Jan. 26: Choosing joy (between clenched teeth)

My self-improvement effort this year is to choose joy; when faced with a situation that has the potential to super-duper piss me off, I want to try NOT to be pissed off. I don’t know if that’s how everyone else defines the “choosing joy” thing, but that’s how I’m doing it, because it has the greatest potential to being life-changing for me. I realize this is a very lofty goal. ;)

When crossed, my usual first reaction is to defend myself. This might be because I’m human, but also because dissension and confrontation make my heart beat too fast and I prefer for everyone to always be on the same side for always and ever ever ever… or at least not to be assholes. During the State of the Union address last week, when so many Republicans refused to applaud or even pay attention to what the president was saying? Oh. Em. Gee. That made me furious, not because they disagreed with the president (that’s their right), but because their behavior was completely childish. And while I know we’ll never reach consensus on how this country should best be run, do we have to be assholes?

(That answer for many would, apparently, be “Yes, because Obama.”)

  Choose joy, Jen. Choose it. It’s right there. Embrace it.

Ooooooommmmmmmmm…

Sometimes I read the news and think, “Why is this news?” because the issue seems so the-answer-is-clear-why-would-anyone-argue-with-this? straightforward. Example: “bee stings hurt!” Duh. They do. That’s probably 95 percent fact (I suppose some people like ‘em). Not news.

Articles about the importance of getting our kids vaccinated so we don’t revive long-dead pandemic diseases? WHY IS THIS NEWS? It’s news because people have chosen not to vaccinate after a few celebrities said vaccinations are bad. Not scientists, or physicians, or people who actually know what they’re talking about, but people who are beautiful and happen to have a platform.

Brilliant parenting move, people. Brilliant move, too, as a member of the human race.

I take these irresponsible decisions personally, because my immune system was completely zapped during chemotherapy. I did my best to stay away from places where I could easily be infected—airplanes, crowds in general—but couldn’t avoid the occasional risk. The idea that someone I encountered might be carrying measles, and my body couldn’t have fought it off? Geez. It’s scary to think there are people out there who don’t even know they have a weakened immune system, and they go on a little ol’ vacation and come home with the Plague. (Worst souvenir ever.)

There was a piece in The Onion last week about parents’ choice to immunize their kids. It’s satire, but only barely.

So, I’d love to choose joy when I read about WHY people aren’t vaccinating their kids, but it ain’t easy.

Same thing, though slightly less significant for the short term, with, saaaay, climate change deniers. How do people so easily disregard scientific facts? And how is that EVER a political issue?

It kinda reminds me about a Sabbath School teacher who insisted dinosaurs, like unicorns, weren’t real because they weren’t mentioned in the Bible. I remember wondering then, even at nine years old, what those huge fossils archaeologists had found were, if dinosaurs never existed.

Goodness and gracious. Serenity now.

My biggest challenge, obviously, is choosing joy when I see absolutely no joy in or around a situation. It becomes even more challenging when the situation involves people who have attacked me personally. I asked a very wise friend about how to deal with these things better, and she assured me that karma is a very real thing; if I can believe that all people eventually get what they deserve, I can probably back off from my need to exact revenge on the mean ones. She was very right.

I’m not perfect, and there’s still time for me to get fed up with choosing joy, but nowadays, when rotten stuff comes along and I just can’t get it out of my head, my method of coping goes like this:

1. I remind myself that we get out of life what we put in. When I’m especially hurt or angry, I like to think of driving the karma bus through a parking lot full of mean people. (I don’t think that’s exactly what my wise friend had in mind, but hey, it works for me.)
2. I watch cat videos on the Internet, read quotes about kindness and authenticity, pet my critters, cook stuff, or clean.
3. I make a conscious choice not to be angry, hurt, or sad about things/people not in my control.
4. Sometimes it works. More often than not, it works.

If you’re looking to be less critical and/or bothered by the things around you, here’s my advice to you:

1. Ignore it if you can.
2. Distract yourself.
3. Express yourself in a way that will not hurt others (write in a journal, create something, scream into a pillow)
4. If possible, find a way to fix the things that bother you—as Gandhi said, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”
5. If those things don’t work, avoid people and weapons and alcohol and posting on Facebook. In other words, don’t be an asshole.

Take it from me, because, y’know, I have no idea what I’m talking about.

Sep. 14: In which Jen rants a little

It’s Day #14 of our September Blog Challenge and today the topic is:

What has happened lately in the media that makes you want to rant?

Goodness, there are just so many things.

I guess marriage equality is a biggie for me personally—for several reasons, but mostly because I don’t like that some people are treated unfairly for no logical reason. Actually, a lot of the people who are doing the unfair treating think they have a very logical reason: because the Bible says so. Here’s the thing:

Having been raised in a church that claims it takes the Bible very literally—rest on the Sabbath, which is the seventh day of the week, as specified in Genesis; avoid unclean foods specified in Leviticus 11; when people die they are dead, not in Heaven or Hell; ornamental jewelry draws attention to a person rather than God; one’s body is a temple, which has been interpreted as anti-alcohol, anti-drugs, anti-caffeine, etc.—I find this trail mix analogy to be perfect. In fact, I remember sitting in church around the age of nine, bored out of my mind during the sermon, and looking up the scriptures listed with each of the 28 fundamental Adventist beliefs. (What else could I do to make the time pass? I’d already circled all the words in the bulletin that had been said, and I giggled through the hymnal as I put “in the bathroom” after each title. Excuse me, but “He Lives” and “Who is He in Yonder Stall?” still give me the chuckles.) In my impromptu solo Bible study, I was surprised to find that there were some “rules” the church followed explicitly, but others they completely overlooked. Even at that age, I saw the inconsistencies between what the Bible told us to do and what we actually did. See, trail mix! Here are just a few examples.

In Leviticus chapter 12, it says that women are unclean for a week after they give birth to a boy and two weeks if it’s a girl—I guess girls are dirtier? Oh, and boys must be circumcised at eight days old. There would be far fewer arguments on cafemom.com if people just did what the Lord commanded.

Leviticus, chapter 19 has things to say about haircuts and tattoos.

27 Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard.
28 Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you: I am the LORD.

In chapter 20 there’s a whole bunch of stuff about being put to death for cursing your parents (no one would ever make it past 17 years of age, for sure). And in chapter 21 we find out that God doesn’t like people with handicaps???

16 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,
17 Speak unto Aaron, saying, Whosoever he be of thy seed in their generations that hath any blemish, let him not approach to offer the bread of his God.
18 For whatsoever man he be that hath a blemish, he shall not approach: a blind man, or a lame, or he that hath a flat nose, or any thing superfluous,
19 Or a man that is brokenfooted, or brokenhanded,
20 Or crookbackt, or a dwarf, or that hath a blemish in his eye, or be scurvy, or scabbed, or hath his stones broken;
21 No man that hath a blemish of the seed of Aaron the priest shall come nigh to offer the offerings of the LORD made by fire: he hath a blemish; he shall not come nigh to offer the bread of his God.

 

Hoo, boy.

I especially love this one: in 1 Timothy, the very book in which Paul condemns homosexuals (kinda; 1:10), he also says “bodily exercise profiteth little” (4:8) and “Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach's sake and thine often infirmities” (5:23). Sounds to me like Paul was a fat, drunk homophobe… so it totally makes sense that we follow every word he wrote.

If you’re using the Bible as the reason you don’t believe in marriage equality, then I call shenanigans. You gotta come up with something better.

As I said, it’s the discrimination part of being against marriage equality that bothers me most.

It’s weird, but I don’t think of my marriage as being interracial—Victor’s as white as white can be on the inside—but indeed, it is. There was a time when marrying outside of one’s own race was illegal too.

I look at these images and am awfully glad I wasn’t old enough to have an opinion at that time. I’m also glad I hadn’t met Victor and fallen in love but was forbidden to marry him. That would absolutely break my heart, for other people to tell me that I can’t marry the person I love. I would wonder why it’s even any of their business… how a white girl marrying an Asian boy could make anyone else’s marriage less special… how they can stand behind the Bible as the basis for these discriminatory beliefs, a book which also forbids divorce and adultery, a book that tells us to love one another.

Whether you question the Bible’s origins and interpretations or not, it’s hard to deny that Jesus Christ once walked the earth and that he was a pretty decent guy. In fact, Christians are named so because his followers are supposed to be Christ-like. Here’s what Jesus said about love:

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. John 13:34

And that, my friends, is my rant for the day. I promise that tomorrow will be way less soapbox-y.

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If you’re a blogger and want to do our blog challenge with us, let me know and I’ll send you our list! Otherwise, tune in here (and on Sherilee’s happy little blog) every day in September.

Aug. 10: Football parents (ugh)

Just now I started to blog nasty things about football parents and it was all sounding very familiar, so I looked back at August 2012, and sure enough, I blogged about it then. Here’s what I said last year at this time, and I mean it even more this year. Just ignore the part where I whine about my hair—not that those complaints don’t still apply too, but OMG, I was really annoying whining about my hair like that. Thanks for not telling me. Sheesh.

So, yeah, apparently football parents can be real jackholes. As an adult, I’ve seldom been told preemptively to behave like a decent human being; this makes the second year in a row I had to go to a meeting to hear exactly that. And again, it just surprises me so much that these things need to be said.

I know I don’t always make the right decisions about how best to handle situations that make me unhappy. I know I can be a jerk. I fully admit that I go into the football season every year with a frowny face. But I know my place when it comes to being a football parent. That, I know.

Here’s why Victor and/or I would contact my kid’s coach:

1. To tell him Jack is going to miss practice (rarely happens)
2. To tell him Jack is going to miss a game (never happens)
3. To tell him Jack’s arm fell off (you never know)

Here’s why Victor and/or I would contact the head coach or league president:

1. To tell him we’re pretty sure the kid on Jack’s team with the full beard isn’t 11 years old.
2. To tell him we discovered that Jack’s coach looks exactly like and has the same name as the president of NAMBLA.

Here are things Victor and/or I would NEVER say to my kid’s coach, the head coach, or league president:

1. “I want Jack to be on [specific coach or player’s] team. Make it so.”
   (This is a tough one… the right teammates make carpooling to practices so much easier!)
2. “Why did you let that other kid go in for Jack in the second quarter? He’s way better than that kid. I’m emailing you a list of reasons right now.”
3. “When will Jack get to play quarterback? He’s worked so hard! I’m emailing you pictures of him in an NFL jersey right now.”
4. “Jack only got 136.5 seconds of playing time in the last game. The other boys played 142 seconds. No fairsies!”
5. “I’ve been watching video of the last three games we lost, and I’ve come up with a great play I’d like to share with you.”
6. “Can I stand next to you during the games? Maybe occasionally yell things?”
7. “Remind me again: what exactly is a ‘down’?'”

Every one of us is committing our entire fall season to football. The coaches and league board members volunteer incredible amounts of their time to making it a good one. Our job, as good football parents, is not to see if our kid can get special treatment, or to offer up our vast football knowledge, or really, to question the way the league runs. We take our kid to practice, get him the gear and apparel he needs, go to his games, and cheer for his team. We praise our kid, win or lose. We encourage him to work hard, be a good teammate, and have fun.

But some parents think the coaches need help doing their jobs, and those moms and dads are the ones that have made a parental behavior contract a necessity for all of us. Pffft. What are we demonstrating to our kids?

…

People super-suck sometimes, and when I am reminded of that, it changes the way I look at the world—and not in a sweet-tea-and-sunshine* kind o’ way. I’d like to practice an act or two (or eight) of kindness today to balance out the universe a bit. If you’d like to join me, here are a list of really easy ideas found with a quick Pinterest search:

• Send a snail-mail card to someone
• Pick flowers from your yard and give them to someone whose day needs brightening
• Put coins in a vending machine to surprise the next customer
• Give another driver your parking spot
• Donate to Goodwill
• Pass popsicles out to the neighbor kids

So, yeah. Let’s be nice.

*Yep, that’s a shout-out to Sherilee, who manages to stay positive, or at least blog that way, even when faced with stuff that sucks. Good on ya, Sher!

Apr. 13: Is this racism? I don’t know.

On my way out of the school yesterday, the principal pulled me aside to tell me about an incident with which Jack was involved. I immediately started to apologize—it’s a habit—but this time it wasn’t Jack’s fault… because he can’t help his ethnicity.

Seems one of the instructional assistants heard another fifth grade boy calling Jack “Asian.” Not referring to him as Asian, but actually calling him “Asian,” like a name. I was kinda “meh” about it until the principal said the same boy calls another kid “Little Mexican.” Together, these things made me super-prickly. I was glad the IA reported it and the principal gave this situation the attention it deserved: the kid was reminded of the rules about name-calling at school and asked to apologize. (For those of you familiar with our PBIS program, I don’t know if he was given a warning or referral, or spoken to only.)

I don’t know if I should be angry or sad or mama-bear-protective. My boy knows his ethnicity doesn’t make him better or worse than anyone else, so I’m not worried he’ll be scarred by this incident (it helps that he doesn’t like the kid much anyway). I think the whole thing mostly just makes me sad. What makes me prickly about it is that a kid—any kid in 2013—thinks it’s OK to talk to others this way. Have these racist attitudes been taught at home? Or could it be that the school staff and I are all overreacting because it’s typical at this age to be unintentionally insensitive?

When my nephews were in high school, I remember my sister being shocked to hear them and their friends call each other the n-word. To them, though, that was just a silly name that meant “friend.” It seems like many of the racist attitudes we were exposed to while growing up in the 70’s are mostly history, at least in this part of the world. This makes me very happy. The idea that people who grew up then might not only still be hanging on to those attitudes, but teaching them to their kids, makes me very unhappy.

We all have biases, some so much a part of us that we don’t even remember where they came from. I am only slightly embarrassed to admit that I am biased against ignorant and/or mean people, bad drivers, and jackasses who walk slowly in crowds. But when it comes to the biggies—gender, race, religion, age, sexual orientation, etc.—it is so, so important that we point our children in the right direction, discrimination-wise. 

Stepping off my soapbox now.

Sep. 30: September in review

Here’s my summary of September 2012. The little owl image is in honor of my friend Sherilee, who has, as she puts it, “a thing for owls.”

Special days I celebrated this month and how:

• Kim F’n-W Day! Kim’s birthday was the 6th, as well as my cousin Deanna’s and friend Dan’s. What a terrific day to celebrate three terrific people! Kim and I decided long ago that September is Kimjenber until the 7th, when we change over to Jenkimber. Sooo… the 6th is special for that reason too.
• Wendy’s birthday! Fun surprise-y lunch on Thirsty Thursday. Yay!
• MY birthday! It was mostly fab, but-cept for this.
• Tina’s birthday! That was last Friday, and we had a girls’ night out with Val and Theresa. It was a fantastic evening and left us all quite flammable. 
• Those weren’t even all the celebrations on my calendar this month—Julianne, Jacob, Mack, Megan, Lafe, April, Margaret, and Hawaii Laura all had birthdays too.

Gifts I gave and/or received this month:

• I gave and received lotsa birthday gifts—what fun!
• I received one gift that deserves its own blog post. Hopefully I’ll be able to write it up soon. It’s a doozy.

Books I read this month:

• My concentration has been lacking lately, so I haven’t been reading as much as usual. This month I re-read Why Girls Are Weird—I was needing something familiar and comforting, not to mention hilariously, intensely readable.
• Right now I’m about two-thirds of the way through A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. It’s been on my list for years—how have I gotten to this age without ever reading it before? I blame my Adventist education and teachers who thought all fiction was the devil’s work. Pfffft. Anyway, I adore the book so far, and I kinda don’t want it to end.

Movies and TV shows worth mentioning:

All the new episodes of the shows I’ve missed all summer: I’ve been welcoming them back with open arms eyes. I love Hulu Plus.

This month’s disappointments:

• Can I be happy for a friend who flew off to a Hawaiian vacation today and still be totally bummed out that I’m not there too? If so, then that. Hope you’re having fun, Val!
• The anniversary of 9/11 brings up tragic of memories of that day. I don’t know if it ever won’t. It shouldn’t.
• I hate being reminded of how mean and immature some people can be. It’s a lot nicer to go through life pretending they don’t exist, or at least not paying any attention to them. But then they get in your face, and UGH, you just feel like you’re in junior high again.

My accomplishments:

• Lots of school stuff you don’t care about. Unfortunately, the busy-ness of school keeps me from blogging more often. You may not care about that either. You’re mean.
• I’ve sat through Jack’s football games without falling asleep. I read a magazine at one of ‘em, though. Vic called me “Darlene” because apparently his mom used to take reading materials to Mariners games. I would never take a magazine to a *real* game!
• I’ve been getting lots of extra sleep. My body’s been telling me it’s tired, and I’ve been listening;—people are supposed to do that, right? Sooo… when it’s 9pm and I can’t keep my eyes open, I go to bed. There’ve been nights I’ve slept 11 hours—it’s quite lovely. This translates into needing fewer naps, which I haven’t had time for anyway, so my days have been more productive too.

Anything else noteworthy:

• Vic’s car is fixed. I didn’t like being a one-car family at all—way too much planning required.
• Katie started cross-country, and she’s hardly taken off her sweatshirt since. It’s very Sue Heck.
• Stephanie has reconsidered her bet with me now that Romney is goin’ down in flames. I should probably insist that a bet’s a bet, and make her do something horribly Democrat-y on Election Day. Lucky for her I like her so much, I’ll be kind no matter what.
• I have funny things:

Later, doods.

Aug. 6: Silly, mean, deep, mean, inappropriate. And mean.

This morning I thought I’d do one of those “currently” posts, but YAWNERS. It got boring, fast. Instead, I’m going to share stuff I’ve been collecting—some’s funny, some’s profound, but none of it’s YAWNERS, I promise. Here ya go.

 

 

Bachelorette party cake = BRILLIANT

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I totally did not think of Tina when I saw this… nope…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Something happened on Facebook this weekend that angered me greatly. A friend shared a well-written article about the protests surrounding that chicken restaurant (you know the one) that has donated to anti-gay campaigns for years, and it prompted a “friend” of that friend to leave an incredibly offensive and ignorant comment about why she thinks gay marriage should not be legal. What bothered me besides the Bible verses she used to support her statement was that she prefaced the whole thing with, “I know and love a number of homosexuals, but…”

I wanted to reply with many, many words that would offend her right back. I know a lot of words like that; I totally coulda. Because no, you don’t love a number of homosexuals if you think legalizing their marriage will destroy the family basis of society and have “a much more far-reaching agenda than appears on the surface, including legalizing pedophilia and bestiality.” You don’t love them at all. You hate them. You think they’re icky and sinful and wrong. And that makes me think YOU are icky and sinful and wrong. Argh.

I didn’t have to respond because other people did, and they did it in a way that was so much better and more fair than I would have. They quoted the Bible AND EVERYTHING. It was the best. Because this is the truth:

And it reminded me of something I heard Aziz Ansari say on the subject (he’s the actor who plays the very annoying Tom on Parks & Recreation):

“My whole take on the gay rights issue, particularly gay marriage, is, let’s be honest, if you’re against gay marriage, you just don’t like gay people and you want to stick it to ‘em. And I’m not saying that I wouldn’t do the same thing if I was presented with similar opportunities. If there was a law up for debate where it was like – ‘hey man, do you think guys that wear tight t-shirts and get bottle service at nightclubs should be allowed to own property?’ – I’d be like, ‘No!  @$#@ those guys! Yeah, uh, it violates the sanctity of owning property and it says in the Bible that they’re douchebags.’ Whatever I need to say so you don’t think this is coming from purely a place of hate.” —Aziz  Ansari

Bullseye.

Don’t think that I don’t realize how much of my post today has to do with not liking people. While it was not a conscious decision to lump all these things together, well, there they all are. Heh heh heh.

So’s not to leave a “Jen be so meeeeean!” taste in your mouth, here’s a picture of Lucy and Millie being friends that don’t chase or hiss or bite or claw. Sometimes they are very sweet critters.

I hope your day also has very little chasing, hissing, biting, or clawing.