Attack Of The 50-Foot 4-Year-Old

We start swimming lessons on Sunday, and we spent 20 minutes tonight trying on approximately 538 bathing suits to see what still fits, because it turns out that one of the primary requirements for swimming lessons is a bathing suit. Preferably one that covers all of one's important bits and that does not give one a perma-wedgie.

You would think this would not be excessively difficult, since it was summer just 15 minutes ago, but -- wait, WHAT? Has it really been 15 WEEKS since Shae's put on a bathing suit? REALLY? 15 weeks and two missing teeth ago? DEAR LORD.

(Gratuitous pictures of my kid's missing teeth are gratuitous.)

So. Anyway. It's seems I've gone and overcommitted myself again, what with the OT at work and the new grad student orientation and the classes and the whatever the hell else I have scheduled which I can't even remember what it is any more, so OF COURSE we waited until practically the last minute to make sure we had a bathing suit. We tried on every suit she wore all summer, and -- SPOILER ALERT -- let's just say its a good thing we have a membership to Costco, where they sell swimsuits even at this time of year, because we have maybe 2½ suits that still fit, and at the rate this kid is growing, at least 1½ of them are going to be questionable by the end of the winter, I think. My niece is getting at least half a dozen hand-me-down suits, which will probably not fit her until she's 4 years old, because she? Is a normal-sized child, and not the Jolly Green Giant, like my kid is.

Shae is going to be 5 in less than three months, and by that time, she's going to be fully four feet tall. I'm 37, and I'm only five feet tall when I am wearing shoes with a nice thick sole. She's going to be taller than I am by the time she starts second grade. Maybe sooner, if the way she's been eating lately is any indication. We joke that her tapeworm has a hollow leg, because she just eats so much, but HONESTLY. There don't seem to be enough cheese and fruit snacks in the world to keep her belly full, and every morning I swear to God she's a little bit taller. I can hear her sprouting and spurting in her sleep.

I JUST CAN'T EVEN WITH THIS KID AND HER GROWING.

Heavy Machinery

CONSTRUCTION EQUIPMENT! RAWR!

Okay, yes, technically this is a foundation. Whatever. Shut up. The reason why this foundation even exists right now is because of CONSTRUCTION EQUIPMENT! RAWR! (I love the little sign that says "OUTSIDE," and I wonder what would happen if, say, some wiseass blogger who was possibly illegally trespassing at a construction site might have removed that sign and put it, say, inside the foundation. What would happen? Not that I, personally, know anybody who might do such a thing.)

There was a bulldozer at this particular construction site -- the new spec home being built on the lot next to the home of the Hello Kitty party girl -- but Shae didn't want to pose for pictures in front of that. She was much more interested in the backhoe.

Not that I blame her. You can't climb into the giant shovel part of a bulldozer because a bulldozer doesn't have a giant shovel part. Duh. (At least I think that is the difference. I thought the bulldozer was actually a backhoe, and that the backhoe was a front-end loader. You know, because the giant shovel part LOADS from the FRONT END?)

Now I am wondering what it is that I asked my husband to buy me when he took me out for dinner for my 21st birthday and we went to Red Robin and I drank an entire birdbath margarita all by myself and got so drunk that I had to lie down in the booth for a little while just to make the room stop spinning and then on the way home we passed some heavy machinery and I basically begged and cried until he promised to buy me a backhoe but what if I really secretly wanted a bulldozer all this time and maybe it means we NEVER EVEN REALLY GOT MARRIED oh my God MIND BLOWN.

Anyway: CONSTRUCTION EQUIPMENT! RAWR!

Feed Me, Seymour

It might be kind of hard to believe, but this is what diet food looks like:

I mention this because there are a bunch of people at work who have recently started a Weight Watchers program, and I listen to them talk about what they've been eating, and nothing sounds like what you see on that plate -- 4 ounces of strip steak, marinated in Worcestershire sauce, with ¾ cup of roasted Dutch yellow baby potatoes and 1 cup of fresh steamed green beans, both with lemon vinaigrette.

No, what I am hearing from the WW crowd is stuff like "brown rice" and "plain broiled chicken" and "no dressing" and "cabbage soup" and "popcorn" and "rice cakes." And I wonder to myself, every time I hear certain buzzwords, "WHY? Who eats THAT?" Who can get excited about a menu that doesn't sound like it tastes very good? I mean, I love microwave popcorn as much as the next person, and I even go through phases where I am borderline obsessed with it, but I don't think I have ever once eaten it for breakfast because it's a "filling food."

That is not to say that I am opposed to WW, or that I think it is bad, or anything like that, because believe me, I am an old-timer. I have been around the block a time or two. Like most women my age, I have spent a good portion of my adult like on some kind of weight-loss plan, and WW is one that works for a whole lot of people. WW worked for me at one point -- more than once, actually. It's a good program, based on very solid, very important ideas that have been proven to be effective in many, many cases. My co-workers are already having some success following the WW plan.

It's just that it isn't what I want to do right now. Right now, ten-and-a-half weeks into a diet that I "developed" myself but that references several important WW concepts, like drinking lots of water and getting maximum volume for minimum calories, right now I can't imagine going back to eating that way. Because I remember doing WW, and I don't remember ever feeling so satisfied, ever, as I did after eating my dinner last night.

When I started this diet, it wasn't supposed to be a weight-loss plan, or at least not immediately. I said back in May, when I implemented this "12-Week 12-Step Plan": "I do not really have a goal here, beyond the generic 'eating better and being healthier.' ... I am more interested in making positive changes and sticking to them than I am in hitting a specific target." The "12-Step" part of the plan was kind of a giveaway -- I didn't explicitly mention it then, but I was very concerned about my caffeine consumption, which was one of the big triggers for starting in the first place.

I also had other concerns that I did not mention at the time, which were big driving forces behind the plan I put together (i.e., small changes, one week at a time, adding up to what amounted to a really significant reduction in calories). I worry about high-fructose corn syrup, and genetically-modified foods, and artificial sweeteners, and salt. I didn't want to go jumping with both feet into a diet that was equally-but-differently as bad for me as what I started with.

But mostly, I am cheap and lazy and didn't want to have to buy or plan or cook anything "special." I didn't want to fill the fridge with stuff I don't want my kid to eat. And I certainly didn't want someone to look at my lunch bag in the office fridge and immediately say: "This is diet food." I just wanted it to look like I was just trying to save money by packing a lunch. In the beginning, I was pretty quiet about my goals. I didn’t announce that I was on a diet. I just … stopped snacking and drinking so much Mountain Dew.

Whether it was conscious or subconscious, I wanted to prove to myself that given enough time and enough discipline, it was totally possible to lose weight while eating, every day, the same stuff that I was always eating, all along. I just recently started actually tracking calories so that I can keep making changes and reductions, to keep up the slow-but-steady pace. That's kind of what WW is all about, but I feel more proud of what I have already done because I did it "my" way, and I didn't have to do any fancy math, or learn any secret tricks, or ever feel that I was suffering or sacrificing anything. And I definitely didn't ever have to eat a frickin' rice cake.

This morning, when I got dressed, I put on a pair of pants that were shoved in the way-back recesses of my closet. I can't remember when the last time was that I wore these pants, but I'm pretty sure they got phased out of the regular rotation because they were too tight and uncomfortable. They're not my "skinny pants," or anything remotely like them, but they're a size smaller than what I was wearing when I started, and these are going to be too big soon. Maybe not for another month or so, but soon enough.

And it might be kind of hard to believe, but I'll be able to keep this up for a lot while longer (my goal is to lose another 100+ lbs. before I stop) because I have a very different idea of what constitutes diet food than other people I know.

Camping Countdown: T-Minus-51

Apparently there are 51 days until we go camping. I actually thought it was a little longer than that, but that is because I can't read a calendar or something. Less than two months. Yeesh. We better start getting our crap together.

You think I'm kidding, but sadly, I am not. I am totally "that person" when it comes to vacations. Well, those vacations that are not all-inclusive, anyway. Obviously when we go on all-inclusive vacations we don't have to worry about packing enough of anything except underpants and sunscreen. The big trick with those kinds of vacations is making sure that you tip your waiter enough on the first day that he puts you at the beginning of the route when he is making his rounds with the mai-tais and the cold bottled water. Also, getting to the buffet early enough to ensure that the plates are still warm while you laze your way through cooked-to-order omelets and that the bowls are still chilled when you fill them with fresh slices of mango and papaya.

Wait, what was I talking about again? Oh, yeah: camping. Needless to say, we don't worry about omelets and mango and flagging down the mai-tai man. Sunscreen is only a concern in passing. We are much more worried about bug spray and keeping the raccoons away from our Twinkies and trying to remember whose turn it is to get the wine coolers and bags of ice and oh my god kid how did you manage to get fish guts in your underpants?

Even though I've been alternatively terrified and horrified about this camping trip -- I mean, in theory it will be fun, but I am a spoiled brat sometimes, so in practice I am not sure quite how awesome things will be -- we have been slowly but surely getting our supplies together, or at least trying to remember whether we have them or not. As previously reported, we got a new air mattress, and we just recently picked up a new tent. I've been keeping my eye on the BJ's flyers to see what we might be able to start picking up, like 60-pack cases of mac & cheese and 5-pound bags of tortilla chips and gallon-size jars of salsa and shelf-stable organic (?!?) milk and pickles and huge wheels of cheese. I have a trip to the dollar store planned, to pick up some spices and Italian dressing and aluminum foil.

Basically, now is the time when we stop the planning and start the organizing, which is when I tend to run into trouble. My ability to organize things is limited to the strictly conceptual only -- like, I can organize a 50-person party or a book club or a fantasy football league, but once it comes time to actually execute these things, I ... freak out. Basically, I overplan, and then I can't fit all the pieces together. I arrange and rearrange and pack and repack and I drive people insane and then I melt into a brainless puddle of goo when it is actually go time. I am totally "that mom" who has a magician, a clown, AND a live pony at her kid's birthday party.*

This is why I tend to think it's a good idea to make friends with the mai-tai waiter.

Still, though, even though I still have so many things to do -- take the sleeping bags to the laundromat, find out who has a charcoal grill, figure out who is going to be responsible for the red wine, the white wine, the beer, the hard liquor, the Xanax, etc. -- I am now past the point where I am dreading this vacation (sleeping in the dirt! with spiders and wildlife! aieeeeee!) and on to the point where I can already taste the Mississippi Mud Pie at Foxy's. And that is a good thing indeed.

* That statement is full of lies: I would never, ever have a clown. They're creepy.

Wheels

Transcript of a conversation I had with my daughter this morning, while my husband was in the shower:

Shae -- "Mommy, I don't want to go to school today."
Me -- "You don't? Why not?"
Shae -- "I want to go to Nana's."
Me -- "Nana's? But you love school. Why?"
Shae -- "I want to visit my motorcycle."

She means her BIcycle, of course. Which is pink and has Disney princesses on it, so it definitely needs some baseball cards to put in the spokes. Anybody have any Yankees cards they don't need?

On the plus side, she doesn't want to drive the car any more.

Brown Paper Packages Tied Up With Strings

I'm trying to get those gosh darn Christmas calendars done and I wanted to make sure I had enough good pictures to use for the December pages, so yesterday I planned a little "photo shoot" for when I got home from work, complete with a prop -- an office supply box that I fished out of the recycling at work, that I then wrapped for Shae to tear into, so I could capture the "magic moment" on film.

This is the point where I tell her there is nothing in the box. She actually handled it pretty well, though -- I told her that she was allowed to play with the box, the paper, whatever she wanted, as long as she didn't touch the Christmas tree or any ornaments, and as long as she helped us clean up before bathtime. For as clean as she is, she does enjoy making a mess from time to time. As we all do. (And she wore the box on her head for a while, and called it a "robot hat." Love this kid!)

I have been worrying though, lately, that I am turning into (or already am) one of those "paparazzi parents," the ones who go nowhere without their digital camera, ready to document anything and everything that might happen. Just in case, you know? It does concern me that maybe my own kid wouldn't be able to pick me out of a lineup, but she can identify my camera from 100 paces. I mean, for crap's sake: I planned a photo shoot for my own kid, in my own house! And the only thing she wants for Christmas is her own "cramera!"

Like any decent and reasonable person, I want to take whatever means are necessary to keep my kid from turning into one of those awful, awful people on shows like "The Hills" or "Keeping Up With The Kardashians." I mean, I think we're going to be fine, because nobody really cares about our life, since we're so average and ordinary and normal in every way (except for the monkeyshit craziness, of course, but even that is your typical kind of monkeyshit craziness).

Still and all, I wonder if maybe we are teaching her bad habits, because I spend so much time being Madame Director instead of being Mommy. I have spent approximately eleventy bajillion hours working on these calendars, and at least half that trying to direct my kid so that I could get the pictures that I want, so as to convey the image that I want, so I could make the pages turn into what I imagined them to be.

And I don't want to be one of those parents, one of those stage or pageant moms.

I don't want to make her into anything other than what she already is, which is COMPLETELY AWESOMESAUCE. She already makes me so happy.

Fifth Element

As I previously reported before, I am a notorious hypochondriac. If I so much as hear about the hot new disease, I convince myself six ways from Sunday that I have it. Swine flu, shingles, echolocation (which is not actually a disease but it sounds like one, doesn't it?) -- if it exists, I've convinced myself that I have it. Having once worked for a doctor's office in a position that allowed me to read other peoples' diagnoses probably exacerbated this problem. And of course the Internet and "The Hypochondriac's Guide to Life. And Death." do not help.

After that adventure I had over the summer where I had that weird case of contact dermatitis that caused some kind of underlying secondary infection -- or, as I like to call it, the "Really Bad Hot Itchy Boob Poison" -- I am particularly wary of (and suggestible to) rashes and itching. Like, right now my face is SO ITCHY that I feel like I am going to have no choice in a few minutes but to SCRATCH ALL MY SKIN OFF WITH A BENT PAPERCLIP just to keep from slowly going insane.

Now, probably it's nothing -- just dry skin from the weather changing. But this has been going on for a couple of days and it doesn't feel like it's getting better, even though I've been using my fancy expensive moisturizers every day and my special exotic treatment gels every night and washing my face with Cetaphil and sacrificing virgin baby unicorns during a lunar eclipse with a blade made of fairy wings and titansteel. Nothing has worked, so I went to WebMD, and simply by filling in that my symptoms include itchy or burning skin on my face, with nothing else going on (no foreign travel, no eating fish, no dancing with the devil in the pale moonlight), I have helpfully been informed that I probably have lice, or poison (again!), or hives, or alopecia, or narcotic abuse.

NARCOTIC ABUSE. Son of a bitch, I knew those two Vicodin that I took when the dentist YANKED TWO WHOLE TEETH RIGHT THE FUCK OUT OF MY HEAD were going to come back and bite me in the ass eventually. I didn't think it would take two and a half months, but there you go -- those 10 mg of Vicodin have turned me into an ADDICT and soon I'll be living on the STREET doing GOD KNOWS WHAT for money so I can buy cigarettes and alcohol and more drugs and it will just all be a bad scene and this is ALL BECAUSE THE INTERNET TOLD ME I HAVE ITCHY SKIN ON MY FACE! Because it's almost winter. Those bastards.

Oh, my point? My point is that Shae is sick, and she ALSO has a weird rash:

Except when little kids get a head cold with weird rash on their face (now it's more on her cheeks than around her mouth -- the mouth and nose redness is because she has been blowing her nose for three straight days), they get to have something called "fifth disease" and not, you know, a DRUG PROBLEM.

Send in the Clowns

(NOTE: This is long and overwrought and very emo, and possibly upsetting. This was a big ol' stream of consciousness thing that I wrote. You can skip it if you want -- the pictures aren't that great anyway. I almost didn't publish this, but I decided to anyway, for two reasons: (1) these are real feelings, and (2) I feel better for having gotten it out, which is kind of the reason why I started this blog in the first place. I'm fine. I'll be fine. I have to be, and I want to be. You can worry, but know that I have this stuff on the radar, and I am monitoring myself, and I won't actually GET out of control. I just FEEL out of control, sometimes. YMMV, and QED, and etc.)

=====

This time last year, I was was practically swimming in bliss, what with my team winning the World Series and my guy winning the election and things just generally going much more my way than things are right at this particular moment in time. I'm not exactly talking myself off the ledge, not quite, but ...

... well, let me put it this way: did you ever have one of those days when you have, like, tunnel vision, and all you can see is what's going on right in front of you, and that's probably okay anyway because what's happening off to the side there sounds a little bit terrifying, but anyway you're staring straight ahead trying to concentrate and then all of the sudden you notice that there is a very weighty darkness rapidly closing in around you and you feel this moist hot sulfurous breath on the back of your neck and then you blink and when you open your eyes all you can see is this pinpoint of light on the horizon and suddenly the panting is getting heavier behind you?

No? Just me?

G is still out of work, and right now I am the breadwinner in our family, and let me tell you something about that: my (not-so) inner feminist is at full-on DEFCON-5. It's one thing to be the moneymaker when you want to, when you and he are separate-but-equal-partners, when your marriage is new and you are both young and strong. But when you have to? When there are kids and pets and mortgage payments? When you've been constantly working for 10+ years without breaks except for the obligatory occasional week of vacation and you're old and tired? Whole 'nother ballgame, buster. This is quidditch on the moon.

The fact that there are only 40-something days until Christmas and I have barely started my shopping, barely even started thinking about my shopping, barely even started considering thinking about my shopping, probably gives away how bad things are getting, in my head at least. How can I worry about Christmas presents when I am busy worrying about how we're going to make two car payments and a mortgage payment and a daycare payment with only one job? It's come to this: I am having a hard time justifying spoiling my own child, the child we wanted so long and worked so hard for, because I just can't make the cost-benefit analysis work. Even as I say it myself, it's the saddest and stupidest thing I've ever heard.

And then I think, "If it's this bad for us, how bad must it be for others? The ones with no jobs, no severance, no unemployment, no nothing? How bad must it be for them?" And I can do something for them, I know I can, if I am willing to sacrifice some of the little bit we still have, but ... then again. Then again. They just did a round of layoffs where I work. I know I am lucky to have a job right now. I have survivor's guilt, I guess. I am becoming overwhelmed with all of it. Sometimes I worry myself right into nausea. I need to out my head between my knees. I can't hardly sleep.

I mean, maybe I exaggerate a little bit, but I am starting to hit panic mode right now and I'm not sure how to keep the sky from swirling over me while the earth spins out of control underneath my feet in this maelstrom of my own making. I am starting to crack under the pressure and I wonder sometimes if we're going to make it, G and I, our little family. I feel like I'm going looneypants. Some days I am sad, and some days I am angry, and some days it's a struggle to get out of bed, and some days I am so consumed with so many emotions at once that I force myself to feel absolutely nothing in self-defense. Fuck off, world! Die in a fire.

This is depression, probably a big one, and I know this. I can feel it like a giant octopus or a big hairy spider, twisting its legs around my ribs and squeezing until I can't run and can't move and can't breathe and can't scream. But I can't be bothered with this, I can't, I just can't be depressed right now, not with him depressed and people around me depressed and the whole damn world depressed. I'm the positive one. I'm the cockeyed optimist. I'm Little Miss Sunshine. I'm the Little Engine That Could.

And here I am, standing in the tunnel, and it's getting darker and darker and that panting behind me is getting louder and louder and that tiny point of light is getting farther and farther away and now I'm starting to hear calliope music, which means here come the horrible flesh-eating clowns, and I think it's going to be getting a lot worse before it gets better, and I'm barely hanging on to this high wire here already. Please, send help. And a flashlight.

Back in the Saddle Again

Sorry that blogging has been so light in the last few days: someone -- and I am not saying who because it might be me -- ran over the camera cord with the computer chair, and we just this morning got it fixed. We've also been wallowing in our depression over the end of the world the other day, and we're still kind of down in the dumps about it.

Oh, and there's that whole situation where I've been working on two calendars at the same time for Christmas. Boy howdy, what was I thinking with that? But I promise: we'll be back on track this week. Thanks for your patience.

Brat Pack

Shae wouldn't take a nap today, and we are probably thisclose to nuclear freaking meltdown. We attempted to avert disaster by going to the playground. Things started well ...

... and stayed okay for a little while ...

... but they started to take a turn for the worse ...

... and eventually we ended up in Midwestern Bratistan ...

... which is where we are right now. But we're having Benihana for dinner, and I plan to have a mai tai or two, or possibly several Blue Hawaiians, or maybe rotgut straight from the bottle. Whatever's on special. No sense in being fiscally irresponsible just because we're going through the terrible twos.

WTF!? Friday: Gleaming, Streaming, Flaxen, Waxen

I'm usually not really sure what I'm going to blog about until I actually start writing, but I assure you, I never in a million bajillion years thought that I would ever take up valuable bandwith talking about ... oh my God, I can't even say it, so here: let me show you instead.

This lovely woman is Shannon Waters, and she's a contestant on "Survivor: Samoa," the current (19th!!) season of one of my favorite shows. She's 45, from Renton, Washington, and she is the first female Marine Sergeant to play the game. At the moment, she does not annoy me, so she is allowed to live.

And let's not avoid the elephant in the room: she is also rocking one of the world's most spectacular fe-mullets.

Is this ... a thing, now? Because I am seeing more and more fe-mullets in the wild (if you can consider my office building in the suburbs, just off the Main Line, to be the "the wild"), and I would be remiss if I did not admit to being more than a little bit ... horrified. Scared for my life, even.

I am not really one to judge people on the basis of their hair; I myself have locks that are, on a good day, the approximate color and texture of moldy hay. My hair is baby-fine and poker-straight and, lately, ponytail-resistant. The Guinness people have not yet certified my collection, but I believe that I have one of the largest collections of scrunchies still in captivity, and I don't care if they "went out of style" five or five hundred years ago -- they can have them when they pry them from my cold, dead hands.

Damn dirty apes.

But this whole mullet thing, I just do not understand. A girl I know, who is young and tall and thin and stylish and probably lovely enough to win "America's Next Top Model," she recently got her hair cut into a sort of mullet-y ... thing. I don't know how else to describe it. She loves it, so I am in no position to judge, but I just don't get it. Like, she deliberately paid someone large American dollars to do that to her head? She wants people to mistake her for a hockey fan -- or worse, for a Canadian?

And don't even get me started on the return of leggings and, for the love of God, fucking stirrup pants. No, thank you. If this is what is passing for style these days, then I will continue to dress like Dorothy Zbornak in a bad Ann Jillian wig. Plus, everybody knows that there is really only one woman on Earth who actually looks good in a mullet, anyway:

Where "Jerk" Begins With "G"

What I said I wanted for Valentine's Day: a couple of packs of World of Warcraft trading cards. The thinking here is that I would maybe get a nice phat loot card, so for a couple of bucks, my husband could make me happy for potentially dozens of virtual minutes, and possibly even get me closer to earning that sexy little [Mountain o' Mounts] achievement so I could get myself a [Blue Dragonhawk Mount].

Instead, what I got, was this:

Flowers! Nice ones! With stargazer lilies and roses and carnations and something called "waxflowers" that are really cute and charming! Something thoughtful and pretty and nice-smelling! Something romantic, even!

Damn him, and his proper training! How could he do this to me? The RAT-BASTARD.

(If he thinks he's getting out of buying me all the key lime pie I can eat on vacation, he is sorely mistaken. And I can eat a lot of pie.)

Typical Situation

This isn't the best picture of my parents and their grandchildren, but it is the best representation of what happened every time we tried to get a picture of more than one person at once:

• Cupcake always played the part of the Chatty Cathy doll, being all "[gibberish] Nana [gibberish] Pop-pop [gibberish]" and making faces like my cousin Brittany and then yelling "Cheeeeeese!" once we put the camera away.
• My mom was trying (and mostly failing) to bribe her to sit still using food while Yours Truly was off-camera trying to coerce compliance with escalating threats of violence and revocation of Dora privileges.
• My dad kept trying to catch the football scores.
• And poor baby Joey was all, "WTF? Where is that boob? Am I really related to these people? It's so unfair! I can't wait until I can walk so I can run away! And where is that boob?"

So, you know. Typical family picture.

Open Letter to Geraldine Ferraro

Dear Gerry,

You know I loved you once, right? I hope you know how much I once loved you. Back in 1984, when I was 10 years old and I had no earthly reason to know who you were, I followed the Presidential election because you were on the ballot. I remember thinking to myself, "Wow, my parents really mean it when they say that I can grow up to do whatever I want, don't they?"

In the 24 years since then, you have shaped me in ways that still astound even me. To a fledgling feminist, you were The One, the benchmark, the standard. From that point on, I never took any crap from anybody, because I knew I didn't have to. Why couldn't the best and the brightest in the class be a girl? Why can't I do anything as well as any man could? You could.

With you, it was always about qualifications and policies. Which is why I am so disappointed to hear rumors that there is a hint of a chance that you would consider voting for the McCain/Palin ticket, just because there is a woman's name on the ballot. I hope this is because your politics and priorities have changed, and not out of some misdirected sense of girl-power cameraderie, because in that case, you would be doing us all a great disservice.

When you accepted the VP nomination back then, you said:

By choosing a woman to run for our nation's second highest office, you send a powerful signal to all Americans: There are no doors we cannot unlock. We will place no limits on achievement. If we can do this, we can do anything. ...The issue is not what America can do for women, but what women can do for America.

I will quote it again, because it bears repeating: "The issue is ... what women can do for America." What women can do for America, all women, is recognize that voting for a person solely on the basis of her gender would instead lock doors that people like yourself have blown wide open. We would be saying that values, principles, policies, and experience do not matter as much as the simple fact of our gender identities.

Which, back in 1984, 24 years ago, when I was just a kid, you told me was false.

At the risk of sounding like one of those "punk kids" who do not respect their elders, I ask you: Is this what you really believe? Do you believe that simply being a woman is enough to qualify someone for this great office? You fought so hard for so long for other people's right to receive my vote; why aren't you fighting equally hard for Sarah Palin to earn mine?

It saddens me to read things you have said over the past few months. Where once I saw a person I one day aspired to become, now instead I see a bitter, spiteful, nasty person who will not graciously accept defeat and recognize the opportunities that coming this far has afforded you. What it has afforded all of us.

What I see now is exactly the sort of person who is wrong for America: a person who sees only what she wants to see. And as the equal-opportunity-for-all feminist that I have become, the one you helped teach me to be, I don't see in Sarah Palin a person I want to vote for. Sorry to disappoint you, but mostly I am sorry that you have disappointed me.

Hopefully, before all of this is over, you will be yourself again, that smart, funny, talented, savvy, awesome woman I always hoped that I could be. Until then, I will be ...

Wishing you all the best,
rockle.

Baby's First Helicopter

MedEVAC
Originally uploaded by r_ockle

While we were at my cousin's graduation party yesterday at a park in the Lehigh Valley, a MedEVAC helicopter landed on the baseball field. The accident was about 200 yards from where we were. All of us ran down to watch the EMT's and the flight crew. It was ... weird. And morbid. And louder and smaller than I expected.

(Can't find any details on the accident or if everyone was OK. I can confirm that when we left the party yesterday, nobody in my family was unaccounted for.)