The Fine Line

     A few years back a letter started being passed around Facebook that was apparently addressed to and answered by Mike Rowe. Everyone went nuts about his advice, passing along this letter sagely agreeing with, "How true it was." And, "What great advice." Furthermore it had the makings of a conservative wet dream but, that is besides the point. The advice he gave in the letter to a young man unsure about what he should do with his life had everyone hot and bothered. What he said was simple, get a job, any job and work hard. A simple American answer. Very puritan, very thorough, very to the point. And total utter bullshit. Apparently Mike Rowe has not had to navigate our world of employment. You know the one we mortals have to slosh through.

    I am not saying this as a simpering, entitled millennial. I am not saying this because I believe everyone should chase their dreams. (Though I know people who have taken that route and the world would be a worse place if they had not.) And I certainly am not saying this because I sincerely believe my place in the world is higher than that. I am saying it because that mentality simply does not and will not work in our modern day workplace. There are steps you have to take, people you have to meet, things you have to do in order to simply just survive in America's workplace economy. I am saying this from experience. I am saying this from the 23 year old girl who did just what Mike Rowe said to do. I went out and got a job, any job. I dove into the rat race head first and ready to work and work I did. Hard. Where did it get me at 33? An "unmarketable" position for myself in the traditional job market, that is where it got me. You see those steps that I talked about above? They are there for a reason, despite being good or bad or right or wrong. They are there to make it easier to simply judge you. That is all this is about, being able to judge you . Like that scene in Half Baked, "F%$k you, F%$k you, you're cool..." If you do not know what you want to do with your life and you dive into a career that does not work out, work for a boss who is truly a crook or a poor businessman (my experience and apparently giant black stains on my resume) or simply have a different desire or dream you most likely are forfeiting any chance to move into another industry without having to totally start over, like moving 10 feet back, or have the ability to move at all. Unless of course, you know a unicorn. You know, a magical being that can "pass along your resume" so that someone actually reads it, or furthermore can actually get someone to have a human conversation with you.

     It seems very few people these days want to look past your veneer to see the substance you are made of, much less give you an actual chance. Your heart, soul, and brain do not matter, those are not easily quantifiable. You must come equipped immediately to do the job at hand. That is why they ask you what you are "qualified" for. Unless you need a license to do you job, like a teacher, a doctor, a lawyer, if you are in a position where you could do severe damage I understand the qualification part, but what the hell does that even mean? I think I am qualified for whatever I want to be. I am not an idiot, I know a lot of thing, how to do a lot of things and furthermore I have taught myself a majority of it. So if I am not trying to get job doing brain surgery or building a computer, what the hell do I have to be qualified in? If you did not complete steps 1, 2, AND 3 then you do not stand a chance. It does not matter how amazing you are at 1 and 3 if you missed 2, no time will be taken to decipher if you possess the character to master 2, hell 2 could even be a latent talent just waiting for discovery. Mike Rowe's advice was bad. He sent that young man forward in his life to whittle away at working for someone else, at the mercy of someone else and I pray to whatever being is out there that the young man was lucky enough to chose a good employer. I hope he was lucky enough to choose something he could live with for the next 55 years. I hope because he just went out and got a job, that he is not deemed worthless someday when he is trying to make his way in this world when he maybe looking for another one.

    I say this with all the anger of a 33 year old, who finds herself further behind than her 23 year old self. Who is now answering questions online for people who refuse to find the knowledge for themselves because so far, apparently that is all I am qualified for. I wish we could stop this notion that people are only valuable if they possess something so concrete its value pools on the paper it is typed on like it is catching raining gold. Our false economy is dangerous enough in over-valuation of things that really are not that essential to our being. That it is such a burden to actually look at a person and not a piece of paper, or worse yet, just put that piece of paper into a computer that spits it out as reject because it lacks a few "key words." That being a good bullshitter is rewarded more than hard work. I put my time in and still am, I have been working since the age of 11 actually, but none of that matters Mike Rowe, does it. It does not matter how hard we work everything is still at the mercy of they system and our employers, because again it is a surface quantifier that is easily judge-able. That is all that matters isn't it. So next time someone is asking you for career advice Mr. Rowe, think about how the job market really operates. Think about the processes everyone has to go through before you tell someone to blindly just go an get a job. You are putting them in survival mode and they will never break free from it. I have been over a decade in survival mode, I am mostly okay in the mode because I am lucky enough to realize there is more to life than work. There is living. While everyone around me is "thriving in the career world" I am still only surviving, pray tell, how can one get out of that whole? Do I just dive blindly into another trap we like to call a "job"? Or do I actually deserve to think of myself as worthy of doing something different if actually given a chance? Because god forbid we do not conform.

My Best Friend

    Let me tell you all a little bit about my best friend. She is tall, lean, and blonde, a lot like me actually :) When we run we pretty much have the same gate and I can hear people making fun of us in the park. But, I do not mind, I think it is a compliment and we run past them with our heads held high. My best friend is probably the fastest runner that I know and I know for a fact that she is the best and craziest swimmer. It is hard keeping her out of the water even on a day like today when it is only 20 degrees Fahrenheit outside. The girl knows no fear which can be good but can also be bad and that is the point of my post today. Because I know a lot of us who have similar best friends and even though they can see in the dark or smell something miles away, they still need us. You see, my best friend is not some lunatic super hero, she is simply my dog.

        If you follow me on Facebook, you know my missives/rants about our day to day struggles. Not the normal dog struggles. We rescued her from Safe Harbor Humane Society when she was almost  a year old. She never went to the bathroom in the house, and save a few issues with my socks and underwear (not Ed's just mine of course) she has not chewed on anything other than her toys and a random Nine West 4" heel bootie that was covered in sausage juice but that's a story for another day. She counter surfs a little (OKAY A LOT!) and knows the location of her doggie or cat friends' food in everyone's house she has ever been to. But, all and all she is and continues to be amazing, except for one thing. I used to think this one thing was her problem, but the older she gets (going on 8) and the more I see her interact with other dogs and people I am convinced she might not be the whole part of the issue. You see, she is a giant bitchy snob and when your dog shoves his/her nose up her ass, she is going to bite the creature and not let go. And no, I do not really disagree with her on that one. 

       I am not going to sit here an anthropomorphize her, she is a dog and she acts like one. I am also not going to sit here and say she is perfect. No one is. But what I will say is that when she was a puppy she might not have been as socialized as she could have been. So with some steady work, she now is pretty great with a majority of dogs, even little Piper who fits inside my boots. I completely trust her around puppies because despite all of their annoying-ness, she is very patient with them. She still has her issues when a strange dog runs up to her, especially when she is on leash and double especially when her owners are around or another dog friend. Which is why she is on a leash and why I feel the need to write this post. Despite her looking like this most of the time, when she feels threatened it can get serious. And a majority of the time it is because the other owner and their dog is oblivious to true animal nature.

 

         Despite her fantastic behavior, her ability to humor me when I am trying to get her to say, "I love you," she is still a dog. When I think about her behavior it resembles a toddler who can run way faster and bite way harder than any human toddler can. Just like a human toddler, because she cannot reason, or control her instincts sometimes, Ed and I need to guide her. That is the point of being a dog owner and dogs need guidance. We keep her safe and it is your job to keep your dog safe. Allowing your dog to run up to other dogs is not safe. Off-leash dogs (or the retractable leash owners, though I think all of those need to be burned) need to stay close to their humans and disinterested in other animals to a point where their safety is never jeopardized. We seem incapable of that, at least in my neighborhood there is a majority that is incapable of it. I am not sure where people got the idea that dogs are friendly and know dog behavior when they run up to each other like the super happy stoner who thinks everyone is their friend. I grew up on a farm and that is atypical behavior for any animal, wild and domesticated alike. 

        What bothers me is the oblivious nature so many dog owners have regarding this subject. My dog wears a gentle leader so I can control her, though I can without one as well. We are fit enough to pick her up one handed or two despite her 65 pounds and we will do everything to protect your dog if we can since too many dog owners these days can't be bothered to do that. One of my friends uses a harness on her dog and others use a special collar. There is a lady who lives a few blocks away, last week I thought her two Weimaraners were going to drag her across the street on normal collars and leases as they barked insistently at Laina and I walking past them on the sidewalk across the street. That lady could not control them, could not guide them, yet she had two. My dog was at risk, her dogs were at risk. Or the people who live behind us with a black standard poodle, who runs up to my dog as we are running down the street. Or my idiot neighbor who lets his dogs roam around in my yard and allows his two little ones to attack my 65 pound berserker. I can't let her out to protect them, because once again, their human is not. So my dog has to suffer and wait for them to leave our yard before she can be let out.

        My point is, Laina is just a dog. All dogs are just dogs. Left to her own devices, she would survive longer than most of her counterparts no doubt, but not very long. We have bred most of the intelligence and survival instincts out of our dogs. They are not equipped, unless a farm dog left to his own devices most of the time, to deal with situations where their instinct takes over. So please, don't make me over-leash my dog, don't make me have to cross the street, don't make me the one shooing (and by shooing I mean flailing my 34 inch inseams at them) away dog chasing us down the street on our run. Guide your dogs like you would your toddler. They might love the hell out of us, but they just do not know any better. Your dog relies on you for their safety, if you cannot provide that, then do not get a dog. And for God's sake, lets start teaching our dogs some manners because as much as I hate getting groped by a creep on a night out, my dog does as well. There is a whole entire protocol to dogs meeting that does not include storming up to another dog like some fan-girl to Justin Beiber. Don't make me bounce your dog out of there-

The Life Factor

     Trying to put into words how you feel sometimes can be difficult. Sometimes it is not always about finding the words, but trying to summon up the courage to put yourself out there. Then combine all that while trying to get it just right is daunting. But, despite the natural perils of writing about yourself and admitting to failure, it just feels like the right time. So, this morning as I read an article about confidence it dawned on me that not only is it my problem, it might be an issue for so many people. One thing I realized is that confidence comes in so many forms and unfortunately it is tied to so many factors beyond our control that it is impossible, nay unreasonable, to rely on this as a factor in how we see ourselves. And, if you are like me and find yourself in the middle of an unfortunate setback (i.e., I am unemployed again, despite years of my best efforts to avoid this and I am rapidly loosing places in my fantasy soccer league, but that is neither here nor there) I think falling back on how you see yourself is more important than any outside factor in gaining confidence and let me tell you why. 
      
       I so desperately want us as a species to look at each other as the total parts of a whole entire life. Family, friends, partners or significant others, the body and mind, how we treat each other and what kind of sacrifices we have had to make. All of these are the things that define us, not how much we make and what we buy with it. So lets say we are knocking it out of the park in all of that. But your chosen profession is not "highly regarded" of you just don't make as much money as Joe Schmoe, so you feel down. Like a failure and pretty soon the confidence drains. Which is my main case in point, we as Americans put so much emphasis on what we do professionally that it is cringe-worthy to sit at a party with people you barely know because its the one thing everyone asks, "So what do you do?" Then we make this horrible snap judgment against a person from that one tiny aspect, or what should be the one tiny aspect of their life. Some of the most talented women and men I know are out chasing their dreams and right now it doesn't sound impressive to someone who wants a concrete answer here and now. It is not interesting that one might be a stay at home mother despite that being their dream job, or a bartender trying to save up for their own place. Unfortunately for us as human beings we now have a hard time connecting with people and if that easy first connection or interest is not there we move on. "What can you do for me, oh nothing, move along." And this does not make anyone feel good.

         It happens to me and it pains me greatly. No one asks, what have I done, where have I been, what is my life philosophy. (And if they asked that last one I might drop dead of a heart attack.) It is, "So what do you do." Aside from not doing much right now, I am pained to admit that despite my short stint as a TA and when I was a server, I have had a string of un-fulfilling jobs with horrible endings that have had to more to do with the shortcomings of others than myself. It pains me even more to be judged on that and that alone because it is just not who I am or who I ever have been. On my resume no one cares that I worked my way through college and haven't lived at home since the age of 18. No one cares that I took a chance and moved a fair distance away and survived. No one cares that I have a masters degree and that I actually finished it on time (2 years) while working 2 jobs. No cares that I have traveled alone to another country, or that I work out everyday and care about my health. No one cares that I know how to cook or that I love my friends and family with ferocity. That I volunteer on different committees and spend a lot of time doing that. Because we do not judge people by their sacrifices and choices, we judge them by the tangible items in our lives, such as jobs, material goods and societal position. That is recipe for confidence issues if I have ever seen one. So many people out there are doing so many amazing things, yet they feel the need to explain them away because our society does not deem them as ambitious, or successful.  

          We are all guilty of this and it is why so many people feel left out, angry, or like a failure. What we define as success should be something we can stand ourselves being judged by. Whether you are a working mother keeping your family alive, or the person just trying to figure out your next move. The first thing we need to do is get our own confidence from within. Just like we cannot rely on others to make us happy, we can never rely on others for making us feel like we are worthy or important. What have you overcome that others maybe have not that makes you unique? What has driven your sacrifices and why? What have you learned from failure or poor decision? These little things that we want to believe are insignificant just are not. They are the threads that weave us together. Life feels so unfair in so many moments but how we overcome that is more descriptive of who we are than how much money one makes in a year.

          Without the confidence to own ourselves, accept our failures, move on and revel in our triumphs because we will never have it all. Mostly because "having it all" is a subjective term and your having it all is different than another's and it is high time we accept that this is a possibility in our country. That our society and culture starts getting past the plastic conformity that creates a false comfort, that veneer of perfection and actually get down to the substance of who each of us really is. It does require that we have an open heart and expect the good out of everyone. We, by happenstance, were placed where we started and it is everything in between that should give us the confidence to move forward and know that we are valued, that we have something to offer and never count anyone as out of the game. You know what you have done, only you know your journey so, proudly stand by it and let that be your guide to confidence. It is not easy but it is the path we are forced to take and we are all on it. So, just wave and smile to each other-

The Life of an Oyster

  

"The life of man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster."

 

    In honor of my recent trip to Scotland, I figured it only appropriate to start this out with a quote form the venerable David Hume, one of my favorite philosophers. In contemplating our place in this world, I am also inclined to believe that the above quote has as much to do with our fear as it does with our "importance." Fear is an ugly thing, especially if we allow it to govern our life. Making decisions based on fear is no way to live a life, but I would also venture that living a life built around our fears misses the greatest of points. That our life is of no greater importance to the universe than that of a shell fish.

     I am such a bitch! I can you hear you thinking it and that is fine. Maybe I am bitch or I just do not get it, but standing in the middle of busy pedestrian mall, where no one gives you a second glance, or a super market, or airport or in the middle of a city's CBD, what makes one life more important than the next? Are we better than the busker playing for spare change or the simple beggar with just a cup out?  Is our life of greater importance than someone of a different religion or country? Are we more important than people in need in general because of the happenstance situation of where we were born?

     I spend a lot of time just thinking. I find it relaxing and flew 9 hours just to go somewhere else to think and it was heavenly and therapeutic.  In addition to contemplating about the possible place of my life in the world, I often think about all of you. Why you do what you do, what you think and the possibly reasons why you think it. Obviously social media makes it much easier than you think. And if you think social media is not representative of you well.....I am big believer in saying what you mean and meaning what you say. Therefore, I take things very literally when people say them. In recent weeks fear seems to be the abundant feelings. Hell, I get it. Some horrible, absolutely horrible things have taken place in  the past few weeks. So I think about people I am related to and all you lovely souls I am lucky to be acquainted with out there and I wonder, what makes us say or feel the way we do? It is fear. Fear that we will not get to live the life we envision, fear that things we love will be snatched away, fear that we cannot control so many simple things.

      My point is that fear is such a powerful and negative force. It turns warm people cold and light people turn towards the dark. If allowed, it makes us say and feel things that are uncharitable in the least and heartbreaking to those who are effected by it the most. It blinds us to the fact that we are no more important than anyone or thing in this universe. It makes us forget that suffering is universal and that it will never pass anyone or anything over. It blinds us from that fact that our lives are left up to chance, if you are religious you say it is God's will and if you are not then it is just bad luck. Wherever your beliefs lie, it is simply the circumstance of place and time. We are not important enough in this universe to be targeted but we can happen upon the wrong place at the wrong time. Letting fear dictate our feelings towards others will not protect us from the path our lives will inevitably take.

     So, I will take the chance of to trust. The effort and actions to help. I will not ignore the atrocities of humans, but I will continue to believe that more good in humanity still exists. I will open my arms to those in need and believe they are good. After all my place in this universe is of no great importance than yours, and vice versa. But I will not go into that cold, dark place where we are willing to leave people to parish. I just cannot turn my back in the name of self preservation.

                                                                   and

*PS- For the love of God, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE stop sharing all of those horrible hateful memes on Facebook! Speak for yourselves and always remember who and what you are speaking to-

A Snowball Rolling Down a Hill

"Men are apt to mistake the strength of their feeling for the strength of their argument. The heated mind resents the chill touch and relentless scrutiny of logic." -William E. Gladstone

     I am still insanely upset about the treatment of Ahmed Mohamed, the 14 year old boy arrested by the City of Irving Police department and suspended by his school, MacArthur High School, for three days following an incident that is utterly asinine. Part of what makes me so disgusted with the incident is the fact that both the police department, town and school have completely justified their actions by using modern day events to play on the fears and insecurities of our nation. The same tactics used by politicians, but I will get into that later. I am bothered even more because the kid, and he is literally a child, 14 years old, never lied about what is was, never even tried to pass it off as something else. Mostly because it there was nothing to pass it off as and secondly because he is a naive child who depends on adults, like all children, to make the right decisions and to treat them fairly. He experienced none of those things and I have yet to hear an "I am sorry" from any party. Only justification. At the very least say, "We may have overreacted" and the most, "I am sorry, we overreacted, and we apologize that we humiliated you, assumed the worst in you, and put you and your family through something you did not deserve. You are a smart kid with a bright future."  

      What really gets me is that if the teacher was so disturbed by what it might have been, and asked, which it looks like they did and he said clock, then why did that teacher then ask the student how it works. If he says it is a clock and can tell you how he made it, it probably is a harmless clock. Furthermore, why in the world are so many people jumping to the defense of the school, teacher and police. This was a fourteen year old boy in what we can assume in his first few weeks at a high school, and yet they automatically assumed he was doing something wrong. Something scary. People are using all sorts of scary logic to justify everything this school did and quite honestly it terrifies the hell out of me for many reason. 

     The first is that, the child never represented his invention as anything other than what it was, so every argument about people getting punished for fake guns, or pop-tarts that look like guns, or any other anecdotal justification in that sense just does not make logical sense. He never represented it as a fake bomb, he never said it was anything other than a clock. The laws of semantics are absolutely clear on this one. The irony of post-modernism is that now people, who despised it at its origination, use it to define things they want to fit their own narratives, regardless of the fact that there is an actual truth to it. YOU CANNOT DO THAT IT IS ILLOGICAL. He said clock, it was a clock, even to many untrained eyes it does not look like a bomb. It has no relational stories about where kids bring in fake guns, or knives or anything of the sort. He brought in a clock and stated as such. We all need to bone up on logic 101 and reading comprehension.

"A phobia is a type of anxiety disorder, usually defined as a persistent fear of an object or situation in which the sufferer commits to great lengths in avoiding, typically disproportional to the actual danger posed, often being recognized as irrational." Definition of Phobia

      The second is in regards to the first, because I cannot figure out a scenario where there is remotely any justification for treating a 14 year old child they way he was treated, I can only condense this down to well, the color of his skin, his name, and his religion. Believe me, I am trying to see the other side. But the facts remain, the school was never evacuated, he was not allowed to call his parents, another teacher in the building knew it was a clock, the boy only ever said it was clock. It cannot be that we are so jaded as a society that we do not give our kids, even our proven overachiever kids the benefit of the doubt. Because, if that is the case then every kid in the nation is subject to this kind of treatment and if that is the case then everyone should be scared as hell for their own children. I have worked a lot with teenage kids and I just do not see that being the case however. It really burns me that the teacher, nor anyone at the school asked him how it worked or how he built it. If it was not really a clock he would not be able to have a conversation about it. But that would involve a sort of trust that this kid, born in America, was not granted.

       To me it feels like it was about humiliation. Small minded men exerting their power over a young boy, who neither lied nor threatened anyone. That just disgusts me and the what compounds my emotions is that not one adult yet has come out and said maybe we should say sorry. But what can we expect from a town of a quarter of a million people who elect an openly Islamophobic mayor. (As noted here, http://www.carbonated.tv/news/texas-irving-mayor-beth-van-duyne-islamophobia-sharia-court, here, http://houston.cbslocal.com/2015/09/17/irving-mayor-edits-facebook-post-about-ahmed-mohameds-arrest/, and here, http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/irving-school-district-ahmed-mohamed ) Therein lies the crux of this problem. Our nations is hurtling down a dangerous path. A path that our founding fathers and those who came after did not fight for. A path that our presidential candidates and other politicans court in earnest as evident of Mr. Trump's latest town hall. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/19/us/politics/donald-trump-obama-muslim.html?_r=0 It has nothing to do with not correcting him about Obama, it is to wacko to even acknowledge but to sit by and laugh while an ignorant jerk asks pretty much when the Muslim population from this country is going to be expelled is beyond disgusting. If Trump had any decency he would not have the man escorted out. Instead he says, "We are going to work that." WTF people. Lets get our heads out of our crazy holes. I have ZERO tolerance for Islamophobia or any other hate mongering ideals that proliferating too many people in this country, unchecked. Small minds breed hate- 

"When the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service. They will become flatterers instead of legislators; the instruments, not the guides, of the people." -Edmund Burke

       Here is the get down to it facts. The facts that matter, that matter not only logically, but as human beings with emotions. With the ability to think emphatically and sympathetically and if you cannot, I am sorry but you are animal. Literally. If you do not have intellect great enough to gain knowledge about something you irrationally fear, if you do not have the courage to come face-to-face with what you do not know, then you are nothing more than an ostrich with its head in hole of ignorance. There are estimated 1.57 billion people of the Islamic faith in the world that is still only 23% of the whole entire population of the world, of that, there are 2.77 million in the United States. Folks, that is giant, 0.9% of our population of over 300 million people. If you are having trouble comprehending that, it is less than 1%. I cannot believe how threatened people feel by less than 1% of our population in the United States. Furthermore, from the limited amount of research I have been able to do, I have ran across figures anywhere from 93%-88% of the worlds Islamic population do NOT support extremism, making the varying amount of figures of 5%-10% of the worlds Islamic population as supporting or actively participating in extremist activity. The fact of the matter remains is that different people use different questions and yardsticks to measure. Lets use one of those easy anecdotal ones we so love in the United States, out of all the recent mass shootings CNN reported that over 64% were committed by white males, 16% by African American males, 9% by Asian Americans, with the small amount left by Latinos, Native Americans and unknown. But, yeah, watch out for a new 14 year old freshman and a clock.

      When you look at the rhetoric, the misconceptions, the playing on an irrational fear of others, then yeah, maybe I can get grown-ups treating a 14 year old boy as a threat. But I can't. I am a human being and in him I see all the new freshman at the high school I was lucky to work at for a while. I see the ones that struggle to adjust to life as a high schooler. I see my nephew and pray to whatever is out there, that he is never treated this way stripped of dignity and pride of accomplishment. I see all the people I am lucky enough to know who practice the Islamic faith and my heart breaks that hey have to hear the shit that comes out of the mouth of the ignorant and uneducated population of this country. It destroys me that people like Mr. Trump and others in his position refuse to stand up for an important segment of our population. This segment who wakes up every morning just like you and goes to work, sends their kids to school and contributes to this society. I am frustrated that people take the word of someone else and lets hate infiltrate their hearts based on flawed facts, logic, and reasoning. And for what, because it feeds a rhetoric of built-up fear, fear of the other? "But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint."- Edmund Burke

 

 

STOP

     I cannot think of a cute anecdotal introduction for this blog and it is driving me mad. It is a subject close to my heart and the older I get the more chimeric twin-like it grows on my soul and for that reason, I am just going to come out and say it. I am not just saying it for me, but for all my sister women out there. For every wife or girlfriend who dares to voice their opinion, need, or want. All the moms, aunts, and sisters who tell it like it is and sometimes do so with emotion. For all the women out there who have even just a sliver of personality that shines forth at certain times, STOP CALLING US CRAZY!! Stop calling us crazy because we simply disagree with you. Stop calling us crazy because we stand up for ourselves. Stop calling us crazy because we want things a certain way for us and our families. Stop calling us crazy because we feel passionate about something. Just STOP STOP STOP calling us crazy!

      When and why has that become the defacto defense mechanism for too many men, husbands, brothers, fathers, boyfriends, uncles out there? There are very real problems, STILL, with the way women are treated in this society and this is just one example that reflects these issues. We all have our bad days, sometimes they are weeks or months, but I can tell you this, it is not because we are crazy. We are human beings with feelings, emotions, and passions just like you. I get it that when you call us crazy for expressing these, it is a way for you to not only invalidate our feelings, but you think, and believe me it is mistakenly so, that you are taking control of the discussion. I mean right, because after all, we are just cray cray. Unfortunately all it tells me is that you, my dear penis holders, are still incapable of correctly articulating your positions, incapable of delighting us with  your wit, incapable of giving us your time and effort towards a productive conversation about something you do not want to cooperate with. So, where do we go from here, oh yeah, "Gawd, you don't have to be crazy." Or, "Wow, someone is PMSing and crazy today." To, "Man, she is crazy, must be that time of month." Or my personal favorite, when referring to a 'demanding' woman, "Man watch out for her, she is crazy." Because yeah, a woman who works hard, is successful and demands respect is so crazy, amirite??? (sarcasm) All of these stupid little reductions, and what that does is reduce us in your mind. Obviously, if you cannot control us, we must be crazy right?

      Now, why this bothers me so much all of the sudden? It is not all of the sudden, it always has. But, getting back to the point, we have very real issues with the way we treat women in this society. For the love of God, Donald Trump just implied that Carly Fiorina is not qualified to be president because of, "Her face." Or his casual references to Megan Kelly's "woman issues" as an explanation for why she schooled him at the debate. He is the leading candidate right now in the Republican Party, by the way. Awesome, nice to know someone who capitalized on his career of calling women crazy and ugly can climb so high. Furthermore, people who actually have a mental illness  and are sick, is nothing compared to an your wife who is upset because you did nothing to celebrate her promotion, and when you say that your wife is crazy you are trivializing an illness someone has to live with. An illness they have to deal with everyday of their lives, someone who already has to deal with the stigma of mental illness, but there you go again, that girl in the club that just turned you down, yeah, she is crazy. (Insert eye roll) All of this is an effort to reduce a woman to something that you perceive as less than you. And what a dick move that is.

    When we reduce women's worth or place in society by how they look or if they are "crazy" the only thing that is accomplished is the perception that all the hard stuff should be left to men. I mean we are all just crazy and totally incapable of reasonable or rational thought. God forbid we raise our voice. Here is the worst of it from this accused crazy woman, sorry but not sorry. I do not think it is crazy for me to want the dishes to be clean before they are put away, I do not think it is crazy for me to want the person in front of me to pay attention to what they are doing when they are driving. I also do not think it is crazy that my friend wants to draw boundaries about when their in-laws can and cannot come over. I also do not think it is even remotely crazy to turn down a man's advances when they are unwelcome. It is not crazy to demand child support from the father of your children. I do not think it is crazy to feel frustrated because it feels so often like no one is listening to you. I do not think it is crazy to feel offended or angry at someone and to let them know that. I do not think it is crazy to feel hurt, confused, or just lost briefly in this constant shuffle we call life. And I will never ever think it is crazy for someone to voice those feelings, emotions or passions. If that is the bar for crazy, then what do we think of people who walk around with their hands down their pants like a cave man all day, who chews with their mouths open spewing food like a toddler even when they are in the 50's, leave the toilet seat up or relies on their material goods, in the form of a truck, boat, or gun, to speak for them. Furthermore what, in the name of all that is good, do we think of men whose only counter in an argument or discussion is that the female they are dealing with is crazy?

For the Love of God-

    Every morning I wake up in a king size bed, get ready for work. Which means taking a shower in one of our bathrooms, going into one of our spare bedrooms, where I lazily keep most of our cloths. After that, I walk down the stairs, past another spare bedroom that we use as an office, into the kitchen where we leisurely make coffee and our abundant breakfasts. I might leave the water on too long while washing fruit, because well, it is not something we have to worry about. We make our lunches, if not, we just buy something and head off to work. We both have a 45 minute one way commute, I go North, Ed goes south, while the dog sits in our empty house all day, lounging on the two couches or her chair looking into yet another spare bedroom that we use as our main guest bedroom. She might drink out of the toilet of our other bathroom downstairs, as she prefers that to her water dish. We both drive home, I take the dog for a run and we go about our nightly business, again at a leisurely pace either making dinner or going out for dinner. We go to bed and start the routine all over again the next day. I know mundane right? But at the same time it is completely and utterly asinine.

     It is completely and utterly asinine that I get to do this routine every day when so many people right now have no place to sleep, no place to go, not place to bath or shower (my fruit gets washed every day, yet these people are  not granted the same decency as my flipping fruit), no place to change their child's diaper if they even have a clean one on hand. If they wake up in their own homes they get to spend the day on edge praying they are not shelled, or kidnapped on their way to work, if they are lucky enough to have work. They get to eat if they are lucky enough to be in a region where they can receive aid from a humanitarian group. Every day is literal game of life and death. I cannot even comprehend the feelings that come with fighting for your life and family every single day. To the point where getting into a flimsy boat to travel to a foreign land is a better and safer option than staying in your homeland. It is completely and utterly asinine that I was lucky enough to be born to Pat and Patty of the United States of America and not Rehan and Abdullah Kurdi of Kobani, Syria. (If you are unfamiliar or unsympathetic to the civilians caught in Kobani, here, this should change your mind if you have heart, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Koban%C3%AE)

     I will have mercy and spare you the pictures of Mr. and Mrs Kurdi's drowned 3 year old son Alyan, and do not worry there are no pictures of their 5 year old son, Galip who also drowned along with their mother Rehan. Do you think she tried to save them or at the very least do you think she died trying to hold her babies as they also perished in the waters of the Mediterranean. A sea rife with yachts and luxury party islands on the other side This morning my routine was disrupted because I wept as I drove to work for them. I wept with the photographer who took the photo as he choked up talking about little Alyan's shoes and how they reminded him of his own 2 sons' shoes. I wept because it also reminded me of my little 3 year  old nephew's shoes. Three year old children still need their food cut up, they still need to be soothed by their parents, they copy everything you say and look to their trusted adults for love and protection. It is not different for Alyan or his brother Galip. We, us adults, we let them down and countless others who are in desperate need of literal life saving mercy. Mercy we refuse to grant.

      You see, we seem to jealously guard our space. Our resources are ours and ours alone. I would have gladly taken that family or any other family from Syria into my home. Our Greek brothers and sisters in humanity who have little themselves and it has been like that for years, would have welcomed their boat on the island of Kos, feed them what they could, supplied them with what they could while they wait for the rest of Europe to decide. This has been documented and it gives me hope. Yet every day the EU fights over what to do, more children will die, along with their parents, or aunts and uncles. More girls will be kidnapped by ISIS, more men in many countries killed because they are the wrong ethnicity or religion. They could be saved if we could just open up our spaces to them. If we could just give them the chance to live.

       It is disturbing to see the comments on this. Comments by EU politicians, comments by people reading articles about this. You see, Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary whittles it down to the simple fact that these refugees are not Christian. Gasp!!! Excuse me while I swoon. What I fail to see is how that means anything when it comes to life and death situations. But it seems many want to go there, just read the comment American's posit on the situation. It makes me ashamed, it makes me sick to my stomach and it takes away the sliver of hope for humanity. I am tired of seeing people bitch and complain about immigrants, migrants, refugees. All we do is bitch and moan about others simply because they are others. Do you honestly think people take the idea lightly of leaving everything they know behind. Their heritage, their homes, their families. We think so highly of ourselves to honestly believe that everyone comes here to just take from us? Take what is ours, because we were lucky enough to be born here in America where most of us have no idea what the struggle for life and death is like. Who cares if they are not of the Christan faith, we have the opportunity to help yet we deny that help. Austria denies that help. The United Kingdom denies that help. All the while little boys like Alyan and Galip are drowning in the same sea where the bikini clad rich take their yachting vacations. It makes me gag. My life is completely and utterly asinine because I feel helpless when I could be helping. Western Europe, America, Canada and all the industrial nations have been complicit in the cause of their situation and now we sit back acting stunned that this is the result. And many of us cannot be bothered to open our hearts with the least amount of empathy or sympathy because these people are not the right "religion." Or they are migrants and they are just here to take what is rightfully ours. If there was ever a God above, the one that we preach about in our bibles, the one who we claim to live our lives by, the one whose son is supposedly "in our hearts" who guides our everyday actions, what would he think? What did Gandhi once say? Oh yeah, "Act like Christ, not a Christian." How apt in this situation.

       I am very angry. I am angry that so many refuse to help. I am angry that we have to bring up religion as a justification for our horrific actions. It is extremely upsetting that we constantly have to bring up religion all the time for many things, but this? Do not even get me started on the money. The decrying of our monetary aid, as if that is our sole contribution  to this and we "spend too much of it already as is." If money and religion guide every principle, then we should have an abundance of both to help. I am angry that the burden of help has been graciously and generously picked up by those who have the least to spare and yet do it on daily basis, when the rest of us sit around arguing over whom this "burden" belong to. For the love of God, it is all of ours to bear and bear it we must. If we cannot find rooms in our hearts to help those in desperate need than what does that say of humanity? If we can not imagine what their lives must be like, what does that say about our own psyche or our souls? When it is a matter of life and death for so many, should money or religion even matter? I am confused as to why Germany can open their country to 800,000 and Canada cannot grant one family asylum? (That was the Kurdi families destination, though they were denied entry into the county, denied asylum, denied safety. Denied reunification with other family members. Denied the chance to live.) Why the Greeks can buy what extra food they can to meet with the refugees flooding their beaches, or the Spanish Coast Guard saving boats everyday, but England can only admit one refugee? Why America cannot accept plane loads of refugees when people like my husband and myself asininely have so much, too much? These people are teachers, doctors, lawyers, artists, manual laborers just like we are. They are mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, who just want to survive. They are human beings first and foremost, who just were unlucky enough to be born in a time where war tore everything they know apart. We need to start treating them with the dignity all humans deserve, especially human beings in need of desperate help.