Lil' Louie

So here’s the thing about Louis Braille. He was a normal kid—liked to screw off as much as the next tyke. But when he was three, Lil’ Louie stuck himself in the eye with a leather awl from his father’s shop. His eye grew infected and pretty soon t’other followed suit and he went blind. 

When he grew, he got hungry. Hungry for words. So he devised a system of pregnant chads to help illuminate the literary world for him. He created silent language when it had not been available. He used a leather awl to create peaks on paper flesh. The same tool which blinded him allowed him to see the world of literature. 

Why do I talk about Lil’ Louie? Why is this interesting to me? I don’t know. Maybe I feel a sense of envy, a sense of hope. 

I feel a sense of envy because Louis had a name for his destruction. He could hold it in his hands. I would give anything to have some tangible semblance of my own downfall. Just to be able to hold an instrument in my hands and say, “You, Thing, you are responsible for my blindness.” 

Lil’ Louie had an awl. 

I think of Louie and his awl and I wish that I could go deep within my ear and draw out and give name to my destruction. I wish I could hold it in my hand and say “you, damn you, you did this,” and then look at it sideways and squat ways and alike and name it self doubt and self destruction and nest it within my hands and create a way to see the world in spite of its damage. 

It’s not that easy, though. Because the ghost wriggles and flutters behind our eyes when we look in a mirror, we have proof that it exists. The sly beast only surfaces when we aren’t attentive—looking the other way in fevered distraction. It roils under our skin at three in the morning and taunts us. It blinds us and cripples our capacity to thrive. 

But Lil’ Louie, he didn’t do that. He held his weapon and made beauty. He brought light to the marginalized corners of the world. He brought literature and math and life to those who were not offered the luxury of art. He brought hope. 

Brings. 

Hope to those who have blinded themselves to the possibility of possibilities. Hope to those who are crippled by the intangible weapons within their own minds. Our destruction can bring about light. I hope. 

Rednexploitation

Damn you, social media. I haven't been able to get my interweb jollies off all day because there's all of this crap about Duck Dynasty. Fine, I'm taking the bait.

A&E, this is all your fault. You are guilty of rednexploitation. 

What did you expect when the tv station formerly known as Arts and Entertainment got offended by its top dancing goon? Honestly, how long did you think this party would last? 

I'm going to be truthful and say that I haven't watched the show but from the formula, I'm thinking a show goes like this:

1) The boys want to go hunt. 

2) Their wives remind them that they have a gala event to support Cajun orphlins or something which requires they get all gussied up in tuxes (ruh-roh). 

3) Tense stares in kitchen/office/ammo room. 

4)Boys go huntin'. For like a minute. 

5) Guilty heart-felt convo about commitment and love. 

6) Boys show up in the Ta-da! nick of time....in cammo tuxes. 

7) Everyone wins. 

Am I even remotely close? 

When choosing a demographic to market a show to, it's important to consider where this cluster of folk settle figuratively in the American family. A&E chose that awkward backwoods cousin that the rest of the family doesn't really take seriously. 

But that yokel cousin is always loads of fun after the booze gets poured and the bonfire cranks. Then everyone just watches and laughs....until (gasp) they start talking about their opinions. The rest of the family, having just been insulted, turns their rigid backs and says something about "that OTHER side of the family." 

When you buy a duck, you get the whole duck. Even the asshole. Deal with it. Unless it is dead, plucked and comes with a side dish, you shouldn't expect it to cater to your wishes. 

So I guess A&E will consider its next show with a little more tact. If you hire someone for their sawed-off, from-the-hip antics, don't expect them to be anything less. 

Santa 2.0: The Krampus Project

If you suffer as I do, then you know that the threats of "The Naughty List" have worn off over year's of unfulfilled spartan Christmas trees.

Present-free Christmasses only go so far as I can take them. Christmas might be slim at my house, but it's like--well, Christmas everywhere else my spawn might travel. Grandparents, grandparents, aunts and uncles have all conspired against the parent who tries to keep their Santa-jaded children in check.

Well, friends, I come bearing a gift for you. This gift is centuries old and made of nightmares.
Meet Krampus.

Krampus is Santa's bastard basement-dwelling step brother who nobody really likes to talk about. But sometimes, when the squids are being particularly ornery and neither threats of Jesus nor Santa will suffice, he's always there.

Krampus was wrenched from the loins of pre-Christian Germanic folklore and looks like Pan after a really rough night of hanging out with Dionysus. Red-tongued, saggy-eyed and  rocking the worst case of bed head imaginable, you'd think just looking at this fella would keep your kids in line. But if that doesn't work (all of these shameful video games have rid these children of visual fear!), just let them in on his seasonal gig.

Krampusnacht: The night before the feast of St. Nicholas (aka Santa), the good St. Nick and his freaky bro take a stroll. Then they knock on doors. St. Nick only pays attention to the good kids and doles out presents (emphasize this point with your own kids, will you?) where as Krampus has an eye for the bratty ones and hands out coal and ruten bundles to beat the kids.

Holy shit, right? Kids getting beat on Christmas?! (Technically, St. Nick's feast is on Dec. 6th in European countries, but you don't have to divulge this tidbit to your spawn.)

But wait: It gets worse. Krampus also carries a basket on his back which he stuffs the truly terrible children into and steals them away to his lair/hell (you pick, it's your threat).

If you think this is bananas, you should see all of the images of the Krampus Parade where folks strut their goat-fur hides and rusty chains and giant horns and red tongues in the street. And if you think that this Krampus figure is scary, I can only imagine how he must have looked centuries ago.

So g'head. Tell your kids this cautionary tale. Just know you may want to give them the watered-down version before freaking them the hell out. Then we'll see who's watered down at 3:30 AM.

One bitch fit later: A guide to wearing the mom pants.

For the last umpteen years I've worked on getting my shit together. I've worked on being the best damned patron saint of domesticity there is only to watch my doomed ambition gather mold on the bottom of the dirty laundry pile.

And yet I still kept trying to get my shit together. I'm trying, I'd whine on facebook. But it just doesn't seem to be happening! 

My children join me in the gripefest at every opportunity. Whether it is a hangnail or a puzzle piece that doesn't fit or a slow internet connection, my children always seem to have a reason to whine, and quite often, these whine-worthy excuses managed to get them out of random chores.

This is where the chaos is born. From random school/project/craft/library flotsam strewn about the house like some Museum of Horrors. It's okay, I'd think. I'm getting there.

Yesterday my children--nestled within a womb of clean laundry, homework and cereal bowls on the couch--drooled at the laptop movie.  I had three options for dinner. Each, in my spawns' opinion, were equally disgusting. Then there was a pinch, a punch and simultaneous wails.

This is where I lost my shit. This is where I had a bitch fit. It hadn't come about from the endless Glee marathon (though I don't doubt jazz hands were a contributing factor) but from the dull, lifeless and apathetic children I had birthed into this world.

There is a breaking point in some people's lives. It may come when you realize you've ben working as a barista for 12 years. It may come when you wake up on a mattress underneath a bridge. Hell, it might even come when you finally get those lyrics to that catchy-ass song you've been singing. I'm talking about the awakening. That sense of existential clarity. For me, it came out when I realized that my children were spoiled brats with no sense of accountability, and it was all my fault. I was passive. If I was going to get in control, I'd never do it. I had to be in control.

Then, in an instant, I got my shit together. I got in control. No more passive planning. Here are the new rules:

Be accountable for your own shit. Neither of my kids really gave a rat's patootie about their "stuff." Now their "stuff" is in their rooms. Put the hell away. There are no consequences. I did not say, "clean up your crap, or I'm throwing it away." There are options in saying that. I have relinquished my spawn of all options. "Deal with your crap."

School days are tech free. No tv. No Netflix. I was tired of watching my son drool in front of a tv and then freak the hell out when any little thing went wrong. No tv is my way of saying, "wake the hell up, kids!" Also, no facebooking. I wiped my daughter's phone clean of all texting and so-net apps. And just to prove that I'm not just some harsh Trunchbull of a woman, I deleted the so-net apps from my phone, too. Now we all have to deal with each other.

I killed the magical house-cleaning fairy. I killed her hard. I'd bury her if it weren't none degrees fahrenheit outside. The house will not clean itself until one o'clock in the morning. The house will not provide fresh laundry to sit upon. The house will not do dishes. We no longer have chores because chores too often earn payment which is an option. There are no options. We have responsibilities now. There is no "if they don't get done."

"You're welcome." Food no longer has names like "chicken alfesto" or "cosmic pizza" or "the-most-amazing-effing-caesar-salad-ever." The food on the plate stands as the only option...apart from bedtime (note: I instagram dinner now should I need evidence in a court of law later). Food is a necessity. Good food is a luxury. Whether the kids decide my consumables are the former or the latter is up to them. Not. My. Problem.

So far, so good. As soon as the rules were uttered, my kids shaped the hell up. Maybe it was the practical application of a few clear-as-crystal swear words. Maybe it was the lack of options. Whatever the case may be, the kids took a deep breath, calmed down and dealt with the new rules. We did not watch tv tonight. We did, however, win the hell out of playing puzzle.

Maybe I'm being a mean ogre of a mom. Whatevs. I'm a mean ogre of a mom in control of my shit. 

Six Little Girls

There is a sheen of glitter coating every surface in my house. Every time I attempt to dust it away, the air is filled with disco lights twinkling everywhere. I live in my own personal snow globe. I blame the tweens.

Friday after school, an entire herd of hormone-addled little girls descended upon our meager little home. The house was so nervous it trembled under their footfalls. 

Six little 11 and 12 year-old girls giggled and screamed. Six little girls went to run errands around the property when one could have gotten the job done. Six little girls shared secrets that were not for me. And still, I tried to hear them. They ran in herds through the mist in the woods, but their ruckus broke through all of it and the entire Pacific Northwest heard the tell-tale sounds of a slumber party. 

Makeup and cupcakes and secrets are passed around at a breakneck pace. Glitter is applied to lips, cheeks, hair and carpets. The girls make their own pizzas and ask for wifi passwords and hug and giggle--no time for crying or whatever the hell these girls do when they aren't giggling or applying makeup. 

Six little girls walk the fine line between their childhood and becoming women. 

I watched them with intense curiosity. My ears strained for every hushed syllable. Let them be, I kept telling myself. Just let them be. But I simply couldn't. They are at this magical time in their lives and they want to be older--to act older and be taken seriously from the world that wants to keep them children for as long as they can. 

In the world, their names and faces are just a handful out of millions in their same age category. In the world they are just statistics. But it's the statistics that keep gumming up my brain. One in three girls....

One in three girls will experience some form of sexual or physical violence in their lifetime (mostly occurring between 15 and 25). One in 14 girls will become pregnant while still in their teens. One in four girls will not graduate highschool. 

I look at these bright-eyed and hopeful little girls and I think about these numbers. I don't want to see these beautiful babies as just statistics. I want to see their futures with as much optimism as the next. Just let them be our babies for a little bit longer. Just let them be wrapped up in our community with as much love as they will tolerate, and then just a little bit more.

The cacophony whirled about the house and just when I thought I might become deaf or overdose on fingernail polish fumes, my support staff arrives. Like the magi, three women walk through my door bringing hair tinsel and henna and glitter and adult conversation. 

In an instant, the night took on a different purpose. These fairy Godmothers--business owners and artists and performers--began doodling on soft and young skin, creating glittery rivulets of color. They tied hair tinsel into each hormonal mane. The grown women did not whisper. We spoke loudly and with clarity and unapologetic truths. We talked about art and new projects and travels all around the world. We talked about complex relationships and identity. The little girls' ears did not have to strain, but they listened. 

They listened to the experience of strong women. They listened to testimony from women who had risen from the trenches of adolescence. They listened to our dreams and our accomplishments. At least, I hope they did. 

These women rescued me. They offered so much more than even the six little girls will ever know. What my friends gave the tweens was strength, caring, and example. My sisters acknowledge that it's community support that can help fend off dire statistics and came together to assist the little ones in their own personal emergence. 

So maybe these little girls won't become globetrotting entrepreneurs. Maybe they won't be artists. It's not our job to tell them what to do. But in modeling the idea of a strong and independent woman, we've given them a little more of what they need in life. 

For now, we can't do much for them. We can just give them love and let them be. 

Painting is by Libyan artist Awad Abeida 

Rutting Season, Year Two: The Cat Lady's Secret Revealed.

Last year I wrote an in-depth expose on small-town dynamics in the Rutting Season where I chided those feeble-minded bonobos of the valley for "hooking up" with unassuming partners. I thought that these poor, single ruralites simply failed to keep their biological tendencies in check.

"Ha!" I scoffed as I walked sololy into the local watering hole this last weekend. "Just look at all of these folks trying to find a suitable bed warmer!"

I was supposed to walk into that bar and watch all of the woodsman figure out which single vixen would be whiskeyed away to their burley bagua. I was. But I couldn't over the din of my own personal biological clock ever-so-gently banging the gong.

In the store the other day while I perused the Thai food section, my son sweetly and discretely bellowed, "MOM, WHY DOES YOUR BODY WANT TO HAVE MORE BABIES?"

I almost couldn't hear him over the whoosh of humiliation throbbing in my ears. (Note: Children obviously DO hear your conversations with your mother after your second glass of wine.)

The biological urge to mate and fork and knife and spoon and make babies apparently does not leave once you have shat forth the next generation as one would assume. It wells up and continues to haunt you well after you've declared you're done spawning.

"Why?" I shout to my womb in my best navel-gazing pose while I jangle my gold retirement watch. "I've delivered two reasonably attractive children into this world! What more do you want from me?!" ::Then shouting to the heavens::"What's wrong with me?!"

Oh yeah. Right. 

I sat at the bar and watched the flocks of happy people making a ruckus over their beers and noticed something: There were no single people in the bar. They all came with their equally jovial counterparts. I did the math. Everybody came out even. Well, except for me. And then I took a further step back and checked out the entire valley. Out of all the single girlfriends I've made over the years, I was the last one solo. They all managed to find partners of some kind or another. Hell, it seems like everyone has either a hunk of meat in their bed or at the very least a slab of something on the side.

And now it's rutting season, but there's not much rutting going on.  It just so happens to be that this one is a little slimmer than the rest.

And to make matters even more bitch-worthy, I got a call. The three-legged cat (whom I already named Emily Dickenson) has already been adopted. Yes, she slipped between my purr-starved, one-cat's-not-enough fingers. 
 Consoling my greedy cat-needing self, I realized that I needed to suck it up, go on without my beloved Emily Dickenson and get another damned cat.

Until I realized something terrifyingly astonishing. I will preface said epiphany with a factoid.

My daughter recently taught me how to age a pine tree. Pine trees grow a tier of branches for every year that they survive. 

It's only logical to assume that for every year a single woman survives the rutting season she acquires a new cat. So you know that crazy old lady with a brazillion cats on your street? Yup. She's prolly been single a brazillion years, poor thing.

I think of this girl in the infancy of her crazy cat lady phase.



She's got so much to offer the cat world.

So, I'm at a crossroads. What do you do when you see the next step in your life? There are a few things that I've clarified to myself recently:1) I won't stoop to whatever's available. 2)I'll not allow myself to dive into the depths of kitten-induced euphoria because we all know that it's laced with the stench of desperation....and cat piss. 

So what the hell is there left to do? What the hell do we do? (royal "we," I assume. I hope).

We trudge the hell forward, that's what. We continue on in our pursuits of careers and child-rearing (if applicable) and supremacy over the deviant mass that is the laundry. 

We stifle the biological gong with pie.

 Sure, it sucks. But the options, being scant, aren't worth the sacrifice. I'll get over this rutting season new cat or no new cat.

Allz I can say is thank gawuduh for pinterest.

Hello Freak!

I came home a little late today. I had planned to write about the best children's Halloween stories tonight and went to the bookstore where my favorite bookstore owner and I talked comic books and other nerdly things. I didn't know I had a wounded little girl at home.

She was a little quiet. Tomorrow's Halloween, so I'd only thought she was busy thinking about her costume--she'll be going as Wednesday Addams.

Then she told me about the incident at school.

"Hello Freak!" was scrawled acrossed her nametag when my daughter got to class today. It's simple, but this little bullying brat-hole was unaware of what they did to my daughter.

They, the bullies of the world, don't know what they really do when they use these words. They don't know the power. They don't know that these words, words intended to hurt, actually live on throughout our lives. They are burned into our selves like tattoos we do not ask to have. These words grow like monsters  just under our skin and attach to our vulnerable self-confidence where they become parasites, eating away at our worth.

"Hello freak!" are the words that bring to mind people in cages, marginalized from the rest of society. As an outspoken and often unapologetically odd grown up, I've come accustomed to these types of words and wear them with pride. But this isn't about me.

This is about an 11 year-old girl in the throes of hormoneville. Your first ride with hormones is like riding a mechanical bull in your underwear in front of the world. All you can do is simply hang on. But it becomes harder when the hot branding iron of hurtful words comes in to stab at you.

The bullying thing is sometimes too hard to bear for these kids. And what can they do to protect themselves? I do not want her to fight back. We've tried "saying something nice" to each bully in hopes that it would pacify them in some way. No good. Kindness is often misconstrued as weakness, from our impirical investigation.

Telling teachers does not work. They are simply too used to these words and often forget what it was like when they were that age (note: If you are a teacher who stands up to these types of words, you have my kudos. I'd love to know which class you teach and how you fix this type of thing. Seriously. I know that this is a generalization, but until I am proved wrong, this is the only logical explanation I can come up with.).

After my daughter told me how hurt she felt. "Yanno, the freaks, nerds, dweebs, and geeks are the ones who change the world," I said. "They make the impact. They affect the way others see the world, and it's because they are different, they aren't burdened by being normal."

This works a little to change her spirits. We go through the list of bullied nerds through history. Bill Gates, Neil Gaiman, Tina Fey, Ben Stein, Einstein, Wes Anderson, Tim Burton, Joss Whedon. They made today what it is because they weren't hindered by normalcy. (Plus, they're mega rich.)

We have found only one steadfast approach to these types of bullies. Whenever my daughter is told nasty things from bullies, she goes to that one place, 20 years down the road...She's running late for a flight to (my daughter says London for the 70th year anniversary ::mega nerd trump!::) so she stops by a McDonald's. There, at the counter is her bully. All her bully can say is, "would you like fries with that?"

This is how we get through our bullying. This is how we deal. It may not be the best strategy, but it is ours and this vision empowers her and gives purpose and pride to who she is, and moreso, to who she will be. My daughter sees this moment clear as today and gets back to reading a comic, smiling.

We work so incredibly hard to make our children individuals, I'd hate to have something like "Hello Freak!" get in the way of progress. And today, we won.

Hurt today, fries tomorrow.

Lest we forget....