Talk to the Hand!!

I love advice columns. One of my favorites is Dear Prudence in Slate. In her latest column she tackled a situation that I find myself in.

Dear Prudie, I am the flip-side of your letter last week from Bliss in Exile. Many years ago, when I was in high school, I did something very cruel to a friend of mine: I took her boyfriend. Now we are both married to other men. I found her on Facebook and attempted to contact her to apologize for the cruel thing I had done. She took your advice and hit "ignore." I feel terrible that I was not even given the opportunity to admit to her that what I did was wrong and try to make amends. I also feel a little angry because I think it is immature to hold a grudge or resentment for so long over something that a teenager once did to you. Now that I have been ignored by the person I would like to apologize to, should I just let it go? Or should I take another avenue to try to contact her to tell her how sorry I am? —Blocked

This is me, except that I'm the friend!!! When I was in high school, a very good friend slept with my boyfriend. I was devastated! Now we're all grown up and obviously I'm over it, but just because I'm over it doesn't mean that I want to be FB friends. I take issue with the idea that because I ignore your overtures means that I am somehow immature. I'm not holding a grudge or holding on to resentment...I'm simply not interested in being friends with you.

Further, where do you get the audacious idea that you deserve an opportunity to apologize? Let me get something straight...you do something terrible to me and I owe you the opportunity to apologize? I don't think so.

My back stabber former friend and I have close to 40 friends in common. We comment on the same photos and status updates. We 'see' each other all the time. And I am perfectly content to leave it at that.

Here's Prudie's advice.

Dear Blocked,
In response to Bliss in Exile, I have heard from several people who were the miscreants in high school and have successfully used Facebook to contact their victims and make amends. But the problem with simply making a friend request to someone you've hurt is that the person on the other end has no idea about your intentions. In cases such as yours, it's a better idea to use your Facebook network to get an address for your former classmate and write a letter explaining that what you did has weighed on you all these years, you are asking for forgiveness, and that you want to reconnect. Give your phone number and e-mail address and add you'd also be happy to be contacted through Facebook. If you don't hear anything, just be glad you did the right thing now, and accept that there are some people for whom high-school graduation was one of the happiest days of their lives.

—Prudie

Prudie, honey, there is a 'message' feature on FB. There is no need to stalk our mutual friends for a physical address or phone number. If my former friend sent me an apology message, I would simply say, "It's all good. Glad to see you are doing well. Peace!" There is no need for further communication.

So tell me, what do you think?

I did it all....now what?

On Monday, my hubby took my daughter to school - like always, but about thirty minutes after they left, I heard the garage open again. Evidently, because we are so good about keeping up with the school calendar (not!) we didn't realize that Monday was a teacher planning day, so I unexpectedly had Jade home with me all day.
I wasn't prepared for that, but still I managed to :

1. Cook the main course for Monday's dinner
2. Play with the kids. Like, chase the kids and roll around on the floor, play.
3. Nurse the baby and put him down for a nap.
4. Make Jade a snack and have a 45 minute lesson on letter writing with her (taught her how to spell 'Dear' and 'Love' in the process)
5. Wash a MOUNTAIN of dishes. Seriously....a mountain.
6. Blog
7. Make Jade lunch and put her down for a nap.
8. Make O lunch after he woke from his nap.
9. Build a block tower (or two, or six) with O.
10. Sweep and mop the floor
    
11. Read for 45 minutes to both kids (well, O was in and out)
12. Make the rest of dinner and serve it to the kids.
13. Clean the kitchen...again.
14. And put the kids int he bathtub by the time the Hubs got home.

Now that may not seem like a lot to you supermamas out there, but for me that was huge. Especially because I wasn't planning on having both of the kids all day. If I am planning on it, then I, you know, PLAN an activity or something. Also, because I managed to spend quality time with my kids individually and together AND do domestic stuff AND do something just for me. That's HUGE. A day where I actually had....the mythical 'all'.

Now this creates a problem. How did this day come to be? I didn't follow a plan to perfection. everything was totally off the cuff. And furthermore, if a day like this is possible, why has it been so difficult for me in the past? Have I actually been slacking the previous four years? Is this the Bizarro World?
What in the world is going on?

Tub Fun

The other night while playing in the tub, Jade took a toy frying pan, put it on her head and said, "Look mom, I'm a pothead!"

HILARIOUS!!

Wheeee-heee-HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!

I love how kids just break out in random happiness. The other day I was shopping with Jade and O and since the store wasn't crowded, I allowed Jade to push a full sized cart all by herself, just to appease her.

Let me say that I had just seen one of my husband's female colleagues in the store. She is a professional working mother of two, I am a stay-at-home mother of two. Whenever I see her, she looks impeccable and I look a mess.
I run into her far too frequently around town. We aren't really friends, so the first time I ran into her, we chatted for a few minutes. Then I saw her about two weeks later; shorter chat. Then I saw her again at a birthday party; barely chat. And then there was this last time, I pretended that I didn't see her and she pretended that she didn't see me.
Well, as fate would have it, I turned down an aisle that she was on and we were forced to speak to each other...this whole 'pretending not to see each other' was just pure silliness, anyway.

However, I was mortified when a few moments later, as we were leaving the aisle, I heard Jade let out a LOUD, "Whee-hee-HEEEEEEEEEEEEE" as she pushed the cart and then hopped on the back for a short ride. Oh my goodness! I was soooo embarrassed!!!


But then I thought about it. She was so genuinely happy...it was clearly like the most authentic kid moment I've seen her have in a long time. I put my pride behind me and enjoyed her enjoying herself.
Sometimes , you have to let kids revel in their unabashed kid-ness.

The Cougar

Are you kidding me? I'm blog surfing/ watching TV and what do I hear....an advertisement for the latest dating show.....The Cougar. Yes, it is as awful as it sounds. From the website:

From the creator of The Bachelor comes a game-changing, provocative new reality show that redefines the rules of dating. One sexy, single, sophisticated woman is set up with younger men who are all vying for her affection. Through a series of weekly challenges, the men must prove they have what it takes to satisfy a woman of a certain age and avoid the kiss of death: a kiss on the cheek. Watch as The Cougar narrows her choices from 20 to 10 to five, ultimately choosing one lucky man to be her soul mate.

The depths to which reality television sinks never ceases to amaze me.

RANT!!!! ****Update****

OK, so I am watching the morning news shows and I find out that the bonuses have already been paid AND it has been public knowledge for a year. Then I see a clip of the President on television telling me that he is 'choking with anger'. No, Mr. President, I am choking with anger because you are trying to play me and you promised that you wouldn't. In your campaign you said you would bring a new kind of politics to Washington, but it seems to me that you are playing the same old game. You and your staff knew or should have known about these bonuses well before this week. That means that if it angered you, you should have been angry when YOU found out about it, not when WE found out about it. That means you should have told Secretary Geithner to employ every legal means to STOP the bonuses, not every legal means to GET THE MONEY BACK. I'm sorry Mr. President....I'm disappointed.

Sidenote: I was combing my daughter's hair and making breakfast while watching the morning news. My daughter, after listening to my rants for about 10 minutes, asks, "Mommy......um, why are you talking to those people? They can't hear you...they're just on TV."
Thanks, baby..ROFL!!!!!

RANT!!!!

Can we talk for a minute? I'm sure by now you have heard about the ridiculousness that is AIG.

• 80% owned by the federal government
• 170 billion in bailouts thus far

And the latest is the hundreds of millions of dollars in 'bonus' pay that AIG, in spite of being insolvent, will pay it's employees. Their reason for paying the bonuses? It was 'promised' before the economic meltdown and is necessary to retain the 'top' talent. Secretary Geithner wrote to CEO Liddy, imploring him not to pay the bonuses, but succeeded only in compelling him to reduce the amount by 30%. I know it sounds crazy, but I'm not making it up. Oh, did I mention that these employees, the top talent who Liddy is afraid will jump ship if they don't receive their promised bonuses, these are the people who work in the AIG Financial Products subsidiary. Yeah, that's the division that nearly did AIG in. Yeah, they are getting bonuses.

Now I know this has been discussed ad nauseam, but what I want to say today is directed at our leaders in Washington. On all the Sunday talk shows, in all of the online magazines, all across the news spectrum everybody is outraged about this. 'Bipartisan Outrage' a headline screams. 'Bernanke says AIG angers him most' says another. And on and on and on. You know what my problem is? If everyone is so hot about this, tell me, how come nobody can do anything about it? I mean, am I missing something? We own 80% of AIG and we can't make him kill the bonuses? And if we can't do it by force of law, we can't compel them to change their minds? You mean to tell me that we don't have a strong enough argument for why these bonuses shouldn't be paid? The best you (Geithner, Frank, Bernanke, etc)can do is go on the news circuit and tell me how mad you are? Frankly, I don't want to hear your moral outrage and indignation. I want you to do what you were hired to do and fix it!!! When I see you on TV and you are going on and on about how outrageous this is and how angry it makes you, it doesn't make me feel as though you understand where I'm coming from. It makes me think that you are pathetic and useless. If you can't do anything about this injustice, then tell me, what am I paying you for?