We've all heard the story: Stay-at-home-mom dutifully makes sure her flock gets their flu shots, even if she has to elbow old ladies out of line to get the last dose for her child. In the chaos her busy daily existence, she forgets to get her own flu shot. (Her dr.'s office is too far away and is out of vaccine, the grocery store clinic is also out, the other grocery store only offers shot clinics at the same time as the Girl's soccer game, the wondrousness of Costco overwhelms her and she forgets to get one when she's there...etc.) So, she gets flu. She fights it, she does not succumb, she faithfully and dutifully arises early in the morning, sees her beloveds off to work and school with fresh homemade lunches, does all her regular chores to keep the household running smoothly, has a hot homemade dinner ready when the family returns in the evening. (And if she's a working mom, let's just add 'goes to work' on top of all that, mmmkay?) She then collapses into bed at the end of the evening, melting into a sore sniffling puddle of goo. But she makes sure to set the alarm and feed the cat first.

Yeah.

That's SO not happening here this week.

I did forget to get my flu shot, again, this year. That part is true. The rest of it, for me anyway, is a cruel joke that society has decided to play on us Domestic Goddesses. It has told us that the very fabric of our family's existence will fray and decay if we take a day off. That chaos will reign if the laundry doesn't remain on schedule. That husbands will implode if asked to make dinner and help with homework. That children will be irreparably scarred if they see their mum prone on the sofa with a cup of tea in smelly frayed sweats for three days. Nay; we must soldier on, there are things more important than our minor discomforts.

Well, I'm calling bullshit on that. Okay, maybe it's just me; maybe I'm a huge whiny baby when I get sick, I won't deny that. But I'm putting out the call to all moms who didn't get their shots or who end up with the creeping gamboo that their kids bring home from the germ-factories we call "school":

Be sick. Lay on the couch all day. Ask for help. Eat crappy comfort food and drink hot chocolate and watch reruns of the Office online. Read a no-brainer novel; maybe something from James Patterson or Nora Roberts. Don't shower, wear your most comfy sweats, don't put on makeup or do your hair. Order Chinese delivered. Watch your husband bond with your kids as he tries not to go crazy helping them learn fractions and write a book report about a book about fairies and/or magical ponies.

If the world cannot deal without us, the world will have to hold on and just fucking wait.

I'm going to go get a cupcake and lie down now.

Oh, Pluck.

Editor's note: This is a fairly long and somewhat boring account of my recent adventures. Please be aware before reading that I am a housewife and nothing exciting ever happens, so this was a Big Damn Deal for me. I'm sorry. I wrote this mostly for me.

So I have cats. I used to like cats, but over the last few years just...don't anymore. My cats are indoor/outdoor versions, and I was really grateful for them when we first moved to this house, because the garden and shed and garages were infested with mice. There was also a lovely family of rats inhabiting our neighbor's dilapidated shed and the "compost heap" she kept in her back yard. The cats very nicely and very quickly disposed of the diseased chew-partiers, lining them up in rows on the back porch. Ew. So that was good. No more rodentates.
But now the cats are bored. And well fed. So what do they turn to for entertainment? Birds, of course. We've always fed birds and love watching them at the feeders. We get swarms of finches and sparrows, and this summer had a visit from a beautiful yellow warbler and some juncoes. I likes the birdies. So do the cats. But they don't just kill them, of course. No; they go Guantanamo on their asses. I hate it. Several times I've had to put a bird out of its misery with a blow from a shovel, and I feel so awful every time. But I can't stand to see a creature in pain. We bury them under the pine tree and say nice things.
Last week while out in the yard, I heard the unmistakable angry chirp/squawk of a bird being tortured and found one of the cats with a mouthful of feathers. The bird appeared near the end, so I left the scene hoping the cat would do the honorable thing soon. An hour later, I heard the squawk again and looked out to see the wiener dog had joined the game and that the little bird, a House Finch, was not only still alive but was trying to fight. The feathers of one wing were upright, bent,all her tail feathers had been pulled out and there was a nasty puncture wound under her eye, but this little bird was still hanging in there. So I stepped in. I know you're never supposed to handle wildlife, but I couldn't stand it anymore. I scooped her up and took her inside and put her in a basket with a cup of water and a towel, hoping she would just pass in peace and quiet. I kicked the cat and admonished the dog and went back to my writing, keeping an ear out for the finch.
An hour later, I heard a rustling and found her sitting on the edge of the basket, alert but a little wobbly. She was still pretty willing to let me handle her, so I snapped this:

and called my husband to tell him to get a cage on his way home.
I spent the next two days frantically trying to figure out what to do. Googling "wild bird rehab" only sent me to bird chat forums, and I was desperate enough to register on one and post a "Help Please!" message. I got some good advice, but nothing on where I could take this bird. My vet friend doesn't do birds and had no idea. So. I figured as long as the bird was healthy, eating, drinking, pooping and hopping around I'd just keep her until she molted and grew her tail feathers back. She spent the days hunkered in my ficus tree:


And in her cage.



She seemed healthy, alert, and smart enough to hop from the ficus into the cage when I held it up in front of her. She no longer wanted to be handled, and I had to respect that even when the Girl got upset that she never got to hold her.
I started to admire this little being. For her courage, her personality and her naked bum, I named her "Pluck".

Then it was Saturday.

I woke up to find her puffed up and panting. I know from the little experience I had working as a pet store clerk in college that this is a bad bad sign. She was still drinking water, but not eating or pooping. Bad bad. Frantic, I made more phone calls. My vet friend could only suggest humane euthanasia, which I was not ready to do. Out of sheer desperation (Google was really disappointing in this area), I looked up the Great Salt Lake Audubon Society and called them, leaving a message. As a last resort, I called Backyard Birds, a little kitzchy shop that sells bird feeders and windchimes not far from my house. I told them the situation and they finally gave me a person to call.
This person was very knowledgeable and helpful, but not encouraging. See, not only do cats like to pretend to be furry little Dick Cheneys, they also harbor a gram negative bacteria in their saliva that is highly toxic to birds. She told me to keep her warm, make her comfortable and bury her in the morning. We cried, I resisted kicking the cat again and went to bed that night disappointed and sad.

Sunday morning. I postponed going into the living room where her cage was for an hour. I needed coffee and snuggling with The Girl before I could face the still little body that had harbored such a fierce big spirit. But I took a breath and went in.

She was fine. She'd beaten it. I took her cage out into the warm autumn sun and let her sit where she could see and hear her flock eating at the backyard feeder. I emailed the bird expert lady to ask her what to do now, with this now healthy and not dead bird. I think I smiled a lot.

Monday morning the Audubon guy finally called me, leaving me the number for a wildlife rehab center about an hour from my house, in Ogden. I called them and they informed me that it's illegal for me to keep her, that I should bring her to them for rehabilitation. "But she's just a little finch," I said, "do you really rehab finches?" They promised me they did.
So between that and losing her for a while when she went exploring out of the ficus and ended up behind the bookcase (she couldn't fly, remember), having escaped the now inside cats, I decided I probably wasn't the best person to be in charge of her if she was going to make it to be released. I didn't know what I was doing, and was afraid I would kill her with a stew of kindness and incompetence. And I really wanted her to be able to return to a normal finch life, not live in a cage with cats yowling below it and flutes being played in the next room and little girls screaming during a sleepover. She needed professional help.

So today, with a sad but hopeful heart, I took her to the rehab center and handed her over to people who work tirelessly and on no money to rehabilitate and release native birds back into the wild. They were positive about her prognosis, were pretty sure she injured at least one bone in her wing, but since she was flapping and getting around thought she'll heal. She now gets to spend the winter with four other rescued finches in rehab, with the goal that they'll all be better and be released in the spring.

Yes, I drove an hour and donated $20 to the WRC for a teeny little finch, of which there are hundreds in my neighborhood alone. It's just a little bird, why would I go to all this trouble?

Why? Because she was Pluck. My little Pluck. She put my pathetic life, the one I've been internally whining about, right the fuck in perspective. And I'll miss her.

This Bothers Me.

A lot. It has for a long time. And I need help understanding it. Please.

I generally, in my blogs, try to stay away from controversial things and from things about which people might have an opinion (not that it stops some people from giving me theirs anyway), but I think it's time I got some input on this. Mostly because I look around at society in terms of this issue and ask WTF? But also because I have a daughter who is beginning to process input more personally and who is being exposed to more and more pop culture happenings every day, despite my best attempts at keeping her sheltered to a ridiculous degree, and I want to know why my opinion on this subject might come across as retarded.

So here's the thing:

Why is it that violence is okay and sex is not?

Let me explain. In college, I worked in a video store. One evening, a woman approached the counter with three or four movies and asked me about them. Specifically, she wanted to know why they were rated "R". I told her they had adult content in them (Duh). As I remember it, they were all movies along the lines of "Die Hard" and some sort of killer-robot sci-fi things.
"Yeah," she says, "but is it sex stuff, or is it just violence? I don't want my boys to see sex stuff."
Just violence? So, she's telling me she's all right with her "boys" (who were running around the store yelling and hitting each other with various items and knocking over displays) seeing the hero punch someone in the neck or rip their still-beating heart out , but it's not okay if the hero goes ahead and plants one on his damsel-in-distress? Is an over-the-blouse boob-squeeze really going to warp their little minds more than seeing people get shot, impaled, blown up, decapitated, etc?

When talking to several people about the Twilight books, a woman I don't know very well mentioned that she enjoyed the first three books, but didn't like the fourth one "because of all the sex. I liked that they didn't have any sex in the other ones, but the fourth one was just too raunchy and explicit." UmmmmKay. But Edward ripping out James' throat and dismembering him in the first one was just peachy.

Yesterday I took The Girl to the dentist. Yay! An hour in which I'm forced to sit on a comfy sofa in the waiting room and read. The dentist wanders in and asks what I'm reading.
"Hunger Games," I tell him, trying not to be rude, but obviously returning my attention back to the book. (Great book, btw. I cheered, I cried, I flipped it over and started again right after reading "the end".)
"Oh," he says, "that's a great book. I just listened to the audio version." I nod politely and turn the page. "I really like that there was no sex in it." Freeze mid-turn.
What there is in Hunger Games is a group of starving teenagers forced to play a gladiator/Survivor type game in which the last person alive wins. The heroine and main character shoots a guy in the neck with an arrow, watches the big bad competitor break another competitors neck with his hands, has her face slashed by a crazy chick with a coat full of knives, has to help her love interest recover from having his leg almost hacked off with a sword, watches her best friend get impaled by a spear...you get the idea, right?
"Yeah," I say, "but there's a lot of...kissing." I do my best not to roll my eyes and return to my chapter, perturbed.

So. I think you can probably glean which way I lean on this issue. I'm not a fan of violence. I don't like DickFlicks with people dying in horrible bloody painful ways. I don't want my daughter watching (or reading) that kind of thing. I hate HATE watching little boys play. But I would be okay with her seeing someone kiss someone else. Not that I want her to see anything sexually explicit, but if it came right down to me having to choose between her watching a movie rated R for violence and one rated R for sex, I'm going to have to go for the one with nookie in it, as long as it has a story and the people like each other while they're doin' it.

My question for you, oh patient reader, is: Why is violence in media considered more acceptable than sex?

Thanks.

Radiohead

That's me. I'm one of those people, have been as long as I can remember, who always ALWAYS a song in their head. Even in my sleep. Sometimes it's the last song I heard (like right now, for instance, it's the chirpy little tune from the Farmville game on Facebook. I just harvested my squash and milked two cows. Cha-ching!) Sometimes it's a song that I have just latched on to and can't get enough of and will listen to over and over both on the iPod and in my head. And when I say over and over, I'm not kidding. It's a continuous loop in the neuron net of my sad little brain. It's just stuck. But more about that in a moment.
Sometimes it's embarrassing. I'll unconsciously do the head-bob to whatever beat is bashing around up there. When I was a personal trainer I had a client who was a local DJ on a popular morning show. When I'd work out with him he'd ask me at the beginning, "So what's playing today?" Luckily, most of the time it was something his station played. Sometimes not, and he'd give me endless crap about it.
I think my daughter might have the same issue. She's taking flute lessons, and has started whistling. Incessantly. Sometimes it's the song she's working on for flute, sometimes it's something from her playlist on the iPod, sometimes it's a tv show theme. So now I don't just have a song running over and over and over through my noggin; I have to hear the one in hers. Luckily, she's got pretty good tone. But usually, at some point at the end of the day I can't take it anymore and have to, with teeth clenched, say "Sweetie, let's give the whistler a rest, shall we?" And pour some more wine.

I've always had a somewhat eclectic music taste. I like a little bit of everything. The only exception is Heavy Metal and it's spawn (Speed Metal, Death Metal, those happy little sub-genres), which make me want to grab the nearest spoon and gouge my own eardrums out just to escape the screech-fest monotony of three cords and cheerful death, maiming and rape lyrics. Other than that, if a song is catchy, has a good beat and lyrics that make some sort of sense, I'll listen to it gladly.
I've mostly been a BritPop or Techno gal. In high school, I was one of the freaks not listening much to Poison or Def Leppard (although I must say that "Animal" is one of my all time favorite sexy songs), but instead combed the import bins at the record store when we ventured to Salt Lake. Give me some Roxy Music, Depeche Mode, Bow-Wow-Wow, UB40, English Beat, Dead or Alive, etc. They went well with the black clothes and pierced nose.
And, of course, there has always been Erasure. But that's another blog. Just suffice it to say, for this blog, that there have been hours-nay--DAYS worth of Andy Bell in my brain. Here's my favorite:



You're welcome. That particular diddy went round my brain for about six months. Non stop. Not exaggerating. I sort-of got over it after I met Mr. Bell.

I've always been a little snotty-proud of my eschewing Pop music in general. I've never heard, for example, a Miley Cyrus song. Or Britney Spears, at least on purpose. Who is Justin Timberlake, again? What's this Limp Bizkit everyone talks about? Why is it limp and could some Viagra help them?
So, I'm a little alarmed at the current track that is so entrenched in my head right now. She was another of the pop divas whom I had managed to avoid. But now, sigh, I not only spent $1.29 to get the song on my iPod, I even read her Wiki page. I watch the video over and over and over. I suddenly break out into step-ball-change while folding the laundry. It's in there and it's not budging.
I give you:
Beyonce.

Single Ladies

(Mrs. Jay-Z doesn't let her youtube videos embed. So click the link, then come back.)

I can't look away. How the hell does she do that with her hips without throwing her whole spine across the room? In those heels? And what does this say about my taste in music now? Am I going bubblegum in my old age?
Dunno.
But I likes this song. I'm going to go dance around the living room and try not to hurt myself. If you see me later in Costco doing the head bob, you'll know what's spinning in the radiohead.
*humming Uh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh!*

Stay-At-Where-Mom?

I hate answering the question: "So, what do you do for a living?" Mostly because my answer ("I'm a stay-at-home mom") usually results in a polite nod and some bullshit about wow isn't that great. Then their eyes glaze over or they find someone with a real job to talk to. Because, obviously, we housewives don't really do anything, do we? And, obviously, if we were truly interesting people we'd have a real job. Sometimes I mention that I'm a writer, but then I just feel like I'm desperately trying to justify my own joblessness. And writers tend to make people nervous.

This housewife gig isn't bad. At all. I'm incredibly lucky to be married to a man, despite all his other faults, is completely okay with me not having a job even though our baby is now in school full-time. I'm an educated woman; getting a job that would both increase our financial liquidity and fulfill some emotional needs I don't want to go into right now would be fairly easy. And I do, in official fact, have a job outside the home: I'm the story lady at Barnes & Noble. For one hour every Tuesday morning, I punch the clock.
Don't feel sorry for me much, do ya?
That's okay; me neither.
But the thing is, I went into this gig thinking it would be heavenly. That I would simply be home doing homey things like baking yummy yet healthy treats, polishing my rock collection and all the furniture, creating awe-inspiring seasonal decorative motifs in my living room, and, oh yeah, writing a book. It only makes sense, right, that someone with seven free hours in a day could get a lot accomplished at home.
Except I'm almost never here. And when I am, I'm exhausted and have exactly zero interest in or energy to do any of those above things. Or even catch up with the laundry and dog hair.
Typically, my day inexplicably gets filled with Other Things. Take yesterday. I was awoken by a panic-stricken child who is convinced that her first-ever book report (which is due in three weeks) will be a complete failure and we should do it right now. This was at 5:30 a.m. Abandoning sleep at that point, we got up and I commenced the Morning Routine, which included trying to do my hair in less than 30 minutes, which almost never works. I scooted the girl out the door for school at 8:20 and frantically finished the Hair from Hell, found clothes that don't make me look like a housewife, made three phone calls, and headed out the door for a dentist appointment, which I had blown off last week when I had jury duty.
After my new crown was safely cemented in place, I ran to Macy's to try to find the Girl the new shoes she's been begging for. Um, they don't carry kids' shoes. Duh. Well, since the library is just up the street, I ran there to grab some books The Girl had wanted. Then, being hungry, I swung through the McD's drive thru. Remembering that our wedding rings were at the jeweler being antiqued, I ran back home and grabbed the receipt, then drove up to the jeweler. Got the rings, called The Hubby to see when I could bring him his so I wouldn't lose it, stopped at Smith's for some groceries and shoes, ran the ring to The Hubby and snagged some Peets coffee from the canteen at his office. Remembered the Payless has socks The Girl could wear with her new ballet flats that don't show and so drove down there. Made it back home with more new shoes. Picked up the Girl and friend from school, stopped at B&N on the way to the doctor's office. Waited in the doctor's office for 90 minutes to find out that The Girl hadn't broken her wrist. Blasted her home to change for soccer practice, stopped to pick up the friend for soccer practice, dropped her off for soccer practice, came home to...make dinner.
Are you still with me?
This is not an atypical day. The only variables are the wheres.
So days like this, days that have nothing on my calendar, are a sweet treat. I had so many things I wanted to get done today; not the least write the rest of my Halloween dead-haunted-baby story. Instead...I had to nap. Now I have two hours left to pound out some literary crap and justify my claiming to be a writer.

I swear, the next person who asks me "But what do you do all day?" is going to get the above description, in even greater detail.
That or my foot up their ass.