Bonus
I’m Losing You
Actually the sound on this version is better.
Archives for June 2008
I Was Robbed Again
It is a little more than three years since I wrote Daddy, They Have Mommy’s Purse. It is the story of how some people stole money from my family and robbed my son of some of his childhood innocence.
The reason I bring it up is because today I found out that I am again the victim of robbery. There is nothing like being violated to brighten your day and make you smile. I suppose that I should tell you what happened, at least to the extent that I can.
This particular story involves my car, but fortunately very little money. Not unlike many people I have a small compartment that I use to hold change. It is generally filled with an assortment of nickels, dimes and quarters that I use when needed to fill parking meters or whatever.
I usually make a point of filling it whenever I notice my pants pockets starting to hang six inches lower than normal. If when I walk I sound like a cat with a bell around its neck I know it is time to dump some change into the drawer.
So this afternoon I opened the compartment and was prepared to lose some silver when I noticed that Old Mother Hubbard’s cup board was bare. Initially I figured that a member of the family had decided that they had need of the change and had forgotten to mention that they had taken it out.
Unfortunately this was not the case. Someone else is responsible for stealing my three bucks or so in change. Someone else decided that it was ok for them to help themselves to my possessions. I am not angry about the amount that was stolen, it is not going to make or break me.
It is the principle of the matter. It is knowing that someone was in my car rummaging through my possessions and that they felt comfortable enough to take what was not theirs to remove.
So I have been trying to determine when it happened. I am trying to figure out if I lost the change to an unscrupulous parking valet or if someone else managed to enter my car and leave with their ill gotten gains.
I tend to think that it was a valet, but I can’t say for certain. Actually I hope that it was a valet because in the grand scheme of things it bothers me less than thinking someone else was in my car. I hope that they really needed the money. I hope that somehow it made a difference in someone’s life.
It is goofy, but it makes me feel better to see it that way. Because the other side makes me pretty angry. The other side makes me want to take my size 12 boot and apply it to their behind.
In the end it may have been an insignificant amount of money, but their actions impacted more than them. In spite of my attempt to keep this tale from reaching little ears I was overheard and forced to share the story. And now that much more of my children’s innocence has been taken.
Don’t ever forget that one grain of sand may be inconsequential, but a billion make a desert. The little things add up.
CNN Reports Men Responsible For All Relationship Issues
CNN has one of the most ridiculous articles I have read in quite some time. The premise of the article is that there is a lack of equity in the division of labor around the home and that as a result women bear an unfair load.
Let’s grab some excerpts and see what is contained within.
“I am very turned on when he’s doing housework,” says the 36-year-old Camden, Delaware resident, a middle school teacher.
“If there’s a sink full of dirty dishes, he knows I’m going to take care of that before I want to get intimate. If he wasn’t helping with the housework, I would not find that very attractive.”
Simmons’ attitude is pretty typical of married women, researchers say. They like it when their spouses share the household chores, but also find that — paradoxically — a husband may also create more work for them, or not contribute as much as women would like. In other words, science has once again proven what many people already suspect: Relationships take work, especially when it comes to keeping a happy (and tidy) home.”
This doesn’t provide a real breakdown of who is doing what around the house, just a suggestion that there is an imbalance. But if you ask the author science has proven this theory to be more than supposition.
Not only is there no breakdown of responsibilities to analyze, it doesn’t spend any time discussing what happens if one of the spouses is a stay at home parent. The article then goes on to discuss how doing chores around the house may lead to more intimacy. Ya know, some people would argue that someone is trying to use sex as a tool, but we’ll ignore that too. Let’s take a look at some more of what was written.
“When a man does housework, it feels to the woman like an expression of caring and concern, which then physically reduces her stress,” says Joshua Coleman, a San Francisco-area psychologist and author of “The Lazy Husband: How to Get Men to Do More Parenting and Housework.”
“A guy can be completely stressed out and want to have sex to burn it off, but women are not wired like that,” says Coleman, who is also a member of the Council on Contemporary Families, a nonprofit research organization. Instead, he says, women need to feel relaxed in order to feel sexy — and it’s hard to unwind when there are chores to be done and a husband who’s oblivious to them.
Blah, blah, blah. Who pays this guy for such insight. Women need to feel relaxed to feel sexy. They’d never see sex as a way to relax, they can only put out if there are no dishes in the sink.
But the best part of those two paragraphs is the last sentence “and it’s hard to unwind when there are chores to be done and a husband who’s oblivious to them.”
Talk about editorializing. Why not just call all men lazy and insensitive. Why not indulge in promulgating stereotypes, I guess that it helps to sell more books.
“Now, the bad news: The same research found that men create, on average, seven more hours of housework a week for women. That extra work may not be as obvious as doing the dishes or mowing the lawn. So-called “emotional labor” — tasks like writing holiday cards, scheduling doctor appointments and planning family gatherings — is too often left to wives, says University of Michigan sociologist Pamela Smock.
“As long as the invisible labor is borne by women, things aren’t going to be equal, even if surveys show they are,” Smock says. Such work can be a major source of mental stress, she adds.”
There are a lot of questions here. It doesn’t account for how many hours each spouse works outside of the house. I know a lot of families who are lucky enough to have a stay-at-home parent. They’re all women. And since they stay at home with the children they’re usually the ones who take the kids to see the doctor, which is why it is only natural for them to make the doctor’s appointments.
You could also make the case that since they don’t have a boss looking over their shoulder it makes sense for them to make arrangements for family gatherings. But of course that sort of data is not included in this article as it makes it much harder to blame men for relationship problems.
The rest of this article is really just more of the same. “Poor women, they have such mean husbands. If only they did something to help them they’d prance around the house with smiles plastered across their faces.
I wonder why they didn’t spend more time talking about the division of labor. I’d call this narishkeit, but perhaps they could have talked about who handles repairs of household items and automobiles. Who takes care of yard work. If you are going to engage in stereotyping why not go for broke.
Blah, blah, blah. Articles like this just make me role my eyes. The bottom line is that every relationship is different and unless you are in it you can’t really say what is going on.
The Lakers Crash and Burn
Well the freaking Celtics destroyed the Lakers. It reminds me a bit of ’84, but back then the boys in purple and gold did a better job than the current edition.
Funny thing, a few of the ’84 Celtics have made their way into positions as general managers. Why is that funny? Because they managed to execute some personnel moves that only benefited the Celtics and did nothing for the other team.
More specifically, former Celtic Kevin McHale just happens to be the G.M of the Timberwolves, you know the team that sent Kevin Garnett to the Celtics for nothing. Let’s take a look at the result of that trade.
Minnesota lost their best player and finished the year with a record of 22-60 as opposed to the Celtics who rolled to a record of 66-16.
Garnett made a huge difference to that team, as did the addition of Ray Allen. Remember that last season the Celtics had a record of 24-58.
Anyway, they played harder, they played with more desire and more consistency than the Lakers. Bottom line, they deserved it more. I have to give them credit.
For Laker fans the good news is that we got back to the championship sooner than we expected. It is a young team that is awaiting the return of Andrew Bynum. If all goes well he’ll come back healthy and we’ll see benefits from that and the experience gained from this year.
For now, it is over until November.
Sometimes the Bull Wins
“Matador Jose Tomas had a lucky escape yesterday when he was gored not once, but TWICE during a bullfight in Madrid.
The 32-year-old, who is widely considered one of the best bullfighters of all time, was competing at the Las Ventas bullring in the Spanish capital when he sustained his injuries.
Tomas, who received medical treatment at the scene, sustained one groin injury that looked exceptionally painful.”
Want to see more? Click here.
Blogging About Blogging
Leora’s post Why Blog? Why not! serves as the inspiration for this post.
Some of my favorite posts are those in which I let myself ramble and roll about this and that. I enjoy the free association and just letting the current take me where it will.
As I write this Dancing Queen is playing on iTunes. It doesn’t take much imagination to picture the almost famous Ann Stacey skating in circles around the skating rink. Does this date me. Does talking about 70’s disco music and the epitome of 70’s music make me old. Makes me think of Austin Powers in Goldmember. They did a whole bit on the roller skating thing.
One more thing film lovers, did you notice that A Fifth of Beethoven was playing in the background. Just how many people did Aunt Brenda teach how to Do the Hustle.
But enough about all that, this post is supposed to be about blogging and so it shall be. Many of us bloggers get into the game with dreams of becoming legends of blogging. We shoot for the stars and hope that one day millions of readers will choose to hang on our every keystroke. Perhaps that is why posts about blogging are always popular.
At least that has been my experience. Blog about blogging and it is a hit. Anyway over the years I have written quite a number of posts about blogging, some of them have even been interesting and worthwhile. 😉
This past March I promised to go back and review some of what I have read and comment on whether I still feel the same way. I try to do my best to uphold my promises (even if I do operate on my own time schedule) so here are a few comments on each post.
How Long Will You Keep On Blogging?– I didn’t really comment on how long I intend to keep blogging, but I expect that my usual answer still stands. I’ll keep going until I no longer enjoy it.
Building The Blog-I can’t say that there are a ton of things that I would do differently, at least not for this blog. The primary one is that I would have come up with a much better title for the damn thing. Beyond that, for a personal blog the list I came up with still suits me.
Blog Questions We Ask Ourselves– I still consider giving up my anonymity. I sometimes wonder if it would really change the nature of what I write. In the early days I was certain that it would be far too problematic to be out there, but now I am not so sure. I suppose that the main issue I have is what impact it would have on my career.
While I very much enjoy having readers, I’d keep writing with or without them. I have written almost 430 posts this year. Remember, it is about quality, not quantity.
Blogging for Ego, For Experience, For What– Still the same, but I wonder if I am repeating myself way too often. Welcome to the department of redundancy department.
How Many Blogs Do You Read?– I read fewer blogs than ever. My free time has really shrunk so my ability to read has made me far pickier about what I check in on. If you are on the blogroll than I probably check in on you. If you used to be on the blogroll I probably still check in, just less frequently.
How Do You Not Run Out Of Material– That is easy. Even though I recycle material I always find new things to discuss. The kids are always doing something worth chronicling. There are always gadgets to cover, politics to mention and the adventures I have in daily life.
Commenting on Comments– I am no longer lurking challenged. Maybe I have less to say or maybe I have just grown up, but I find myself leaving fewer comments than ever.
Just a few more words to share with you. If you are new to the blog and interested in seeing what other inanities I have come up with you can click on the label and find all sorts of other nifty things to look at.
Alternatively you can look on my sidebar at the drop down menus. There are three called: Personal Favorites, Judaism/Religious Thoughts and Blogging. There is all sorts of stuff in there, why it is chock full of posts you’ll wish that you had written yourself. Or perhaps you’ll wish that had that last five minutes back.
Go on now, take a look.