Sweet, Bitter, and Bland

I don’t owe anyone any apologies for being a mother.  I don’t generally ask other parents to apologize for what kind of parents they are, and I shouldn’t feel the need to apologize for the mother I am.  I’m sure this is a sentiment most parents feel.  So why are we always so sensitive?  Why does it always feel like some other parent’s criticizing you just by being around, parenting their child the way they feel their child needs to be parented?  Why are we constantly in the comparison business?  And why do we constantly get so butt-hurt when the business is over?

I wish I could say I’m over it.  I wish this was just something “new” parents did, flailing around in that first year, desperate for some confirmation that they’re doing things right.  But I don’t think that’s true.  I’m still a relatively new parent.  Even though I’m on my second go-round, I’ve still never seen what happens after three, not from a parent’s perspective.  That’s three years of experience up against fifteen years of lack.  And I still look for that confirmation.  And I see other parents doing it too, well beyond year one.

I’ve heard it called the “mommy wars”, which is a misnomer, because fathers do it too.  They may do it in different ways, but they do it.  I’ve also heard that it’s all made up by the media.  I don’t think that’s exactly correct either.  It’s definitely perpetuated by the media (Time magazine, anyone?), but I’ve seen plenty of parents take part all by themselves.  We sometimes start to choke on the exorbitant amount of information we have culled as a people, and we simply choose sometimes to use the media as a gag reflex.  It’s not the media’s fault; we’re just biting off too much too fast.  I’ve done it myself.

When my daughter was almost a year old, I re-posted this article on Facebook, after a friend shared it.  Two years later, I can say if you’re a parent who’s already made up your mind about breastfeeding, don’t read it.  That’s not who I had in mind when I posted it (and probably not who the author had in mind when it was written) and it won’t be useful to you.  I don’t exactly vet articles I re-post on Facebook; I simply post them or I don’t.  I find that if I have to check them for accuracy, there’s a better article I can post in the process.  If they’re opinionated, I don’t mean to imply that I agree with them 100%.  If I do, I’ll say so directly.  I don’t think it should be assumed.  When I posted this one, I didn’t mean to judge parents but to shed light on facts pertaining to nutrition and health.  However, in posting it I made the grave mistake of indirectly congratulating myself and expressing pride in myself for breastfeeding my child as long as I had (by thanking my mom for her support).  Because it was hard, physically, emotionally, financially, and socially.  And because previous to parenthood I was down on myself for the things I hadn’t accomplished. My choices made my first year as a parent extremely difficult, I read an article that  reminded me why I’d made one of those choices, and I cried out to the world that I did something right.  One thing!  Yay, me!  Did it come off that way?  Was the article even read by my intended audience?  No.  The road to hell … I just ended up pissing off people who hadn’t breastfed as long as I had or hadn’t breastfed at all, including most notably my two dearest mom friends, who both had to give up breastfeeding, reluctantly, for reasons I now better understand.  One had to deal with work; the other had to deal with a medical condition.  They were both deeply hurt, and I was hurt for having hurt them.

Ironically, I got a taste of my own medicine later when the same friend who’d posted the infamous breastfeeding article posted another one about alarming C-section rates.  Her intention was not to shame women like me who’d had C-sections (she herself had not), but that sure was how it made me feel, as I was still stinging from my reluctant “unnatural” delivery.  And she received backlash from me, filled with my own very personal feelings on the issue.

Since then I’ve gained a couple more years of experience, being a parent, dealing with other parents, dealing with people who are not parents, and most dreadfully, reading all kinds of other people’s opinions on parenting on the Internet.  The most important thing I’ve learned about that is what’s lost in Internet commentary, along with accountability and tone: civility.  In three short years as a parent, I’ve grown so tired of hearing other people’s opinions and trying to get mine across to people with such different perspectives, on such a blinding forum, I almost can’t stand it anymore. And I’ve never had the desire to simply clobber people over the head with the holy notion of what I think.  So when this Time magazine controversy arose, I tried to just ignore it.  After all, that’s what takes away the power of “the media” to perpetuate anything.  And basically, right now I don’t want to talk about attachment parenting anymore than I want to have another C-section.  When it all boils down I’m really too busy to stop and ask myself if I’m “mom enough”.  The most important thing I’ve learned about motherhood is: the whole time you’re telling yourself you can’t do it, you’re doing it.  And if your child is fed, clothed, sheltered, safe, reasonably healthy, and most importantly loved, you’re enough.  Anybody who tells you differently is selling something.

So here’s my response: fuck Time magazine.  Here’s a cover idea.  Why doesn’t everybody just butt out and mind their own business?  And as for all the spectators who’ve blown this thing out of proportion: we’re all entitled to our own opinions.  We’re not entitled to our own facts.  Nor are we entitled to everybody hearing our opinions and treating them as law, despite what those little blinking “comment” cursors tell us in our little self-constructed dens of anonymity, the only place most of us are bold enough to speak up.

Wouldn’t everybody be happier if people just butted out?  If it makes us so nervous to see a kid breastfeeding, for example, can’t we just agree to not look?  Wouldn’t that help the spectator and the mother relax, not to mention the child?  Some say this cover mom should keep her own business out of the limelight, and perhaps she should.  But would some mom in California feel the need to pose on the cover of a magazine to prove herself as a parent if her parenting methods didn’t freak out so many insecure assholes?  Can’t we just relax and save each other the trouble?

I mean, it’s not like she’s hurting the kid!  Anybody who’s breastfed knows it’s not remotely sexual or sexy (a ridiculous notion ironically encouraged by this cover), and anybody who hasn’t breastfed really doesn’t have a dog in the fight.  It’s not like the kid’s still on a breastmilk-only diet at three; he’s obviously not starving.  And she’s definitely not hurting anybody else.  And you haven’t hurt anybody by not breastfeeding your three-year-old.  At some point you just have to ask yourself: why does this bother me so much?  Then go from there.

Here’s my biggest concern.  There are people out there who do much worse to their kids than feed them and give them affection.  Kids who are abused, neglected, orphaned, and abandoned need the kind of fire power people are putting into Internet comments about a preschooler breastfeeding “too long”.  Imagine how much better off those kids would be if people were driven so passionately to action in their defense.  Getting pissed off about something another parent does to care for their child, while remaining complacent about parents who don’t care for their children is not only ridiculous.  It’s straight up harmful.  And that goes for anybody on either side of the breastfeeding (or whatever) argument.

So maybe everybody should just back off.  The media is only as strong as the people who engage, and Time magazine knew people would engage.  They counted on it, as usual, and they got what they wanted.  I’m not reading the article though.  I already have Dr. Sears’s book, and I already know he thinks I’m doing some things wrong, and some things right.  About that, he would be correct.

I am a human mother.  I am a living example for two human children, for whose lives I am responsible.  I know those children better than anybody else, I am the best judge of what is right for them, I get to make the decisions, and I get to ask for advice when I need it.  That’s the way it’s always been.  Every decision I’ve made about birthing them, feeding them, dressing them, putting them to bed, medicating them, keeping them safe in the car, educating them, and spending time with them has been based on that judgment.  And that’s the way it will continue to be.  Some of the things I do don’t work out the way I wanted, even when I have the best of intentions, and that’s just life—one more lesson for me and my children to learn.  But one thing remains constant.  Love is love, and caring is caring.  It doesn’t matter which method anybody uses to love and nurture a child.  As long as I do what’s right for me and my kids, I am right.  As long as you do what’s right for you and yours, you are too.  As long as that level of respect is maintained, no apologies are necessary.  And if anybody tries to tell you otherwise, you should tell them to fuck off.

So George Zimmerman is in custody on charges of second degree murder.  The American justice question of the year (so far) has been answered: No, you can’t shoot an unarmed black kid in Florida, claim self-defense, and just get away with it.  Trayvon Martin will not be the modern-day Turner.  It remains to be seen whether he’ll be the modern-day Till.  Now what?

Well, now we wait for the justice system to work.  I’ve heard people say it’s a slow process, and it is.  But it doesn’t usually take two months to charge someone for a homicide when they admitted doing it.  We have Florida’s Stand Your Ground law to thank for this one.  The State of Florida didn’t come up with any new evidence for these charges; they’re using the same information the media and the public have been shuffling through for weeks.  It was all there.  The only reasons George Zimmerman wasn’t arrested in February were, primarily, the law that says you can do whatever you need to do to defend yourself anywhere, any time you feel your life is threatened, and secondarily, his record, which looked clean at first, like an old apartment looks clean when you slap a coat of cheap paint on the wall.

What I’ve been wondering for weeks is: if the person left standing automatically gets to grant the story, what is the point of this law?  If you defend your own life, die in the process, and the killer gets to say it was self-defense, what good is having a right to self-defense?  If I feel my life is threatened, I use force to defend myself, I get shot and killed, and my attacker says it was self-defense because I used force, he might as well have just walked up and shot me.  The scary part (scarier than the fact that George Zimmerman was a student of criminal law) is: if I was walking through a strange neighborhood at night, and a strange man who outweighed me by a hundred pounds approached me with some ambiguous talk that didn’t even begin to explain why he was approaching me, I would damn sure feel threatened.  If I happened to see he was armed, I’d go down fighting too.  Where in the hell was Trayvon Martin’s right to “stand” his ground?

Since Zimmerman was not arrested, for what the Sanford police saw as his rights, and since Martin’s parents spoke up, this case has been allowed to fester in the court of public opinion, whereas if he had been arrested, this would not be a famous case.  How many dead black kids’ names are known throughout American households anyway?  While the public and the media have waited for the justice system to work thus far, I’ve seen two teams develop in the discussion. For the sake of simplicity, let’s call them Team Trayvon and Team Zimmerman (and I’m not referring to either party’s family or legal team, just the public and the press.  By the way, this guy is also the media).

Both teams seem to be saying the same things.  ”Stand Your Ground!”  ”Don’t jump to conclusions!”  ”We don’t really know what happened!”  The only difference is to which party people choose to apply it.  Team Trayvon applies it to Trayvon Martin, asserting he had a right to defend himself, that Zimmerman jumped to conclusions, and that Zimmerman acted without information or evidence.  Team Zimmerman applies it to George Zimmerman, asserting he had a right to defend himself, that the American public is jumping to conclusions, and that the American public is acting without information or evidence.  The reality is a kid is dead and gone forever, and the American public can’t actually try anybody.  Only the state can.  Trayvon Martin’s family wanted an investigation, and if wrongdoing was found, a punishment.  Justice.  George Zimmerman’s family just wanted their son to be safe.  No one can blame any of them.  And all of this could’ve been accomplished for them much earlier and with much less heat, with an arrest.  Zimmerman would’ve posted bond, and the investigation would’ve proceeded as just another day in the American justice system.  The shit storm that has occurred instead is the Stand Your Ground law’s only accomplishment here.

Now we have a nation of opposing team members, and while the justice system does its slow work, we get to play defense on our own feelings.  Such is the American game, especially when it comes to racial sensitivities.

Some have pointed out that “black-on-black crime” never warrants so much outrage.  That is certainly true.  But here’s an interesting take on that.

More interestingly, some have pointed out that “white-on-black” crime doesn’t get enough attention either.  This was re-posted on one of my friend’s Facebook pages:

When are we going to admit profiling, violence and racism exists everywhere…in all cultures, in and against every socioeconomic status? Violence is wrong, regardless of the reason behind it. Murder is inhumane, regardless of the color of the victim. But I ask, why aren’t we equally outraged when a white kid is killed by another race? Last week a boy in Ohio was burned by a group of black kids while walking home from school….media outrage? No. Did Al and Jesse show up and puff up in front of cameras? No. They’re calling Zimmerman a White-Hispanic…a term unheard of before now…a term being used to create more racial conflict.

In 2008 Eve Carson, a white female from Athens, Georgia was an exceptional student at the University of North Carolina. She served as President of the Student Body and was a Moorehead-Cain Scholarship recipient. She majored in Political Science and Biology, Pre-Med. Eve gave back to her community, she was a peer educator for underprivileged youth, was selected to be a North Carolina Fellow and she was murdered. Slaughtered by four blasts of ammunition to the head and body by two young black males (ages 17 and 21), because they wanted her car and her ATM card. The final killing shot tore through her hand and into her head as she made a sad attempt to protect herself; obviously aware the bullet to her skull would be fatal. Was she profiled? You bet she was. Eve was profiled as a Rich, Blue -Eyed, Blond Haired, White Girl. Were there protests, marches and outraged politicians speaking out for her? Did Barack call her family? Why is it about race only if the victim is black? Why aren’t we outraged when ANY kid is murdered? As a nation, have we been silenced by a politically correct whip? Lets’ be outraged about all murders, all racism, every injustice.

(Really?  We’re not angry enough?  Here are a couple pieces of outrage from my town earlier this year.)

Of course, this Facebook status makes no mention of Eve Carson’s attackers being found, arrested, and charged within a week of her murder, and I’ve read nowhere that the black men who killed her told the police they killed her in self-defense (while they were robbing her, which obviously, they legally had no business doing).  It’s true that racial profiling and murders happen everywhere, all the time.  But racial profiling is not what happened to Eve Carson.  She was targeted because she appeared to be a wealthy woman at an ATM, not because of her skin color.  A black man of small enough stature, driving the same car could’ve just as easily been targeted by these armed assailants, who were after money, not vigilante justice against white girls and their bank cards.  If they’d attacked an older, black professor, would his murder command the same outrage as that of a beautiful, blonde, southern girl in North Carolina?  Who knows?  Who the victim was wouldn’t make it any less sad that two young people can find it within themselves to shoot someone in the head for a car and whatever money they can find in their bank account.  But in that case, at least justice was served.  It’s only when the justice system fails that dead victims become household names, regardless of skin color.  Unless, of course, they’re children.  Some dead children have a way of becoming household names no matter what the justice system does.

In all the ensuing drama, Team Zimmerman seems to have forgotten that a child is what Trayvon Martin was.  In the public eye, it seems, even a child can be seen as a vicious threat in the right situation.  Even a child can have his character called into question after he’s killed by a vigilante adult who uses racial epithets over 911 calls.  Even a child can be outright blamed for his own shooting death at the hands of a grown man who’s appointed himself sheriff of the subdivision. Explore the attitude behind that, and you’ll know how this whole thing started.  Perhaps Team Zimmerman can now ponder this question: could that have been my child? I’m wondering why they haven’t before. Then again, maybe they have. Maybe their answer is one of superiority.

A scenario:

A seventeen-year-old white kid is an invited guest in a gated community, in a different city from where he lives.  He leaves the home he’s visiting to walk to the store for some candy and a drink, then returns.  He’s walking home in the rain, wearing a hoodie around his face and trying to find his way back while talking to a friend from home on his cell phone.  While he distractedly scopes out the surrounding town homes trying to find the one where he’s staying (he doesn’t live there after all), he spots a large, black man watching him from a car.  He tries not to appear shaken, although his friend on the phone is telling him to run.  He continues to walk for a while, but then he decides to run as the black man, who looks anything but welcoming and outweighs him by more than a hundred pounds, gets out of his car and comes at him.  He evades the black man for a minute, but then he finds that the black man has headed him off and cornered him.  He asks the black man why he’s following him.

A few minutes later 911 calls pour in from the community reporting a scuffle.  Someone is heard screaming for help, and then there is a gunshot.  Residents and then police come onto the scene to find the black man standing over the white teenager’s dead body.  It is then discovered that the white teenager was armed only with a bag of Skittles, a cell phone, and a can of iced tea.

How would things play out for this 28-year-old black male?  That is the question being asked by millions of skeptics worldwide, who’ve read about the case of Trayvon Martin in Florida.  If you’ve been living under the proverbial rock for the last few weeks, you might ask: did Trayvon Martin shoot a white kid?  A quick Google search would answer that question.  No, Trayvon Martin was a seventeen-year-old black kid who ended up dead in the same scenario, with the involved parties’ races reversed.  George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch captain, is the 28-year-old white man who admitted killing him, claimed self-defense, and walked away without so much as a detention, still “free” today, although he is understandably hiding out the international uproar the case has since caused.

How did this happen, you might ask, if you’ve been living under that rock?  The Sanford (FL) Police Department cited Zimmerman’s self-defense claim, Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law, and Zimmerman’s “squeaky clean” record, although it was later revealed that his record was so clean because an earlier scuffle with a police officer was expunged.  It was also revealed that Zimmerman was a somewhat aggressive wannabe cop who had a reputation around his neighborhood and quite an impressive record of 911 calls.  What Trayvon Martin didn’t know was that the neighborhood had suffered a few break-ins and the self-appointed Sheriff Zimmerman was on the case.  He wasn’t just a creepy guy watching him from a car.  He was profiling the black guy in a hoodie he saw walking too slowly in the rain, he was on the phone with 911, and he was packing a 9mm pistol.

It all sounds like a big misunderstanding.  Unfortunately it revolved into more than that over a short course of events.  First, George Zimmerman was advised by the 911 operator not to pursue the “suspicious” person he was trailing.  That was the job of the police, who were on their way.  Zimmerman acknowledged that advice, but ignored it.  A physical confrontation ensued, and by the time the police arrived, there was a dead, unarmed kid on the ground.  Then, with the death of a black kid to investigate, the police took Zimmerman’s story at face value (because, hey, he was still there to tell it), even going so far as to “correct” witnesses who stated they heard Trayvon Martin screaming for help, instead of George Zimmerman.  Zimmerman got to claim “Stand Your Ground” immunity, because he was the one left standing.  No self-defense claim for the dead teenager who was being followed by an armed stranger.  So unfortunately the misunderstanding ended up with a dead black kid and no arrest for his admitted white killer (who would later be heard muttering the words “fucking coons” on the 911 tape), when it could’ve just ended with the police finding Trayvon Martin and figuring out that he actually belonged there and hadn’t committed any crime.

Understandably, Trayvon Martin’s family found this unacceptable, sought media attention, and now have the support of millions of people worldwide who would do the same thing if this had happened to their child.  Eyes are on Sanford, Florida to see if justice will prevail or if George Zimmerman will be awarded the prize of freedom for taking the law into his own hands and shooting an innocent kid.  Also, the racial implications are impossible to ignore, if you know anything about the history of this country.  Many have labeled Zimmerman a racist.  Let me be clear.  He’s not a racist just because he’s white and he shot a black kid.  And even while the racial epithet on the 911 recording is a pretty clear indicator, it’s humanly possible that’s not what he said.  It would actually be difficult if not impossible to prove Zimmerman a racist, if he has a good enough attorney.  Still, it would be profoundly obtuse to even imply that the color of Trayvon Martin’s skin had nothing to do with Zimmerman’s actions.

Remember the white kid from our earlier scenario?  Would he even be considered suspicious to the white eye?  Would his skin color match that of suspects of previous break-ins?  (The answer is no.)  Have we all seen footage of white kids in hoodies robbing convenience stores?  Have white people feared young, white men for centuries in this country?  Clearly, George Zimmerman mistook Trayvon Martin for a criminal; it’s happened before.  At the same time, Trayvon Martin saw George Zimmerman as a threat.  It’s happened before.

Until just recently I’ve been thinking about this only in the context of our times.  I know from previous interactions that it’s sometimes hard for white people today to see America in the same context as black people, although the context is there.  I’ve even heard numerous white or non-black people tell me that racism in this country is a self-construct of the black imagination, which to me illustrates a deep and baffling misunderstanding of what racism is, or a case of sheer ignorance or denial, depending on the person. So in an attempt to shed some light on the climate, I’ll point out a couple things I’ve read just since the Trayvon Martin case sprung up.

This interesting piece of reading coincides with the release of the film adaptation, The Hunger Games.  It is unrelated to the Trayvon Martin case, but contextually relevant.

This is a comment posted on the Facebook page of one of my friends, who dared to fault the logic of anyone who blames Trayvon Martin for his own death (which, believe it or not, some people are doing, like this intelligent person):

“No shame on any parent that lets their MD run wild and show disrespect. To others second off he shouldnt have been behind no houses, and come on ——- wearing a hoody in the dark and not responding sends signs of no good sorry …but its that kids fault how do we know like every other wanna be gang member. He didn’t act like he had a gun. And was acting like he was going for it …..just saying its something the naacp found they can stir up shut and make everyone look racist against blacks when in fact black folks are mire racist of any dye to the lack of self knowing and begin inspired to change their social setting and blame everyone else for the problems they have….”

When my friend (who is white, as is the commenter, as far as I can tell) pointed out that they ran the streets as youths and were never suspected of any wrongdoing worth getting shot over, the commenter continues:

“true ——- true ….but I think the news thought ..it taking it to far and it will turn into. something we don’t need …… its wrong either way but the news for the naacp is portraying it as he walked and shot ..they leaving out the other parts …..we all disagree to some point but I do agree it was wrong the way it happened. but its also wrong the way they keep going on about watch next it will turn in to a dam.Nancy grace special…….”

Another commenter pointed out that things had changed a lot in the twenty years since the childhoods of these white citizens.

To me, all these comments and Geraldo Rivera’s make me wonder.  Have times changed all that much?  It wasn’t until people started playing the Blame the Victim Game that I started to notice similarities between Trayvon Martin’s case and cases gone by, which have gone without justice for a hundred years or more.

Look at the obvious case of Emmett Till (seriously, read up on this if you’re somehow unfamiliar with the tale that inspired even Rosa Parks and kicked off the Civil Rights movement).  His crime: whistling at a white girl.  It was not quite sixty years ago that the fourteen-year-old black Chicagoan, visiting relatives in Mississippi, was kidnapped from his relatives’ home and savagely executed for the unwritten crime of making a sexual advance toward a white woman (at least what she perceived as such), one Mrs. Carolyn Bryant.  After Till was missing for three days and his bloated, bullet-ridden, broken body was finally found in the Tallahatchie River, with a face that was unrecognizable to say the least, his mother demanded a public, open-casket funeral so the world could see what had been done to her boy.  The case gained national attention, even without the Internet, and Mississippi went under the microscope at least as much as Sanford, Florida is now.  But when the case went to trial, the two men responsible (Mrs. Bryant’s husband and his half-brother, identified by Till’s great-uncle and seen by others with Till) were acquitted after about an hour’s deliberation by the jury.  Later, when they were safe from double jeopardy, they proudly admitted killing Till. A few decades later, before his death, Mr. Bryant claimed Emmett Till had ruined his life, although he never served time for the crimes of kidnapping, beating, torturing, shooting, and dumping the fourteen-year-old’s body.  Tell me that ever happened to a white kid in this country.  You know this story, right?  Please tell me you know this story.

Here’s one you probably haven’t heard.  I didn’t hear it until last year; it certainly wasn’t in any of my history books.  In Georgia in 1918 (that’s less than one hundred years ago), a family of two going on three were lynched for no reason.  Their crime: being in the way of angry white people.  Hayes Turner was swept up in a rash of lynchings following the killing of a white man by his black servant, as white mobs looked for other parties that might have been involved or might have had prior knowledge of the killing.  After Hayes Turner was killed, his wife, Mary, who was twenty years old and eight months pregnant, made it known that she intended to press charges for the murder of her husband.  The white citizens didn’t like that, so they found her in a house where she was hiding, hung her by her ankles, doused her with gasoline and burned her clothes off, shot her, then cut her fetus from her belly and let it fall to the ground, where they stomped it to death.  When they were finished they buried Mary and her unborn child and marked the grave with an empty liquor bottle and a cigar butt.  They made their point.  Nobody was arrested.  Can you imagine what would happen if a black mob had done this to a pregnant, white woman?  I imagine every black person in the country would have been dead or in hiding within a week.

Now, some things have definitely changed since 1918, since 1955.  Dramatically.  Since Emmett Till, racist behavior has been subjugated to the outskirts of American civilized culture.  Born a mere thirty-odd years ago, I have only a picture in my imagination of the pasty, drooling, fat-tongued, blithering specimens who must have killed Emmett Till and Mary Turner. There are no more lynch mobs.  There is no more enforced segregation.  We even have a biracial President with an African father.  But again, to imply that a lack of lynch mobs, a lack of segregation, and a lack of a white President equal a lack of racism, shows a bleak misunderstanding of what racism is.  To imply that black people are making it up, after slavery, after Jim Crow, after all the Mary Turners and Emmett Tills, and more recently, after the shit storm that was the Civil Rights movement in this country—that is just blind ignorance.  To say that black people need to “get over it” and stop blaming people for “their own problems”, while these imposed events continue to weigh on the cultural psyche of generations of African-American people, shows a complete lack of compassion, and again, ignorance, especially in a nation that touts itself as “Christian”.  Unfortunately, this is the apparent climate black people live in, and the waters are continually being tested by events such as these.  To this day black people are constantly having to measure where they stand in this country, whereas white people never even have to think about it in regards to the colors of their skin.  Remember the scary black man in our earlier scenario?  Realistically, would he even have bothered with some strange white kid, especially if he had an assault on a police officer on his record?  Well, George Zimmerman sure did, with confidence, and now a dead child’s family grieves and fights for justice, while a nation of onlookers are warned not to let their black sons out of the house in hoodies.

I don’t know if Trayvon Martin is the “modern-day Emmett Till”, as some have already named him.  I know he was apparently shot for defending himself against an armed stranger.  I know the “Stand Your Ground” law probably should’ve applied to him, not the man who killed him.  I know wearing a hoodie doesn’t justify criminal execution any more than a skirt justifies rape.  I know the white man who shot him claimed self-defense and still hasn’t been arrested a month later.  I know the police who “investigated” smoothed over the killing of an unarmed black boy with no criminal record, in favor of a white man.  I know a dead black boy’s “word” is up against a living white man’s, and I think we all know what a disadvantage that is for the memory that is now Trayvon Martin.  Most of all I know questions are going unanswered, and this case needs the thorough investigation it will only receive if a man is arrested.  Whether or not Trayvon Martin’s family receives justice remains to be seen, and where black people stand in this country remains to be seen as well, again.

Yesterday I got a piece of bad news that all but ruined my day.  It wasn’t this, although this is part of my problem.

Since we moved back to Austin I’ve been trying to get back the security of the part-time job I left last year.  Before we were forced to leave I was paying for health/dental/vision insurance for my entire family and bringing home enough cash to pay our car note every month.  Needless to say, that cash and coverage would again be helpful now.  We returned to Austin during the holidays, so I didn’t have much luck finding openings with the retail giant I previously worked for.  I mostly looked elsewhere.  But I did manage to find one opening nearby.  It was a cashier job in the crappy little store near my house (the one I don’t even shop in because it’s so small and outdated and hardly ever has what I need).  It was one of the last jobs I’d want, but I applied anyway.  I was more than qualified after all.

See, I didn’t just work there for that one year.  I worked for this company through half of college and for a couple years after.  I worked in their stores and in their regional training center.  So I have years of experience with their customers and their cash registers, about six to be exact.  Well, they sent me the “thanks, but no thanks” e-mail.  Not even an interview for me.  This was in December, I think.

Just a few days ago I checked in again and found cashier openings for my old store.  I jumped, because I thought my chances were great, obviously.  And these are people I’ve actually worked with.  And although I didn’t love working in the in-store cafe last year while my husband stayed home, I could definitely go for working the registers again after my husband comes home from work.  So I applied and hoped for an interview.

Yesterday I got another e-mail:

Thank you —, for your interest in growing a career with —.

The search to locate an ideal candidate for the Cashier position at — has provided — with many outstanding applicants such as you and we sincerely appreciate your time and effort. At this time we are proceeding forward with other candidates.

You are welcome to apply for any open position at (website).

Thank you again!

Thanks, but no thanks.  So I’m shot down again by the company I worked for, for six years.  I can’t even get an interview.

As far as I can tell from the application process (including this vague and annoyingly cheerful rejection e-mail), it’s for one of two reasons.  Either my availability just sucks, despite the fact that I opened it up farther than I wanted, or more likely, considering my availability is still evenings and weekends, which is when they do most of their business, I didn’t score high enough on the applicant personality “assessment” test they’ve implemented since last I was hired.  This is a required part of the application process now; your application can’t be considered without it.  It’s one of those tests in which you’re asked about a hundred questions about your personality and ethics, but they’re really just the same five questions phrased twenty different ways.  Although it is timed so they can see how long it took you to answer, it takes forever and allows no explanation for why you “strongly disagree” or are “neutral”.  It basically just wants a fairly black and white, numerical answer.  Luckily I only had to take it once.  Whatever my score was on my last application, it was applied to this one, which implies that this score will be used on any application I submit for at least some predetermined period of time.  Which makes me wonder if it’s even worth my time to apply with them any more.

My husband took one of these tests when he got his job with the jewelry store in my hometown.  He scored somewhat poorly on it.  But the manager hired him anyway, because in her experience, intelligent people usually do score poorly on these kinds of tests, because they don’t look at the hypothetical situations posed in terms of black or white, yes or no, true or false.  Like anything, most of their answers depend on context that’s not present in these tests.  In my case, I don’t even know if a human being looked at my application or if I was systematically rejected by a computer.

But I guess the result is the same.  The position I thought I had the highest likelihood of getting, I’m not getting.  Now I’m trying to decide if the whole job hunt is worth all the time and worry.  Maybe the universe is trying to tell me I should just keep writing.

And I’d be happy to do that if we had just a little more money coming in (without having to ask family, which we’ve had to do again this month).  Or if I had any health insurance coverage whatsoever.  But honestly, I’m just a bit nervous operating without that cash and coverage, so I’ll have to keep writing and looking.  I may have to settle for just cash, if I’m lucky enough to find the opportunity.  I’m starting to understand why unemployed people sometimes just give up, and why my husband was so bent out of shape by the time his struggle ended.

In the meantime, I’ve been waking up dizzy occasionally.  Since I can’t see a doctor (I don’t have a “real job”, so I don’t deserve to, right?), I’m just going to go hypochondriac and assume the worst (that my gestational diabetes from 2010 has gone Type 2) and eliminate sweets from my diet, hoping to significantly reduce my sugar intake, despite the fact that it’s in everything, and despite the fact that I have no medical training to tell me if that’s the right thing to do.  It’s not like it will hurt to stop pounding down pints of ice cream.  I’m officially saying goodbye to my Sugar Rules.  No more trying to remember what’s legal and when; I’m just going to drop sweets and look at every indulgence as a relapse.  Alcoholics and drug addicts don’t get to use “just on weekends”.  Perhaps I should follow the same guidelines for my sugar “issue”.  Yogurt, juice, lactose-free chocolate milk, sugar-free pudding, and sucralose can be my methadone until I can afford to ask a doctor what the hell is going on with my body.  And since Rick Perry is a douchebag, I guess I won’t plan on any Pap smears any time soon either.  Damn it.  If I could just have a job.

… are not problems at all.

Yesterday I got pretty excited and posted these and other thoughts all over my Facebook page.  We finally got our tax refund, but it wasn’t just any refund.

As of February 23, 2012, we are no longer feeling the financial effects of our personal unemployment crisis from 2009-2011.  Our refund arrived and saved the day, allowing us to pay off our car (this morning), catch up on late bills, and stabilize our monthly budget.  So we can now just feel the financial effects of having two young children and living on one income (maybe one and a half if I’m blessed by the employment gods).  Yes, we’re still poor by American standards.  But we’ve settled nicely into our new house in our old city, and now we can finally get by, which feels wonderful.  And realistically, we are doing far better than most in this world.  We’re actually doing better than we were before my husband got laid off.  We’re one kid richer, we have a much better place to live, and we have a more relaxed lifestyle now that we’re experienced parents and I’m not trying to take care of kids and work from home.

We even have a little money left over, with which we’ve already purchased a sleeper sofa, so we can have the luxury of sitting on something besides our living room floor and have a place to put guests.  That’s coming this evening, and so are guests (my parents).  It’s our first new furniture purchase together, and it only took seven years!  My cash-and-carry husband is going to use some for a credit-building “loan”, so some day we can start to think about buying a house.  And we have a few other small ideas and projects around the house and the car that we may or may not be able to afford, so we’re just hoping to maximize what’s left.

Most of all we have relief.  These have always been money problems, but now they’re solved, and we can finally just move on.  So hopefully this blog will become sweeter and more bland, and a little less bitter.  I feel great today.

Hooray for President’s Day, another day of suspense. Another day of baited breath. I hope the IRS is having a nice day off while I sit on my living room floor watching my bills pile up.

Ugh, dammit! I just want to put a lid on this whole unemployment nightmare and get back to the stability we had three years ago. Why must it drag on and on; haven’t we suffered enough?

It’s been eighteen days since we filed our income tax. The refund was supposed to take ten days at most. But they won’t even take inquiries until Day 21. That’s coming right up. I hope we don’t have to go there, but maybe then we can get it expedited if there’s a problem.  Maybe then we’ll at least know what’s going on.  I wish I could just stop thinking about it, but unfortunately we have no money! We paid bills current and late with my husband’s check. Now we have more late bills. And of course, we have to eat, and so does the car. And no one’s calling me for work, because apparently a woman who can only work when her husband’s home is not a hot commodity.

I need relief. I need to pay off my car, so we can manage our budget.  I need something in my living room I can sit on.  I have about a hundred other problems I may or may not be able to fix with the leftovers that I need to know what to do with.  I need to be in the black again.  Most of all I have two toddlers to look after; I can’t worry about all of this too. The work of staying positive is getting too hard. Uncle Sam, we need our money! We couldn’t afford to give it to you in the first place!  I’ve never needed an income tax refund so bad in my life.

At least the girls are asleep for a while, without any cares in the world.  I’m going to jump on my laptop and escape to fiction land.

Still haven’t found that serenity.  Maybe I’ll light some candles when the girls go down for their nap today, right after I get my bedroom door unlocked (thank you, Lucy).

To be perfectly honest (and I’m not going to get pissed off at myself for this) I’m pissed off.  I’m still pissed off about Valentine’s Day, which my husband spent with his co-workers and his mom while I took care of the kids.  Which I think made it officially our worst Valentine’s Day ever.  (This is how he feels about it.)  But really it’s about more than that.

I’m pissed off that I’ve been forced to just give up and look elsewhere in the name of peace.  I’ll get over it, I guess, and I really hope it will make me a happier person.  I hope that will look good to my kids.  Because that’s what I’m really worried about - how it will look to them that Daddy doesn’t show any affection on Valentine’s Day because he has a point to make, but Mommy doesn’t want to let it get her down, so Mommy celebrates while Daddy sits out.  What are they going to take away from that?  Somehow I have to make sure they learn to value themselves so they will be happy and show other people how to treat them (on Valentine’s Day and every other day of the year).  I figure my plan will teach them about half of that.  Hopefully they can learn that even if Daddy refuses to be romantic on the one day of the year that’s devoted to romance.  And no, I don’t give a rat’s ass who “devoted” it.  I don’t want to be snubbed by my own husband in the name of keeping corporations honest.  Especially greedy, filthy corporations that (gasp!) make money off of sentimental romantic expressions.  For shame!  How do they sleep at night?

This is really about me worrying that my husband isn’t completely there.  And by there I mean present, and willingly so.  It just seems like he’s always looking for time alone.  (This still smarts.)  I understand needing to be alone sometimes; I need that too.  In fact, we both spent a good bit of time being single and independent before we got married, and being older than I am, my husband spent more than I did.  So it’s only natural that family life would require some adjustment.  I can even understand that his particular background and his “blood only means what you let it” philosophy would enhance that for him.  But it feels like he needs to be alone too much, like he took on the family role for me and not himself, didn’t realize what he was getting into, and constantly searches for escape.  And some days that’s just really hard to live with, even though I’m pretty sure he’s “not going anywhere”.

Then again I’m no picnic either.  I didn’t marry my husband with the goal of changing him.  However, I do think change is inevitable, and I’ve sure spent some time trying to influence his, even though I’m not 100% happy with myself.  That’s hard for him to live with, no doubt.  So I guess at this point I’ll just have to do whatever I can to be happy and hope that rubs off on him too.  I’m secretly hoping that the world doesn’t burn up in December, so I can have another go at this Valentine’s-Day-with-my-curmudgeon-husband thing.  If that happens and my plans don’t work, I’ll wait until the year after that and start farming myself out for platonic dates with lonely, single friends.  But I’ve got one more idea for getting my husband into the Valentine’s Day spirit, and I guess I can practice until then.  But I’m not saying what it is.  It’s a surprise.

Hope it works.

When I was pregnant with my second child, down with gestational diabetes, and working a part-time restaurant job to make ends meet while my husband was unemployed, I had a little ritual I performed at the start of each day.  I’d get up before my husband and my daughter, I’d sit on a little foot stool in my living room with the blinds cracked open, I’d light a candle and some incense, and I’d chant the Serenity Prayer and set mental goals for the day to get my head in the zone.  Then I’d watch the sunrise for a couple of minutes and start my day.  I didn’t do things perfectly by any stretch, but that worked very nicely for me.  It helped.  And then it kind of went out the window when Nelle was born and my schedule went haywire, but she’s over a year old now, and I’ve recently gotten that schedule back.  And I’ve shed the gestational diabetes, the part-time job, and the husband’s unemployment.  We’ve got a new house, we dodged the bullet that was life in my hometown, and we’re about to receive the income tax refund we need to stabilize our situation for the first time in about two and a half years.  We could always have more things, but things are pretty golden right about now.

So why am I constantly pissed off at myself?  I get pissed when my housework doesn’t get done, I get pissed when I don’t get to write, I get pissed when I haven’t had a shower.  I get pissed when I miss church, I get pissed when I miss yoga, I get pissed when I have to change my plans, I get pissed when I leave home and forget something.  And this stuff happens all the time.  The worst part is I get pissed at my husband because he reminds me of myself more than anyone else I know.  And he’s always around.

A lot has changed in the last eighteen months, and now it’s time for a little bit more.  I’ve got to forgive myself for my mistakes and my imperfections and move on.  I know it sounds cliche, but I really am my worst critic, and I’ve got to get rid of that habit.  It’s getting seriously old.  So I’m thinking about reinstating my serenity ritual until, well, I don’t need it anymore.  But first I’m thinking about having a little forgiveness ceremony for myself, so I can let go of a few things.

Like not applying to the college I wanted to go to when I was seventeen, because I didn’t know how I’d pay for it.  Like all the bad choices I made in various man-boys before I finally met my husband, who’s always valued me for the person I am and not some bullshit version of what he thinks I should be.  Like not being in the shape of a twenty-year-old when I was thirty and having a difficult childbirth that ended in a C-section, which ultimately resulted in a second one, which ultimately means I’ll never have a child the “natural” way.  Like not having the courage to buckle down and write when I was young and single and free, but instead deciding I needed to correct the school decision and go overwork myself for five years, which itself almost killed my desire to write.

Constantly turning over this crap in my head is so damned useless.  All it does is make me feel bad over and over again and make it impossible for me to get over any of it.  And yet, doing all of it was pretty useful and always felt like the right thing to do at the time.  It got me here after all; none of it really ended anything.  And when I was a teenager, all I wanted to do was have my own place and a husband and some kids and a cat and write books and listen to good music (really, I have a journal that tells me so).  And that’s exactly where I am right now!  And who really knows where I’d be if I’d done it differently?  I could’ve done better.  I could’ve done worse.  It doesn’t matter.  This is where I am, and that’s all I’ve ever had.  That’s all I ever will have; that’s all anyone has.  Beating myself up is pointless.

I’ve been keeping this blog for the year 2012, and I’ve been having a lot of fun with it but also a little trouble too.  Some days have just been so disappointing.  I’m hoping a little serenity will help.  Because it’s not over yet.

As I’m sitting here pondering the recent decision of Susan G. Komen for the Cure to pull breast exam funding from Planned Parenthood, I find myself wondering, how can anyone say this is not a war on women?  Not only are we thought too irresponsible to handle our own bodies, but now we have to choose loyalties between reproductive choice and breast cancer research?  That’s unbelievably messed up.

What am I to do?

Well, first I did a little research on Komen for the Cure.  It turns out they’re not as charitable as they let on.  It also turns out they’re quite keen on the anti-choice agenda.  Their “new regulations” against donations to organizations “under investigation” seem to be a thinly spread smoke screen, especially when considering why Planned Parenthood is under Congressional investigation.

So I guess I’m going to have to pick rights over ideology, as usual.  Right now I’m thinking of this in fairly simple terms.  Pro-choice advocates are deceptively called “pro-abortion” by the opposition.  I’m sure there are a few people out there who are “pro-abortion”, but I don’t know any of them.  Nobody’s saying, “Yay, abortion!”  What do pro-lifers have to gain by using such terminology?  Yet, when we play that game and call them “anti-choice”, it’s actually true.  Because there’s not really a choice if you’re only allowed to choose one option. While we’re at it, let’s examine the term “pro-life”.  I believe it applies to people who oppose abortion, war, and capital punishment, and people who actively do what they can to support the alternatives.  But like I said before, I don’t know any of them.

Come to think of it, I’ve never actually heard anyone deny this is a war on women.  I guess they’re proud of it.  I’m due for a breast exam this month, and I have no health insurance.  I hope somebody has the funding to help me, or I’ll just have to stick to this.

This whole decision seems as crooked as the movement behind it.  But I don’t want to choose sides.  So from now on, I’ll be donating my money to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.  It’s just too bad Susan Komen’s name has been dragged through the mud on this one.  But her sister’s responsible for that.

Oh, U.S. Postal Service, I wish I could quit you.

Here’s how my husband’s mistake + the post office’s mistake = a major pain in my ass.

At some point in the fairly recent past, the U.S. Postal Service apparently started providing updated addresses to any business that needs them.  I noticed this after a recent move when places like doctor’s offices (some of which I hadn’t done business with in many months, sometimes even years) started sending me correspondence at my new address when I hadn’t notified them of an address change.  And that’s fine, I guess.  One was a 2010 bill for my daughter, a one-time visit they just got around to billing me for that I sure wasn’t expecting (I’m guessing it had to be processed through Medicaid for over a year, and that’s why it took so long).  So it’s a good thing they were able to get my new address.  But here’s the opportunity for problems.  They’ve got the wrong damn address!  The freaking post office doesn’t know my address!

You could say this trouble stems from the many address changes we ordered over my husband’s two-year bout with unemployment.  But we did change our address faithfully as needed.  Mostly we just used my mother-in-law’s as a permanent address, which my husband’s been doing since he was about nineteen.  But with our most recent (and hopefully our final) move, I asked my husband to do the necessary address change online, as he was the only one with regular Internet access at the time, and going to the post office with my two toddlers is something I’d rather avoid at all costs.  So he did.

When we got the confirmation in the mail I noticed a mistake.  He apparently didn’t feel the need to specify “Drive”, on our street address, just the street number and name.  My husband has a habit of leaving out this information.  I think it’s one of his little “f-yous” to the world.  But of course, there is a “Court” with the same street name, a little cul-de-sac right around the corner.  I was annoyed at this, but he rolled his eyes and said it shouldn’t be a problem, and I decided it wasn’t a battle I wanted to fight.

Sure enough, we started getting forwarded mail with hand-scrawled notes from the postman: “Dr. or Ct.??”  Although there is a little card with our name on it right there in our mailbox, this apparently was a real head-scratcher for somebody.  And I can understand that much.  It was my husband’s mistake.

But then we started getting mail with a new forwarding address on it.  Apparently somebody decided it was supposed to be “Court”.  Unfortunately that’s not correct, so then we started getting forwarded mail with hand-scrawled notes saying “Incorrect address!”  Yeah, no shit.

Now we’re getting mail (on a delay, of course) that’s directly addressed to us at “123 Our Court” — the aforementioned delayed doctor bill for one.  I also realized that we haven’t received a utility bill since we moved here two months ago.  So today I called the city, and what address do they have, despite the fact that we ordered service for 123 Our Drive?  123 Our Court!  This shit is endless! I’ve already tried twice to get this corrected over the phone. The first time the “computers were down”. Today I couldn’t even get through due to “high call volume”. So now it looks like I get to choose between marching down to the stupid post office with toddlers in tow or paying the postal service more money to do it online, which I’m not even sure will work at this point. All of this so they can stop giving people the wrong address they decided was mine. And all when I just want to have as little to do with the post office as possible! Dammit!