Since we won the SuperBowl last year (at least I suspect that’s the reason) I get to see more of their games. Usually, I have to put up with the Cowboys, Chiefs and Broncos….BLECH….but this year, so far all of their games have been televised here.

Since I live the erratic life I live, I record the games so I can be sure to get to see them. Except, my dumb butt needs to adjust the recording settings to record extra time at the end, because on all three of the recordings, so far, it quit just minutes before the games were over. Today, there was 1:01 left on the clock and we were up 20-15. I about came undone! Turns out, the final score was 23-20. We lost. UGH.

So, now we’re 1:2. The stupid Ravens are undefeated and, by extension, first in our division. We’re not off to a good start.

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Diggety-Dang DVR Leaves Me Hangin’ Again!

But first, let me tell you what I really LIKED about the Twilight books. It’s the same thing I like about Disney/Pixar movies:

The story might be for/about kids, but they’re written in such a way that adults get a whole lot more out of them than kids do.

In the case of Twilight, there are no graphic sex scenes. Period. None. Hell…Bella and Edward don’t truly “get their groove on” for real until the last book, for cryin’ out loud. But their love story is the point of the whole series. And believe you me, baby, my heart was a-flutter well before the first book was done.

Why?

Because the story is written with a less-is-more attitude about graphic depictions of a love story. Our imaginations are our strongest aphrodisiacs, my friends…and I think too many authors (teen and adult fiction alike) have forgotten that.

When I think about my daughter reading the Twilight series, I realize she’ll be reading it through the filter of anticipation, not experience. And her heart will flutter just like mine, but for different reasons. She, at 10, doesn’t have the first clue what it feels like to have mind-blowing sex with someone you love inside-out, upside-down and sideways. I do. She’ll “fall in love” with Edward or Jacob for very different reasons than her mama is slobbering at the thought of those two. And that’s just as it should be.

Which brings me to the reason I won’t mind if she doesn’t read the Twilight series: Bella is not the model of self-esteem I want to see PDD following through her teen years. I mean, really, Bella doesn’t truly “get” any of her worth until the damn last chapter of the last book.

I get that fiction writers need to create conflict. I get that they need to create drama. And human relationships – particularly among teenagers – are full of both, for sure. But give me a royal break, will you please all ye fiction writers out there who insist on making your heroines subjugate themselves and their self-worth to the point of ridiculousness, all in the name of love.

PUH-LEEZ!!

Having been a teenage girl myself (though, admittedly, it was many eons ago) I know that low self-esteem and low self-worth run rampant in that demographic. Some of us carry that crap right on into adulthood with us, until we wake up one morning feeling like we’ve been dipped in wet cement and hung in the corner to dry, our coating of protective self-loathing is so thick. Bella would not ring true as an American teen without some of that going on in her head. I get that.

But does it have to be EVERY conclusion she draws as to why this or that happens? Every single time?

That is the one bitch I have with the Twilight series. Stephanie Meyer wore Bella’s insecurities out before the first book was done…and then kept on, and kept on…until I wanted to reach into the pages of the book and give Bella a slap like Cher gives Nicolas Cage in “Moonstruck” and scream, “Snap out of it!”

And this very thing is why I don’t read romance novels anymore. They’re unhealthy, IMHO.

I get that many women read them for “escape”. I get that. But I can name a few names of women who read them and substitute them for reality.

I hate to break it to some of you romance fans, but no man is going to “read your mind” and see how much you love him while you’re busy denying your attraction to him, much less your devotion, and come chasing you down to declare his undying love and sweep you off your feet into the happily ever after. Just ain’t gonna happen in real life.

Will a man pursue you despite your foibles? Uh, yeah. Duh. Will a man love you despite your imperfections? Uh, yeah. Double-duh. But will a man put up with you and your incessant “less-than” mentality forever on end? Not only no, but good God, I hope not!!

I know a couple whose marriage is, was and likely always will be teetering on the edge of emptiness largely due to the wife waiting on the husband to act like the Romance Novel Hero, and anything less than that leaves her disappointed. But will she speak up and say what she wants? Oh no…he’s supposed to read her mind and just give it to her.

There is a concept I learned the first week of computer programming school all those many years ago that applies to just about every aspect of life:

I’m pretty sure Bella would have been just as interesting, maybe even more so, if she’d been a little less self-loathing and a little more self-aware. And she’d have been a whole lot more ‘real’ an example for PDD than the default, “I’m so worthless I don’t see how Edward could love me” that played until the last few pages of the last book.

Maybe Stephanie didn’t see Juno yet…

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Why I Don’t Read Romance Novels (…Anymore)

Look what I found this morning when I logged into Facebook, posted by my sister:

Yep – that’s me, at 11, in 1975 in my flowered swimsuit. (Peggy, this one’s for you, since I long ago promised you a picture from my past.)

Interesting, isn’t it, that this is the only kind of bathing suit I seem to be able to find 35 years later on the fat, middle-aged women swimsuit rack. I swear to you I saw this same print in Wal-Mart last week.

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Facebook: The Swimsuit Edition

Truth be told – I’m considering amputating it right now – myself.

Like the dumbass that I can be (though less and less often, these days – thankfully) I ripped a hangnail out of my left ring finger last weekend.

Dumb.

Dumb.

Dumb.

I know better. Truly, I do.

Nonetheless, now I’ve got a real mess on my hand(s). Pun intended.

I have spent the week doing the usual: bandaid, triple antibiotic ointment. When it got worse instead of better, I tried to lance it. I could see pus under the skin and under the nail…so I went after it.

Dumb.

Dumb.

Dumb.

Then, the whole side of my finger started swelling up around the nail causing any pressure at all to send me through the roof. So, of course, Dr. Suzanne’s treatment: trim the nail.

Great plan, except that 1/3 of the nail came off when I tried that.

Dumb.

Dumb.

Dumb.

If I didn’t think I’d totally gross you out, I’d take a picture of this thing. The parts that aren’t scarred from the failed lancing attempt are swollen beyond belief and are a greenish-gray color. The skin around the back of the nail looks like it’s going to explode any minute. There’s so much pressure and it’s so red, it looks like Rudolph’s nose.

Of course, typing is an adventure in itself.

Try typing while holding your left ring finger in the air. Yeah, it’s a trick. One I’ve not mastered…yet.

And of course, when it’s literally a pain to type, I can think of all kinds of funny stuff to tell you about. Like my pipes under my kitchen sink that spontaneously blow out at the most unexpected moments. While running the garbage disposal…of course. Water spewing everywhere isn’t enough for me. It has to be water with chunks. That’s how I roll, you know.

That, too, will have to wait. Right now, I’ve got to figure out how to amputate this finger.

Without alarming the children.

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9 Fingers Are Enough for Me

The other day, Nancy left a comment on my post “Bailout Plans Chap My Ass” as follows:

Hey Suzanne, you’re right on. Here’s a clip from Ohio Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur that speaks to this dilemma perfectly (and offers the first cogent solutions I’ve heard yet.)

I hope they act on this! It won’t fix everything (maybe nothing can, now) — but it sure as heck beats what the “powers that be” want from we-the-people.

And hey, isn’t the power supposed to be in OUR hands anyway??? Aren’t our elected representatives supposed to s-e-r-v-e US???

Hmmm.

Take 5 and watch the video she shared with me…

Thanks, Nancy.

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• The Alternative “No Bailout” DeFazio Plan
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Real Reform Now…Or Not

Here’s why.

Seven years ago, I had a retirement account valued at over $250K…that’s a quarter of a MILLION smackers, folks. I was sittin’ pretty. It was all in stock options of the company I worked for, and in February or so of 1999, set to give birth in May to my youngest, I cashed out a few of them and got myself completely out of debt except for my mortgage. Let me tell you – there’s NOTHING better than writing a check for $18,990 to pay off your Chevy Blazer knowing that sucker will not only clear, but that there’ll still be money in the account afterward. Talk about tingle all over, baby…

Then, within two years, my retirement account balance went to -$48,658 because the SEC found out that the president and treasurer of the corporation had been doing super-shady-shit to artificially inflate the company’s stock price. They went to jail and December of 2002, I lost my job in the last wave of layoffs that year. Shortly thereafter, the company filed bankruptcy, reorganized, got sold for a song to a competitor and is now doing business under a new name and hopefully better management.

Would it have been nice if some bailout package had been available to preserve my retirement account balance and protect it from dive-bombing the way it did? Hell yeah – but it wouldn’t have been right. Did I participate in any of the shady shit? No. I was one of those “innocent victims” we’re hearing about in the news every morning. And I feel for them, yes I do – BUT, and it’s a BIG BUT – a bailout isn’t the right answer. To preserve something that is crap to begin with is just ridiculous, and along the way you reward the perpetrators of this round of shady shit.

Would I like to have my quarter of a million bucks back? HELL TO THE YES! But you know what? Not if it meant I had to go back to that life I was living then. Going through something like that, having the proverbial rug ripped out from under you like that, sucks butt of the biggest proportion, but it’s not the end of the world. It also serves as a wake up call, teaches you what you’re made of and what’s really important to you, and in its wake, brings opportunity and hopefully some new behavior.

Face it, folks – we’re addicted to credit, addicted to oil, addicted to a lot of shit that we’re gonna have to let go of. Letting go isn’t fun, and most of us aren’t willing to do it. Most of us have to wait until it’s ripped out of our hands and then we call THAT letting go.

Is there a graceful way to transition from where we are to where we want to be? I think so. Do I know what it is? No, but I believe in the idea that a graceful way exists because I believe in things like personal accountability, personal responsibility, jumping in to help even if you didn’t cause the problem, accepting what is and being the change you want to see in the world.

What we’re experiencing now is a real life application of cause and effect. We love it when the effect is something we like…not so much when it kicks our collective asses. Having landed unceremoniously on my large part more than once in my life, I’m here to say each time I got back up on my feet, I had something better than I had before.

Do I think we should bail out Wall Street? No.

Do I think it might mean the end of a lot of things as we know them if we don’t? Yes.

But here’s the good news: a lot of things as we know them right now SUCK. Ending them might not be such a bad thing.

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Bailout Plans Chap My Ass

People saying Obama’s experience as a community leader leaves him lacking as a Presidential candidate.

Really, now. That’s a good one! Come on, folks – put your thinking caps back on. Presented with a choice between a career politician (with the so-called requisite “experience”) and a community leader who can effect positive change (and has) – I choose the community leader, thank you very much. Why? Because it’s just a matter of scale. Neighborhood > City > State > Nation > World…all communities.

People saying Obama is a charismatic speaker, and can motivate crowds of thousands, but that somehow leaves him lacking as a Presidential candidate.

If you ask me (and I know you haven’t, but I’m telling you anyway) a leader who can inspire and motivate us to stop whining, get off our asses and participate in our lives and help to solve the problems we collectively face is just about EXACTLY what we need right about now in this country.

For the first time in my adult life, I am interested in the election. All the previous elections…whatever…same old, same old…Democrats dissing Republicans, Republicans dissing Democrats…I never gave too much of a rat’s behind what happened because I didn’t feel like my vote counted for all that much.

And the only thing I can point to this time around is that because I feel heard and understood by a candidate who is echoing my own private thoughts, I feel like my vote matters. I also feel a new responsibility to not just vote, but participate in creating and effecting the change we all want so badly. Yes, we can get this country back on the right track, but no we can’t do it sitting on our large parts whining, bitching, pontificating and pointing fingers of blame. It’s going to take work, sacrifice and probably a good bit of struggle (because, you know…everyone wants change, but no one really likes it) to feel better about how things are going all the way from my own life to the global community.

People suggesting being anti-Iraq-war is somehow being anti-American.

I’m sick of this war and its agenda. I’m sick of feeling like I have to be quiet about that lest I be thought unpatriotic or ungrateful for the sacrifice made by those in uniform who are laying their life on the line everyday so I have the freedom to speak my mind. I am neither unpatriotic nor ungrateful. I think we got suckered into this war by a bonehead in the White House with a personal agenda (but no plan) who capitalized on the swell of patriotism post-9/11 and thought we’d all catch a bad case of the Okie-Doke and go along with it without complaint. I’m sick of the Bush Doctrine, too. The “I’ll hurt you before you can hurt me” attitude that causes so much grief in our personal lives is now our national foreign policy. That’s just ducky.

I want change.

I don’t want to hear about hockey moms, pit bulls and lipstick – I want to hear from the Republicans how, if elected to office, the next four years will be different than the last eight. I want to hear how we’re going to kick our foreign oil addiction and become an environmentally responsible global community citizen. I want to hear about how jobs will be created and how we will transition to new technologies for power and how we’re going to pay to educate our children to compete in a global economy. I want to be inspired to believe and motivated to act. Most of all, I want to be acknowledged as a thinking, voting citizen of this country whose opinions and concerns matter.

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I’ve Had Just About Enough

Knowing that misery loves company I want to promote annual breast cancer screenings, I planned ahead and took my digital camera with me with the idea of taking a picture of one of my scans to use as the image for this post. Not that I need to have my ta-tas on display, but because we all know images add interest to blog posts.

No dice. I was told I was not allowed to take a picture of a scan of my own ta-tas, not even to help promote annual ta-ta torture mammograms for us mature ladies 40 plus. So I asked if I could have a printout of one of them, and the bimbette technician replied, “We don’t use film anymore. These are digital, so no, I can’t get you a printout.”

WTF??!!! Hello lady – digital = easy printouts. No developing films required. Ugh! Whatever. I rolled my pancaked ta-tas up, stuffed ‘em in the ol’ bra and got the hell out of there. I had to resort to this image I found online. I chose it because at least it shows you the better resolution and clarity of the new digital mammograms vs. the old film-screen mammograms.

If you live in or near Tulsa, go somewhere other than St. John Breast Center for your mammogram, if you can. Otherwise, you might have to deal with the bimbette that did mine. Oy.

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Pancaked Ta-Tas for Breakfast

BabySis and her hubby bought a digital camera and new living room furniture with theirs. A friend of mine spent hers paying off a credit card, which she promptly cut up and threw away (go girl!) And I will be playing catch-up on some bills and will hopefully ferret away enough to take the kids to the drive-in next weekend (if they decide to play anything worth paying money to see, that is.)

I know I’m just a rabble-rouser saying this out loud, but doesn’t it kinda piss you off that the government passes out money and openly encourages us all to go blow it? Every news broadcast I’ve seen since the checks were announced has openly said they hope we’ll all go shopping with them. God forbid we use them to dig ourselves out of the debt-hole most of us have dug for ourselves. Economic stimulus, my ass.

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Economic Stimulus, My Ass

So I think I’ll stop my whining and hit the hay. I have to be up early tomorrow, anyway, to work concessions for the Special Olympics.

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Friday Night Bites