Stories like these ones are why I don’t watch the news or read the papers.  I don’t want to live in a world like this, and I certainly don’t want my daughters to know that they live in a world like this.  I won’t be taking the advice of any of the talking heads currently guiding shocked parents through the process of how to explain Pennsylvania, Colorado, and Quebec to their children.  I won’t be taking it because Diva Girl has no idea those events occurred, and I intend to keep it that way.

Maybe that’s selfish of me.  Maybe I’m avoiding a moral responsibility here.  Maybe it’s unfair of me to shield my daughter from this world of hers. Maybe I should be preparing her for this world we apparently live in–a world where women and girls are  lined up and shot, execution style, in front of their classroom blackboards.

But how do I explain to her that there are men in this world who hate her simply because of what she is:  a bright, beautiful, bubbly little girl who will grow up to be a breathtaking, brilliant, vibrant woman.  How do I explain to her that while it’s true that all people are equally valuable in this world, there are men who will resent her for her value (and the value of every other woman) and who will use any means necessary to take it away from her and every other woman in the world?

We’re up in arms over female circumcision practices in Africa.  Afgan women sporting burquas cause a political outcry.  The idea of “throwaway daughters” in asian countries leaves us incensed.  And yet, we’ve somehow accepted that we live in a world where this happens.

We live in a culture of violence.  First person shooter games.  Casually violent song lyrics. A government bent on war at any cost.  An entertainment industry that glorifies murder and mayhem.  

We have a news media that has taken the axiom “if it bleeds, it leads” to a whole new level of lurid.   The coverage of these tragedies becomes so all encompassing that it loses all meaning.  We become numb to the images and the horrific becomes the mundane. 

School shootings, once a terrifying aberration, have become almost commonplace.  It’s only a matter of time until “columbine” joins “going postal“  in our vernacular.

Dateline becomes “All Predators, All the Time” and what was once a shocking expose on internet predators becomes a weekly exercise in the ridiculously pathetic. 

School shootings, accidental shootings, snipers, all routine occurances on the evening news.  And every attempt to stem this tide of violence by curbing access to the guns that allow it to be perpetrated with such distanced ease are met with the rallying cry, “guns don’t kill people.  People kill people.”  As if that makes it ok.  As if that makes it better.

More so even than gun violence, the thing that terrifies me about these instances is the focus on female victims. Maybe this lack of randomness in the choice of victims shouldn’t make these crimes all the more chilling, but but as a woman, and the mother of daughters, it does. Somehow, it’s easier to accept that some madman simply opened fire than that he methodically and deliberately chose out his victims, separating the boys who would live from the girls who had to die.  And I wonder, what does that do to those young male survivors?  What message is imprinted on their young pysches? 

The rage at women, the power structure that fosters that hatred, the society that allows it to fester, I think these are the issues we need to be looking at.  We need to take our heads out the sand and really look at the gender politics of our society. 

It’s all well and good to be raising strong, confident, independent women, but are we doing so at the expense of our men?  How do we balance the needs of both sexes?  How do we create a world where my daughters’ sense of their worth and confidence in their choices does not leave someone else’s son feeling disenfranchised?   The “hapless hubby” jokes and the “dumb blonde” jokes. The absence of positive, nurturing male role models in our popular culture today. The lingering image of the shrill, manhating feminist. All of these things contribute to the seething societal stew that allows this type of aggression to breed and grow and eventually to explode.

Today I no longer feel confident that my daughters will have the place in this world that they deserve. I don’t feel confident that anyone’s daughters will. But I still have a fierce belief that they do deserve that place.  Every person does, regardless of gender.  But until we figure out how to support one without failing the other, we are continuing to create the type of society in which exacting wholesale vengance on young women, while still unthinkable, is, sadly, not undoable.

You may remember Amy.  She (and her stooges, but we’ll just simplify things and refer to their collective consciousness as “Amy”) was the impetus for the move to this shiny new place. 

I moved here to get away from her threats to expose Ms Sisyphus to my real life, and then decided “screw it” and put up the url on the original blog.  Sort of defeated the purpose for the move, but it’s so pretty here and blogger is, well, blogger, so it all worked out in the end. 

Anyway, I realized during the Long Silence that my final stumbling block to posting was that I was sort of subconsciously waiting for the shit to die down before resuming the merry chroniclings of my failings as a mother and drubbings of the Fuctard. I guess I figured given enough time and space, Amy would get bored, move on, whatever.

Thordora let me know that apparently that’s just not going to happen.  So again, screw it.  If a bunch of washed up cheerleaders cannot outgrow junior high and need to pin all their vitriol and self loathing on me to make them feel better about themselves, well, have at it ladies.  

No need to stalk me across message boards and comments on other blogs any longer.    Here I am .  Enjoy.

(oh, two pieces of blog housekeeping: 

Comments:  I’m having some trouble publishing them at the moment.  I’ll figure it out there.  And I’m no different than any other blogger–I loves me the comments.  So please, keep them coming, even if you don’t see them posted.  I promise I’ll figure it out.

The Fuctard Follies:  I’m thinking about making these private, password required posts.  I really don’t want to do that.  I’m not wild about the idea of creating a tiered system of readers.  But, on the other hand, I’m not wild about Amy sending the Fuctard along to read everything written about him.  And if it comes down to it, my family’s safety wins.  However, if they do go private, I will absolutely give the password out to commenters I know who want it.)

There’s actual content coming, I promise.

And Eden, I’m sure I can work up a rant just for you. 

So, I’m back. 

I never intended to take a hiatus; it just sort of happened. 

First, summer vacation kicked my ass.  Six kids, all day every day is hard.  Even when you do get some time to write, the headspace just isn’t there.

Then there was the slow slide into depression.  It wasn’t some awful death spiral, but enough of a funk that even once I was back to just my own two kids, and shipping one of them off to school for 6.5 hours a day to boot, napping just seemed a far more attractive and productive choice than oh, say, sitting down and actually producing something. 

And, um, well, to tell the truth, I lost the keys to the blog for a while there.  Those of you who know me in real life are probably rolling your eyes right now and saying, “oh, please!  She can’t even keep track of virtual keys???”  To that I can only say, “shut up.”

The point is, I’ve missed you all (if you’re still here), and I can’t wait to get back into the swing of things.

Did you miss me? 

The children are eating my brain. 

“I want my Smarties.”

“You ate all your Smarties, Zen Baby.” 

“I WANT my SMARTIES!!!”

“Well, I’m sorry, but they’re all gone.”

“I want my freakin’ Smarties, Mama!.”

“No.”

“Gimme my damn Smarties.”

Zen Baby has moved beyond the mere expletive and has now mastered the use of profanity as an adjective.  Clearly she’s a prodigy.  Or maybe I need to clean up my mouth a bit.   

 Vacation : “a period of time devoted to pleasure, rest, or relaxation.” Clearly whoever wrote that entry hasn’t spent the first two weeks of summer “vacation” at my house.

Anyone with older children will tell you that the parenting groove changes once your kids go to school fulltime.  You may still be a stay-at-home mom, but it’s a whole new world with out-of-the-home kids.  You’re not in control of their every moment anymore, but you’re not responsible for them every second, either.  It’s odd at first, but then, without you noticing, it becomes the norm to spend more time apart than you do together.  Your routines intersect, but are largely independent of each other.   

There are weekends, but during the rush of the school year they’re more like a moment outside of time than a slice of real life.  Between cartoons, playdates, errands, and church, those hours are pretty well filled with their own routine–one that certainly disrupts the orderly progression of a normal day with the Zen Baby, but is predictible and manageable in its own right.

In summer though,the rules change.  Instead of two days of disrupted time looming before you, it’s two months of unstructured time.  Two months of constant contact, all day, every day.  Two months of the baby not napping and  of hearing “I’m bored” and “There’s nothing to do” and “Can I watch Spongebob?  Can I watch it now?”   

I haven’t spent an entire summer home with my kids since the Diva Girl was a Diva Toddler.  I haven’t wanted to.  Truth be told, I didn’t want to this year, either.  But, neoptisim reared its ugly head, I didn’t get the teaching job that keeps me happily out of the house during the month of July, and so here I am, lost in an endless cycle of swim lessons, library trips, rides on the swings, and melting popsicles.  And I’m doing this with not only Zen Baby and Diva Girl, but with TOM’s brood as well.   

Yes, you heard that right.   In addition to my two, I’m trying not to kill  caring for TOM’s Girlies, aged 6, 7, 11 and of course 13 year old TOD.  Before you start questioning my sanity, let me assure you that that there are perks in this arrangement for me:  TiVo, built in playmates for the Diva, and best of all, I don’t have to cook dinner.  Ever.  Plus, instead of being cooped up in our eighth floor apartment we’re camped out at TOM’s house where we have a big backyard to play in and a community pool down the street. 

What I haven’t had a whole lot of is time to think, what with the exponential explosion of children in my life.  But, now that the older girls are back from their two weeks up north, that’s about to change.  Now I have slave labour help. Hopefully, that’ll translate into having the time to actually blog about my life, instead of just spending all my time living it.    

“Look, Mama!”  Zen Baby tells me, sticking out her tongue to show me the half-chewed pea sitting on its tip.

“Don’t do that, Zen Baby.  It’s not nice manners.”

“No it’s not.  I sharin’ wif you.”

***********************************************************************

 ”Come on, Zen Baby!  Bear is on!  You’re going to miss him sniffing you.  If you miss him sniffing you, you won’t know what you smell like.”

“Yah, I do.”

“Yeah?  What do you smell like?”

“I smell like pee!” 

So, this is it.  Ms Sisyphus’ new digs. 

Please don’t mind the mess, I’m still just moving in. What do you think of the paint job, by the way?  The wealth of choices offered by WordPress left me giddy; it was nearly impossible to choose.  This one made my beige-hating soul sing, but I’m not married to it or anything.  

I’ll unpack the archives soon; right now I’m just getting settled in the new space. I don’t have my nice “here’s the link button, you idiot” feature, so I’m going to have to figure that out again,which is a pain in the arse.  But I do get categories! Woo Hoo! And file uploading that even a luddite can love.  Which means there could be pictures!!!

We now resume our regularly scheduled bitching and moaning.  Carry on. 

Oh, and I’m so glad you came!