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Archives from 2002-2006

I saw Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Awfully Acrylic-Looking Skull today and it was, you know, pretty fun (Harrison’s like a Timex, man). I was talking to JB about it afterwards and we both thought that there were some scenes that might be a little rough for young kids to watch — tut tut tut — then I considered what it was about those movies that stuck with me and probably gave me a few bad dreams back when I first saw them: the face-melting scene, the monkey brains, and who can forget the moment in Temple of Doom when a still-beating heart is removed from someone’s chest? The more I think about it the more it seems to me that kids NEED to be scarred by movies, or they’re missing out on an essential part of childhood. Why, I wouldn’t be the yellow-bellied chickenshit I am today if I hadn’t had the living bejesus scared out of me by Poltergeist at an impressionable age. Just don’t talk to me about clowns. Or thunder. Or swimming pools full of rotted corpses jesusfuckingchrist.

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A weekly round-up of Elsewhere Blogging, for those who are interested, and even those who aren’t:

• Father’s Day gift ideas at Work It, Mom!
• The thrilling tales of taking Dylan to the pediatrician and testing a Googled home remedy on Riley at ParentDish
• Foods I’m eating on my “diet” at Gather

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By the way, I really enjoyed reading your comments here — you guys have such interesting and diverse lives. And, may I point out, it’s awfully damn nice that almost everyone who comes by this corner of the web is refreshingly devoid of the Shithead Factor, as evidenced by the total absence of even one little steaming comment-turd to the effect of You’re a Terrible Mother For Working Outside the Home Like OMG.

On that particular subject — but only briefly! I swear! — I saw some ugly opinions left on ParentDish a while back from some vitriolic working-mom haters, and I’ve been thinking, if Narrow-Minded Angry Internet Person’s own daughter grows up to have children of her own, and circumstances lead her to continue working at the same time that she’s raising her children, would NMAIP tell HER that she shouldn’t have had kids if she was “just going to let someone else raise them”? Would they still hold such ignorant, judgmental beliefs? When NMAIP looks at their little girl, do they want her to be a strong, independent woman capable of making her own decisions and raising her children according to what’s best for her own family’s situation? Or is she only allowed to make the exact same choices NMAIP made? What do you think, Non-Narrow-Minded Sane Internet Person?

Okay, that wasn’t really all that brief, was it. Dear brevity: suckadick.

I am feeling pleasantly busy lately as opposed to chicken-with-head-cut-offedly busy, thanks in part to cutting back on a few blogging obligations (bloglibations?). It is far more doable to write for ParentDish twice a week rather than twice a day, for instance. Also, although it seems vaguely impossible that I even have time every week for my office job, going to Workplace seems to free up some space in my life in some way that’s hard to explain — I suppose getting out and having an entirely different set of responsibilities on a part-time basis helps reduce that feeling I am wussily susceptible to, of being completely over-fucking-WHELMED by parenthood.

It doesn’t hurt that Workplace isn’t exactly what you might call a taxing environment. Sure, it’s got its frustrations (although none of them are nearly frustrating to me now as they used to seem: when confronted with an annoying work situation I just compare it to the experience of cleaning up the third milk-barf of the day; or having two small children experiencing total screaming system meltdowns at the same time; or changing a particularly disgusting poopy diaper only to have to immediately change the other kid’s poopy diaper; or staring at the clock in disbelief because you’ve got to be shitting me, there’s no way it’s only 10 AM, I am never going to survive this day, etc — which is to say, that irritating coworker/managerial SNAFU/last-minute project from hell is practically a full-body hot-stone massage in comparison), but overall my office is far more focused on downtime than deadlines. That can soooort of sometimes be an annoyance in and of itself, actually, but really, I can think of worse things to deal with. Like the dotcom job I used to have where the company was owned by a terrifyingly dysfunctional pot-smoking husband and wife team and everyone had to walk around pretending that our software products actually existed, for instance.

My office job is sometimes enjoyable and sometimes lame, and I think I used to feel that I should be entitled to a job that is NEVER lame, but now that I am more seasoned and maybe also a little jaundiced and old enough to not only know what a silicone-based makeup primer is but also to greatly appreciate its effects, I am fairly certain such a job does not exist. I mean, I still believe in pursuing a fulfilling career and I have ideas and hopes for my future job opportunities, I guess I just feel more capable of appreciating what I’ve got now.

How about you? Are you in a good place, job-wise? Have you changed the way you think about working as you’ve gotten older? Those of you who are staying home with kids, do you plan to go back to work at some point, and if so, will you pick up where you left off — or do you have different interests now?

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