Month: November 2013

File this: Not Funny if it Happens to You

Maggie and I were getting hair cuts tonight when Alex called me. I declined the call and received the below text.

Right now cleaning the earphone plug on my phone it is full of dog shit cause the little basterd just had to chase and kill the leaf on the hill so he jerked it right out of my hand

I admit it. I laughed. I then read the text aloud and Maggie and Jeanna chuckled. Jeanna even said, “I believe I have heard it all now!”

I know how frustrating it is to have an expensive phone potentially not working. Alex thought long and hard before getting a smartphone. He even bought a 100 dollar case to protect it from rain, snow, sleet and flood. I guess he didn’t think about dogs.

I asked how this could have happened with his case and was told he had the headphones out for just a few minutes. I don’t think he found my comment too helpful:

This is gross but suck on it. That worked w mine.

See? His phone thinks the headphone jack is in it so won’t play sounds the normal route. The sucking trick I learned on the Internet when Maggie dropped my phone in slush.

I called mom on our way home to see if the storm had died down or not. She told us she thought he had gone to the AT&T store. I suggested a bag of rice and mom replied that she was sure it was not wet but chunky. Maggie and I howled over that, thinking about the poor person who got that customer! I mused it might be fun to lurk on their employee forums: “You won’t believe this! Some guy’s phone was literally full of shit!”

I had to pick Michael up from a volunteer opportunity to iChat. He called me and asked if RJ was doing something to a phone as he had been alerted on his phone. I started laughing and could barely spit it out. I was barely able to see from the tears. He said. “Let me get this straight …” andI dissolved into laughter again. I asked him if he wanted to know what I had I said and he immediately quipped, “Shit happens?” Glad I didn’t hit the police car next to me!

I am still hopeful the phone will recover without a chunk out of the wallet. I hope Ale. Can see the humor in it from our perspective and finds it as funny as we did. I think it would take me a couple of days …

What is Justice?

This post was started on 1-6-2013 and I just recently found it in my drafts. I am going to work on finishing it tonight though I am again not sure where I was headed when I started this. I just skimmed the article again to refresh my memory.

I have been ruminating on recent NYTimes article regarding something called restorative justice. You can read the article here. It will take you a bit of time to read it but it is well worth the read. I will wait.

Okay, how many of you are now thinking, “There is NO way that could be me?” I volunteered for the same organization as Kate many years ago and we “met” online. We have been Facebook friends for a few years and I heard of Ann’s shooting when it happened. I could not imagine the feelings of Kate, Andy and Conor’s parents. The feelings of sadness, anger and betrayal by a boy they loved and raised.

Reading this article has really given me food for thought. Just how one finds that kind of forgiveness in their heart is almost beyond me. Tragedy has touched my life in a profound way, also through a murder. In my case, it was a young girl, just barely a teenager. I had not even met her in person before but had Facebook chatted with her many nights and she was my son’s girlfriend in Cincinnati, as two teens who live an hour apart can be boyfriend and girlfriend. Much easier in the digital age in which they were raised.

It is hard for me to think of forgiving her murderer. Of being able to sit there and hear what happened. Feel it as if I were there, because that is what parents do. I feel sick, as Michael must have, reading of him stopping on the way to the hospital to vomit. I hear what Andy may have sounded like when he heard Conor talk about what he did to his daughter, how she cried out in a vain attempt to live. I get a pit in my stomach just writing this.

I know that holding onto anger and rage only hurts me. Not the person who has hurt me. I know that. I get that. I just can’t always get beyond it. A week or so after Esme was murdered, Michael was told he could not go to the local park. I just couldn’t do it. He needed to be home. To be safe. He went anyway. I found him and I remember yelling at him and crying, “I get to be over protective for a few weeks. I GET to be this way. You can’t take this away from me. I won’t always be like this but I need more than a week. Get yourself home NOW!” He got it. And I got over that … mostly.

Tragedy like this affects your life … forever. Some things will never be the same. I look at things differently. I worry each time Maggie walks to work. Or wants to go for a run. Or a bike ride by herself.

I admire Kate and Andy and Conor’s parents for having the faith and love and desire to get to the space of forgiveness. To know that this is for them as much as for Conor … actually, it is more for them than for Conor. I actually wish more of the world could move to this space of love.  It is hard for me to separate forgiveness out from punishment. I worry that forgiveness means no repercussions. This is another example of how that is not the case. Conor is serving time for his crime. If Kate and Andy did not forgive him, they would also continue to be punishing themselves. Carrying around hurt and anger does not do a body good.

Does this change what you think of when you think of justice? I used to be very pro-death penalty. Then I was very anti-death penalty. After a personal experience, I felt that I could be happy seeing that man put to death (he is on death row, if anyone wants to know). What constitutes justice? An eye for an eye? Turning the other cheek? There are many forms of justice. I hope to be able to get to this space some day myself.

Roller Derby

Stress has been the name of the game these past couple of days at work. Nothing that I won’t get over but the fun has been few and far between. Had an interesting and fun IM with my manager today about Maggie’s interest in roller derby.

When I was first approached about it, I told her I would look into it and think about it. All smart kids know that means one of two things: parents will ignore the fact that the conversation ever took place or that it is an immediate and resounding, “No!”  Maggie was not going going to let me get away with either option so I did what any tech-savvy mom would do: I Googled “roller derby Dayton Ohio” and found one adult league and no junior league options. I told her emphatically I was NOT driving her to Cinci so we were good. Or so I thought.
A few months later, junior roller derby came to Dayton Ohio and she was THRILLED. I was  not. I hemmed. I hawed. I asked a friend who does roller derby what she thought about my precious snowflake daughter hanging out with such riff-raff getting hurt by tough girls and was told, “Let her do it! She will learn so much and have so much fun!” Since I really did trust Kimberly, I grudgingly went to the first meeting. What helped is that a friend brought her daughter along as well. The girls were so excited about it and the moms are really cool, too.
What roller derby has brought to Maggie is such a sense of self confidence. Anyone who knows her well knows she is not really lacking in that area but she really does shine on her wheels. She is kind and considerate to the less experienced girls and is able to be hard (yet kind) to the girls she is practicing with each week.
My manager and I were IM’ing yesterday about Maggie and roller derby. He commented something along lines of, “What? She couldn’t pick something with less contact  like badminton? Doesn’t she like her teeth?” We both got a chuckle out of that. It really made me think, though, of how much she has grown since starting roller derby. She has always been kind and considerate of others. Compassionate. This has given her an outlet for some of that and has given her an avenue to strive to do her best and beat her own previous records. She is a leader and it shows.
I started this post last night when I think I had a different point I wanted to make but was unable to keep eyes open. If I remember where it was heading, I will come back to it.

Three Little Words

Not the ones you may be thinking I mean. They could be be two words and not three. I didn’t make my kids say them when they were younger. I wanted them to mean something. We talked about them. We talked about they made others feel. How they made themselves feel.

Why are these words so hard to say to someone you care about but so damn easy to complete strangers? Bump someone’s grocery cart? Let go if a door a moment too soon? Almost bump into a co-worker around a blind corner? These words come out. Easily. Routinely.

F*ck up at home and the person hurt gets blamed. I haven’t played that game in years. And when I say it, I usually mean it and am not being snarky. I hope I have modeled that well for my kids and that they remember the apologies more than the blame.

I fell tonight. Hard. My feet went straight out from under me. I landed hard on bottom and my back smacked hard up against the half wall in the foyer. The floor was wet and had not been dried. Not life threatening (to me but it could have a game changer had it been mom or if I had smacked my head on the wall as hard as I went down or even landed differently).

No apology. Not even a backhanded one. I was blamed. Amazing how hurt and angry I am over that. Instead of a sincere apology, I was told it was my fault.

My head is starting to hurt from the jarring I took. I will take a few OTC sleeping pills and a Vicodin. Or two (they’re small).

I guess I see it like I raised my kids: don’t apologize unless you mean it. I don’t want empty words from family and friends. Say it when, and if, you mean it. I guess it wasn’t meant.

A month of blogging …

when I am already two days behind? Not sure I can do it. I have friends who have done it a few times … Reticula and Autodidactpoet … are two that come to mind. I always think: how fun! I should do that … then I think, “WHEN will you have time to write? You always say you will write but you don’t take time to do it.”

I thought I would blog when I got home from Indy on Friday night. That hellish trip didn’t end until Saturday, though. Don’t get me wrong, the trip wasn’t bad … I actually had fun being in the car two hours longer than I needed to be with three teenagers. Two of them boys that I didn’t birth. We laughed. Joked. Talked about semi-serious stuff. And put the van in park more times than I care to remember while on I-70. Getting home at 1 a.m. or so, though, didn’t lend itself well to blogging.

Yesterday, my sister and niece were here visiting and I just didn’t think about it after they left. I AM going to do this. I really am. Even though I am two days behind the 8 ball. I will either post twice on a couple of days (I do plan on having a couple of vacation days this month) or I will continue posting into December.

I like blogging, even if I think no cares about what I have to say. I find, when I go back and read some things I have written, that I have forgotten what I wrote, the exact words, not the stories, and I find that I LIKE what I had to say.

I hope you like to hear from me, too.

Also willing to take suggestions for topics, though I will leave the vaginas to Reticula.