Momartfully

Wii, Wii, oui... all the way home

My parents were in town visiting last week for a couple days to run some errands in the city and then head back into the wilderness before the next big snowfall. I came home late last Monday after a very busy day and a very frosty walk from the bus. I knew my kids were snug at home, hanging out with Gramma after school and maybe indulging in a wholesome craft activity or baking cookies.

Riiight.

I opened the front door and was immediately run down by two very, very excited kids.

"Look Mom, LOOK! Look what Gramma got us! MommommommomMOMmomMOMMOMMOM... SO cool. So COOL. Mom LOOK!"

I peeled off my coat and scarf. "What? What is it?"

(thinking please dear God don't let it be a puppy!)

"See? Isn't it COOL?" My son held up a white remote control and pointed it at the TV.

Wait. A white remote?

Oh. My. God. My mom got the family a Wii for Christmas.

On a school night.

-----

A couple hours later it was declared that my mom got ME the Wii for Christmas - because the kids wouldn't stop fighting about who the Wii belonged to and who got to go first or got the remote first and who got to play longer or better or which game they played... or...

Sigh. Does the Wii serve Martiniis?

Blindsided

I don't just have one extra-special suckeye, I have two suckeyes (suckii?)

The verdict is that I have Glaucoma:

"Glaucoma affects 1 in 200 people aged fifty and younger, and 1 in 10 over the age of eighty."

Lovely - the one time I beat the odds it isn't a lottery ticket or finding out I'm a Russian princess who mysteriously disappeared in infancy and was raised in secret by an adoptive family... nooooo - it's finding out that I have the old lady eye disease.

I'd even take winning a free Canadian donut over this.

For an artist being told that you have a disease that really, really could make you go blind is terrifying.

I'm trying to concentrate on the fact that it's treatable, and so far there's no damage to my optic nerves and I'm really young for Glaucoma. Insanely young. A mere infant in Glaucoma years.

Yeah, there probably aren't Glaucoma years, but throw me a bone would you?

God's sense of humour is going seriously overboard with this whole suckeye thing.

You are not funny, Sir.

Suckeyed

On Saturday I'm returning to the Optometrist for further tests on my left eye after tests a couple weeks ago had some weird results. I'll also be picking up new glasses - my prescription needed a major update.

My left eye has always been my weakest eye and lately it's been bothering me (focus issues and headaches).

So I found it particularly funny that I was contemplating my upcoming eye exam while surfing and commenting on blogs... and this is the word verification phrase that came up.

"Suckeyed";

Proof positive that God has a sense of humour.

What Kind of Mom Doesn't Read?

My house walls are wallpapered in bookshelves filled to capacity. There are frequent evenings in my house where the whole family climbs into mommy’s bed with a stack of books and some plans for snuggling.

We are readers.

Having been a professional communicator for a very long time - and also a plain ol’ logical person - I know from both experience and observation that there’s almost no way to succeed in life without feeding your brain. It’s as simple as good input=good output. If you feed your brain good “food” then you’re a much more informed, capable, valuable employee, parent and person – and if you feed your brain poor quality “food” then you can’t push out good quality effort for your work, your children or your world.

I had thought that most of the world had the same general view – it was certainly what I saw around me. Almost every single mom I knew pushed their kids to read as they regarded reading as one of the key components of a sucessful future. Moms were all about reading, I thought. We volunteered for the Scholastic program, spent years chanting "Goodnight Moon" by heart, we paraded the kids to the library and sounded out words with them. We also read ourselves - we fed our careers, hearts, souls and minds and we kept perenial stacks of books on our nightstands.

So a tepid discussion of reading from a group of moms was a bit of a shock.

Months ago Momversation presented a video from their panel of supposedly "typical moms" who almost universally stated that they just don’t read “anymore” (they were supposed to talk about 5 books that changed their lives).

Thankfully, there were a couple moms who were quite confident in stating that they still read - but the overall tone and premise was mommies don't read.

Motherhood has just been so ultimately demanding and all-consuming for the Momversation panel of  supposedly "typical moms" that reading has just fallen by the wayside as a result.

That video has bothered me ever since. Aside from the dismissive tone toward reading there were also disturbing competitive mommy undertones in that video; from the one-upmanship in the choice of trendy, new, highly marketed books that some of the participants called their “all time favourite” books to the underlying implication that busy, good mommies are so utterly consumed with being a busy, good mommy that they just don’t have a single speck of time for something so self-indulgent and worthless as reading a book.

But. But. But - there’s certainly time to write in their blogs. And make video entries and responses. And travel for numerous guest appearances on TV. And travel to write richly compensated blog advertorials. And write their own books.

The logic fallacy in that last paragraph was pretty mind-boggling. Time to write – but no time to read.

I look around me and I see reading moms everywhere - yet a panel of supposedly "typical moms" says otherwise. I look around me and I see a society of readers and life-long learners, yet the celebrity bloggers say otherwise.

Why wasn't there a single working mom who rolled her eyes and said tiredly "I have to read for work every night" - which is a much more common conversation among the moms I know than a lament about being "too busy to read". What ever happened to all the moms who valued their post-secondary educations so highly? Where are the moms who are teaching themselves new skills? What about all the moms I know who are filling in the holes in their education with some Ayn Rand, Dante and Aeschylus? Where are the legions of moms I know who are feverishly keeping up with their industry so they have a career to return to?

I find it unbelievable (but sadly more and more common every day) that women are expected to suspend our own intelligence, experience and sense of logic so we can believe that Moms as an entire group (we are all the same, after all) are universally giving up on reading once we give birth - because the mommy celebrities say we're much too busy.

We're expected to believe that being a mom means you don't read - or if we do manage to force ourselves to read we're not tackling anything more challenging than teen vampire fiction and People Magazine.

I don't know that kind of mom.

Measure for Measure

I was thinking about how different my approach to "romance" is now compared to when I was younger - and how the quality of my relationships was (unconsciously) inversely expressed in my behaviour. I couldn't see it then. Now, in hindsight, it's pretty clear.

When I was younger whenever I started dating a new guy I would pour over "analysis" of our sun signs, Chinese astrology charts, compatibility charts, biorhythms, calculators, dating profiles, name numerology... even a church-sponsored premarital analysis program - to see if my prospective mate was a "perfect match".

I'd read about The Rules, practice every version of our names together and daydream about what our kids would look like (although I never Photoshopped prospective children). I desperately sought a variety of ways to measure my prospective mates to find some sort of indicator of success. I was hedging my dating bets and looking for a romantic guarantee - a  fairytale ending guarantee.

Which, really, was a disaster in the making. 

I should have been paying attention to the realities of my romantic encounters. I was so reassured by the "analysis" and "evaluation" of my relationships that I forgot to pay attention to what was really going on. Instead of worrying about what phase of the moon it was or where the planet was hurtling through space at the moment I took my first breath I should have paid attention to my paramour's spending habits, choice of friends, leisure activities, integrity... and what their priorities were.

Case in point; my Ex and I were supposedly 75% compatible when all measurements were lumped together - which was fairly high. I had absolute stacks of "analysis" that predicted that my ex and I would be ever so compatible in everything from career goals, parenting styles to housecleaning standards.

Right.

On paper it seemed my relationship with my Ex was destined to be a fairytale - the proverbial golden pumpkin coach riding off into the sunset and a "Happily Ever After" close the book ending.

In reality it was really more of a train wreck on a dark and stormy night.

On the opposite side of the spectrum - M and I are supposedly not compatible - yet M and I have had a friendship that has spanned 20+ years. I don't think we've ever had a serious fight - plenty of testy or annoyed discussions, but never a loss of respect or decency for each other when we're discussing issues. And we laugh - even in the middle of annoyed discussions and embarrassing moments - we've never lost that.

If my past history of romantic success predictions by 3rd party analysis is anything to judge by, then the incompatibility that M and I share means we're actually a perfect match that will last forever.

What I think is more telling, though, is that I didn't even know we were supposedly not compatible until tonight - 20 years after first becoming friends and more than 2 years into our romantic relationship - I just found out. I've never looked - and it never even occurred to me to check to see if we were compatible. I just knew - I didn't need to have anyone else tell me we were perfect together.

And really? That's the only guarantee there ever is.

Mommyblogs are like reality TV

I confess - I don't watch TV much anymore. Well, aside from some inadvertent Treehouse TV (Canadian preschool channel) or the odd Star Trek rerun.

I really stopped watching TV years ago when the networks were forced to create a pile of shows that weren't dependent on traditional writers. The networks decided to place bikini-clad drama-addicted wannabe spokesmodels in front of TV crews in remote locations and told them to writhe and cry on cue for the camera crew. It seems they felt their experiences would "represent" what isolation, starvation and pain were really like. They called it "entertainment". They called it reality TV.

It was... nothing like the reality. It still isn't.

I could only stand to watch one episode of "reality" TV. The suspension of disbelief was too much for me - I couldn't get past the fact that the spokesmodels were performing for what I knew was a very comfortable and well equipped TV crew on site - with craft services, honey wagons, dressing rooms, microphones, generator trucks, Key Grips, Best Boys and overpaid Teamsters.

It wasn't real - it wasn't even believable - but it sold, it sold like crazy, and it was cheap - and audiences loved it. The drama, the gossip, the cruelty and pain - the audiences loved it all because it was entertaining and constantly fresh - and deep down they knew it wasn't real.

Real starvation, real deprivation, real illness doesn't sell like "reality" TV does. Watching pretty people cry for money doesn't make us uncomfortable. Documentaries are about real pain - and so documentaries are rarely commercially sucessful because real pain is hard to watch and it hurts us - and most importantly it makes us angry or motivates us to make a change.

That's what many documentaries want to do - they don't just entertain - they want to share, build a community, make a change. What's real motivates documentarians to do something, to learn and grow - to challenge preconceptions and be brave enough to find out errors. It is hard - incredibly hard - it is anything but passive - but it has integrity because it's real.

That's a huge the appeal of "reality" TV - we can walk away from the drama of "reality" TV and gossip about it, speculate about outcomes, complain or admire - but we don't feel the need to do anything personally. We aren't outraged or threatened or introspective - It's not about us - it's not real - it's entertainment. We know in the end that the mock-suffering of the pretties will be rewarded with a seat next to Barbara Walters.

I was comfortable with the decision to skip out on what TV had become, and I moved on to content online. For a while my documentary loving soul found a huge amount of amazing real content in blogs - filled with integrity and genuine voices. Then blogging started to change - blogging for profit hit the mommyverse - and suddenly there were "celebrities" and "fans", conventions, endorsements and compensated reviews. Discussion was no longer wanted and dissenting opinions were punished. Profit was king and content was demoted to serving wench.

I realized this change was remarkably similar to what the TV industry went through a few years prior. Suddenly blogging - mommyblogging especially - was no longer about genuine experiences, unique points of view, creating a community, discussion of issues or growth.

The real voices were mocked by the simulated reality, pretend pain and commercialized angst that celebrity bloggers engaged in for profit. We were entertained - but we should have been angry.

The consequence of all this simulated "reality" is that the issues - the real issues - have been shunted aside in the name of profit and entertainment. It has became more fashionable and popular to participate in ridiculous polarizations on TV - like on Dr. Phil's divisive mommy debate - or Momversation's insulting segment on working moms. TV producers no longer research issues to pitch - they run to Google to find a "celebrity". Who cares if they know anything about the subject? Celebrity has replaced authority. Celebrity is the new authority.

As long as you're famous your opinion - about anything - matters. It shouldn't.

We shouldn't tolerate it when celebrities are encouraged and rewarded for speaking on an issue they have no experience with. Speaking on our issues. We should be furious that our realities are being cheapened and mocked for profit. We should all be furious that our voices are being silenced and discounted - we are not what they'd like to pretend we are, and it's about time they found out. We don't need a celebrity or a spokesmodel simulating our lives, our challenges and our pain for their profit. Our realities deserve respect, a genuine voice and integrity.

We all deserve more real in our "reality".