This Blog Is Dying

It's true. The blog is slowly dying. I just don't have anything to say. Nothing new, anyway. I'm trying to keep away from the full-on Mommy Blogger thing, not that there's anything wrong with that. It's just that there's plenty of that going on in the world already, and anything I would have to say has probably already been said 57 times by other people, and probably a more cleverly. And I honestly just don't find anything interesting enough about the minutiae of my daily existence to share that with the world. There's enough of that out there too. Some of it is funny. Most of it is mind-numbing. I just can't bring myself to join the ranks of the exhibitionists.

Plus, I'm not actually in Turkey right now. I'm just not paying attention to anything going on there. I don't pay attention to anything going on here either. I pay attention to my kid, and my family, and just try to get as much sleep as possible and not get too fat. I don't even know the date today. I usually know what day it is, but not the date. Which means November 17 came and went with nothing extraordinary happening. Or maybe it did, but I wasn't paying attention. That's the thing about superstitions, I suppose. You have to be looking out for them to be true. Either that, or I jinxed the reality of November 17 by mentioning it publicly. I kind of prefer thinking about it the second way, the jinx-y superstitious way. Superstition can be a nice way to negotiate seemingly cold and unfeeling chains of events in the world. It makes me feel like I have control, or something like it. Come to think of it, this probably goes a long way to explaining why religion continues to be so darned popular.

Don't get me started on religion.

In fact, it often seems best that I don't get started on anything. Since the baby was born, it seems I never have more than 20 minutes at a time to do anything, let alone complete a thought. Right now the baby is at school (he's doing better with it, by the way-- the crying and clinging stopped last week and now he struts around like a big kid when he's there), but BE is calling from downstairs for me, as he does. Turns out he was about to take a shower and discovered the towels were being washed. And he wasn't shouting up the stairs, he was calling softly, thus making it impossible for me to carry on the conversation from here. So I had to go all the way down to see what the hell he wanted, then all the way back up to fetch the towels, then all the way back down to deliver them. Apparently being dressed only in his undershorts prevented him not only from fetching the towels himself, but also from shouting loudly enough so I could hear him without going down the stairs.

Minutiae, right? Who cares? I'm definitely not the first woman to notice having a husband and a baby is a lot like having a small baby and a big baby. That thought is as tired as mother-in-law jokes.

Bri, who pays attention to things in the world, has alerted me to some ridiculous events involving a Motrin commercial and a host of upset babywearing attachment parents. I felt like having a rant about that, but then I changed my mind. A mini-rant will have to do. In a nutshell: mothering and martyring are not the same thing, though I admit the line between them gets blurry at times. Bully for everyone who doesn't want to take anything for the pain they have as a result of hauling a kid around. Bully for everyone who's really into babywearing like it's a defining characteristic of their identities as humans, and bully for their babies who will sit still for that. Is this really the first time a commercial has seemed condescending to or dismissive of its potential viewers? Legions of Women's Studies professors and students would surely have something to say about that. As long as so many people have all this enraged energy to spare, let's get them to pull this Suave commercial too, because it really pisses me off and there's just not enough injustice in the world for me to worry about now that Obama's been elected.

I don't want my blog to die. I just have to try harder. To anyone who still bothers to read me, thanks for bearing with me during this boring time.

A Sigh Of Relief

It's been such a long time that America's done anything on the world stage that I can feel really, really proud of, I'd forgotten what it feels like, if I've ever felt it at all. In recent years, it's just been a matter of more cringe-worthy or less cringe-worthy.



Buh-bye, dear. You make me think of a scene from Fiddler On The Roof where Golde says, "May it fall into a river, may it sink into the earth, such a dark and horrible dream."