Aw, Mom.

11. June 2012 · Write a comment · Categories: blowing off steam · Tags: , , ,

My kids lose patience with me pretty quickly. I suppose that runs in the family, since my mother drove me crazy on a regular basis. However, my mother and I communicated by talking with each other, so usually it was not difficult to get the general tone of the conversation.

Being a Modern Mom, I communicate with my kids via text message, Twitter and IM a lot. (For those of you who don’t know me, my “kids” are in their 30s and got their first computer in the mid 1980s.) I first started chatting online in 1984 and know that it’s ridiculously easy to misunderstand, misconstrue and just plain go off into woo-woo land when all you have is letters on a screen, but still…

We rearranged the office not long ago. Part of the new arrangement involves putting my Mac computer in a corner that’s

office arrangement

My little corner of the world

not quite big enough to hold the arrangement I have for its keyboard and mouse. There’s not room for another desk in here, I’ve had bad luck with KVM switches, and… well, trust me, the Mac has its own separate Microsoft Natural ergo keyboard and wireless mouse, and they take up space, and I made a “desk” of sorts for them by putting a Levenger lap board on top of a Dave table from Ikea. This worked wonderfully in Office 1.0. Office 2.0 doesn’t have enough room, even after I chopped about three inches off one end of the Levenger board.

I’m working on my third novel with Scrivener for Mac, because it is the BEST, hands down (the PC version is hot stuff, too, but the Mac edition’s been around longer and has more features). This means that every day I have to try to type while working in less space than I really need.  So, what’s the point, you say? Well, the other night I idly wrote on Twitter that I should start saving up for a Mac laptop. I meant it in terms of “and then I’ll have more options as to where I sit,” and my kids took it as “there she goes, trying to reinstall Windows to fix her wallpaper AGAIN” and came down on me like a ton of bricks.

Honestly, I was surprised and a little hurt by the reaction. I mean, I get enough of that from them when I deserve it, but this caught me completely by surprise. Trying to explain myself just annoyed them more. I could console myself with the thought that they weren’t pulling that on MY mother.  :)

So, I figure that if I save up at the same rate as I did to buy my Mac Mini, I can probably have the least expensive Mac laptop in about a year and a half. Of course, by that time Apple will have abandoned the current cheap model, raised the prices and put in something completely new, but hey, a gal’s gotta have goals.

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Rejoice, rejoice, you have no choice

12. February 2012 · Write a comment · Categories: commentary · Tags: , , , ,

The RainbowRecently, a bunch of terrified religious leaders slapped their names on a “marriage and religious freedom” screed that anyone with two functioning brain cells could see was a horrendous collection of lies. You know, marriage is under attack, religious freedoms are under attack, religious organizations are going to be forced at gunpoint to do all kinds of things they have been taught to believe are totally icky… blah blah blah.

One of the signatories was the Commissioner of the Salvation Army. As it happens, I am a descendant of two of the Salvation Army’s shining stars, and I have their last name. All those other fearful-faithful brethren would not even see a letter I wrote to them expressing my opinion on the subject of Bronze Age superstition clouding 21st century minds beyond all reason… but in that one instance, my name would get me an audience.

I took the opportunity to write. I was polite but firm. Signing that hateful collection of absolute lies was reprehensible. To be honest, I never expected a reply and I was fine with that.

In one of those cosmic connections that defy imagination, I got a reply. It arrived in our mailbox the same day we got the news that our daughter (also a descendant of those two shining stars) and her partner of seven years had gotten married in New York City.

I told the commissioner (among other things) that he was standing square in the footsteps of George Wallace in the schoolhouse door and that my family and I were very sad that his unfortunate lifestyle choices would prevent him from sharing in our happiness.

Marriage equality is inevitable. And the people who frothed at the mouth about it are securing for themselves a place in history right alongside George Wallace, Orval Faubus, Lester Maddox and others who truly believed that they were right.

Creative Commons License photo credit: Kaptain Kobold

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No father? No problem.

03. March 2009 · Write a comment · Categories: commentary · Tags: , ,
Rutherford B. Hayes, former President of the U...

Image via Wikipedia

(Crossposted to journal and LiveJournal)

One of the anti-gay-marriage arguments I’ve seen used more than most is the notion that a child who grows up without a father is doomed to failure.  The people I’ve seen carrying on about it are just absolutely, positively incensed at the idea of lesbian couples raising children “fatherless” or (less often) two gay men raising children “motherless.”

The issue of no father, though, seems to dominate their concerns.  I’ve seen more carrying-on about the idea of fathers being necessary and kids without fathers coming to a bad end than about any other “no parent” issue.

Well, of course fathers are necessary (especially in the biological sense).  They’re good to have around.  If a kid has heterosexual parents it’s a good thing to have one of each gender who form a stable relationship so the kids start life with a sense of security.  If a kid has homosexual parents, it’s a good thing to have two parents who form a stable relationship so the kids start life with a sense of security.  Funny how that works out.

But is growing up fatherless a fast path to jail?  I got to thinking about that this afternoon, so I did a little research.

George Washington’s father died when he was 11.
Thomas Jefferson’s father died when he was 14.
Andrew Jackson’s father died three weeks before he was born.
Andrew Johnson’s father died when he was 3.
Rutherford Hayes’ father died 10 weeks before he was born.
James Garfield’s father died when he was 17 months old.
Grover Cleveland’s father died when he was 16.
Herbert Hoover was orphaned at age 9.
Franklin Roosevelt’s father was an invalid throughout his childhood.
John Kennedy…  well, we all know what kind of father old Joe Kennedy was.
Richard Nixon’s father was abusive.
Gerald Ford’s father was abusive and his parents separated 16 days after he was born.
Ronald Reagan’s father was an abusive alcoholic.
Bill Clinton’s father died 3 months before he was born and his stepfather was an abusive alcoholic.
Barack Obama’s father abandoned his family and his parents were divorced when he was 3.

So that’s 15 out of the 43 men who became president who had absent or abusive fathers.  It may be more than that; that’s just my quick run through easily available sources.  But even at that, it’s 38%.

Somehow I think that ought to be considered, next time people start thrashing around insisting that fatherless children are on a fast track to doom.

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on births and birthdays

01. June 2008 · Write a comment · Categories: personal foibles · Tags: ,

My daughter remarked the other day that this year her birthday falls on a Thursday, the same day as the day she was born.

That led me to thinking about something I discovered about my… what do you call the family you were born into? They’re not your immediate family any more, are they? … anyway, one of many interesting things about my parents, my brothers and me is that my birthday, my mom’s birthday, and my two younger brothers’ birthdays always fell on the same day of the week, and my dad’s birthday and my oldest brother’s birthdays always fell on the same day of the week (a different day from the rest of us). I don’tBirthday! suppose the odds against that are as phenomenal as having everyone’s birthday always be on the same day of the week, but I suspect it’s pretty unusual. The more so because ten years separates me from my youngest brother.

Both my kids were born on Thursday, but three years apart, so they will never have same-day birthdays.
However, my son’s birthday and my husband’s birthday fall on the same day of the week. No such luck for the female half of the family.

It was hard enough on me when my son went off to kindergarten for the first time. What will I feel like in two years when my daughter hits 30?

Regardless of what day or year I was born on… I feel old.

Creative Commons License photo credit: Richard Parmiter

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The ultimate question, the ultimate answer

30. December 2007 · 2 comments · Categories: commentary · Tags: , , ,

Table of contents for 10 Ways To Take A Stand Against Ignorance

  1. The ultimate question, the ultimate answer
  2. The ultimate stand against ignorance
  3. Who’s pulling your chain?
  4. Don’t be part of the choir, no matter who’s preaching
  5. Go to the source
  6. Check it out. Check everything out.
  7. Your own library
  8. Look at your world
  9. Break on through to the other side
  10. Explore strange new worlds
  11. Support knowledge expansion
  12. Introduction

One of the best ways to take a stand against ignorance is at the same time the most difficult. We all believe what we believe, and know what we know. And yet, we become more and more ignorant the longer we stick with the status quo. To take a stand against ignorance, one has to be willing to ask one simple question:

But what if that’s not true?

Think of all the advances human knowledge has made because someone was willing to take what “everybody knows” or “everybody believes” and start asking questions. Where would we be, for example, if Copernicus and Galileo hadn’t considered the idea that the Earth is the center of the universe and hadn’t asked “But what if it that’s not true?” What if doctors had kept thinking that dirty hands were just fine? What if Martin Luther had never looked in the Bible and started thinking about Church doctrine in a whole new way?

Ask the question. Think about the answer. You might just learn something.

And we should likewise ask questions about our own talents and life paths. What may be “true” for us might not be so for our children. We should never force our children into our own mold. Our children have to know more than we know, or human progress stops. What if Bishop Milton Wright had insisted that his sons Wilbur and Orville follow in his footsteps? What if Abraham Lincoln’s parents had made sure their son was also an illiterate hick? What if Benazir Bhutto’s family had forced her into purdah? Think, again, about all the people in the world who achieved something their parents never dreamed of. It may be an apocryphal story, but Leonard Bernstein’s father is supposed to have groused, “How was I supposed to know he’d grow up to be Leonard Bernstein?”

The minute you find yourself thinking that you know all there is, or that what was good enough for your parents is good enough for your children–that’s where ignorance begins. Take a stand. Ask questions. Take a stand against ignorance.

(note: I have disabled comments on this post because for some unknown reason it’s drawn what my daughter would call a cubic ass-load of spam. If you’d like to send me a comment, please use the comment form. Thanks!)

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Next in series

here comes Peter Cottontail

08. April 2007 · Write a comment · Categories: family follies, personal foibles · Tags: , ,

When the kids were little, we did not, as a general rule, allow candy in the house. For one thing, I didn’t want them to end up with lots of cavities like I did. And for another, F’zer and I didn’t think that consumption of mass quantities of candy was a good idea even with good teeth.

The results were predictable, though–on the holidays where the consumption of mass quantities of candy was traditional (Easter, Valentine’s Day, and Halloween) the kids tended to go berserk eating the stuff. (No, we did not celebrate Easter in any other way than playing bunny with the products of Hershey, Brach, Mars et al.)

Of course, the fact that we were usually flat broke during those years meant a delicate balancing act between having candy available to be eaten On The Day and buying the same candy at half price or less The Day After. A kid who expects a stuffed Easter basket is not going to be happy with the same chocolate bunny a couple days later when Mom and Dad find it on the clearance shelves. In fact, the kid might just come roaring in on Easter morning to castigate the parental bunnies at the top of her lungs for gross Easter basket deficiencies.

We also gave out non-edible treats on Halloween for many years (and, believe it or not, got mostly favorable responses from the kids at the door) but this caused major grumbling from the kidlets in the house who then did not get mass quantities of leftover Halloween treats to snarf along with the bags full of stuff they’d collected on their own nightly rounds.

Even now when the kids are more or less old enough to be parents themselves, we still get poked at now and again for our Candy Rules of the past. I don’t suppose any parent really gets it right.

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