I have lived in Kitsap Co. almost three years. I have several acquaintances that would step in to help during an emergency. Also, neighbors that can pick up my kids from school if something happens or take them to baseball practice when I get delayed at work. But I don't have that nearby friend to call to commiserate on shoes, grey hair, grass allergies, paranoia and motherhood (those don't all necessarily roll together....although could on a rough day.) I still have my main Seattle friends as talking buddies and that is most evident when my cell phone bill arrives. There is a life I have thrown myself into here, that I didn't fully comprehend when I left the bounds of my 25 years with the kids dad. That of an easily identifiable and non-threatening wife and mother in a house with a volvo and minivan. Oh yeah, yeah, I am so much more than that, but for simple discussion we will talk of outward appearances. There is no thought involved to understand the life I used to lead. Kids in soccer, dance, piano. Worked part-time in a non-profit, and husband worked main-line business.
Now I live without a husband in a farmhouse on property. With two children and not working. Tell me what these words mean to you: Single mother. Unemployed. Living alone.
If that was all you knew... what do you see in your minds eye? Would you want your children playing with mine? How about inviting me over for dinner? Would I hit on your husband? Hit on your wife? Do I have a constant stream of unreliable men in my life and bedroom? Are my kids being exposed to drug and alcohol abuse? Am I on welfare?
I feel I have to explain myself more now. I have to gently move conversations to guide understanding of what I am doing, who we are, why we are here. So gently I go. Not necessarily patiently, but gently. I am the same woman, sort of.
Showing posts with label Small Town. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Small Town. Show all posts
Friday, April 29, 2011
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Laborers
The two fellows that actually got my bathtub out were genius. I found Mr. Stean on Craigslist, and he has previously over the last year hauled away the piles of garbage found/left on the property when I bought it. The tub took them a good hour to wrassle free, and then muscled it out the door and onto my truck.
Then they pulled all the layers of linoleum and wood off the floor.
Then they leveled our piano by lifting it. Literally. The piano that is so heavy I watched my living room floor bend as we rolled it in a year ago. (Just writing that gives me the heeby jeebies. Not sure I should be comfortable with that, I keep looking at my tree trunks in the basement to make sure they are doing their job of holding up the house.)
Note about Craigslist, if you hire off of there, be cautious. I have not had any issues, but have had a couple of hard drinkers show up for jobs (not drinking while working, just had very heavy very sour alcohol fumes wafting off of them.) I also let a neighbor know and a friend in Seattle who calls after a set amount of time to check in. There is also a risk of big danger if they are not licensed or insured and something happens to them doing a job on your property. So hire wisely.
Then they pulled all the layers of linoleum and wood off the floor.
Then they leveled our piano by lifting it. Literally. The piano that is so heavy I watched my living room floor bend as we rolled it in a year ago. (Just writing that gives me the heeby jeebies. Not sure I should be comfortable with that, I keep looking at my tree trunks in the basement to make sure they are doing their job of holding up the house.)
Note about Craigslist, if you hire off of there, be cautious. I have not had any issues, but have had a couple of hard drinkers show up for jobs (not drinking while working, just had very heavy very sour alcohol fumes wafting off of them.) I also let a neighbor know and a friend in Seattle who calls after a set amount of time to check in. There is also a risk of big danger if they are not licensed or insured and something happens to them doing a job on your property. So hire wisely.
Friday, October 1, 2010
Blogs - Soap Opera - Part II
So I got sucked into this online hissy fit between three bloggers. It is like reading those reality shows I won't watch, except there is no editing to make it more palatable for primetime television.
Only one was actually having hissy fits you could see online. Her sister and brother in law were having their own uncomfortable online blogging episodes and the point of all the brouhaha a) her attacks on a blogger who is one of the big bloggers with the aforementioned clean and easy-reading blog, visually appealing and supposedly well-funded by advertisers and b)she had a crisis of faith, as in, completely went away from the church. This may be fine and dandy to do on the West Coast of the U.S. but from reading her it sounds like hell on earth in her part of (Kansas? Iowa? anyway the corn and bible belt) She is pretty feisty. Reading her I stick by my "I think menopause is hitting her bad..." or else she has tucked alot of 'shoulds' under her belt without knowing why and when the hormones started changing she began to question things. Really really question things. I don't envy her one bit. She has alot of anger, although it is well-worded anger. Her stories of how her family is dealing with her make me sad.
Note: I am editing all the blog name specifics out of this and my previous post. I wanted to comment on the impersonal/personal nature of blogging and how we bloggers may or may not match our online blogging persona. What I don't want is to benefit traffic-wise just because I put some big name bloggers in my verbiage here. And I was. So now I am not.
Only one was actually having hissy fits you could see online. Her sister and brother in law were having their own uncomfortable online blogging episodes and the point of all the brouhaha a) her attacks on a blogger who is one of the big bloggers with the aforementioned clean and easy-reading blog, visually appealing and supposedly well-funded by advertisers and b)she had a crisis of faith, as in, completely went away from the church. This may be fine and dandy to do on the West Coast of the U.S. but from reading her it sounds like hell on earth in her part of (Kansas? Iowa? anyway the corn and bible belt) She is pretty feisty. Reading her I stick by my "I think menopause is hitting her bad..." or else she has tucked alot of 'shoulds' under her belt without knowing why and when the hormones started changing she began to question things. Really really question things. I don't envy her one bit. She has alot of anger, although it is well-worded anger. Her stories of how her family is dealing with her make me sad.
Note: I am editing all the blog name specifics out of this and my previous post. I wanted to comment on the impersonal/personal nature of blogging and how we bloggers may or may not match our online blogging persona. What I don't want is to benefit traffic-wise just because I put some big name bloggers in my verbiage here. And I was. So now I am not.
Friday, May 14, 2010
Parents, kids, and public middle school
"When I was young" we were a sloppy yet consistently big group of neighborhood kids that went through elementary, middle school and high school together. There were not other options other than catholic school in my youth... so the public schools were a pretty all encompassing group of children and adults within a defined geographical boundary. Never mind that the PTA back then was scary and a bit Stepfordwife-ish. There was a set of unspoken and spoken rules of how children and adults behave, what was acceptable in school, yada yada. And if little Johnnie or little Stephanie was out of line at school.... geez-lou-eezie you did not want to be there when their parents heard about it.
Middle school back then was mean. No two cents about it. Anyone who did not fit the mold (whatever that was at the moment) was tortured verbally, and the beginning of the clique culture began.
When I was faced with middle school for our daughter, I found a girls school that took her in. Her strength in math and science was developed at this point, and continue to give her an edge in high school. At the end of her time there, I left her dad and bought a farm. We moved to a small town.
Our son is gearing up for middle school. It feels like a slap in the face to me, I took him away from his Seattle friends thinking I was returning to a version of my childhood (yeah, I know you can't go back) where similar kids from allover a geographical area attend school together. Where it is clear what is acceptable, and what is not. HA. Would that be where kids divide by cultural background and taunt the kids not in their 'group'? Would that be where a middle school girl can be raped on a full SCHOOL BUS with no kids piping up and the driver not noticing? How about 11 year old kids being thrown against lockers and things thrown in toilets?
Fear of this is what makes parents, who have the financial ability, to homeschool or head off to private school.
I could do that with our daughter, what do I do with our son? I have thrown him into a substandard educational system, that seems to have no teeth against bullying and flat-out criminal activity. My daughter gets in arguments daily on the bus about gays, christianity and people of color. She told me yesterday that she is beginning to hate christianity. I told her the Ghandi quote "I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ". It is hard to show her the middle road.
Middle school back then was mean. No two cents about it. Anyone who did not fit the mold (whatever that was at the moment) was tortured verbally, and the beginning of the clique culture began.
When I was faced with middle school for our daughter, I found a girls school that took her in. Her strength in math and science was developed at this point, and continue to give her an edge in high school. At the end of her time there, I left her dad and bought a farm. We moved to a small town.
Our son is gearing up for middle school. It feels like a slap in the face to me, I took him away from his Seattle friends thinking I was returning to a version of my childhood (yeah, I know you can't go back) where similar kids from allover a geographical area attend school together. Where it is clear what is acceptable, and what is not. HA. Would that be where kids divide by cultural background and taunt the kids not in their 'group'? Would that be where a middle school girl can be raped on a full SCHOOL BUS with no kids piping up and the driver not noticing? How about 11 year old kids being thrown against lockers and things thrown in toilets?
Fear of this is what makes parents, who have the financial ability, to homeschool or head off to private school.
I could do that with our daughter, what do I do with our son? I have thrown him into a substandard educational system, that seems to have no teeth against bullying and flat-out criminal activity. My daughter gets in arguments daily on the bus about gays, christianity and people of color. She told me yesterday that she is beginning to hate christianity. I told her the Ghandi quote "I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ". It is hard to show her the middle road.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Gentleman Woman Farmer
That is what my neighbor called me yesterday, somewhat stumbling over it all. A gentlemanwomanfarmer. I guess that is alot better than 'single-mom-getting-into-lordknowswhat-without-a-man girl' neighbor. Sometimes I feel I am on the receiving end of folks not able to fit me into their little hole of working single ma. Whatever that means in their head, I guarantee I don't fit it.
In the past two years I have dealt with things I never dreamed were still happening around Seattle, or for that matter, since the 1970's. I forgot how open Seattle is. There is a reason people are moving here in droves.
I am only 20 miles away, but wow, it is quite a different beast over here. I am missing the alarm in my brain that has a clearly designated this-is-woman-behavior and this-is-man-behavior section. I didn't grow up that way in my family. If it needed doing, it was done. Didn't matter what gender accomplished the task. In this place, for better or worse, I am the do everything person. I don't have the luxury of only cooking and cleaning. I also have to fix the mower (slowly) clean the gutters (fearfully) get the cars repaired (I like this part) talk to neighbors with wayward dogs (not so much) oh, and get my kids in to get their teeth cleaned. For the first time in my life, I have been told that there are things women do, and things men do, and that is for a reason. And, that it is in the bible. Sigh. I am hitting small bumps of how to fit into community meetings, where the women flow to one area and the men to another. I have a foot in both the decision making homeowner group and the childrearing gardening cooking group. How is that navigated? Before I die, I will know. But for now, I don't. And sometimes it is just tiring. I know why I have such a fierce love of inclusiveness within groups. Some sort of reaction to being excluded. Yeah, yeah, not everyone needs to like me, but civility is a good thing. I make it sound like everyone is cognizant of their behavior, and I really think they are not. All strange. But also, all invigorating for me. I love a good challenge, and an opportunity for opening minds, or probably more appropriate for me, but less effective, the opportunity to smack closed minds into shock mode. But politely, of course.
In the past two years I have dealt with things I never dreamed were still happening around Seattle, or for that matter, since the 1970's. I forgot how open Seattle is. There is a reason people are moving here in droves.
I am only 20 miles away, but wow, it is quite a different beast over here. I am missing the alarm in my brain that has a clearly designated this-is-woman-behavior and this-is-man-behavior section. I didn't grow up that way in my family. If it needed doing, it was done. Didn't matter what gender accomplished the task. In this place, for better or worse, I am the do everything person. I don't have the luxury of only cooking and cleaning. I also have to fix the mower (slowly) clean the gutters (fearfully) get the cars repaired (I like this part) talk to neighbors with wayward dogs (not so much) oh, and get my kids in to get their teeth cleaned. For the first time in my life, I have been told that there are things women do, and things men do, and that is for a reason. And, that it is in the bible. Sigh. I am hitting small bumps of how to fit into community meetings, where the women flow to one area and the men to another. I have a foot in both the decision making homeowner group and the childrearing gardening cooking group. How is that navigated? Before I die, I will know. But for now, I don't. And sometimes it is just tiring. I know why I have such a fierce love of inclusiveness within groups. Some sort of reaction to being excluded. Yeah, yeah, not everyone needs to like me, but civility is a good thing. I make it sound like everyone is cognizant of their behavior, and I really think they are not. All strange. But also, all invigorating for me. I love a good challenge, and an opportunity for opening minds, or probably more appropriate for me, but less effective, the opportunity to smack closed minds into shock mode. But politely, of course.
I am really doomed if a man does wander into my life. Since I don't want to be the inside the house cleaning person. Or even the crafty person. I want to be the outside breaking things like my lawn mower person. Or trying to fix things and getting all oily and dirty person. Or tying my hair up with baling twine and wearing jeans all day person. And then when I am all dirty and tired come in the clean house with dinner already done person. I also don't want to be the scrub around the base of the toilet person. That is my least favorite job.
Friday, February 26, 2010
Blogs - Life is a Soap Opera ... Live
It is fun to search through new blogs, or blogs that you all link to. I have found some hilarious blogs that way and great house restoration resource blogs. Recently, one blog I link to has now become involved in a bloggy soap opera. There is a big issue between three .. and part of that tiff appears to be christianity. Two are sisters that each have their own well-done blogs. The other is a rich by marriage (her words) ranch mom that seems to be well-known in certain circles for cooking ( I think. )(2011 addition: I saw her book in the bookstore so she is definitely known for cooking!) The first blog was one of my very favorites due to her sense of humor. I swear to rippin' GOD that her story of being locked in the henhouse with a sick hen under her arm and a mad rooster attacking her is worthy of peeing your pants. She is a woman with a lot of joy, dancing and laughing that I appreciate. Especially since she works and has 4 kids. I can handle the christianity that weaves throughout when it is not shoved as the one and only righteous path to God. (Learn history, please.) And lately, I believe in response to her sister who went from similar life views to (gasp) ATHEISM the formerly joyful gal and hubby have been reduced to some christian frillery. Their posts of late have gotten a bit... shall we say... narrow? Really parents... the first thing you want your beloved children to look for in a life partner is that they be CHRISTIAN? Really? It's fine if someone goes off and hits your amazing daughter... since they are christian? It is fine if your son marries a two-timing skanky lady as long as she is a christian? I do not mean that "only christians do these things," but that humans do these things, exclusive of their particular faith. Weakness of character is not "fixed" by God. Plus, only marrying a christian means 75% of the world population is ruled out right there, and there are some dang wonderful people in the world. But hey, those are all heathens and non-believers going to hell anyway. Technically, wouldn't there be more people in hell than heaven? Does that seem just? Would a just god really send more people to hell than heaven? This is the main problem -- to believe you have to disbelieve in common sense, wisdom, a moral life and humane behavior. Those very things that religion and law should help guide society. (stepping off the soapbox right now)
The now atheist blogger mom attacks the successful published author blogger gal, and the posters to christian mom blog post attacks on her atheist sister. Here are my questions:
1. Why does atheist mom dislike cookbook lady so much (and they have met according to blog tales) My personal theory is that one is perimenopausal and full of feistiness, but hey, that could just be me projecting.
2. Why does love appear to be conditional in Christianity? That is NOT the christianity I grew up with. Hell (and I say that with all sorts of love) I don't think another person's faith mattered when I was a child... only how we personally treated another person. That reflected on our own faith. It was about us and our relationship to god. Not getting up in everyone else's business about their relationship. When did it become such a cranky narrow scope of acceptance?
3. How will this sort of human interaction (online) change our humanity in the longrun?
NOTE: Cranky atheist mom has closed down her blog. All her archives are gone. Hmmm. My mind says the big guns of media have threatened her with libel, since there is a big hollywood movie being made about the gal she so steamingly roasts and they want no holes in the marketing frenzy. Justified or not, personal opinions aside, at what point do we keep our mouths firmly shut of any feisty opinion about another? If something offends me in the world in blogland.... I don't read it!
Second NOTE: Her blog is back up and renamed. And she is pretty cranky and spinning her wheels about it. Not for the faint of heart. People posting (who am I kidding... it is only women posting) on other blogs say they are praying for her. It is odd that somehow when I read those blog comments way over here 9 states away I feel like I am in the smallest town ever sitting around a big kitchen table listening to gossip.
Third NOTE: I took out all blog names and regular names since I was number three on search results for their names in combination. I don't know any of these people, I am not what should pop up when people want to know anything about this. The folly of search engines... people with personal opinions can get valued more than facts. Keep that in mind with political opinions you read online.
The now atheist blogger mom attacks the successful published author blogger gal, and the posters to christian mom blog post attacks on her atheist sister. Here are my questions:
1. Why does atheist mom dislike cookbook lady so much (and they have met according to blog tales) My personal theory is that one is perimenopausal and full of feistiness, but hey, that could just be me projecting.
2. Why does love appear to be conditional in Christianity? That is NOT the christianity I grew up with. Hell (and I say that with all sorts of love) I don't think another person's faith mattered when I was a child... only how we personally treated another person. That reflected on our own faith. It was about us and our relationship to god. Not getting up in everyone else's business about their relationship. When did it become such a cranky narrow scope of acceptance?
3. How will this sort of human interaction (online) change our humanity in the longrun?
NOTE: Cranky atheist mom has closed down her blog. All her archives are gone. Hmmm. My mind says the big guns of media have threatened her with libel, since there is a big hollywood movie being made about the gal she so steamingly roasts and they want no holes in the marketing frenzy. Justified or not, personal opinions aside, at what point do we keep our mouths firmly shut of any feisty opinion about another? If something offends me in the world in blogland.... I don't read it!
Second NOTE: Her blog is back up and renamed. And she is pretty cranky and spinning her wheels about it. Not for the faint of heart. People posting (who am I kidding... it is only women posting) on other blogs say they are praying for her. It is odd that somehow when I read those blog comments way over here 9 states away I feel like I am in the smallest town ever sitting around a big kitchen table listening to gossip.
Third NOTE: I took out all blog names and regular names since I was number three on search results for their names in combination. I don't know any of these people, I am not what should pop up when people want to know anything about this. The folly of search engines... people with personal opinions can get valued more than facts. Keep that in mind with political opinions you read online.
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