A New Theory and an Informational Supplement

I have been absent for a loooooonnnng time because A of all:  I've been hellabusy.  Like, "What do you mean, Will, you want me to clean the kitchen?  I have to edit pictures, design marketing layouts, email clients, wash laundry, wipe Jeffrey's allergy laden-nose, plant seeds, clean out the car..." busy.

And, also, a lot of what I want to say falls into the religious/political/philosophical spectrum and as a good chunk of people who I want to pay me money to take their pictures don't share my beliefs about...um...anything, it seemed a good idea not to say anything.  I find it distasteful to use one's religious or political beliefs to GAIN business, but that doesn't mean that I don't recognize that, for many, it's a good marketing strategy.

HOWEVER, today on Facebook I was involved in a political conversation that was so dumb that it almost killed me.  Like, literally, y'all, I almost died right here on the couch because a giant wave of dumb almost sent me into the abyss.  I clawed my way back toward the light and as I lay trying to catch my breath I realized a simple truth, a truth so stunning and devoid of political or religious leanings that I knew I had to share it with you.

Are you ready?  Ready for the TRUTH?

Are you sure?  It's...pretty profound.

Okay, here goes:

The idiots are ruining everything.

I KNOW!!

Now, you have to understand, I'm not talking about conservative idiots or liberal idiots or Christian idiots or Pagan idiots or black idiots or white idiots, I'm talking about the giant, air-sucking army of idiots that trample all over good sense and decency and logic and pretty much eat our brains...

OH MY PARK RANGER, Y'ALL.

They aren't just idiots, they are, like, ZOMBIE idiots.  We are on the cusp of a Zombie Idiot Apocalypse.  And Idiotaclypse, if you will.

It's already started. You can see it in our government's slow grind to absolute irrelevance as they fail in TWO YEARS to come up with a way to stop the defunding of food and education and transportation programs, but somehow manage to--the day after these programs are defunded--introduce $500 million legislation that would provide abstinence-centered sex ed programs to teens and NOBODY STORMED THE CAPITOL.

You see it in the fact that in four years of governance, the president has introduced four budgets and only ONE has been passed, mainly because Democrats are afraid of being seen as spenders and Republicans are afraid of pissing off rich business people.  And so they divert the attention of the idiots to things like "the President stopped White House tours" or "Mitt Romney strapped his dog to the top of the car," which are, you know, awful and everything ,but not in any way a burden on the average American citizen.  The Supreme Court, meanwhile, ruled that corporations are people.  That took them a year and a half to figure out.  It's taken the Court a decade (or more) to get around to addressing gay marriage, an issue which affects MILLIONS of Americans.

You can see it in the fact that Sarah Palin got up in front of millions of people (via TV and interwebs) and made fun of the president using a teleprompter whilst using a teleprompter herself AND compared Washington to reality television after starring in two failed reality programs herself and the entire country isn't saying, "Gah, woman, go back to Alaska and try to spot Russia."

You can see it in the fact that there is going to be a reality television show in which celebrities learn to high dive.  OMG, companies are paying millions of dollars in advertising fees so we can watch Rudy Huxtable jump into a pool.  WHAT THE HELL????  (And I just discovered that Fox actually came up with this idea a year ago.  I...WHAT THE HELL???)

Idiocy is like a virus, y'all.  And we have to stamp it out.  I'm not sure the best way to do it.  I lean heavily toward isolation on remote islands for the idiots, but the bleeding heart in me is always thinking that they can be rehabbed somehow.  If you have any ideas, let me know.

In the meantime, I've come up with a handy-dandy list to help you spot the signs.  It's short and sweet, much like me before I got involved in the dumb conversation this morning.  Feel free to make copies and distribute to your friemily, perhaps noting in somber tones that "Only you can prevent the Idiotaclypse."

SIGNS YOU ARE DEALING WITH AN IDIOT

1. The infected individual chunks people into a group and derides said group, often (ironically) commenting on lack of intelligence.  Only an idiot would assume that ALL of any group believe or act the same way.  To be sure, one is comfortable in a group because one finds people in that group who share one's interests or basic beliefs.  But that doesn't mean that everybody in the group has the same background, education level, romantic life, et cetera.  Even a group with narrowed purposes is comprised of people with varying experiences that lead them to have different opinions.  For example, people who love Joss Whedon and his handling of The Avengers might wonder why Nathan Fillion, who is clearly one of the yummiest members of the Whedon gang, doesn't have a role in that movie.  But SOME of the Joss-Whedon-The-Avengers fans might not like Nathan Fillion and were happy not to have his impish charm grace the big screen again.  (Clearly, these people are not my people.  I don't actually KNOW that these people are idiots, but I have my suspicions.)  My point is, assuming that somebody who calls themselves X must also believe 1, 2, and 3 is idiotic and leads to communication breakdowns and frustrations.  Not all conservatives love Sarah Palin.  Not all liberals love Michael Moore.  Not all gun owners are Republicans.  Not all Christians go to church.  Not all Democrats are pro-choice.  Not all reality television watchers think that clearly what we need is another reality show based upon miserably unhappy rich women.  I hope.  OMPR, I hope.
2. The infected individual refuses to participate in discussions.  Here's how a discussion works:    Hilda says, "I think this."  Bartholemew says, "I disagree."  Hilda says, "I think this because of A, B, and C."   Bartholemew says, "Interesting.  Did you know that A was refuted by researchers at the University of Wichita in 2008?"  Hilda says, "No, I didn't.  That's frustrating.  But C is just my gut feeling, and I trust in that."  Bartholemew says, "I understand.  I don't agree with you, but I respect that opinion.  Can you tell me why you think you might feel this way?"  And it goes on and on, leading to, at the very least, a pleasant goodbye and stronger belief in one's own ideas.  At best, we get a balanced budget AND gay marriage all at the same time.  Idiots cannot manage this.  A "discussion" with an idiot looks a lot like this:  Hilda says, "I think this."  Bartholemew says, "You are so ignorant."  Hilda says, "Um. Why do you think that?"  Bartholemew says, "The turnips on the back of the wagon are always more purple than the ones on the front."  Hilda says, "Actually, in 2011, researchers at the University of Witchita proved that to be false."  Bartholemew says, "I lick tartar sauce off my plate!"  Hilda says, "Wait.  What?"  Bartholemew says, "And you know that the rabbits in Botswana want you to think that.  You're such a sheep."  Hilda says, "But...the researchers at the University of Witchita?"  Bartholemew says, "The government pays off those researchers.  Get your own damn tartar sauce."  And then Hilda is swept into the abyss.  Poor Hilda.  
3. The infected individual cites various websites, blogs, or internet memes to prove his or her point, even when the websites, blogs, or internet memes are proven decades old or just flat out lies.  Moreover, if presented with evidence that is contrary to their "evidence," the idiots will do one of two things.  A:  question (ironically) your intelligence, often declaring that you don't read "history."   Or B:  call you a sheep.  One begins to wonder if idiots actually know what sheep are.  I'm starting to believe that they think that sheep are, you know, monsters.  Or demons.  Or people who are so desperate to believe something that they'll cling to unsubstantiated evidence to uphold their belief.  Which, pretty much, makes them not sheep, as from a biological and physiological standpoint, sheep don't do a lot of clinging or believing.  They do, however, follow the sheep around them, which is exactly what the idiot who reposts a chain email claiming that the pope said, "Women are stupid and stink" does.  IT'S A VICIOUS, IDIOTIC CIRCLE, Y'ALL.  (Extra idiot points to the idiot who posts something inflammatory and ridiculous on Facebook and says, "I don't know if this is true, but...."  Just...hush, you poor idiot.  I'll get a cloth for your head.)  Websites, blogs, and internet memes are FINE justifications for your thought processes, provided that they are well-researched and backed up with verifiable facts.   If they aren't well-researched and backed up with verifiable facts, they are...I don't know.  A waste of interwebby space.  Or...wait.  Waiaaaaait.  Maybe the un-researched, not backed up memes and emails are the actual CARRIERS of idiocy, the method by which the virus spreads.  Does...does this mean we need to turn off our computers or risk infection?

I'm pretty sure it does.

Book Review: A Year of Biblical Womanhood by Rachel Held Evans

A few of my peeps have pointed out to me that I seem to really think about Christianity a lot.  There's a couple of reasons why.

First, as a spiritual wanderer, I think about a lot of religions a lot.  I love to read stories about spiritual journeys, probably because whilst I was standing still in the path, the voice I was trying to listen to said, "Keep going."

"Hunh?" I said.  "Really?  Because, you know, the standing still and waiting for clarity and all that..."

"Seriously, dude," said The Voice.  "I told you to keep going down the path.  GAH.  No WONDER you have such a hard time with this whole spirituality thing!"   

My god is apparently not a Filing Cabinet, but a rather grumpy Park Ranger who wants me to keep wandering in the National Forest of My Soul.  And I'm going to just keep listening to him or her and stopping to admire whatever it is he or she puts in my path, like funny and timely books by Christian writers.  

Second, as I have said repeatedly, the culture in which I live is predominantly Christian.  I am frequently distressed by the words and actions of some of my Christian neighbors, and so finding writers like Ms. Evans is a relief, because she is well-read and funny and so absolutely in love with her god that she gives me hope that we won't descend into madness.

No pressure, Ms. Evans.  

Anywho, I found Ms. Evans because of a link that one of my Christian FB acquaintances posted about her response to Pastor Mark Driscoll's obnoxious comment about President Obama on election day.  (Several of my other FB Christian acquaintances simply posted his comment, much to my chagrin.)  (I'm not going to post any links to Mark Driscoll, because I find him odious and also, because I worry that any more attention on him might make his head explode.  Feel free to look him up yourself.)  Her response was pointed, foot-noted, and Biblically sound.  And it made me giggle.  I looked up her blog and found myself drawn in, even when her beliefs and mine were very different, mainly because she is so HUMAN about her faith.  

So when I went to the big bookstore in Macon this weekend to meet with a client, I also picked up  A Year of Biblical Womanhood.  (I grabbed Beautiful Creatures, too.  I'm WANDERING.)  I started reading it in the cafe of the bookstore, and by page one, I was laughing out loud.  

Basically, it boils down to this:  Ms. Evans decided that she would see if it was possible to "live biblically" for a year.  (Many, many things are either approved of or frowned upon in our culture based on whether or not they are "biblical," as Ms. Evans points out.)  She scoured the Bible for directives as to how a woman is to behave, she made some lists and calendars, and she went to work.  

The book follows her month to month, with each chapter focused on a month's particular goal.  Each chapter begins with a set of Scriptures that guided her month and includes a profile of an important biblical woman.  Along the way, Ms. Evans meets with Jews (because let's be honest, until the stone rolled away, the Bible is about a passel of Jews) and Christians who follow specific Biblical teachings that are unfamiliar to her.   Ms. Evans' writing style is conversational and to the point.  She is both self-deprecatory (my favorite!) and honest about her strengths, and she uses humor with a deft hand.   

Now, it would be easy to poo poo this thing as a publicity stunt, akin to the lady who cooked a Julia Child's recipe a month or the folks who had sex every day for a year.  And I think, probably, in many ways, it was.  But I also think that Ms. Evans learned something and, more than that, I think she has a lot to teach people of all faiths about women and our place in society.

Keep in mind, there is not doubt that Ms. Evans is a Christian.  Her exploration does not come from the standpoint of "Hmmm...wonder if I should try out this Christianity" thing.  Rather, it comes from the standpoint of "Hmmmm...as an Evangelical Christian, is it necessary for me to follow all of the tenets in regard to women from the Biblie--and is it even possible?"  The answer, poignantly, hilariously, and redemptively is NO.  It is not possible.   However, TRYING to follow those tenets lead her to a firmer grasp of her faith and her marriage and her place in this world.   (There is also no doubt that Ms. Evans is a thoroughly modern, feminist woman.  Interestingly, following the tenets helped give her a firmer grasp of that, too.)

All this sounds very futsy and foofoo and serious, but you should also know that there were times when I snorted with laughter.  Ms. Evans if fuh-ny.  (Case in point:  "Submission was something my mom did once in 1976, not something she did every day."  I'd tell you more, but I've already flung the book at one of my Christian ladies.)  And the issues she has with cooking, dressing modestly, and keeping a clean house are the same kind of issues that I wrestle with--she just has to cuss less while wrestling with them or risk paying in to her penalty jar.

I'll admit that there were a few times when I thought, "Oh, come ON, Rachel, you DON'T have to climb up on the roof or hang out in a tent while you're on your period or stand with a sign at the city limits praising your husband.  That's just for effect."  And I think that's true, BUT I also think that she has a scriptural basis for doing those things and it's fascinating to consider how messed up it seems for her to do this in modern times.  That's one of the big conclusions that Ms. Evans seemed to come to:  the Bible is a collection of stories and prophesies and letters and sermons handed down for generations and applied to a people over a period of thousands of years.  Of COURSE people should analyse it with an eye to the present time.  

Of special interest to me was Ms. Evans' conclusions about both Song of Solomon and Proverbs 31.  Both book and chapter have been distorted so much by our various cultures that what we have now are both clubs and measuring sticks with which to smack down and bring feelings of inadequacy to modern Christian women.  What's worse, if the religious right has anything to do with it, these biblical words would become the means by which all women in our country are measured.

It feels weird to recommend this book to my Christian women friends.  It feels a little pretentious:   "Hey, y'all.  I know you're all secure in your faith and I'm wandering around looking at Mushrooms of Divinity and Flying Squirrels of Piety, but for serious, this book will make you look at things in a whole new light."  BUT, I certainly do recommend it to my Christian women friends.  Moreover, I recommend it to anybody who likes to read well-researched and well-written books about spiritual journeys.  MOREOVER, I recommend it to anybody who hears the word "Christian" and automatically assumes the worst about a person.

Thank the Park Ranger, Ms. Evans is there to prove you wrong.  You can buy the book here:   and check out her website here .  Go do one or the other right quick.

Grumplyanna, Queen of the Grumpletonians

Yesterday, both of my children woke up in moods so patentedly atrocious that I considered taking them back to the kid store and getting different models, because mine were clearly defective.  We got through the morning, but I'm pretty sure it was only because some supernatural being took pity on me and lent a hand.

This morning, I woke up and my kitchen sink was full of dirty dishes and that was just enough to tip my own mood right over the edge of the Cliffs of Insanity, whereupon I turned into some sort of hideous beast that hates everything.  Things that were vaguely annoying yesterday are now enough to make me want to incinerate the world with the force of my anger and start all over again, because clearly I can do a better job running things than the rest of you people.

(I'm sorry.  I love you.  I really do.  It's just that I hate everything right now, and you're caught in the crossfire.  All apologies.)

However, the truth is that I don't have the fricking time right now to incinerate the world, much less start a whole nother one up, so instead, I'm just going to sit here and eat my pancake and bacon sandwich (DON'T JUDGE ME)  (AND YES, IT DOES HAVE SYRUP ON IT) and write a list about all the things I hate, because I am Grumplyanna, Queen of the Grumpletonians, and that is my right.

Mkay?  Mkay.

1. The adulation of athletes in America  When I was in high school, there was an athlete with whom I had a class.  He was talented in a few sports and also, he was a jerk.  The cool girls loved him and I thought that it would be nice if somebody flushed him down the toilet.  Anyway, he and I were both stinking up the place in this class and had the exact same grade going in to the final, which was a 63.  I studied my butt off for the final and wound up making well enough on it to pull my grade up to a 68, which I hoped would mean that my teacher would take pity on me and let me pass the class.  This did not happen.  It did, however, happen to the athlete in question, who actually got a lower grade on the final than I did and yet somehow wound up passing the class.  And then he went on to play on the state championship team for one of his sports and I was bitter and had to take this class in summer school.  ARGH.  The awfulest thing about this young jerk was that not only was he given a pass in the class, he also was given a pass in life, as he cheated on his girlfriends and was generally a turd to anybody who failed to give him his proper adulation.  And so when Lance Armstrong announced he was jumping on the Oprah Pity Train, I immediately transported back to high school and the cheating, adored jerkwad.  Lance Armstrong is a cheating, lying, bullying jerk.  He dumped his wife, he lied for decades, and he bullied as many people as he could to get his way and is now claiming he was just doing what everybody else was doing and it's so AWFUL for him.  Shut the hell up, Lance Assjacket.  I don't want to hear your voice any fricking more.  What would have been big of you is if you had just had a press conference and said, "I lied.  I doped.  I got other people to dope to make me feel better.  I treated people like shit and took advantage of an entire generation of people who thought that I was a hero."  But nnoooooo.  You had to go on fricking Oprah and make a big deal out of your sorry self.  You suck.  And you are indicative of a certain mindset that I've just decided SOME athletes have.  The way I see it (as a non-athlete), everybody who is an athlete has one or two things in common:  natural ability and the drive to excel.  Then they are split into two different factions:  the ones who cheat and lie and showboat and act the fools and the ones who do the work and live their lives with little fanfare.  I like those guys.  Those guys rock.  But the Lances of the world?  The Barry Bondses and the Ochocincos (or whateverthehells) and the rest?  They can go away forever.  And this extends to college sports, too.  I almost quit college football after the Penn State awfulness and yet another Bulldog off-season during which our guys were arrested for drugs and guns and dawg knows what else.  And then the whole Manti Te'o thing comes up and...really?  You had a girlfriend for two years who DIED and you'd never met her and you didn't go to her funeral?  Dude.  Either A:  you need a brain scan because you've taken too many hits to the head or B:  you are a Lance.  My money is on B.  And that feels awful.
2. Time  There is not enough of it.  I suspect this is because I have always mismanaged it and it got pissed off at me and decided that it wasn't going to be nice to me any more.  I am in the process of trying to turn over a new leaf when it comes to balancing work and home, basically because it finally dawned on me that, you know, I'm sort of successful at this whole photography thing and I probly need to get more organized so it all works well together.  So I've started breaking my days up into thirty minute increments and doing thirty minutes of housework and thirty minutes of photography work.  The problem is that I've let the house sort of go for so long that thirty minutes is perhaps not long enough to get all my stuff done.  When it takes you an hour to clean out the fridge,  you are already thirty minutes behind.  And when the kids get home, I have to go off the thirty/thirty thing because our hours are stuffed with outside time and homework and taekwando and Show Kids and, you know, we eat food and junk.  Sigh.  If time would just slow down a wee bit, I would love it.  When I start the world over, I'm totes going to have slower time with it.
3. Math  Math does not suck any less than it did in high school, but I'm trying to pretend it does, because the way math is being taught now is insane to me and Jeffrey's brain doesn't get it and he's FAILING MATH.  I can't stand it.  So, basically, we are doing math homework every night and I'm getting him to add, subtract, divide, and feediddle with fractions all day long and bringing up interesting math facts and hustling him to tutoring three days a week.  Do you know how fricking annoying it is to pretend to enjoy something you hate?  "Math is so super important!  We couldn't live without math!  Yay, math!"  I feel like the Barney actor had to have felt.  He was bouncing around and chortling and singing about friendship in his floppy purple suit, but you know between takes he was smoking crank in his dressing room and dreaming about stuffing that kid with the glasses into the trashcan.  That's what I'd like to do to math.
4. The phrase "gun control" and the discussions surrounding it  A few years ago, folks started calling "global warming" "climate change," because a certain faction of people couldn't grasp that "global warming" didn't mean we all get really hot all of a sudden and palm trees spring up in Minnesota overnight.  "Global warming" acknowledges that the earth is, in fact, getting warmer, but the main problem is not that we wear shorts all year long, but that the climate is getting wonky and ecosystems are shutting down and this is bad.  So we eradicated that phrase because people were like, "Yeah, this global warming is awful" every time it snowed and scientists and people who do things like, you know, acknowledge science were starting to eat our own faces every time it snowed because of those other people.  I wish we could do that with the phrase "gun control," because every time certain people hear the phrase, they lose their minds and start frothing at the mouth and bragging about stockpiling ammunition and talking about their cold, dead hands.  What those of us who favor "gun control" really favor is "more gun regulations to prevent crazy people and/or criminals from having access to assault weapons and bullets that are marketed as being able to pierce armor that our police officers wear, because we are not in a police state just yet and this isn't Red Dawn."  I swear, half of the debates I get into with anti-gun regulation people involve some sort of situation in which a rag tag group of kids overthrows an oppressive government.   A couple of things:  A of all, ain't none of the people I'm talking to qualifying for the term "kid" any more.  B of all, you know what happened to Jed?  He wound up dying and bleeding on a bench with his brother whilst blowing snot bubbles out his nose.  (Oh, Patrick Swayze.  Your two biggest talents were dancing like a BEAST and blowing snot bubbles out your nose.  I miss you.)  Also, C of all?  Any oppressive government of the future is going to do away with you with tanks and heavy artillery, never mind the drones and the  other fancy stuff they have.  I'm just saying.  What I'm also saying is that if you can't come at me during a conversation about the real fears of American people without blabbering about your freedoms being eroded by the Socialist government, just don't come at me.  And certainly don't talk to me about Hitler taking away guns, because, in fact, he loosened gun laws in Germany.  It was one of the first things he did.  Might want to ask yourself why.  Basically, if your biggest argument is that you aren't giving up your guns and people kill peoplegunsdon'tkillpeople and whatever else, just...no.  I love you and I respect you, but we're going to have to not have a conversation until you can actually have a conversation.
5. People who call me a racist during conversations about gun control  This actually only happened once, but when it did, my head exploded.  What was more annoying than being called a racist was when the person who did so then claimed that I was too "emotional" and that he wasn't talking about ME when he insinuated those things and THEN he insinuated that I must be so defensive because I was, in fact, a racist.  Let's talk about what I'm really mad about, which is when you are having a conversation with somebody and they throw out a generalization like, I don't know, "white liberals."  And then they go on to discuss all the bad things that "white liberals" do.  And then they say something like, "I don't know you, but I hope you aren't like that."  But secretly, YES, THEY DO.  Y'all, when people make generalizations that cover the person that you are, they are totally lumping you in with the generalized group.  When you call them on it, they'll accuse you of being emotional or too sensitive or defensive because they want to make you seem weak.  This is a crappy tactic and we all need to stop using it.  Not all conservatives are Karl fricking Rove and not all liberals are Michael fricking Moore, and what I'm really mad about is that we use our language like a bludgeon and it SUCKS.  Stop beating me with your words, people.  Stttoooooooopppppppp.
6. Cold weather without snow  I want a snow day.  With fudge and popcorn.  And a fire.  And cocoa.  With amaretto in it.
7. The Sandy Hook hoax people  I'm sorry, but the folks that say, "I don't know, I just don't think we know the whole story" strike me as, at best, insensitive and, at worst, insane.  Plus, anybody who honestly believes anything like "the Obama administration + Sandy Hook = clear manipulation by the Socialist government to take away our guns" needs to just leave.  I'm serious.  If you think our government, which took almost fifteen years to take out Osama bin Laden, which uses drones to kill civilians in foreign countries against which we aren't in war, which can't even pull themselves together long enough to get money together for stranded hurricane survivors is capable of being meticulous enough to fake and/or execute the murder of 26 babies and their teachers, you need to leave this country.  Seriously.   Because...you hate it.  You don't feel safe in it.  And you're bringing down our collective intelligence.  And, no, I'm not generalizing.  I'm being really fricking specific.  If you honestly believe your country is capable of this sort of awfulness, you can't really want to stay.  Now, if you are saying this stuff because you want to believe that this is one more weapon in your Red Dawn scenario...y'all.  I love you and I know you hate the president and liberals and everybody else that isn't like you, but imagine for a second that you are a citizen in this grieving town and you read this mess on the interwebs and you realize that somebody is minimalizing your pain and the lives and deaths of people you love.  After you imagine that stuff,  STOP DOING IT.  Because your hatred of the president will NEVER be as great as their pain.  Ever. 
8. Kathy Lee Gifford  She never stops getting on my nerves.  Ever. 
9. Photographers who add haze to their pictures  I spend a lot of time setting up my shots so I don't get haze and if I DO get haze I get rid of it as much as possible, so when you show off your pictures that look like your subjects are peering at me through the fog, I want to punch my computer screen.  WHY does anybody think this looks good???
10. My DVR that didn't record Grey's last night  Are you serious, DVR?  You didn't record my show?  I won't get to look at Kevin McKidd look all earnest and pained and, you know, hot.  DAMN IT.

OMFC, y'all, the school just called me to tell me Jeffrey felt barfy.  

I can't stand it.

I'm totally burning down the world after I go pick him up.

******************************************************

It should be noted that shortly after I picked up Jeffrey, my friend came by with chocolate and we had a good fussing session and I'm feeling much better.

Pretty sure it wasn't just the chocolate...

Faith

I participated in an act of faith today.

I took my babies (and the baby of another family) to school.

I walked them in, tears welling with every step, making sure that I smiled and told them I loved them (yes, your baby, too, my friends) and that I hoped they have good days and work hard.  I used the excuse that I was bringing cookies for the office staff (which I do every year), but the real reason was that I needed to hold on to them for a few minutes longer.  I needed to be silly for them and be the mom that I wish I always was and often fail to be.

And I needed to hug their principal.  She needed to hug me, too, and so we stood there in her crowded office and hugged and every single adult in the room--in the building--knew what complex emotions were in that hug.

We all knew, the adults, what we were all thinking.  I met the eyes of other parents who smiled ruefully at me:  this is what we have to do.  I met the eyes of the teachers and staff who smiled at me in the same way.  This is what we have to do.

We can't forget what happened, those lives lost.  We can't forget the fear and horror that struck us when we saw the first bulletin and then the slow grind toward a sort of numb hopelessness as we realized what it was that had happened and that drove many of us (like me) to drive to our kids' schools and pick them up and wish that we could pick ALL of them up.  But we have to go on.

Forgive me for what I'm about to say.  Forgive me, but this tragedy, those dead teachers and administrators and children, they are worse than 9/11 for me.  Because this is an unexplained thing.  The enemy here was a United States citizen, subject to the laws that allowed him to take his mother's guns and kill her and twenty-seven other people.  We can't go charging off into another country and bomb a few terror cells and say, "We're winning this thing."  We can't address this incident from a legal standpoint at all without considering our Constitution and how it applies to law-abiding citizens, the mentally ill, our sweet babies.  This is harder than 9/11 because we are the enemy and the things that we hold sacred are, perhaps, partly to blame for our war.

All of that stuff...gun control, care for the mentally ill, hate crime and hate speech laws, the right of free expression of religion...it has to be discussed now.  It has to be hammered out and thought about and pared down into the best tool for all of us to use and the discussions and debates that will follow will be awful and difficult and long-winded.

But...we have to go on.  We MUST do something different, and our laws must follow this different direction.  That seems only logical.  We have to do it.  The question is whether or not we have to guts to do so.

This discussion can't exist within the parameters of one religious faith or one interpretation of the Constitution or one ideology regarding weaponry.  It must encompass all of us because all of us are affected by it.  And so it must be done in a different way.  And THAT, more than words about gun control or God in school or mental health care--that must be where we start.

If we are to go on, we simply must do a better job of being fellow citizens.  We must do a better job of being fellow human beings.  We have failed each other for decades in the way we talk to each other, in the way we judge each other.  We don't stand up for each other.  We don't stand up for ourselves in a way that teaches our fellow citizens that we love them enough not to accept anything other than their very best.

We expect people to be jerks when we disagree with them and when they are, we just grind that knowledge into their faces.  We expect them not to know as much as we know and we punish them for their ignorance.  We look at their clothes or their jewelry or their tattoos or their hairstyles and we make those things mean everything about our neighbors.  We revel in the accolades of people who believe exactly the way that we do when we lay zingers on those that don't share our opinions, as if the sting means more than the balm.

Much has been said about how the Winter Solstice will bring about the end of the world.  "No, no," say some of the folks whose spiritual beliefs line up more cozily with mine,  "It will bring about a new consciousness."  This morning, as I sat in tears in the school parking lot, afraid to drive away from all those babies and the men and women who help me teach and care for my children, I railed at the Universe.

Because for one awful moment, I thought, "Are those people who are saying this was a celestial judgment right?  Is this what it will take for us to do better by each other? Is this a punishment from a loving deity who has been telling us all along that we must love each other and we DON'T?  And if it is, how DARE you, Universe?  How dare you make us afraid and heartbroken?"

My faith won out, but not my faith in an unseen deity or in the frightened words of some of my fellow citizens.  It was my faith in US.  We are capable of so much more good than we are of evil.  In the gigantic scheme of things, for every Hitler, how many Mother Theresas have their been?  For every one insane human who gives in to the darkness, how many millions of good, brave, imperfect humans rush toward that darkness to fill it with light?  SO MANY MORE.

Maybe there will be a change of heart, a change of consciousness in us.  I pray that there is, and more than that, I have faith that there will be, because I cannot accept that horror and fear and hopelessness are more powerful than joy and love and hope.  I won't accept that.

I have faith in you, my friends.  I have faith in the people who drive me insane with their religious rhetoric.  I have faith in the people who wear their apathy like flannel shirts.  I have faith in the bus drivers and teachers and drug store owners and garbage men who are different than me, but who get up and take care of me and my family and my friends every day because that is WHAT WE DO.

 I just think we can do it with more grace.

I think we must do it with more grace.

I have faith that we can.

Because we have to.

My Ecofriendly Side Takes Another Hit

I tried, y'all.  I really did.  But once again, I've given in to my need to be, you know, CLEAN.

I feel so dirty.

You might remember the Stank-Smelling Laundry Fiasco of 2012.  What I thought I had written and apparently only did so in a feverish, surfactant-laden dream was that the STANK came back after the bleach thing and I bought something called "Lestoil," which was touted by all of these folks on the interwebs as THE  THANG WHAT SAVED MY HUSBAND'S CLOTHES.

No.  No, it wasn't.  It was, however, the thang what made my clothes smell like a combination of Pine-sol, lighter fluid, and stank.  I stood in the middle of my laundry room, sniffing sheets and wailing imprecations to the Filing Cabinet.  Then I beebopped over to Publix and bought some damn Cheer.  And some color-safe Clorox 2 to go with it.  BOOM.

My clothes no longer have the stank.  I have not looked back.  Word.

However, this was just a minor little blip on my green journey, right?  I still use washrags instead of paper towels, you know?  I use baking soda and Dr. Bronner's to make a soft scrub for cleaning.  I am back to making my own bread.  (Please ignore the Rolo pretzel sandwich I just ate.)  And up until a week ago, I was using eco-friendly dish washer soap.

I had considered making my own, but following the SSLF2012, I decided that my life needed surfactants and given that dishes are, you know, greasy, I probably needed a good lot of them in order to have clean dishes.  I did, however, switch to a Seventh Generation liquid from my Cascade because I love my Seventh Generation dish soap, so I figured I was good.

Then Will quit smoking and started drinking coffee.  And it got cooler in the mornings and Jeffrey started wanting tea more often.  And my cups started looking like toilet bowls from movies in the early nineties starring Ewan McGregor, a prepubescent-looking Owen McKidd, and Rumplestiltskin before he got all freaky and weird-eyed.  (Also, I just realized Rumplestiltskin was in The Full Monty.  And my brain exploded.)

What?

Right, gnarly coffee-cups.  Y'all, it was gross.  And while I realized it was just staining and I could scrub it off with a little liquid detergent, that struck me as tiresome and inefficient.  Also, I would think of toilet bowls and heroin and gag a little every time I scrubbed.  But I forged ahead.

Then my silverware started looking iffy.  Not DIRTY, per se, but a little grimy.  A little filmy.  A little maybe not as clean as I would like, but easily dealt with by applying water and my thumb.

I started wondering if it was the dish washer stuff I was using and so I switched to another natural product, this one promising to remove tea and coffee stains.

IT BROKE ITS PROMISE.

Not only that, but the silverware went from iffy to straight-nasty in two days and my plates were like, "You know, we think we're going to hang on to these bits of food that you aren't washing off before you put us in the dishwasher so that if a zombie apocalypse happens, you can totally eat off of us and we'll be HEROES."

THAT'S RIGHT, PEOPLE.  MY PLATES STARTED TALKING TO ME.

Then last week, our pipes backed up.  Now, this happens once every six months or so because the builder who built our neighborhood is notorious for doing things not exactly correctly thirty years ago when he was building all of the neighborhoods in Dingleberry and some pipe or other that leads to the septic tank isn't big enough to handle the waste products from our house and some filter or other gets backed up and our laundry room floods. Generally, these back ups fall around summer vacation and Christmas.  It's all very festive.

We called the plumber, who'd been expecting us, and the guy came over and took out the gadgets I now refer to as Maude and Claude and got to work on the pipes and filters and other stuff while I baked bread.  When plumber dude was done, he came in and said, "Well, we're all done."

"Great," I said.

"Man, there was a lot of grease.  I mean...a TON of it.  I never SAW so much grease.  It was as if all the grease in your neighborhood was collected in your pipes."

Y'all.  Y'ALL.  I'm so tired of the word "grease" that I could throw up on it.  I'm so tired of the word "grease" that I don't even want to hear the word "baklava."  I'm just SICK of grease.  And grease-related issues.  I proceeded to launch into a tirade about green cleaning products and surfactants and builders and pipe-size and Lestoil that took a good five minutes to wind down at which point in time, the plumber blinked.

"Well," he said.  "You sure have thought about this a lot."

I handed him the check and followed him out the door so I could drive to Publix and pick up a bottle of Cascade.

One wash, my friends.  That's all it took to get my coffee cups looking like not something Ewan McGregor would dive into. My silverware sparkles now.

My.  Plates.  Are.  Silent.

Look, I WANT to be green.  I want to save the planet and be all earthy and stuff.

But I also want any fantasies of red-haired Scottish actors to involve kilts and wind-swept moors and NOT chatty dishes and dirty needles.  

Priorities, people.  Priorities.