I Say Tomato…

This week’s blog is way overdue because I got sidetracked. Three separate and unkind incidents wound up being related and I found myself in a state of pre-Christmas shock. Christmas is a season that fills me with joy. I love the decorations, the gift-giving, and most importantly for me, the true reason behind this most loving of celebrations. I was taught from a young age to put God first, honor my Mother and Father and treat others the way I want to be treated. This brings me to my current soap-box stand.

I was checking out in a large chain store and the cashier wished me “Happy Holidays.” The lady behind me snorted and said clearly so six people deep could hear her, “It’s not Happy Holidays, it’s Merry Christmas.” The cashier was a 20-something full-time student (hey, it’s a small town and we tend to know everyone) working her way through college and it broke my heart to see her face turn pink with embarrassment. I turned to her and said clearly so six people deep could hear me, “Thank you so much for wishing me happiness.”  The lady behind me was not amused, but given the situation, I treated her the way I hoped someone would treat me and smiled and wished her a Merry Christmas.

Later that same blooming evening, Facebook smacked me right in the kisser with one of those e-cards on my news feed. “I won’t wish you Happy Holidays, but I’ll Merry Christmas the crap out of you!” Really? Someone is so obsessed with something being only one way that they’ll put the word crap in the same sentence with Merry Christmas? Pardon me, but whoever thought of that needs an enema for the brain. Crude, I know, but again; really?

The next morning I turned on the radio in my car and found that someone had been messing with my dial. Talk radio was on at its most opinionated. Rush was hollering how the “Left” in our society was trying to rid the world of Merry Christmas. I happen to work at Social Services. I enjoy my job and I have a live and let live mentality. In the eyes of Mr. I-know-everything-and-you-don’t, that would put me so far to the left you couldn’t get directions. Funny, but I believe in Merry Christmas, Happy Easter and the Pledge of Allegiance. 

My point? How can someone wishing me Happy Holidays possibly take away from what I believe? How does it threaten me? If someone says “Have a blessed day,” am I not the recipient of a kindness regardless of my beliefs? I don’t get it. In a Season that is all too short, glossed over with commercialism, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday, what has become of us that we can’t recognize kindness? Here’s what I wish. That if you celebrate Christmas, then may God bless us everyone, if you don’t, may your Season be full and may you be surrounded by love. Peace begins with each and every one of us, and it is my wish for all. 

Thank you, stepping off of my soap box, and going to the Christmas Concert with my family, amen.

Grocery Shopping in the Mine Field

Well, it seems the theme continues from Evelyn’s blog, “It’s Such Hard Work…Eating Bon Bon’s.”  Tired from a full day of working both in and out of the home, I went to the grocery store at 8:30pm, after the family had been fed, watered and the kids were bunkered down for the night. I rounded the corner between the bananas and the melons and ran smack into someone, who I now believe, clearly shouldn’t be allowed to speak, ever.

“I heard all about your good news Mary! How does it feel to finally have a real job?”

Can you hear the crickets?

For a full two to ten seconds my mouth just hung open. Clearly it doesn’t take a Hilary Rosen to get it all wrong. Why Mike Rowe would have a field day following Moms around. Dirtiest Jobs would take on a whole new meaning watching cute-as-pie Mike clean up biological accidents, whether from sickness or an occasional “spill.” Ever clean a sippy cup that was stuck under the car seat for several days in 100 degree weather that had been full of milk? How about the days when everyone is sick but you? That’s what you call living it up, it’s like a day at a posh gym, the stairs have never been worked so hard! Nah, I didn’t have a real job when I was at home.

In a way, I feel sorry for that poor woman. She clearly didn’t know who she was speaking to when she congratulated me on my “real job.” I was tired, cranky, my ankles were swollen, my eyes were red-rimmed from computer work and my nose was running from the irritating scent of toilet bowl cleanser I had used earlier. She was dancing in the mine field without armor, and I lobed a grenade.

“You know Dr. Laura Schlessinger wouldn’t agree with you, she thinks working moms are just trying to have more, more things, more trinkets, more pedicures,  but then Rush thinks women who work outside the home are "Feminazi’s." Of course, writing two blogs, one essay, a column and a review every month is more of a hobby, don’t you think? That’s only after fitting in laundry, errands, band, Kung Fu (even though I’m not in a band and I can’t lift my leg to do a crane move), supper, baths and whatever else the family needs. No, work is like a vacation for me now, I get to try and fit in all of that other stuff along with “work” and go to the grocery store at 8:30 at night! Yes, I love my new “REAL” job.”  I grinned and walked away.

Clean up on aisle three.

Bless Their Pointy Little Heads, Someone Has To

Tell me that I’ve stepped back in time and this is the reason I’m so confused by the maddening mess of minutia reported in the media. This week yet another slice of news came in via a Bloomberg report that stated, “six jobs with the largest gender gap in pay and at least 10,000 men and 10,000 women were in the Wall Street-heavy financial sector.” Really? Wall Street? This vast place of making or breaking the financial back of America (where women make most of the purchases), can’t come to equal terms where salary is concerned? SHAAAZAM! All of this and glass ceilings too, why we must be back in the Eighties!

Speaking of blasts from the past, Rush, I’ve-been-married-four-times-so-you-know-I’m-an-expert-on-women, Limbaugh has pulled yet another low blow, twisting facts (Really Rush, if you’re going to call yourself an expert, it’s the insurance companies that would have to pay for birth control pills, not our tax dollars, and you don’t take a birth control pill every time you have sex, just saying!), and calling Sandra Fluke a slut and a prostitute. People are enraged, as they should be, but not nearly enough. When asked what he thought of what Rush said, Romney stated he would have used “different language.”  Say what?

Not once did any of the major bigwig, grand poobah, yuckleheads currently running to be the Republican candidate for President think to say, “Dang Rush, but ain’t you a big ole NEEE-ANDER-THAL!” A young lady was speaking on behalf of a friend to make employers have comprehensive health insurance that covers birth control pills. Sandra Fluke only wanted to tell her friend’s story, but because she dared to speak out on such a controversial subject (What year is this again?), she gets labeled a slut. I swear, if Rush so much as eluded that about my daughter, he’d have a whole heap of Southern Mama whoop ass on his hands.

I guess Romney would have called her loose, misguided or something else. I guess those would be oh so much softer words. Gee, but I hope his daughters, if he has any, or Santorum’s, the good ole Catholic family man (I am a Southern Catholic, and I can tell ya, ya don’t get more confused or guilt ridden than that), never have daughters with open minds who want to control their own bodies. In the meantime, I shake my head at those men who believe they stand tall and yet refuse to defend the honor of a lady, no matter what her opinions are. Shame on them and heaven help their daughters.