Kangatopia

Dang it.  I’ve just been given the all clear to go home before the outside temperatures drop and make life in traffic a little more treacherous than normal.  Unfortunately, on any other day this would mean that I could make a beeline for my bike and take it for a three hour spin, today it means this is one thing that will not happen.  A friend just told me that our sprawling metropolis only has five sand trucks.  So, if I don’t post again ever then you know what happened.  It’s been fun, and thanks for reading! Or better, So long and thanks for all the fish!

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 30th, 2006 at 3:07 pm and is filed under General, Just Mommy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

And I’m telling you that has got to end. I do not like green eggs and ham sleeping alone on cold nights when the rain is coming down, and the weather is getting icy, and my kids all sleep in their own beds and in their own rooms. I have a bed. I want to share it.

Yes, this message has an intended reader. I just didn’t want there to be any mistake, or for anyone to think that a Kanga alone in her own bed is always a happy Kanga. Sometimes Kanga likes being alone, but not every Goddamned night.

Just so we’re clear.

The weather has gone all crazy. That joke about “if you don’t like the weather in Texas just wait a minute” was no huckster attempt at humor last night. We went into the grocery store and it was 75 degrees. We came out an hour later and it was 60. During the ten minute drive to our next stop, the outside temperature dropped another 13 degrees. Now it’s 30 or something outside and snowy. That (snow, that is) almost never happens here. We might even accumulate a quarter of an inch!

So, Shep has been sick, and last night he insisted on playing hockey in spite of his flu-like symptoms. This morning he sent me a bit he read online (on this site. John Buccigross is a bona fide genius.) wherein a guy writes in about how his girlfriend doesn’t understand his love for hockey.

Here is the resultant exchange.

——————————————————————————————-

From: shep
Date: November 30, 2006 10:25:21 AM CST
To: kanga
Subject: Please read carefully…

Dear Mr. B:

Am I in love with the woman I am dating?

I mean, I have missed two Sharks games in a row so I could be with her.

Even worse, I can listen to a truly horrific song on the radio like Shakira’s “Hips Don’t Lie” WITHOUT going into convulsions.
Please help!
Mark

Turn in your NHL fan card, your music fan card and your man card, Mark. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. The girl of your dreams would never take you away from hockey. She would feed you pucks on Lake Ontario until her arms fell off. Move to Ontario immediately, wait for the lake to freeze and find true love, Mark.

You are not in love, Mark. You are being seduced by Satan himself. Run. Run very fast and don’t stop until you see “Welcome to Port Hope.”

————————–

From: kanga
Date: November 30, 2006 10:33:51 AM CST
To: shep
Subject: Re: Please read carefully…

Maybe you should send Mr. B this email:

Dear Mr. B:

I love the woman I am dating, I think. She got a little pissy when I insisted on playing hockey with a fever of 103. She kept saying I was going to get pneumonia and die. Now, I am starting to wonder if she really loves me.

What do you think?

Hacking in Texas

————————–
From: shep
Date: November 30, 2006 12:05:27 PM CST
To: kanga
Subject: RE: Please read carefully…

Yeah - I can see you just don’t understand.

Oh well, I’m off to Ontario to find a less selfish girl that does.

Wish me luck?

——————————————————————————————-

So, there it is, Folks. Shep has gone off to Canada and I am left to face this bad weather alone in my empty bed with nothing but a flu infested extra pillow for company. Any takers on keeping me warm and feeling loved? I promise to wash the pillow case.

Hello??

Hello???

Damn.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 30th, 2006 at 1:49 pm and is filed under Just Mommy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

A few weeks ago I talked to my boss about changing my schedule to 7am-4pm.  This way I would have more time in the evenings to ride my bike during the less dangerous daylight hours or work out at the gym if the weather was bad.  It would also allow me a lot more time with the kids.  By getting the bike riding and/or gym work-outs (on Sunday I worked out at the gym and rode my bike.  Go me!) taken care of between 4 and 6pm, I could pick up the kids between 6 and 6:30, take them home for dinner, homework and playtime.  This schedule would make all the difference to our family, so it wasn’t just about how I get twitchy when I haven’t been on the bike in awhile.  It was about being a better, and more present, mom.  I admit that this discussion didn’t take place until daylight savings time ended, but my heart is really in the right place.  I promise.  Everybody wins.

I haven’t actually started working this schedule yet, but today panic started to set in.  The weather is supposed to get really cold, icy and generally crappy over the next 24 hours.  It won’t last long.  It will be gone by the weekend.  But, still, when can I ride?  What will I do???  It’s hysterics, it is.  I have found that a day off the bike is a day when Mommy goes a little bit crazier.  A week off the bike is guaranteed to result in a Mommy melt-down.  Mommy really needs to get back on that bike.  The silly thing is that I can’t imagine that I would have been able to ride tomorrow anyway.  I definitely can’t ride tonight, and Friday wasn’t looking much better.  The earliest will most likely be Saturday afternoon.  I guess I should just calm the hell down and go back to counting the minutes as usual.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 29th, 2006 at 5:59 pm and is filed under Health, 2006, Just Mommy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

This is something I’ve been puzzling over the last week or so since the news broke that Michael Richards is a soul angry racist after yelling profane epithets at hecklers during his stand up act at a comedy club. Parablemania has a pretty palatable take on the whole to-do. The irony of all this is that Michael Richards received his Bachelor’s degree from one of the most progressive, end racism, save the environment, all people have a right to fair play sort of colleges around, The Evergreen State College. (It’s where I graduated from too, so I’m not knocking it - and if I had a little more time to write this post I would attempt to write a more eloquent blurb. I would like to note that in the process of linking to them I found they have recently done wonderful things to the website. Yay Evergreen! God, I miss Evergreen.) Anyway, during his military years according to Wikipedia, he produced shows dealing with race relations and drug abuse. He also spent a couple of years in a California commune post-military career “finding himself”. The dude was so hippyfied back in the seventies that it confuses me a little he is automatically being labeled a racist by people such as Jesse Jackson. I can completely understand why Michael Richards is so mortified and ashamed. I don’t think this has a whole lot to do with the way his career might end up on the DOA list, as much as it goes against his core values to behave so badly. I heard someone say that he was responding to the room, and what happened in that room was for the room only.* It just reinforces my belief that the media perpetuates band wagon jumping and mindlessness in the public. Whether Michael Richards is truly a racist that ought to be burned on a cross is less at issue as the Salem witchhunt mentality still prevalent in the public’s consciousness today. Are we so hungry for sensationalist news that we devour bad behaviour and faulty judgment and turn it into a dialogue about how racism prevails still in America? Maybe we are, and yes, that dialogue is healthy and we are overdue for this particular gut check, but at what expense?

I’m not sure Michael Richards is really a racist who deserves the unhealthy and negative publicity he’s receiving at the moment, but he should get a pat on the back for re-introducing discussions of hatred and racism into the media. The media is what it is - a reflection of attitudes even while it creates them - but if it can manipulate for harm, then now is the time for Jesse Jackson and everyone else to use its power to not villify Michael Richards specifically, but impress upon the purveyors of pop culture to erase the lines of race that make Michael Richards, but not - oh, say - Chris Rock, a shocking example of American bigotry.

* Tom Green:

“Unlike Mel Gibson, who probably does hold racist attitudes, I don’t think Michael Richards doesn’t like black people. I think he was just trying to say the craziest and most vile thing in that room he could possibly muster. And I think he dug deep, into the darkest corners of his mind, to say those evil things to those men.”He added, “But he did it in a small room, in an exchange, during a performance, and it wasn’t meant for us. It was just meant for that room. So why don’t we just let them settle it? Let’s leave Michael Richards alone.”