My Life - I Need to Vent

So I try to paint a relatively accurate picture of my life. I don't want to paint my life as all seashells and balloons 24/7/365. I don't think anyone's life is like that no matter how happy they are. Right now my personal life is all sharp broken seashells, sea glass that hasn't been polished by waves enough, and deflated and popped balloons. My parents are getting a divorce. I alluded to this earlier as it made E3's graduation interesting. But it's become slightly overwhelming lately. Moving has also caused complications. And, the world is falling apart.

Head Lice

Hubs went to the doctor yesterday morning because I had bugged him about it. He has some small problems that had bothered him for a long time. One of them was that his head itched. I have bad allergies so I itch all the time and thought nothing of it. Hubs had head lice. (He probably got it from one of his students.) He called me at work to tell me. (Using Foxy Lady as the ring tone for your husband and then not putting your phone on silent will result in embarrassment if he calls you at work.)

I use Hubs as a pillow 45% of nights and the rest of the nights we share a pillow. My head itches and it looks like I have head lice too. Hubs is going to have to comb out my afro with a nit pick. On the plus side it looks like I will be using a sick day on our anniversary so we can socially groom one another like the primates we are.

My Mom

My parents had been in counseling since I was in high school at least. They had trust issues. My sophomore year of college my dad bought a house without telling my mom. A few years after that my dad switched the beneficiary on his life insurance plan from my mom to my sisters and me and my mom flew off the handle. But they kept trying to make things work.

They kept at it until last March when my dad apparently bought a house for his secretary without telling my mom. She thinks he's having an affair. He's not. If you knew him you'd know how implausible that seems. My dad moved out. My mom hired a big shot lawyer who specializes in rich people divorces. They spent a year working on a post-nuptial agreement. That fell thru and my mom filed for divorce this spring.

via Kim Seng

I'll grudgingly admit my mom is justifiably paranoid, my dad has bought houses without telling her. But she has been so unreasonable lately! She told our guests at E3's graduation that he was going to come with his mistress! My dad just has his sister living near by and my mom is slandering my aunt too! My mom has been trying to limit the time we spend with her. E3 called me to vent about how our mom had fought with her about a visit she had planned with our paternal aunt.

The part that sparked this rant is that she won't stop getting us involved in their legal dispute. We keep telling them that we do not want to talk with them about the divorce in any detail. My dad generally respects this. Sometimes I regret asking him certain questions because there's no way for him to answer them without talking about he divorce.

But my mom ignores us. So last month she asked me to talk with my dad about the settlement agreement her attorney has proposed. She told me to "talk to him about the pros and cons as you see it from a legal point of view."

I was so upset when I saw this email in my inbox. I've told her I want to be supportive but I don't want to be involved. I have also told my parents a million times that I cannot give them legal advice because I am not admitted to the bar in their state and that I don't feel comfortable giving them legal advice because I don't like mixing professional and personal relationships (my respect and admiration for my parents clouds my professional judgment).

I took a couple of days to collect myself before responding by saying: "No. I love you both and I do not want to be perceived as taking sides. I think it is unfair that you have asked me to do this." Hubs said this seemed a bit harsh. In retrospect he's probably right but I really thought it was in appropriate for my mom to have asked the question in the first place.

I hopped in the shower and when I got out I had three angry crying voicemail messages from my mom.

She told me about how he felt hurt because her family (me and my sisters) were as supportive of her when she was going through breast cancer induced menopause as her sister-in-law's family was. She told me she was hurt because I was doing the same thing as my dad by refusing to talk to her. In the last message she left she expressed her own disappointment at having raised me to hide from people who were hurting instead of comforting them.^†

I decided to pretend like I hadn't heard any of the messages and sent her a text saying "I saw you called while I was in the shower." My grandma called me back and we talked.

My mom called later and kind of apologized.

A couple of weeks later, she cc'ed me and my siblings on an email in response to my dad about divorce things. And I was angry all over again.

I am still upset about my mom situation, as evidenced by this long post, and by the fact that I changed her ring tone to the scariest loudest alarm sounding ringtone on my phone. What I hate most about this whole thing is that I feel like this whole thing is mostly my dad's fault (who buys real estate without telling their spouse?!) But he's been the better parent throughout this mess. He doesn't go crazy and leave angry voicemail messages on my phone he doesn't talk about the divorce unless I bring it up first. It's so hard to be sympathetic to my mom's situation when I am down right afraid to tell her to respect my wishes regarding this. I almost feel like she doesn't care that my parents are getting divorced!

via Bernard Blanc

I also really resent how it feels like she's trying to keep me away from my dad. She came out and visited me with E2 over father's day weekend last year and this year she wants us to go to Walt Disney World (without Dad) for the holidays. I worry about my dad. He's 10 years older than my mom, 40 years older than me. He had a DVT, a blood clot in his leg, this year which can be very bad, even fatal. He has high blood pressure (crazy wife maybe?). His hands have started shaking and he went to a Neurologist and it is likely that he has Parkinson's. (The good news is he's gotten real about his estate planning but that lead to him sending a crazy distressing email to his lawyer on which my siblings and I were cc'ed on saying I want to leave everything to my three daughters. I am legit afraid every single time I get an email from my parents because of this shit.*)

My Father-in-Law

Hubs and I are moving about an hour north, as you know. We currently live a 20 minute walk from his parents' house, it's about a mile. My FIL has come over to our place maybe twice. My MIL stops over fairly often, for example she brought us balloons for his birthday and stopped by to hide a graduation present for his sister. My BIL and SIL, they both live with their parents, come over maybe once a month to hang out.

I haven't talked to him about this so what I'm complaining about is all hearsay. But Hubs has said he's incredibly upset about how far away we're moving. He can't handle that and I can't handle how out of sorts it sounds like he is because we're moving just under an hour away. I can't even!

I live a three hour plane ride away from my parents. My mom seems like she might be turning into an alcohol because of divorce stress. My dad has Parkinson's and the DVT this year. My grandma has dementia and is slowly leaving us. At my cousin's wedding in June I realized that the last time I saw my grandpa was at my wedding. He lives in California and I don't have enough time or money to go out there and while he visits my mom our travel schedules never over lap. He fell this winter; he ended up with a skull fracture and had no memory of what happened. Thank goodness my stepgrandma found him. E3 just left to teach in Taiwan for a year.

A week ago I let my homesickness and stress loose on Hubs and I just bawled. Anyway, I am annoyed with my FIL since it kind of seems like he doesn't really care about me or how I've moved so far away from my family so that Hubs can stay near his family. An hour isn't that far away, we'll see them just as often as we used to but I'm still over three hours and $400 away from my family and I love them and I want to see them. I just feel like the sacrifices I've made get no respect or consideration from him.

Ebola

I have been freaking out about the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. I am half-Nigerian. I have and aunt and uncle, their spouses and cousins who live there still. I've only meet my dad's brother and sister because I haven't been there. But there's been two confirmed cases now in Lagos, the largest city and one of the largest cities in the world. A traveler from Liberia wasn't showing symptoms when he got on a plane and when he got off he was sick. Now Nigerians have it. I am so worried.

If it comes to the US I am worried for my dad and E2 since they both work in hospitals where they might be exposed to someone who is contagious before it's confirmed that they have the disease. My dad is old and E2 is type 1 diabetic so I worry about their ability to deal with a bad infection.


</rant> Thank you for reading all those words. I really just needed to let that all out, again since Hubs has already heard this once, and blogging is cheaper than therapy especially since I have a $15 copay.

^†I thought this was a low blow as I had previously expressed concern that I often half wonder if I should have been diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum because I am sometimes socially awkward and as Hubs describes it I have the emotional depth of a small puddle. I'm pretty sure I'm within a standard deviation of normal but sometimes I think I must be pretty close to being outside out one standard deviation from the normal in terms of socialness.

^*Please excuse my language this once, this situation calls for strong words.

#firstworldproblems #whitegirlproblems #rant

This post has been kicking around as a draft for a long time now. In October, I tried to participate in the Fat Mum Slim Photo a day challenge. I can never remember to do one every day but I love instagram and I like getting creative with the prompts. On October 17, the day after the government shut down ended, the prompt was #firstworldproblems. While I sense that some people use #firstworldproblems to shame themselves and reminded themselves that there are bigger problems out there than Starbucks getting their latte order wrong, I don't like #firstworldproblems. Instead of getting mad and not doing the prompt that day I tried to explain what I didn't like about it. So I captioned my photo:

#fmsphotoaday #photoaday #firstworldproblems The government is shutdown so I can't get any work done (my job is funded by a government grant and I need to check in) and the low income people I work with can get help paying their rent or buying food for their children. I can't stand #firstworldproblems. I think it ignores the fact that even in the global south people have "trivial" concerns like trying to choose between different shades of lipstick and that they have phones and computers too. It also minimizes the problems here in America. There are plenty of Americans in poverty who are malnourished and homeless, who don't really have a "first world" standard of living.

The photo I instagrammed that day, me at my desk kicking back.

To break it down, I think #firstworldproblems is problematic for two reasons: 1) it can cause people to ignore the struggles that our fellow countrymen here in the U.S.A. have and 2) it perpetuates stereotypes about people in the third world (I generally prefer the term global south since I get confused by the fact that there apparently is no second world).

As to the first problem: I grew up relatively privileged both my parents are doctors, they are smart people who make a lot of money. Growing up I never had to worry about not having enough healthy food to eat, getting sick and not being able to afford medicine,^* or not having money to participate in school events.

In law school and in my first job post law school I worked with low income people with legal problems. Honestly, I was shocked at how many people were homeless, couch surfing, and living in substandard housing like tents or soon to be condemned apartment buildings. My husband teaches in a school district where over half of the families are so poor their children get free breakfast and lunch at school. What do these children do for dinner and what do their families feed them over the summer?

I hear stories about families who cannot afford necessary medical care for their children for example read this story about a man who was sentenced to life in prison because he was selling drugs to pay for his son's bone marrow transplant. The US has the one of the highest rates of child poverty of the "developed" nations. For an in-depth look at the life of one homeless family read the NY Times' really long, really good but depressing story called Invisible Child.

Poverty is the third world is more dire than it is here in the U.S. but people here still suffer and die because they do not have enough money. Families have fundraisers to raise money to pay for necessary medical expenses. Children here may not starve to death but they do not get enough healthy food to eat because unhealthy food is cheaper and more filling. They can focus in school because they are hungry and they have bad health outcomes for the rest of their lives because they lacked proper nutrition growing up.

I have less first hand experience with the second issue. I've travelled outside the United States but I've never really seen day to day life in the third world. But I know that people all over the world have internet access and cell phones. I've read that third world countries are skipping over landline phone technology and just going straight to implementing cell phone technology.

People in third world countries are people and they have mundane problems just like you and me have in the U.S. The author Teju Cole, he's lived in both Nigeria and New York City, tweeted a response to the #firstworldproblmes hash tag where he discussed the fact that though Nigerians have face significant troubles they still still hop aboard the minor problems struggle bus and have complaints similar to those one of my fellow Americans might mark with #firstworldproblem. Mr. Cole's tweets were collected an turned into an essay by the Atlantic here.

For example, I have a #firstworldproblems type problem. Burts Bee's changed the formula for the night cream I use and now I think it's smelly. I paid $17 for a huge jar of something that I think smells horrible. (It doesn't bother my skin so I am going to use it up and then find something that smells better.) If I were living in Nigeria I would still be upset that they changed the formula on the night cream.

#whitegirlproblems are what really get to me though. I can't imagine any problem that white girls have that I don't. Maybe sunburns. But that one is a bit of a stretch since I got a horrible, horrible sunburn all over my chest and shoulders in Bora-Bora. I should have been more diligent about applying sunscreen since the equatorial sun gave my dad a noticeable tan (my Dad is the nerdiest and ended up with an aquasocks tan line). But I can't imagine having to worry about getting a burn like that every summer since the sun here in Maine is too weak for that.

Like your average white girl with problems I too wear Uggs, go to yoga and have my cellphone go off during class^†, want to wear my yoga pants everywhere and not just to the gym, drink Starbucks, wear leggings as pants, Instagram, and have so many clothes that I cannot choose what to wear. These problems are not unique to white girls, they are problems that all people who have enough money such that they are no longer focused only on survival have.

Both #firstworldproblems and #whitegirlproblems are about minor inconveniences that seem to exist only because the person with the problem has enough money to have the problem. For example: Uggs are ugly but so warm and comfortable; I'm waiting for my manicure to dry so I can't do anything; I'm too lazy to get the charger for my phone and the battery is about to die; my charger broke; it's too hard to think of captions for my instagrams; et cetera.

I propose using #richgirlproblems or #richpeopleproblems and in the alternative since #firstworldproblems aren't limited to people in the first world and #whitegirlsproblems aren't just problems for white girls.


^*I did worry that my parents over used antibiotics and weren't treating me properly because they weren't pediatricians.

^†At least I thought it was my cellphone, really it was just some other land who had the same ring tone as I.

I mean no offense to my readers who use #firstworldproblems and #whitegirlproblems. As I indicated at the beginning  I assume that most people are well meaning and don't want to cause harm to others. I simply wanted to share my thoughts on the hash tags and hopefully get people to think a bit more about the world we live in.

Save the Moms!

So October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. One fall during my junior year of college, my parents called me. My mom had breast cancer. She's been okay for long enough now that the chance for reoccurrence is pretty low. But now October is different for me now since it's impossible not to forget especially when I see things like this:

via Instagram
I concealed the user who shared this on purpose.

"Saving the Tatas" and "I [heart] boobies" things are my least favorite part of this time of year. My first thought when I see these slogans is that the people who made them up only care about my mom's breasts, my breasts, anyone's breasts! But not about the people themselves. I know that can't be right so I assume that most of the people who have things like this care about women and do not want people to die of breast cancer and just like saying risqué things. But, it still makes me feel uncomfortable because it does seem like the focus of this type of awareness is just on the sexualized nature of breasts.

I'm 27 and no longer breast feed so I could care less about my mom's breasts. But I care about my mom. My mom is a whole wonderful person and she would be still be my wonderful mom even if she had a double mastectomy and didn't have reconstructive surgery (this is not necessarily what happened to my mom). She would not be able to be my mom if she had died of cancer. So maybe another part of what distresses me is that these slogans obscure the real stakes when it comes to detecting breast cancer. It's not about about one part of your body--it's your whole life.

via Instagram
For some reason I found this one particularly galling.

I also am incredibly suspicious of corporations who seem to use Awareness to simply to promote their products. I don't really ascribe any motive to large corporations other than increasing profits. For example, I don't think companies that sell yogurt really care they just want me to buy their yogurt so they say they'll give some non-profit 10 ¢ for every cup of yogurt sold.

I am looking at you Lilly Pulitzer!
(I may end up buying this murfee but
that will be because I like the print.)

While, I don't ascribe the same motive to smaller companies that are run by one or a few people. It is still so odd to see people trying to get me to buy pink things to so that the company selling them can share profits with the American Cancer Society or the Komen Foundation or some other non-profit that is related to breast cancer. I would prefer to give my money directly to the non-profit organizations that help people with breast cancer or that raise awarness.

I'm sorry that I've been so cynical today. Like I said, I imagine that most people who want to "save the tatas" are genuine in their attempts to raise awareness about breast cancer and to raise money for research. It just rubs me the wrong way. And, I know different people react differently to different things so saying "lets save the tatas" might be comfortingly humorous to someone in circumstances similar to mine. I just needed to vent. Thank you for reading.

Update: I found this article on "Pinkwashing" at Sociological Images, the Lisa Wade does a much better job of explaining how this practice is sometimes problematic and she's found a couple of really egregious examples of pink washing.