Books and Their Covers...

This happens all of the time:

My long haired boyfriend and I were walking through WalMart the other day when our cart crossed the path of a woman who was probably about our parents age. Rather than say "Excuse me" (after all, we were on the right side of the aisle) she stood, huffed and puffed, as if she expected that we should move without her having to ask for assistance.

My boyfriend, he of the amazing bass abilities, went out of our way to...well, get out of hers. Which is nicer than I was thinking about being. Honestly, I would have made her actually excuse herself, or-and this is a noble concept-go around us. But this is the kind of person Kevin is. He sees the way to make someones life a little easier and will go out of his way to help out. I don't know if it's Karma or how he was raised, or just the inherently good person that he is. . . but I have a feeling it's a mix of all three. This is one of the things I love about him!

What happens all of the time is that people look at him with his long hair and his beard, some of which hides under any one of his collection of funky hats, his leather bomber jacket and cigarette hand and they judge. Harshly. Some people look at him like he's a terrorist and they're trying to remember his description while others visibly scoff at him. It could be a game if it weren't saying something about how we, as people, are terribly judgemental.

They have no idea who they're judging.

Last night, the region I live in experienced a torrential snow storm. Literally, more snow fell in 12 hours than  the entire winter season of last year. My boyfriend, on his way from his gig with his band to the home where he was dog sitting, helped a friend get his car un-stuck. When he was almost to his house sitting place, he saw a car stuck in the opening to the housing track. Once his own car got stuck trying to avoid the original stuck car, he walked down to the bottom of the hill and helped the people get their car out of the snow. Did they offer to help him? No. Did he complain? Not once. After much internal debate, he went to the home he was staying at and figured he'd come back to his car in the morning.

When he returned to his car, there was a sheriff searching it. The people whose home the car had gotten stuck in front of called the police to report it. When Kevin arrived to his car, there was an older man being walked down the driveway with people on either side acting as a crutch. Kevin asked if the man needed help, since that seemed a bit more urgent than his car. Immediately, the people on either side of Kevin began yelling at him and telling him that it was his fault for having his car stuck there.

Because Kevin totally wanted to leave his car, with all of his equipment, on the side of the road overnight. Yep. It was his plan. Nothing makes Kevin, a gigging bassist and former mechanic, happier than abandoning his car and band equipment in a snow pile. Especially with plows coming through. I'm sure he was all like, "Meh," when he decided to get out of the snow himself and take care of the dogs that were waiting for him. Nobody stopped to thank him for digging out two cars that weren't his own before leaving his overnight because he couldn't do it on his own, and he sure as hell was not going to go knocking on doors at 3a.m. asking for help. They'd rather assume the worst and treat him like a criminal because his car got stuck in the worst winter storm we've had in years.

I watch this man and his selfless actions go un-noticed completely the majority of the time. Kevin's the first one who will help you when you're in need and the absolute last person to ask for help when he's struggling. I've watched him deal with things that would make any other person curl up in a ball and cry, and he takes them standing tall and steady, calm, focused, alert and able. He never complains, never barks back, never says he cannot when he truly can't. He absorbs so much of the terrible things, actions and words that get thrown at him and I simply cannot understand how everyone doesn't see past the long hair...which he's growing out to donate for children's wigs, by the way.

Exactly.

But I Already *Have* Friends!

Today in Adventures with Cyd...

I accidentally invited my neighbor over for a play date with our sons! This does not seem like that big of a deal...except it is, because I already *have* friends. I have awesome friends that I have selected carefully! They are wonderful and funny people with good hearts and little to no drama. Seriously. My friends and I can go for weeks without talking, but I know if I need anything or they need anything, we always have each other...even at 3 am. My friends are exceptional people! And good looking, to boot! :D

Also, a good portion (100%) of these friendships were not rushed. We both had to come around to each other. There was no one time meeting and then BOOM! Besties!  Nope. Slow and gradual. Basically, the opposite of my romantic relationships :P

This neighbor is always outside of her apartment. Which means she must not like it inside her apartment. It's getting colder, and she always has her front door open so it's just the screen door, and if she hears you, she pops out to say hi, or ask about your dog, or see how you are. She's a sneak attack neighbor! And it's not like she's older with nothing to do...she's right around my age (late ((shudder)) twenties). She always seems nice, looks frazzled, and talks hurriedly.

I am a hermit. I like living where I live and knowing the people around me, but I get uncomfortable with anything more, like... introducing them to my extended family. Because then they might think they know me. If we're both outside doing outside things, I'll gladly be a neighbor. But I'm not going to invite you in for hot chocolate after building a snowman. I'm going to say, "Wow, that was great! look at the time! Gotta run!" ...and we'll see you next winter. Of course, if my neighbors ever needed anything neighborly, I'd be here for them. Hell, I'm a great neighbor! I take great care of my stuff, pick up after my dog, keep my inner home quiet...and best yet, you'll never see me in your peephole unless I've been invited. Thank you, but I already have friends.

But somehow, when she saw me walking to my car today, she bolted out of her apartment to ask about my kid and see if we could get our kids together sometime. Which makes no sense, since hers is 3 and mine is 7. And then somehow, it came to be that they'll be over around 6 tonight.

And now I'm left pondering if I should concoct some bullcrap excuse for why this shouldn't happen.

In a brief discussion regarding this sensitive issue with my sane boyfriend, he encouraged me to go through with it. His reasoning? It's weird that I don't want friends (disclaimer: it's not). I argued that I might not be the kind of friend she is looking for, or worse yet, she could be the type of "friend" that terrifies me, and he just shook his head (I could hear it through the phone) and told me that in that event, you talk to the person. Which reminded me about that thing called boundaries and how I need to actually finish reading that book about that.

I had tons of friends once. Seriously, couldn't turn around without knocking into one of them-I was never alone. But most of them turned out to be fair weather, or gossipy, or back stabby... they'd try to sleep with my boyfriend or pull other Jerry Springer like antics, and I cleaned house. So...why should I open that back up? My friends now are diehard! I adore them!

Ok, I need to just bite the bullet. I'll go through with tonight. Maybe she's not all that bad, or maybe it wouldn't be a bad thing to get to know other people who might be different. Hell, maybe there will be some shared interests or something. And if there's not, I'm going to start googling "polite ways to get people to leave your home" right after I publish this blog :)


UPDATE: She cancelled on me :) Sweet! Her kid came home sick from school (not sweet) and we decided to try another time (like when hell freezes over) :)

It Takes A Village

The worst thing that Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris did on April 20, 1999 was give so many young minds the idea that when things are going bad, you can make a bigger impact with violence. My peers and I grew up in a time when schools were re-evaluating their safety precautions, their visitor policies and establishing a now necessary emergency plan. One act of terror and violence literally changed the landscape of how entire generations would view their safety while in school. Now I'm a parent dealing with this new and scary reality.

This morning, I was flustered when I had to ring a buzzer and sign a form, wear a badge just to bring my kid his snuggy for reading day. This afternoon, I'm grateful to see him come off the bus. We watched the president choke up on TV and visibly tear while giving a statement that would have gotten caught in every parents throat. For it is our job as parents to protect-but how can we?

To say my heart goes out to the parents, family, friends...community in Connecticut... it doesn't come close to expressing this: I think every parent will grieve with them. Something has to change, people.

We all know how hard it is to ask for help. We all know it's terrifying when you see someone struggling. This, "He was the nicest kid" shit has to stop. Obviously, he wasn't. Someone knew. His mother, now dead... how could she not have known? Can we please, finally, learn that getting someone help or at the very least, alerting the proper resource that someone is violent and that you are afraid...this is not a weakness?!?!? I know that when someone doesn't set right with me, I tell someone, even if it's just to say "This person worries me. What do you think?" Your intuition is there for a reason! There are programs in place for this reason! Things like mental health arrest and restraining orders and simply saying "yes" when your doctor asks if you feel threatened or unsafe at home... the net can only get so big. Is our pride worth this? As long as things like this continue to happen, we as a community-a human community- are not doing our jobs.

And it's not to say that we don't know. How many of us have seen someone posting troubling thoughts, song lyrics on Facebook or Twitter? Maybe not mass-murder thoughts, but thoughts of loneliness and depression, of hurt and despair...do we ask them how they are, truly, when we see them next? Invite them over for coffee? Do we reach out at all? Or do we do what I do so many times, just feel unequipped or too busy?

If we can't do it for fear that we risk ourselves, can we at least recognize that when we fail to acknowledge a severe issue, we are passively inviting the opportunity of a cry of attention that cannot be ignored?

Wrong Parent Houses

Confession time!

Boys and girls, ladies and gents...the coolest chick you know (aka, ME!)...

...listens to talk radio.

Like, a lot.

Which makes little sense, considering my profession! But I digress.

There I was, riding around in Bertha the other day, filling up on talk radio knowledge when something pivotal came blaring through my speakers. A psychologist was being featured on a show and was discussing family structure and what affect it had on children. His main point was that children do better in two parent homes. It didn't matter if the parents were the child's biologicals, foster, grandparents, step-parents...just as long as there were two of them. He made smart people arguments on things like home-life stability affecting test scores in a positive manner, and how homes with two parents had more structure and stability than one parent homes.

Ok, about the only thing I agreed upon was that the financial benefits of having two working adults per household makes things infinitely easier. For instance-I can not cover a thousand dollar mortgage by myself. Just not happening. But add another working adult to split the cost with and it suddenly becomes very doable! Ta-da!

Adding another parent can also teach children the dynamics of relationships! No longer is it just child/parent communicating in the home, the child now learns how to distinguish adult conversations from their own. You know. Because children are dumb like that.

What Mr. Insensitive failed to recognize is that people pick shitty partners all the time! Prince Charming can easily become a booze fueled maniac that squanders rent money on Rum. New Mommy might be so stressed by the step kiddos that she pilfers their ADD meds. Basically, what I am saying is that I was vastly upset by the notion that two parents are better than one. That statement is a naive notion that the adults wandering about are healthy and sound in mind and have figured out how to behave appropriately in a relationship that is combined with children-some of whom may not be their own.

For those of us in the real world, we know that last sentence is the truest thing I've written.

You see, I've been determined to find another person to make my home a two parent home for my child. How did that go? Well, my son's earliest memories are of his dad hitting me, then I married a guy who had a secret life filled with sexual deviancy, and topped it all off with a raging alcoholic. All of these people seemed really awesome at first and only exhibited these terrible behaviors after we moved in together (or got married). Uh...I might be off-base here, but maybe my son is better off with just me?

Because each of those three times, when things were no longer working and were broken down to the point that their not working was affecting my son's home life and performance at school, my son also had to deal with the emotional pain of losing another role model.

Fuck you, Psychologist dude, and everyone else who has ever helped push this theory into popular belief!

My son is thriving now. It's him and I in our two bedroom apartment. We have a dog, heat, a working car and a Wii. We take trips to the library, bowl weekly, have game night with my boyfriend once a week. He reads two full grade levels up from where he is supposed to and has a stellar vocabulary. His manners are constantly praised by family and strangers alike, and he shows a compassion that most adults can't comprehend. The only dad he has is his biological one, whom he sees regularly and routinely. He wants for things on a material level, but who doesn't? His clothes fit properly and are in good condition, his hair is never unkempt. Most importantly, when he lays his head down at night, he sleeps peacefully.

The world has changed. Family structures have changed. People are walking around emotionally damaged without any recognition that they need help. Everyone wants to be loved and in love, but few are actually willing to take the steps necessary to find a deep, fulfilling and healthy love. Running around screaming about how all kids need two people in their homes is like standing on the street corner with a cardboard sign saying "Repent! The End is Near!" Is the end near? Probably. But the only people you're going to get to follow you down to doomsday are the ones you wouldn't necessarily want to follow you, anyway.