. Anne Coulter is a terrible liar. There are consequences of speech. Speeches can bring people to do heroic deeds or commit genocide.
We tell our children that they can do it. When a toddler falls we say upsadaisy! Our words of encouragement mean something. I sometimes commute with a forty-five year old man whose mother always put him down and discouraged him. He is fighting to believe in himself. She never encouraged him or his siblings to try. She only told him he could fail. Her words have consequences, they don't visit or call. My father used to say nasty things about why people ate dried fruit. I have a problem eating those foods although I had them available for my family. He never said anything nasty about dried apricots and I love them.
I want to laugh with delight over cleverness. I want to take a moment to get a silly joke. I want to hear employers address their workers or parents speak to their children with respect. Humor and respect.I want news stations to report the news and stop editorializing. I want politicians to stop bending the truth for their own purpose. (Here's an old joke: Q: How can you tell if a politician is lying? A: If his /her lips are moving. Har de har.) It is late right now, but I hope tomorrow all my words will be those that empower. I hope I can make someone laugh, even if it is just a baby.
Some years ago I worked with a woman who commented about a co-worker, "He's too stupid to live." I replied that there were worse things than being stupid and she asked, "What?" I said, "Being mean." And I meant it then as I do now.
I do not like mean spirited comedians. I prefer Craig Ferguson's type of humor because he riffs on his own self. I don't think there is a joke on earth about Lindsay Lohan that I could laugh about. Kicking people who are down, or sad, or broken or pathetic isn't funny. Making fun of people who put themselves above others can be funny, though. Call me a hypocrite, but I think joking about a politician who touts "family values" and then serves his wife divorce papers while she is in the hospital being treated for cancer so he can marry his mistress, makes him fair game.
I have followed the career of Joan Rivers since the 60's when she first appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show. I read her first book and know she is a very intelligent woman. She can be scathingly funny, but these days she is going for the mean laugh and shock value. There are so many good lines she could use, so why does she have to say nasty things about an actress' vagina? Not funny. Just shocking and I really think it demeans her.
Remember Madonna's song Papa Don't Preach? When she was told that young girls emulate her and look up to her and she influenced them, she pooh-poohed it. She could do what she wanted and didn't ask to be a role model. Some people say that Rush Limbaugh is just putting on an act, that he says the things he says just for ratings. But the type of hate he spews is contagious to people who don't think and look up to him. Anne Coulter is a terrible liar. There are consequences of speech. Speeches can bring people to do heroic deeds or commit genocide.
We tell our children that they can do it. When a toddler falls we say upsadaisy! Our words of encouragement mean something. I sometimes commute with a forty-five year old man whose mother always put him down and discouraged him. He is fighting to believe in himself. She never encouraged him or his siblings to try. She only told him he could fail. Her words have consequences, they don't visit or call. My father used to say nasty things about why people ate dried fruit. I have a problem eating those foods although I had them available for my family. He never said anything nasty about dried apricots and I love them.
I want to laugh with delight over cleverness. I want to take a moment to get a silly joke. I want to hear employers address their workers or parents speak to their children with respect. Humor and respect.I want news stations to report the news and stop editorializing. I want politicians to stop bending the truth for their own purpose. (Here's an old joke: Q: How can you tell if a politician is lying? A: If his /her lips are moving. Har de har.) It is late right now, but I hope tomorrow all my words will be those that empower. I hope I can make someone laugh, even if it is just a baby.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
