Angie Kinghorn

A Friday flip-off to the asshats who don’t comprehend the rules of the road

The word of the week is asshat.  Ahem. 
If that offends your delicate sensibilities, you may want to stop reading now.
Definition (as provided by the Nerd Mafia Dons):


Asshat: noun, (slang): asshole.  From the slang expression, “having one’s head up one’s ass,” thus wearing the ass as a hat.  The term is extended to people who are clueless or bumbling, who don’t understand what’s going on.
Urban Dictionary’s helpful addition:  A person, of either gender, whose behavior displays such ignorance/obnoxiousness that you would like to make them wear their own ass as a hat.
Originally I was not pleased with this word of the week, because every time I read “asshat,” my mind wants to pronounce the “sh.”  Similar problem with the word “sweetheart.”  I want to pronounce “th.”  Anyway, asshat has turned out to be a most appropriate word.  Lately I’ve just about worn out the horn on the minivan, and I’m trying valiantly not to cuss in front of my kids, so I have a lot of pent-up road rage.  And so, I am carpeing the diem to rant at the asshats of the road.
Dear Asshats,
Yes, you.  You there driving ten miles under the speed limit when I’ve got to get my kids to preschool.  And you!  Yes, you Mommy midgets making fun of my Swagger Wagon while craning to see over the steering wheel of your Suburban and juggling your Starbucks and cell phone.  I’m talking to you!
Months of pent-up road rage have led me to the sad point of your collective flipping off.  Wait, am I talking to you?  How do you know if you’re an asshat?
Start by checking  your head.  If your ass is on top of it, then, well, you’re an asshat.  Even if your head is ass-less, if any of the following apply, I hereby find you guilty of asshattery:
  • You’re reading this at a stoplight.
  • You’re reading this while operating a moving vehicle. 
  • You park the wrong way in angled parking spots.
  • You expect other cars to make room for you as you leave the angled parking spot going the wrong way down a one-way row.  An especially big flip off to you if you honk at ME as if I’m a dumbass while trying to get your car out of a place it never should have been in the first place.
  • You park your giant SUV next to my Swagger Wagon and ding my sliding doors.
  • You’re the person who scraped my rear bumper a few weeks ago and left nothing but a small dent and white paint behind.
  • You don’t use turn signals, because guessing is so much fun!  
  • You clearly have the right-of-way at a four way stop but insist on sitting there and waving everyone else through.  That’s not chivalrous; it’s stupid and irritating and creates confusion and potential accidents for everyone involved.  When it’s your turn, GO, asshat!
  • You park in the handicapped spot while dropping your kids off at preschool so you can make it to your spin class on time.
  • You make everyone behind you wait while you back your car into a parking spot.  (Exception if you’re James Bond and might really need to peel the hell out of Dodge.)
If any of the above qualifies you as an asshat, flip off!
Feel free to comment and share your own Friday flip-offs. 
Love to all (asshats excluded).


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Socks, sharks, and other irrational fears

So the hubster has informed me, that despite my status as a relatively rational and intelligent person, I harbor a lot of irrational fears.  (Really?  Doesn’t everybody worry that the one time they use their laptop in a thunderstorm that the house will be hit by lightning and they’ll be electrocuted via email?)
For instance, I have a pair of socks that causes me considerable anxiety.  I honestly have no idea how they came to live in my sock drawer, but while all my favorite socks go missing on a regular basis, this pair is an irritatingly reliable presence that refuses to be eaten by the sock monster that lives in our dryer.  This is an admirable and rare quality in a pair of socks, so I’ve kept them despite the irrational fear they instill deep in my soul each time I wear them.
What’s the big deal, you ask?  They’re just plain white athletic socks.  
Except for the giant letter “R” stitched onto the outside of one, and the giant “L” stitched onto the other.  (And no, they’re not supposed to be Ralph Lauren.)
My fear is that I will meet with some disaster whilst wearing these socks, and that their presence on my feet will cause the paramedics to draw some erroneous conclusions.  For instance, they might be unable to find my ID and conclude from my dress that I’m the kind of girl who monograms her socks, so I must be Lorna Ripley.  Alternately, they might decide the letters on the socks were a grown woman’s hideous attempt to hide her inability to tell left from right, and then come to the (logical) conclusion that I turned right when I meant to go left and caused a huge pileup and thus was at fault for the whole mess.  My greatest fear, however, is that they’ll assess the sock situation and dock me about 100 IQ points, and my medical care will proceed accordingly, in a manner that might involve wrist restraints and a locked ward.  
Sharks cause me considerable anxiety and fear, whether I’m at the beach or several hundred miles away in my bed.  I absolutely cannot let one arm, leg, or even a toe dangle out over the mattress.  Even if our bedroom is 1000 degrees, I can’t do it.  Because in my screwed-up mind, that mattress becomes a tiny piece of wood adrift in shark-infested waters, and any appendage peeking out over it is a shark appetizer, served up on a platter.  (Sure, you didn’t think about it before, but wait until tonight.)  
And if I’m actually at the beach, Lord help me.  I’m fine in the clear waters of the Caribbean.  I’ve even been known to scuba dive there.  But in the murky saltwater of the East Coast, I get nervous the minute I can’t see my toes through the water, which is pretty much the minute they’re covered by water.  Something about not being able to see through the water gets me every time.  And I always worry that I’ll have a scrape on my knee or a cut on my foot or, ohmigod, my period, and that sharks will come from miles around, attracted by one tiny droplet of blood.  
Ridiculous, I know.  But “Jaws”has lasting repercussions. 
If all that weren’t weird enough, I really worry that some day, God will hear me say that I want something to happen and make it happen.  And then I’d wind up living in Gisele’s body and ruining her career while she tried to squeeze my body into my skinny jeans and dropped my kids on their heads.  Perhaps I watched too many Tom Hanks movies as a child.  
This one may not be particularly irrational, but I constantly worry about where my emails actually go when I send them out into the cyber void.  I’ve also been known to lose sleep wondering about emails that people may have sent to me that are lost in that same void.  This one really screws with my head, y’all.    
Usually after I’ve been reading a mystery novel or watching some spy movie, I start to fear that my house or my car is bugged and that someone somewhere is laughing at my rendition of “Alejandro,” or reporting me to the NSA for discussing editorials about radical Islam with my husband.  
Oh, here’s a biggie: fear that I will be stopped by a policeman on suspicion of drunk driving.  Let me clarify: I don’t drive drunk.  Ever.  But I’ve been known to swerve and do irrational looking things behind the wheel of a car while sober.  I mean, it’s really difficult to pick up somebody’s lost Croc from the backseat or refill a snack trap without swerving across a lane or two of traffic.  Know what I mean?  Anyway, I’m worried that someday I’ll get stopped and then fail the sobriety test, as I’ve also been known to fall over whilst stone cold sober.  And even in the depths of sobriety, under that kind of pressure, I am not entirely sure that I could count backward from 100 by 7s or whatever it is they make you do. 
I am terrified of being caught shoplifting.  Again, let me clarify: I have never ever shoplifted as much as a lipstick from a drugstore.  If the grocery clerk doesn’t see the milk under my cart I stop her and have her scan it in.  I’ve been known to send back a bill in a restaurant if they’ve forgotten to include something on it.  But all the surveillance cameras in stores these days make me afraid that someone will think I’m trying to shoplift when I’m really just rummaging in my purse trying to answer my phone.  This was particularly bad when the kids were small enough to be in a stroller.  If I only needed a few things from the grocery store, I’d just toss them in the basket under the stroller.  But I did this while behaving like a dealer in Vegas.  I’d show my empty hands to the eyes in the sky, purposefully grab a pack of diapers, make a loud comment to the babies about how we didn’t need a cart that day because we were only getting a couple of things, and then shove the item into the stroller basket.  I got the hairy eye from a store manager once, as he saw me shoving salad dressing into the mesh pocket on the back of our double jogger, and that was enough.  From then on, I pushed a stroller and pulled a cart.   
Sometimes when we’re sitting at home on a Saturday night, enjoying dinner and a movie, I’m struck with a feeling of certainty that everyone else on the entire planet is at Oprah’s for some fabulous dinner party to which we were not invited.  
Finally, I worry that this post is too long.  Perhaps I should break it up into pieces.  Irrational Fears, Volume 1.  Irrational Fears, Volume 2.  And so on.  Mentioned it to hubster, who said, “That says something, doesn’t it?”  
Well, hell.  Does it?  

Flashback

It’s not like I expected this week to be the most fun of my life.  
Ugh.
This coming Monday, September 20th, will be the first anniversary of my father’s death.  Throughout the grieving process, people have told me how hard anniversaries of all kinds can be, but the brutality of this one year mark has shocked me.
Memories are supposed to dim with time, but the flashbacks I’ve had over the past month are anything but fuzzy.  My allergies are so bad I can’t smell a thing, but when my mind takes me back to the hospital a year ago, the smells are so sharp that I cringe.  I can feel textures, hear sounds, and even the muted colors are vivid.
And then Wednesday, our family’s beloved 15 year old dog became suddenly ill, stricken with an extraordinarily painful bladder tumor.  So I spent the afternoon with her at the vet’s and held her as he pushed the plunger on a syringe, sending her to a peaceful end.  
There was not enough Kleenex in this world.  All I could think was why, why, Lord, why could it not have been this easy for my father?  Why the twelve years of suffering?  Why the agonizing death?  Why, dammit, why?
And I’ll never know.  But in that little dog’s death, I did receive a strangely beautiful gift.  In that death, I was able to do what I couldn’t for my father.  I was able to hold her, comfort her, and make sure she didn’t hurt.  
God knows I’ve needed to cry, and most of the time I try not to.  It tends to scare the children.  But they weren’t with me in that office, so I sobbed.  As the tears fell, something else did, too.  Something like a wall between my brain and a deep pool of grief.  It was a profound catharsis.  Now I feel drained, and my mind has gone into what I think of as protective grief mode.  When things get to be too much, I go to sleep.  Weird, I know, but apparently it’s my body’s defense mechanism.  It happened for a long time last year, and I wasn’t expecting it to come back, but here we are.
I’m sorry for the lack of posts this week, but it’s hard to be funny when you’re asleep at the keyboard.
While I go take my nap, y’all go over to Pretty All True for the awesome post of the day.  Tip: refrain from eating or drinking while reading.  Kris is funny as hell and I will not be held liable for computers sprayed with Diet Coke.

A Friday flip-off to the ultimate mothering fugazi

I don’t normally do Friday flip-offs, but this one’s been stewing around in my head since a friend tearfully confessed to me that she felt bad about giving her new baby formula because of Gisele Bundchen’s recent statement that there should be a worldwide law requiring women to breastfeed exclusively for at least six months.  And the Nerd Mafia word of the week, fugazi, inspired me to actually put these words down on paper.
So for reference: fugazi, according to the Nerd Mafia dons: 
  • (slang) artificial, fake, false.  Can be used in reference to a thing or to a person.  If a person, it is usually used to reference a superficial person.
  • (slang) Something that has no substance.
From urbandictionary.com:
  • Fake, false, i.e., “That’s a fugazi,” (about a faux diamond, from “Donnie Brasco.”)
  • A really bad knockoff, a copy.
  • Someone that copies or fronts. 
  • Vietnam war slang reminiscent of “fubar.”
  • Someone or something that you dislike very much.
Now that we’re all clear as to the meaning of fugazi, let’s talk about Gisele.  The ultimate mothering fugazi.  
There are plenty of reasons your average gal may not be a huge Gisele fan, most of which can be summed up thusly: Gisele was back to modeling swimwear six weeks after giving birth.  At which point she, the all-knowing, selfless, dare I say model mother, deigned to come down off her pedestal long enough to suggest that there be a worldwide law requiring us mere mortals to breastfeed exclusively for six months.  She scorned formula, asking what kind of mother would give “chemical food” to a child so little.
Let me add that this selfless mother (fugazi!), this woman so committed to her child that she would never dream of giving him “chemical food,” was plenty cavalier about his safety when she decided to have a home birth in her bathtub.  This after a report in the medical journal The Lancet last month indicated that home birth can triple the risk of infant death.  For further info on the dangers of homebirthing, please visit The Skeptical OB, Dr. Amy Tuteur.  
But back to nursing for a moment.  I’m calling Gisele out as a total fugazi.  If a woman is nursing exclusively, it’s pretty much a full time job, and I have a hard time figuring out how the hell she’d be back in runway shows for Victoria’s Secret six weeks later, and turning up in shows at Fashion Week in NYC just a month or so after that.  Maybe she’s toting a Pump In Style backstage, but something tells me she’s not.
My guess is that she does occasionally attach baby to breast, but that a team of nannies do everything else.
Gisele, let me give you an idea of what breastfeeding is like for the rest of us.  You know, those of us without live-in-help and millions of dollars.  Breastfeeding hurts.  Even when done correctly.  I sat in a lactation consultant’s office with my son latched perfectly, and every sip he took was agony.  And that’s when things were in relatively good shape.  A friend of mine ended up with cracked nipples (a relatively common complication) and was pumping blood along with her milk.  Yes, I said pumping blood.  
I supplemented my twins with formula from the beginning, on doctor’s orders, as they were premature.  But I would have done it anyway, since I knew that a particular medical condition would eventually require me to resume taking medicine that would dry up my milk supply.  
For four and a half months, I tried to give my babies every drop of milk I could, and it damn near killed me.  I wonder to this day how much better my postpartum depression might have been had I just given up nursing and pumping.  In the beginning, the babies were so weak that they could nurse for an hour and not empty a breast, so I’d nurse, then pump to empty them completely, then clean the pump, then it was time to start over again.  I tried nursing them two at a time, but honestly, any tandem nursing arrangement does not work well unless you happen to have some recessive octopus genes.  
So I ended up pumping.  Eight times a day, I hooked myself up to a hospital grade breast pump, and it literally felt like it was sucking the life out of me.  I pumped in the middle of the night, using a hands-free pump bra while I bottle fed a baby.  Pumping 20 minutes at a time, eight times a day is a LOT of time.  
All this, and for what?  My babies had horrible reflux, and they actually did a hell of a lot better on formula than they did on breastmilk.  They certainly slept longer.  So, at four and a half months, we called it a day and went to formula exclusively.

And I felt residual guilt, until I came across this fabulous article in The Atlantic Monthly, and this editorial in The New York Times.  They have the audacity to suggest that breastfeeding and breastmilk may not be as superior as society currently claims.  Both are well worth your time to read, and, dear readers, I sincerely hope you will, as they contain far too many brilliant observations to be summarized here.
So Gisele, Mrs. Fancy Pants Supermodel, I’m sure you think I’m a horrible mother for giving my babies “chemical food.”  But here’s the thing: I’m not.  I’m actually quite good at what I do.  I love my children more than I could ever imagine, and would never do anything to harm them.  
There’s something else you need to understand, and that’s postpartum depression.  Simply put, it’s hell on earth, and nursing or pumping makes it a lot worse.  Partly because of the sleep deprivation, partly because of the isolation that nursing and pumping tends to impose, and partly because you’re prohibited from taking a lot of the medications that would normally be used to treat the condition.  I’d rather see the babies of the world on “chemical food” and with healthy mothers than breastfed and the victims of infanticide because their mother’s depression turned to postpartum psychosis.  
Finally, who the hell are you to be giving the rest of us parenting advice?   You are the epitome of a fugazi parenting expert.  You’ve not even had six months of experience, and you have resources at your disposal that most of us will never be able to access.  And what do you do with that?  You use the first opportunity that comes along to make yourself look like a martyr and other mothers look like irresponsible parents.
Shame on you.
And flip off.   

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