Green

Everything is green.

The grass, the trees, the moss growing up the side of the garage, the aloe plant in the window sill, and even the duckweed floating around my pond next to the lily pads.  It hasn't stopped raining in 5 days.  Today is the first day the power has been back on in 25 hours so I could actually take a shower and wash some of the bug spray off my body and out of my hair.  I planted my garden before the rain began; I am sure everything has drowned by now.

I remember reading the first book of the Twilight series when Bella spoke of how everything was green in Washington compared to Arizona.  Well so is everything in Michigan.  It is squashy, muddy, damp and green.  Its especially fun when you go outside for five seconds and get eaten alive by mosquitoes.  My least favorite part is that it is ball season.  I want to play, I want to watch, and I want to be outside at the fields.  I've played 3 games this season...  6 have been cancelled.  My daughter plays two nights a week, 5 have been cancelled.  If this is premise to how awfully hot the summer is going to be, I am screwed.   This ginger is going to spontaneously (not maybe not even spontaneously) combust around mid-July.  

Absolute sidebar:  Today is day 229 of no smoking.

A New Semester

Yesterday in my Communications class we did a brainstorm on the board. Yes, precisely as you remember from 2nd grade. The teacher gave us one word and we shouted out what we thought she should write.  The word was "Indian." A great word for a brainstorm.  There were things like genocide, Native American, Hinduism, Mecca, Tepee, Islam, Casinos, etc... People were going in a lot of different directions with this word - which I think was the point. Then she erased all but one word: "Pocahontas."
She said "If I were going to write my speech on her I would perhaps do another brainstorm.  And the first thing that comes to my mind is Lewis and Clark."
Immediately I looked dumb-founded.  It was the first day of class so I couldn't exactly raise my hand and correct her, but now I am completely pissed off that a college professor with two Master's degrees doesn't know that Pocahontas stayed in Jamestown and was probably killed off by a bout of disease, not off traveling in the west like the ENTIRE STORY she told. I wanted to cough out "Sacagawea" but instead I jotted a note to myself down on a little piece of scrap paper and stuck it in my folder so I could think about it later. Class ended shortly after but now I was completely annoyed.

WTF?!

Back in 2002, I had this same teacher for my Comp I class and I really liked her. I excelled and got an A but I do not remember anything like this ever happening.  When I signed up for this class I thought to myself "Sweet. I remember her. This will be a breeze!"  Crap.  Now I can't focus on anything but her stupidity.  A college professor who just got thousands of dollars from her students who she is teaching the wrong shit to? Damnit! C'mon!  Maybe I should have just corrected her so I could move on and get over it.
Sadly, my daughters teachers aren't any better. They Xerox pages out of workbooks and send them home as homework.  No one is learning anything except me, because I have to do YouTube tutorials to figure out how to do her homework. Then teach it to my kid.  Maybe the district should pay me the teacher's salary.  My daughter even had to sign her name the other day and didn't know how to because oh yeah! They don't teach cursive anymore! So what do they teach exactly?  I think it may be a question that needs to be addressed with vehemence. Obviously whatever they are teaching -especially at the college level- is freaking wrong!  Oh my, this is going to be a long semester!

**Update: 5/13/13.  Today in my Political Science class the teacher referred to the book Little Women by one of the Bronte Sisters.  Oh dear.  Little Women was written by Louisa May Alcott. And I know this because I have read it five or six times.  I am hoping this was just a slip up because this teacher seems legitimately smart, but crap. I feel like I am worse off than not going to school at all.  This time I did correct it, for those of you that wanted me to the first time.  I told him "I am sorry for being a prick student and correcting my teacher, but neither of the Bronte sisters wrote Little Women."  Needless to say he thanked me for correcting him; however, I don't think everyone would be as grateful.

Game Over

While I want to write my thoughts down, that the fact that the American government surveils society at random, tortures information from people, and restricts people from speaking too loudly on critical topics makes me leery about putting my thoughts onto a computer... yet here we are.  I cannot avoid the risk of my government potentially blacklisting me unless I were to type this out on a typewriter somewhere.  As an open-minded, educated American, I can sense some of the horrors our government experiencing these days and am constantly seeking new information.  Though, when that information stuns me into silence I find cause for concern.  I don't often find that a topic would confound me into silence, but when I could put myself at risk and those I love at risk by simply using my voice, it strikes fear into my very being.  After seeing Naomi Wolf's documentary End of America, I realized that I have no idea not only what the American government is capable of, but what they are actually taking part in to keep our society in check.  Personally, I have always been a bit of a squeaky wheel.  If something is morally wrong I will be one of the first to speak my mind about it, however, after seeing the horrific things this country sweeps under the rug makes me want to think twice before opening my mouth at all.

When America was still an infant we were run by another country. From all the way across the Atlantic Ocean we had to live by rules and demands set by someone else and this wasn't okay for America.  When the Patriots took hold of America and decided to make it our own place with our own set of rules, they created a democracy; a government for the people where they could be respected and heard. We became America: The Land of The Free.  This was not the first time democracy was used, but the people of America seemed to know exactly what they wanted and needed to be successful and democracy was what suited those best.  What most people don't know is that America has been on a very dangerous path for a long time.  Naomi Wolf pointed out that there were essentially "ten steps a [government would take] to close down an open society" and that America was following all ten steps - which gives me my own personal set of nightmares.  Could we be compared to Stalin's Russia, Mussolini's Italy, and Hitler’s Germany?  America?  It couldn't be possible, yet apparently it is so.

The Department of Homeland Security for example: A department in our federal government created in response to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.  A department created to ensure the level of safety of American citizens - essentially to control the fear levels of American citizens.  Naomi Wolf explained how other countries also have to face terrorism, but how they deal with it in a calm way without generating fear in all of its citizens. "[Other countries] take pride in not frightening the citizens and having daily life go on without fear." - Seemingly a very hard concept for America to understand.  Instead we drive fear home with each and every news story ever made. Bombings, terrorist attacks, murder, threats, homicide, abuse - it is never-ending and also a way of life for Americans.  As if we didn't have enough problems without imminent threat looming over our heads all the time.  Just over month after the attacks on 9/11, Congress pushed forward the USA Patriot Act which largely reduced the restrictions that law enforcement agencies had in the gathering of personal information on any citizen of the United States of America. With this law in place citizens lost their privacy at the blink of Congress' eye; people can now be invaded upon "all without having done anything wrong and all without a warrant."

Yet the trepidation doesn't stop there.  Every day people who stand up for what they believe in have been ostracized without any regard.  Anti-war groups, anti-death penalty, environmental groups, and even less aggressive non-violent peace groups have been targeted by our government.  The groups become infiltrated by a mole and the mole relays back all of the groups activity, cause trouble within the group or even to break up the groups. These surveillance and infiltration acts were kept in check by the American Civil Liberties Union or ACLU whose job it was to defend and preserve the rights of every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States. "Surveillance and Infiltration... it's a psychological pressure point not just a tactical one."  Another notch added to the American belt of fear and another way to keep the American people quiet and underneath the thumb of its government.  Sometimes as a joke or in casual conversation I will suggest a radical idea and then say aloud "Uh oh, I bet you the government heard me say that," but I suppose it isn't a joke or even a comedic response, because while they aren't listening to every conversation, I am certain they are listening to a wide variety of them and one day that conversation could be my own.

            Those ten steps to closing down an open society are prime reasons why I would love to no longer be a part of this terrifying place which we call a country; a once a magnificent place that people came to for freedom… for a chance.  In the last fifteen years (roughly) we have broken ourselves as a country and in a disparaging manner.  We have marred ourselves with our treacherous actions and shut up the very people who recognize the destruction and want to fix it.  My heart breaks for this country.  This country where my ancestors came for their shot at happiness and never in their wildest dreams would have believed that it would be a place their grandchildren would run from – in fear.  I tell people all the time that I want to leave America and while to some that may sound incredible to others it makes sense.  “…We lost our way – we just need to find our way back to the path that served us well for so long…”  Together, as Americans, we can make anything happen… if only we weren’t so afraid to do so.

Family Values

Yesterday I decided to take a look at all the food in my home and determine how much of it – or how little- was organic, non-G.M.O, and fresh.  I found four kinds of food in my fridge, plus an array of in season fruits and vegetables, one type in my freezer, and zero in my pantry.  After watching the documentary Food, Inc., I became disturbed by my own eating habits as well as the eating habits of the rest of the world. I had thought I ate fairly well and after seeing this documentary, apparently by comparison to a large majority of Americans, I do.  I eat a low calorie diet consisting of mainly fresh foods, but apparently some of the things within my meals are where my diet is considered poor.  Who has set this example for Americans telling them that it is okay to eat badly?  When did we decide it is okay to put convenience over our values? It is not okay to poison our bodies while filling the wallets or corporate big shots.

In late 2003, I stopped eating fast food, more specifically McDonald's. I had learned some of the horrors within the company are particularly when it came to their food and how in time it literally poisons the human body.  In 2010 I started eating only organic meats as a result of my eight-year old daughter becoming pubescent.  When majority of the third grade class is wearing bras, it is time to look at where we have taken a wrong turn. This is when I first learned of hormones and antibiotics (among other things) being given to the animals we are eating. As a result we are putting those hormones and antibiotics into our own bodies. I knew I had to make some changes for myself and for my growing daughter, but I suppose just those changes aren't enough.  I never would have imagined that the foods I was eating (other than meat) were unhealthy or that there even was such a thing as a G.M.O.  I guess I never would have thought that something as simple as food, particularly fresh food, could be bad for me. The industry pulled the wool over my eyes just the way they intended to.

Society has been engineered to eat foods that are not necessarily good in any way, shape, or form, but more or less convenient for the working parents and those on a strict budget.  Fresh asparagus can cost upwards of $3 at a grocery store, while a bag of potato chips can be just $2.  In Food, Inc., it is expressed that a person can buy an entire cheeseburger at a fast-food restaurant for under a dollar, but a head of broccoli will cost at least $1.50 or if you buy organic it will cost upwards of $2.50.  As a buyer of some organic foods, it is tough sometimes to decide between that which harms your wallet over that which harms your physical being.  When I switched to organic eggs, I found myself thinking "A carton of organic cage-free eggs is $4, while you can get the store brand kind for $.99. Is it really going to hurt me to eat the cheap ones?"  We seem have put our "convenience" on the dollar menu and our "values" in the organic aisle. 

Chickens, for example, have been "redesigned" just like our values have.  Chickens now grow to twice the average size in half the time.  Instead of the normal five months it takes a chick to become a fully grown chicken, they can now reach twice that size in just forty-nine days.  People also prefer the boneless, white, breast meat of a chicken so they have been designed to grow larger in the breasts, because a big, fat chicken will feed more people and give Mr. Meat Man more money.  We have redesigned life to appeal to our desire for convenience.  In most cases, chickens are harvested indoors, in the dark, in cages, twenty-four hours a day, until they die on their own or are sent for slaughter.  When did we take the value off of the lives of chickens?  When did it become okay to let any creature live this way even if it is to satiate our bellies?

Perhaps next we can begin redesigning human life to rid genetic flaws.   If the chickens can have bigger breasts, then maybe we can tweak our genetic makeups and let humans have bigger breasts too… or smaller feet… or smaller waists.  Plastic surgery could be a thing of the past if we could just alter our D.N.A. to give us that blond hair or green eyes we always wanted.  Despite the human need for constant self-improvement, I personally think human value on life is too high to go altering our genetic makeups, but on the life of a chicken, it wouldn't matter to most people.  Not if there is more breast meat to go around.  So where does the line get drawn?  When do we decide whose lives are more important than the next?  A living creature is a living creature and life was not meant for humans to come along and start altering genetic codes as easily as it is to get dressed in the morning.  Our values have gone out with yesterday's trash.

In Food, Inc., it is said "If you send something by the scanner, you are voting for it." This past week I went through the organic section in the supermarket and found that the cooler that sells the organic milk and yogurts was almost completely barren.  I hadn't switched my milk to organic yet and wanted to start that day, but I couldn't.  Was I angry that the shelves weren't stocked to meet the demand?  No. It made me happy to know the cooler was empty even though it had inconvenienced me from buying the one thing I needed most. It means people are voting for organic milks and yogurts, but why not everything else?  Maybe because spending all your money in the organic aisles will leave you penniless.  We seem to forget that while buying organic does destroy our piggy banks; it does not destroy our bodies.   We are supposed to value our bodies over our wallets; then again we are not supposed to consider eating well an inconvenience. 

We have lost sight of the important things in this life: the values on wholesomeness over material conveniences in a world where our children are the ones who suffer with their too-soon pubescent bodies and their poor eating habits instilled since birth.  Maybe one day we will pull that shroud out from in front of our eyes and put value keeping this body happy and healthy - seeing as this is the only body we get.   

Soundtrack of My Life

It's funny how a song can take you back to a place and time as if you were stepping into a time machine.  Or can become this warm blanket that encompasses you and takes you to a place in your past - or even in your present.  Even the chords before the lyrics begin can spark a memory you forgot existed within yourself.  I have always been a musical person.  While I couldn't play an instrument if my life depended on it, I can sing - and do quite often.  Just ask my ten-year old daughter who is constantly telling me to zip it.  I often consider myself a walking karaoke machine, because I can remember the lyrics to thousands of songs, even those I haven't heard in many years. 

I love music about as much as I love food. Or sleep.  Or oxygen.  It gets me through hard times, good times, and even the times in between.  Sometimes I make playlists of certain songs just to get my mind to calm down when it races into the wee hours of the night.  I find that no matter where I am, where I go, or what I do, music is what I cling to.  Some people listen to the melodies and swoon.  I, personally, am a lyric girl.  I find that song whose words can't escape me. 

I used to make these incredibly elaborate mixes for people telling them what I thought of them and how I felt.  Each tape (eventually CD) was painstakingly hand-crafted.  I would sit in front of my boombox with my pad of paper for hours, rewinding and playing, rewinding and playing, rewinding and playing songs to make sure I knew each and every lyric.  I had thirty notebooks filled with lyrics that I would sometimes just sit and read, singing along a cappella.  I know the lyrics now to thousands of songs.

As a mom, there have been hundreds of songs I want to "dedicate to my daughter" so that when she hears them she thinks of me.  Some that fit my situation so well that I can't help but weep when I hear them.  About our struggle as a team of mother and daughter and how we can get through anything as long as we stick together. 

My personal favorite is when you hear a song when you are somewhere random and you remember which movie it is from. When you get home you have to watch it because the nostalgia is so overwhelming.  I place songs with movies constantly.  I will hear the same song throughout several different motion picture soundtracks and feel this self-accomplishment that I recognized it. Like anyone gives a damn but me. 

How about a love song that makes you think of a forgotten love in your life.  Or a whole album you listened to that even one song on it slams you into a time you can remember as good as the back of  your hand.  It is amazing that songs have these capabilities to spark a longing inside of you. 

I don't even know why I am sharing these thoughts.  Perhaps because I have been soundtracking my life for the last 3 straight days.  Belting out random lyrics that fit with what is happening or just a random up-tempo pop-tune to get me through to the next activity.  Oh well, I guess there could be worse things, eh?

German-y

You know you are getting older when life takes you in a different direction than your best friend.

Our lives have been running in two completely different paths for the last few years but we have managed to stay friends while the world pulls us apart.  Within the last year we have spent the least time together than ever before.  She has had a child within the last year and half, while I did that ten years ago.  She has a live-in man, while I find the mere thought of living with someone mind-boggling.  A number of different factors that makes our two worlds just that - two worlds.  We used to be inseparable to the point where people began telling us we looked like sisters when we look nothing alike. We spent a good decade together without a hitch. She could have been growing off my hip and I wouldn't have even noticed because we were never apart anyway.

Last night I got to spend a few hours with her. I drove to her house and sat in the bathroom while she was in the shower, like we were 17 again.  We talked in our voice that no one understands so that no one could hear us from outside the bathroom.  We drove to our friend Joel's house because he was having some volleyball peeps over for a random gathering.  We went there and I swear most of the time it was like no one else was in the room.  We just get lost in our stupid jokes and stories.  She can read me like a book - and, I, her.  It's almost like the things we say would never make sense to anyone except her and me.  Maybe everyone else in the house noticed it too. That we spent a good portion of the time on our phones showing each other random YouTube videos (like this video) and trying to decipher what others were even talking about.  We talked about love for a moment and I didn't even have to say anything to her - she already knew exactly what I was thinking about the situation.  She knew my heart was torn without even looking me in the eyes and seeing the pain I felt. The stuff only best friends can do.


The point I am even trying to get across is sometimes life likes to decide for you the people you will surround yourself with and the people you love the most may be the people you see the least.  While I love my best friend unfailingly and we only see each other maybe once a month, she is still my best friend who I would punch people in the face for (or call 911 at least) and do absolutely anything for.  Or her daughter.  I guess I just want to say thanks.  After 14 years of everything one person could possibly imagine, thanks for being you.

A Day Like Today

Life will never cease to amaze me.  It's constant twists and turns always lead me back to a place I can call home.  Even though there are times that I don't want to stay in this place -or in this city- anymore, I still love the moments that make me feel fuzzy.

You know those friends you have that you don't talk to very often and rarely see, then you see each other and it was like you were never apart?  Those are my favorite relationships.  You can spend an entire afternoon of playing "catch up" and reminiscing about the past.  Picking up where you left off, like no time has passed at all.  It is such a surreal feeling.

I had one of those days today -and it was next to perfect. A day where every story that was told brings slammed me into the past, whipping up so much nostalgia that my cheeks start to hurt from smiling so much and my mind is in an absolute frenzy of memories and just life in general. 

Sometimes I don't feel like I have gone down the right road and made the right choices for not only myself, but for my daughter.  Yet on days like today, I know that the choices I have made are okay.  I know that no matter what has happened in the past or what will happen in the future, that things are the way they are supposed to be.  I wish I would have tweaked it a little but it has been such a learning process.  Maybe I wouldn't be me if I would have changed the course.  

This sums today up so nicely.