Archive for the ‘ Opinionated much? ’ Category

Having It All

Author: Erika

Feb 1

One of Liz Lemon’s running in-jokes on the show 30 Rock is that she’s trying to have it all: Career, personal fulfillment, a family. That she rarely achieves even 2/3 of her goals is the source of much of the show’s humor, but it’s also an interesting examination of the plight of the post-feminist woman.

I’ve had plenty of time to think of this, especially during the first year of my time as a stay at home mother. I loved my job. When Aidan was small and the challenges of new motherhood seemed so much bigger than I was capable of handling, I wondered if I wasn’t a little crazy to give up my much-beloved career.

After all, what did it say about me that I was willing to trade in an engaging career for a never ending river of spit-up?

Don’t get me wrong, staying at home with Aidan has been and will always be the right move. It’s in line with my goals and priorities as a parent, it fulfills me in ways no career ever could, and I can see the benefits of it every time Aidan decides to behave himself.

The writing certainly helps. I have a stimulating hobby that manages to not only give me a creative outlet but also makes me feel like I’m still doing something tangibly worthwhile with my time. It helps. And it’s fun.

Now that I’m pregnant and have let my writing simmer on the back burner, that old post-feminist pestering is back. My ambitious nature goads me daily, telling me I should be working, not napping. That I’m willingly letting my dreams get hijacked by two little people who don’t even realize it.

Someone I follow on Twitter recently asked whether it was always necessary to choose between kids and goals, and why that was. I notice a lot of my peers struggling with this same frustration. They have goals, dreams, and ambitions and feel stymied by the limitations incumbent to a mother with young children.

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Pseudo-Pundits

Author: Erika

Jan 27

Election years are tough for me. In addition to the decency-deprived, insulting ads taking over the television, suddenly people everywhere start opening their mouths and sharing their opinions about politics. Their feelings. Their theories.

In general, even if I agree with a person’s viewpoint, I would strongly prefer that person to keep it chained behind their teeth unless I explicitly ask for it. Why?

I don’t know, exactly. Maybe I just think it’s rude to talk about politics unless asked. Maybe it’s because very few people are informed enough for me to consider them credible. But I think mostly it’s because strong opinions make a lot of people sound nuts, and that can be upsetting.

I checked in with my Twitter feed yesterday while the GOP debates were going on and read wave after wave of irritation, outrage, and incredulity. It annoyed me so I closed Twitter and moved on with my evening. Sharing these opinions didn’t do anything but turn me away from reading more.

And that, I think, is the crux of the problem. In this day and age of self-published thoughts available at all hours of the day, people have gotten the horrible misapprehension that every single thought they have is worth publicizing.

This is a lie. No one cares that you are eating pizza, or that you think such-and-such a candidate is crazy. Unless you are a political pundit whose job it is to analyze and synthesize data in an effort to distill it into an expert opinion when asked, chances are excellent that no one will listen to you anyway.

This being said, it would be my strong preference for people to realize this and just hush already. If I could, I would ban political ads as well but even I’m not naive enough to think that’ll ever happen.

I guess I could unfollow and unfriend anyone on Facebook or Twitter who says stuff that annoys me, but I’d lose an awful lot of friends who, other than during election years, make me think, smile, and laugh.

The election is important. So important. But I think we really ought to focus more on being well-researched, informed voters than on sharing our opinions as loudly as we can. Unless, of course, it is your job to have opinions on this sort of stuff.

There are a lot of social customs and manners from earlier last century that are antiquated, but I think not discussing politics in public is one that is still apropos. I could be wrong, though.

What about you? Do you find the political opinions of your friends and family edifying? Do they actually influence your voting in any way?

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No One Enjoys Mouth Breathing (except scuba divers)

Author: Erika

Jan 10

You never realize how amazing it is to breathe through your nose until you have a cold for three straight weeks and are deprived of the pleasure. Then? Then breathing through your nose is the only way to live and you feel like you might suffocate in your sleep thanks to some toddler’s wayward germs and aversion to sneezing into his sleeve.

Not that I’m talking about any toddler in particular. Ahem. AIDAN.

Seriously though, I always feel such joie de vivre when I’m fully recovered from a bout with illness of any kind. While watching my bathrooms grow grubbier day by day as I lay on my sickbed (i.e. the couch) I wished for energy. I wished for health. I wished for Netflix to just skip to the next episode of Thomas the Train already instead of making me get off the effing couch every half hour.

Yes, I let the TV entertain my child when I’m incapable of breathing through my nose. Judge me silently if you must.

Now, though? In the cold light of a winter’s day to which I awoke without a horrible hacking cough and sore throat that made me feel like I swallowed a wire grill brush?

I AM SUPERWOMAN.

Thanks to my newfound amazing health and also the second trimester (my favorite of the trimesters, indisputably the very best one) there is nothing I can’t do. Clean bathrooms, windows, hardwood floors, counters, and clothes? Check. Vacuum all the carpets I have access to? Check. Polish the tables, thus freeing them from the scurf of the thrillion and a half meals we served and ate on them over the holidays? CHECK.

I may already be missing some crucial pieces to my son’s Christmas toys, but gosh dang it I am back! I am alive! I can now set to work removing the imprint of my sad, sorry self from the cushions of my couch!

That is, until Aidan inevitably picks up yet another illness from the Sunday school nursery (or, as I’ve begun to call it in my bitter little head, The Pandemic Breeding Ground). I love the ability to sit through church knowing Aidan is playing with trains and loving his life, but I really wish he didn’t come home with his very own edition of the Pestilence Plague every week.

Oh, well. It’s building a good immune system for my boy, yes? I am capable of looking at the bright side of this situation, because I can breathe through my nose.

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Filed under: A Touch of the Crazy, Opinionated much?

Don’t Dream It, Be It

Author: Erika

Jan 5

My friend Brooke shared her New Year’s goals on her blog the other day and it was as I crafted a comment for her post that I started thinking about why I eschew New Year’s resolutions in favor of goals.

I think this is why: A year is a long time. A lot can change, from jobs, to health, to living circumstances, to obligations. I think it’s prudent to avoid picking fights I can’t win (one of my favorite parenting axioms, actually) and, as such, refuse to set myself up for failure.

Why make a resolution I know I can’t keep? If I can’t control the circumstances surrounding my commitments, I see little value in taking them on unless there’s value in the attempt.

Like, for instance, the infamous weight loss resolution. It’s a cliche, but for good reason. I can’t imagine the people who make this resolution only recently decided they needed to lose weight, so why the arbitrary timeline? Why give yourself a year to lose weight? That just seems like license to backslide to me.

When I lost a whole bunch of weight last year, I borrowed a motto from AA: Yesterday’s history, and tomorrow’s a mystery. I can’t change what I ate yesterday, and I have no idea what kind of temptations will assault me tomorrow, so all I have is today. And I can eat well for one day. It worked.

And I suppose that’s the heart of my problem with New Year’s Resolutions. They seem destined to fail unless they’re coupled with a plan and some steely resolve. And you can’t give yourself a year to execute a plan. Steely resolve isn’t self-replicating.

You have to push the execute button every single day, from the moment you wake up, and shore up your resolve with the little victories you earn along the way. A year is too much time, it gives you every excuse and obstacle in the world.

A resolution is, by definition, determination. Why set yourself up to fail? If you’re going to make goals, or big life changes, take them on one at a time. Pick the time and place of your battle and then win it. January and the advent of a new year don’t factor into it.

That’s why I set out my hopes for the new year instead. It’s fun to think about what I want to accomplish in the new year, but it also gives me space and room to accommodate whatever challenges might sneak-attack me along the way.

Because when I make a goal, when I resolve to do something, it’s getting done. If I have to move a mountain to do it, it’s happening. I don’t care how many cups of decaf or cupcakes get hurt along the way, stuff is going down.

Let your yes be yes, and your no be no. Don’t dream it, be it. Be a force to be reckoned with, and Heaven help anyone who stands in your way.

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The Prude’s Guide to Tasteful Music Videos

Author: Erika

Sep 9

Look! Clothes! And ears! We all win!

I’m a huge prude. There’s no getting around it. I see teenage girls strutting through Safeway in bathing suits and all I can think of is, “PUT SOME CLOTHES ON, YOU HUSSIES!” I write a scene in which my characters might be, um, intimate, and I get all blushy and flustered and must avoid describing what they’re doing entirely.

Seriously? Even writing the word “intimate” makes me uncomfortable. It’s a wonder I ever managed to get pregnant, huh?

It’s ok, for the most part I’m fine with my prudishness. I figure it’ll come in handy when I want to torture my kids someday (especially if I have a daughter. I look forward to using the word “hussy” as often as possible).

I did have occasion to wonder about my modesty, though, when I stumbled across a Lady Gaga music video. It was…Umm…What’s a nice way to describe it? Well, let’s just say I was shocked I didn’t have to buy her dinner before watching it. I actually had to turn it off, and check that it was really her music video and not some kind of lascivious wormhole that reached out and swallowed me whole.

Am I behind the times? I mean, even some network shows seem, to me, to be rather more, um, lubricious than I’d always assumed the censors who protect us from naughtiness would be ok with. I mean, Janet Jackson’s boob was a national incident, and yet there’s just as much boobage on some episodes of Mad Men.

I mean, yeah, Janet Jackson was on the Superbowl and Mad Men is a show intended for adults. But it’s not as though kids evaporate after 8 pm and never have access to this stuff. So, really, I see little difference.

Is anyone else shocked by things like how so many music videos resemble soft core pr0n nowadays? Just once I’d like to see a music video where all the people wear clothes.

I mean, isn’t that Lady Gaga’s thing? Wearing crazy clothes? Her music isn’t so bad that she needs to feign relations with people to get us to listen to it, so why bother? Why not just film a tour of your closet, stick a music track behind it, and call it good?

An upside to the Prude’s Guide to Tasteful Music Videos is that you have to diet a lot less if the whole world doesn’t see you naked all the time. Truffles for everyone! We all win!

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