All We Can Do is Pray

My dad and I are having a little fight, though it occurs to me that he doesn’t actually know we’re fighting.  Maybe a more accurate way to describe it is that he thinks everything’s fine and my feelings are hurt.

I’ll just be honest with you.  My feelings are hurt on two levels, one is altruistic; the other is selfish.

My feelings are hurt in an altruistic sense because of the following: my sister-in-law has not enrolled my youngest nephew in pre-school as she had agreed to do when my brother agreed to give him back to her.

This pisses me off.

I said, “God, that pisses me off.” and my dad said, “Well, there’s no point in getting pissed off.  All you can do is smile and accept that that’s how life is.  God will take care of it.”

If I were God, which I am not, I would be pissed off that perfectly capable, able people with some big old brains in their heads were waiting around for Me to do something when maybe the Something I was going to do involved them being motivated to do it.

I am tired, tired, tired, weary in my bones of having to listen to every single person in my family talk about my sister-in-law like she is some all-powerful force of nature who could, at any minute, wreck all our lives if we don’t always make every effort to appease her and appear as if we are no threat to her.

She’s just a person.  A person I don’t like, but just a person.  To make her into some mythological beast none of us are cut out to fight is unfair to everyone, even her.

And I’m pissed and hurt because I’m going to be in Chicago next week and my dad’s going to be in Naperville and when I called him and suggested we meet for dinner, he said “no.”

Fucking Naperville.

Then he said he was going to spend the night on the night in question down at my mom’s.  Why don’t I drive clear down there and have dinner with them?

He can’t drive from Naperville downtown against rush hour traffic, but I can drive down to fucking Kankakee with rush hour traffic?  As a compromise after he’s already said “no”?

Oh, gee, I wonder why I’m not in any big hurry to make that drive?

I have eleventy billion theories I was going to bore you with, but even I’m tired of explaining to myself that this is just how it is and I have to learn to accept it.  It’s bullshit when others say it to me and it’s bullshit when I try to convince myself.

In All Fairness, I Assume Most of Us are Barely Literate, Not Completely Illiterate

WSJ.com takes me to task for calling us all a bunch of illiterate fools.

In my defense, being illiterate isn’t all that bad; I’m spared the ridiculousness of the word “blogress,” which succeeds in being both patronizing and stupid at the same time.

But, hey, Rachel, I think if the Wall Street Journal calls us a “blogress,” we can put it on our resumes. I know I’m adding it to my about page as soon as I’m done with this post.

Edited to add: I know some of you will be so excited by this that you may want to make out with me, just to get some Journal cooties on you.  That’s fine.  Just drop me an email.

If I Am the Woman the World Needs, The World is in Trouble

Fine.  I’m going to the blogger on the hill thing.  “Complainer in chief.”  You know when Adam “Tiny Pasture” Kleinheider and my dad start making similar jokes you’re in trouble.  Could we imagine if Kleinheider ever met my dad?  At first, it would be okay, because Kleinheider would just stand there all goofy and quiet.  But then my dad would say something cutting and snarky about me and the flood gates would open.  They’d be commiserating like two old war buddies about how mean I am.  They’d send each other Christmas cards.  They’d call each other once a month just to complain about how bossy I am.  They’d get my brothers on a conference call.  They’d love each other.  It’d be terrible.

I Believe You Have a Right to Rock the Boat

I like it when Slartibartfast comes around, if only because he sees things so much differently than I do that it makes me think.

But today?  Today I want to go over to Slarti’s house, grab him by the arm, and take him around town kicking ass and taking names.

Sadly, we would have to start by tying Slarti to a chair and beating him with a hundred feminists and I am not strong enough to lift a hundred feminists.

Shoot, I’m not even strong enough to lift myself. 

But let’s not get distracted by my problems.  We’re talking about how much Slarti needs him some feminist indoctrination.

Ready, Slarti?

Repeat after me:

What I do has value and I have the right to expect that my value be recognized even if I don’t conform to strict gender categories and societal expectations.

I do have the right to expect the world to make room for me and the right to be angry when it won’t.

See, today Slarti writes about how, even though he likes to do domestic things, he feels excluded from participating, as a parent and domestic-task-do-er, in groups that call themselves, say, Tennessee Moms.

And he’s right, that he is being excluded and in an unfair bullshit way.

But, does he start up his own group?  Call the Tennessean on their bullshit gender stereotyping? Write a post about what bullshit it is that his own talents and skills are overlooked just because he’s a man?

No.

He writes a post about how, since he’s always been “different,” he’s learned to suck it up and accept that the resources he needs are never going to be available to him because he doesn’t fit in.

Slarti, I know you’re a Christian, so cover your ears at this next part, but what the fuck?

No.

You have value and the world should make room for you and the fact that it doesn’t sucks.  A person might have to make his or her peace with that, but you shouldn’t accept it.

How Long Did You Think You Could Go on Like That?

I’m all the time cruising around Little Egypt just for fun, taking in the Old Slave House and… and… some other stuff I can’t tell you about here on the internet and, often, while you’re perusing the New York Times and reading Tiny Cat Pants, the New York Times and I are watching you pee.

We’re weird like that.