There But For The Grace Of God...

I've been lying awake stewing over this particular issue long enough this morning to feel compelled to post, but it might cost me some friends. The accident at the zoo in which the gorilla was shot and killed to protect the 4-year-old boy who crawled into the enclosure was a terrible, terrible thing. It was a perfect storm of things that went wrong: an enclosure that was apparently not as secure as everyone thought, a mom who didn't take her son seriously when he said he wanted to go see the gorilla up close, you name it. But I am not ranting about the existence of zoos, or the choice to shoot to kill rather than tranquilize, or any of that. I am ranting about those people who are posting things calling that mother a "bitch", saying she should have her children taken away from her, saying she should be shot and killed as "Justice for Harambe". You know what? You are a f*cking terrible person. Let me explain why I feel this way right now. I have read comment after comment from people basically saying the same thing: "She is a bad parent because she let her child out of her sight. She is at fault. She is a terrible person and should be punished. [Here's where it really gets me steamed.] One of the following: I DON'T HAVE KIDS, BUT IF I DID, THIS WOULD NEVER HAPPEN TO THEM BECAUSE I WOULD WATCH THEM LIKE A HAWK. Or I WATCH MY CHILDREN 100% OF THE TIME; THAT EXPLAINS WHY NOTHING BAD LIKE THIS HAS EVER HAPPENED TO MY CHILDREN." I'm sorry, but if you believe that you are the reason nothing bad has happened to your kids, that you have kept an eye on them 100% of the time, round the clock, YOU ARE AN SANCTIMONIOUS IDIOT. No parent is perfect. And nobody, not a single person, not even the Immaculate Mary, has watched their kid 100% of the time. It's not possible. The reason nothing bad has happened to your kid is because you are lucky or blessed. And let's face it, nobody is always lucky or blessed. If you think you are a perfect parent and better than everyone else, I invite you to unfriend me right now. Because everyone makes mistakes. We don't all make the same mistakes, and we don't all make them in the same places. One of the thoughts that went through my mind when I read the news story was, Thank God that wasn't Brendan. Because kids are like Weeping Angels from Doctor Who: they are fast, faster than you can believe, and so you'd better not blink. Because there will come a day that you SWEAR you are watching your kid 100% of the time but you suddenly realize they aren't standing right next to you in the women's department of Target, or they aren't still playing on the floor with their legos, or they aren't on the swing on the playground even though they were JUST THERE, or God forbid you hear a screech of tires and realize your child is running into the street after a ball even though you've told him 100 times to never do that. The kid apparently told his mom he wanted to go in and see the gorilla, and she should have taken that seriously. But kids also say things like, "I'm going to go live on the moon" and "I'm going to marry my teddy bear." And you're supposed to magically know when to take that comment seriously? How do you know when a kid is going to act on something? YOU DON'T. The woman also had several children with her; should she have had another adult with her to help her with the load? Perhaps, but why does this suddenly justify a thousand Internet comments screaming for her head? Yes, a terrible, terrible accident has occurred, and heartbreakingly an animal has lost its life because of it. But if you think that this justifies death threats towards this parent, and you AREN'T A PARENT: Shut the f*ck up. And if you ARE A PARENT and you are spewing this crap right now, I want you to repeat after me: THERE BUT FOR THE GRACE OF GOD GO I. Because it COULD be your kid, no matter how awesome of a parent you THINK you are. So shut the f*ck up. YOU ARE WHAT IS WRONG WITH SOCIAL MEDIA. Go ahead and do us both a favor and click "Unfriend" now. Rant over.

Ingratitude

I feel like an ungrateful beast a lot of times. I have life pretty good. I have a husband who loves me, two healthy kids, full-time employment...basically, everything I need. But I spend a lot of time being sad and depressed, when I don't have anything to be sad and depressed about. Depression is a bitch, because not only does it make a person feel awful, but can also remind that person that they shouldn't feel awful, and then that person feels awful about feeling awful.

Case in point: today. I spent a couple of hours this morning standing at an intersection in town, directing traffic for a half marathon. I was there for the safety of the runners, stopping cars while they crossed through the intersection. The half marathon is in memory of the son of a friend and coworker, a son who was five months younger than my older son, a little boy who died a few months shy of his second birthday. I am always reminded of this little boy as I check off milestones in my kids' lives. Brendan is 5 1/2; Josh will always be younger than 2 in the minds of everyone who knew him. Brendan will be starting kindergarten in the fall; Josh never even got to attend preschool. Brendan is an unstoppable energetic force; Josh never even learned to walk. This half marathon today was a fundraiser for an organization here in town that pays for the funerals of babies who died before their first birthday. I never faced anything like what those parents face. I should be incredibly thankful.

Then, I come home and read a blog post from a former student. She and her husband have three kids, all with special needs and medical conditions. Her youngest is in the hospital right now with breathing problems; one of her twins has a lump in his neck that may turn out to be cancerous (but hopefully will turn out to be benign). I cannot imagine the struggles that their family goes through on a daily basis. Both of my kids are on track developmentally and are healthy. I will never know what it is like to have a kid with chiari malformation or autism. I should be incredibly thankful.

But I sit in the middle of my living room, completely annoyed with my children and wishing I could be elsewhere. I feel exhausted and headachy, and I am inexplicably grumpy. I am ungrateful. And I hate myself for it.

Slow progress is still progress

Today's weigh-in: 191.8

Well, I'm nearing a goal...I had hoped a couple weeks ago that I could be at or below 190 by the end of the school year. We still have four weeks to go, so it's looking possible. [Of course, I could easily bounce right back up, so I'm not trying to count any chickens before they've hatched.]

The next goal I have in mind is 185, which will put me in both of my kayaks again. I'd like to paddle a bit this summer, probably not on any rivers but maybe on the local lake.

After that, I'm hoping to get down below 175...that's about what my lowest previous weight was, around 2006? Hard to remember that long ago.

It's very slow going, though. I'll be stuck, plateaued, with my weight yo-yoing in a 3-4 lb fluctuation. This 191 that I've got could easily be 194 tomorrow. I need to keep going. I just wish I could have a consistent weight loss instead of the yo-yo pattern. That is no fun.

Think about Ink

So, for a while now, I've really wanted to get another tattoo. I got my 8th tattoo back in 2012, a few months after my younger son was born. This was the most important tattoo, one that was a memorial for my mother. It's a big celtic cross with knotwork on my left shoulderblade, and it has her initials in her own handwriting beneath it. I love my tattoos, although I admit that several of them have no real significance; I just got them because I liked them. But now, I have several more ideas for tattoos that I really really want to get, and all of them have significance.

1) On my right foot I would like to get a quote from Lord of the Rings. It's a line from the poem about Aragon: "Not all those who wander are lost." I would do it in a font similar to what Tolkien used for the books. I would like to put it along the outside of my foot, maybe wrapping around to the top. I'd also like to put a compass rose on the top of my foot. I'm trying to figure out if there's a way that I can incorporate several things into the compass rose. I'd like the arrows of the rose to be Katniss' arrows from The Hunger Games. In the center of the rose, I'd like to put the Deathly Hallows symbol. I'd love to see if I could get the Star Trek logo in there somehow as well, but I'm not sure how. And I want to find a way to incorporate a semicolon (see The Semicolon Project). I don't know if I can get all those things into the compass rose. I might just do the rose with the semicolons and save the other symbols for another time.

2) On the inside of my left forearm, I would like to get a quote from To Kill A Mockingbird, in type font. It's from the end of the book. Scout says, "Atticus, he was real nice." And Atticus replies, "Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them."

3) I want to get another Celtic knot, called a motherhood knot. I'm thinking about the back of my neck, or maybe the middle of my back between my shoulderblades. I would love to get some cool colors with it, like a watercolor splash. And I'm thinking about incorporating a quote somehow. I love the line from Shakespeare's play The Tempest: "We are such stuff as dreams are made on."

The problem is, how to pay for all this. I'm notoriously bad at money; I tend to spend it as soon as I have it. I need to save a couple hundred dollars for each tattoo, I'm sure. Just don't know how my hubby will feel about it. He has one tattoo, but he's never succumbed to the addiction like I have. Hard to justify a couple tattoos when we've got hefty balances on our credit cards. :/ I need to figure out how to make some money. O.o