Weekend Before Christmas

It’s now late in the afternoon on the day before Christmas Eve, a mere 24 hours before the festivities begin in earnest, and only 4 presents are wrapped. Most of the groceries are purchased, but I haven’t looked up any recipes I need to prepare this faux Chinese dinner that Rob and I thought would be a good idea. The basement and Katy’s room is in complete disarray because Rob’s sister and her children are coming to visit and we needed to make room to put up the extra full-size bed downstairs and pull out the trundle in Katy’s room, not to mention the fact that both Farron and Jordan - and at least one additional cat and a large dog - will be staying over tomorrow night. Why do we feel compelled to begin huge projects on the eve of holidays or family visits? Is there some sort of compulsion that drives us? We probably are tormenting ourselves for naught. Shannon, my sister-in-law, hasn’t even given us an arrival date yet. Perhaps she will call from the road? She’s a widow too, which explains much to those of us “in the know”.

Yesterday we ventured over to the mega-mall to finish up our shopping. Next year we are vowing to start in September and do it all on line, but this Christmas we did the bulk out and about with the rest of humanity - literally it seemed. We made remarkable time. In and out in 90 minutes and found a spot to park in the lot to boot.

Last night was a Christmas party at friend’s of Rob’s, Dan and Heidi, whose oldest babysits for Katy. It was strange to do the holiday party thing again. Deja vu and not. I didn’t know a soul aside from Dan and his girls. Katy played upstairs with the other kids and I spent a bit of time chatting with a very young medical resident until I happened to mention our odd blended family and circumstances. I forget that I shouldn’t speak so casually about dead spouses because most people who know me even a little don’t know how to react, so forget about people I have only just met. She did find Rob and I to say good-bye when she and her husband left which I will take to mean I didn’t completely scare her off. At some point, as the kitchen filled up and spilled into the living room area Rob and I just cuddled up a bit on the sofa near the wood burning stove, watching the other guests get hammered. It was nice to have another wall-flower to hang with. At parties past, Will was always engaged with some person or other when he wasn’t manning the grill (yeah, even at the winter holiday parties) and he would always nag at me to mingle and not depend on him so much for company. And it wasn’t as if I didn’t know people and I did interact but I also hung back and watched - because that is who I am. It’s still who I am even though I am far less ill at ease in a room full of strangers than I have ever been in my life. As I told the young resident during our conversation, I have been surrounded by strangers, more or less, for the last six months. I did recognize a few of the women in attendance - from the gym and dance too, I think. I wasn’t keen on getting to close. I am leery of making friends with people when they are drinking heavily. You just never know how close they are at the moment to who they really are or not.

Today was our usual Sunday of a long breakfast, followed by tearing up the house and then public skating. Skating is starting to be a family ritual. Even when it feels like a chore or interruption in the day, it is nice to get the heart pumping and feel the chill of the ice seep up from your toes. We had tea, hot chocolate and cookies when we got home. Another ritual. That’s what it’s all about in the end. Family and friends and the rituals that hold us together.

When are you running for President?

I have been doing quite a bit of political blogging and commenting on others’ blogs at the Des Moines Register this past week or so. So much that my husband asked me tonight if I was planning to run for office myself. I told him I would be running for election right after I started to glow with the ethereal light of the chosen and asked him if he had noticed me lighting up the room at night with spiritual incandescence. He said no, but he had noticed that I fart in my sleep and offered to bring a lighter to bed.

My husband would make the perfect first husband however. He has a quiet presence of authority and is just apathetic enough to put to rest the fears of my fellow Americans who might worry that the United States would end up a mere puppet government in thrall to our empire building northern neighbors. I can assure you all that I am my own woman. Independent in thought and action (but I don’t clean litter boxes - that’s man’s work).

I am highly suspicious of those who seek the presidency too eagerly and am not at all surprised when their hypocrisy or true natures are exposed. Take for example the Republican, Ron Paul. He has been enjoying quite the cult-like build-up of late. His campaign raised something like $6 million over a short time period recently. But, interestingly and yet not surprisingly, about $500 of this money came from a known hate group. When called on this, the Paul organization went into a spin cycle that was as impressive as it was sad. Impressive because it was classic rationalization and sad because it seemed so effortless. So much for being different. I ran across a video on the Newsweek site which featured a Drake College student waxing rhapsodic about how wonderful and well-respected a guy Rudi Giuliani, of all people, is. It was especially ironic when you remember that he has children in college who dislike him enough to join Facebook groups supporting other presidential candidates.

Wouldn’t it be nice if real human beings ran for the presidency? People who realize that it’s just a job, albeit one with a great address, awesome health coverage and your own really cool jet so you can avoid the TSA entirely. I even bet when you’re president you don’t have to take your shoes off or check your shampoo at baggage. It is a job. I wonder if anyone remembers that? Seems odd that such an important position can be attained with vaguely detailed goals by people that many of us wouldn’t want to know personally.

I suppose though that someone has to want to be president just like someone has to clean rooms at Holiday Inn Express, chop up cow, pig carcasses for IBP, and roam from farm to farm during harvests, dragging their families behind them. Dirty work that most Americans won’t do. We leave it up to those without better options, leaving us free to up-size, accessorize and accumulate. I guess I should be ashamed that I don’t feel the tingly glow-worm of democracy pushing me to run for office.

No Crying in Presidential Campaigns! Unless you need to prove your Warmth

So, Mitt Romney stepped up to the plate and shed a tear or two for the team because if you want to be the president of this country (the U.S. not Canada - they don't have a president and I don't have space to explain what they do up here), you have to be warm, likable (there's that word again) and fuzzy. You have to prove that on top on of that intellectual core that is aflame with great policies destined to change the very essence of America is the next door neighbor of our dreams. Not the unemployed 40 something guy with man-boobs in the cut-off shirt and gym shorts who sits in his garage smoking and ogling the stay at home mom's as they go about their momming. Not him. But the great person who always has a smile and a greeting and comes out in -30degree weather to help you shovel off that oversize drive you have to accommodate the two vehicles you can't park inside due to the overflow of stuff. That person. It boggles the mind at times, but the fact is that only human beings through whom the milk of human kindness flows by the quart need apply for the the presidency. Competent. Smart. Experienced. That may get you in the door with your app, but if you can't smooze, ya lose.

Hillary Clinton knows this - now (though Bill surely knew it before and I wonder why he didn't share that with her) as she hustles about on her "If You Knew Hillary" tour of Iowa. She spent so much time playing the man's game that she forgot a small but significant part of the game was being ingratiating and radiating a holy healing light that provides warmth to all. Interestingly MSNBC ran a short article today about a recent study that found that while male bosses were not expected to be overly caring and could be forgiven for not reading their employees moods/minds, women bosses were cut no such slack.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22343419/

So, for not being a mind-reader, Hillary was sent back to go - almost - without collecting the 200 warm and fuzzy points and made to parade her inner self for the next two weeks.

Mitt Romney on the other hand just does what men in the public eye do when they want to prove they have a heart - somewhere. He cried. Because crying is womanly and proves that a man is in touch with that side of himself. Right?

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071220/NEWS/712200403

Frankly, now that he has the Tancredo endorsement, Mitt may be squeezing out droplets at every turn because Tancredo is not exactly a warm breeze on a summer evening.

I think the real issue is why warmth is an issue at all. Clinton and Romney may or may not convince the non-believers they are sincere and are wasting a lot of time that might be better spent showing the voters some of their stands on issues of real consequence.

Sexism in the City

I mentioned that I am blogging on a newspaper site in my old home of Des Moines. I try to be topical which it being Iowa and an election year means I do a fair amount of writing about issues and candidates. I have post a few of the things I have written for that site here. Two of those pieces being about sexism. My latest piece on the DM Register site is about an article I found on MSNBC about the difficulty Hillary Clinton is having in Iowa with wooing women voters. The article goes on to explain that aside from Mississippi, Iowa is the only state to have never elected a female governor or senator. In my assessment, I agreed with much of what was written implying that Iowa is a very traditional on gender roles despite the fact that more women work outside the home in Iowa than just about anywhere else in the U.S. and that it is so entrenched an attitude that even the women by into it. And this isn’t a new issue for me. I have been annoyed with the gender thing in my home state since I was a kid and couldn’t play summer little league baseball or join the Boy Scouts (because they actually camped and did cool outdoor stuff as opposed to the cooking and sewing the Girl Scouts had to do).

My latest efforts got my blog noticed and I received a flurry of responses - from guys - telling me I was full of shit (and those were the nice replies). So, I am wondering readers, my few and loyal, am I off base with the gender thing? Is the world, or at least the west, truly a gender-blind utopia - because it feels not so much different to me now than when I was growing up.

Any thoughts on sexism?