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All About Politics, and the People Who Discuss Them (Rejected Blog Post)

I watch the news daily, I read about current events. I cry a little when I read the top headlines, because rather than any news of substance I see things like “_____ celebrities ate tacos”. I don’t care if some celebrity was walking around with a Cheeto bag, and when I do care I will read “Celebrity” news, not the top headlines of the day. Actual news should be separate from useless nonsense. It’s not hard to wonder why American’s need to be told “Chechnya is an entirely different nation than the Czech Republic”. All foreigners are the same and celebrities are more important than current events. Amurica. (Purposeful and sarcastic misspelling.) So this brings me to an Election Day post I rejected. I agree with the main point of “celebrities need to worry about being celebrities”, but I felt the post felt flat otherwise. Happy Friday!

I watch the news to see the pundits argue out their points. I watch entertainment to be entertained. I watch the Daily Show and Colbert Report to be entertained by comedians mocking the news. I don’t watch an interview with a celebrity to hear their political views, I want to hear about their new movie or something funny that happened while filming said movie. Likewise, I don’t want to hear a politician giving a review about a movie. I don’t care what they think. It’s great that they want to indulge themselves in whatever philanthropic pursuits they wish or is the “in” cause. It’s good that they incite the masses to donate whatever time, money and resources we have to help others and some of them actually put their money where their mouths are. That’s using their celebrity for good.

However, I don’t care who you vote for or what your political views are. You’re actors/singers/models, there to entertain. I will listen to your songs, political or not, because I like them and not because I want to vote for whomever you’re voting for. I don’t want to listen to an actor telling me what to do in elections, I pay you to at least decently act in whatever movie I’m choosing to see. I’m glad you’re voting. But I don’t care if you tell me to vote for Obama or Romney, because your opinion doesn’t matter to me and I’ll take whatever you see with the same grain of salt I’ll take the major news channels on their election information.

So my lovely celebrities, save your money from those commercials you make to try to sway our vote. I don’t care how many Academy Awards you have, reasonable people won’t vote for people because you tell them to. Everyone (whether they admit it or not) has pretty much decided how they are voting. Most of them are just going to vote along party lines like good little ducklings following along. And those that aren’t voting “the way they should” are probably too smart to care what an overpaid privileged celebrity says about elections or really just don’t care about voting. Maybe you should put that money someplace useful, like the open pantry or soup kitchens or battered women shelters.

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Guns Kill Immigrants? No Wait… Immigrants Kill Guns?

How I feel personally about immigration and gun control are irrelevant here. This isn’t a debated of “why I think guns should be legal/illegal/assault rifles banned” because I honestly think the politicians rooting for gun control are just appeasing masses that are traumatized by events like the Aurora movie theater shooting or the Newtown school shooting. Maybe they think “trying” to pass reform will make people feel better. News flash: it doesn’t. If politicians really wanted to make a change, they would do it and not spend 10 years talking about doing it.

Maybe I’m cynical. No, I take that back. I know I’m cynical. I don’t trust politicians, I repeat that every time I bring up politics but it never becomes less true. They sit and talk about a topic of relevance until they are blue in the face, and share how they are going to wave a magical wand and fix everything. They’re not fixing anything, unless by fixing it  you mean “further ruining”. Then, when the smoke clears away from that topic of relevance they move onto another “we need to fix this” discussion. With that said, a lot of talk about gun control and immigration confuse me. Maybe you can help explain this to me logically? (Not really, I already know the answer.)

In arguments about gun control, people anti-gun control argue about “what good is background checks? Bad guys are going to do bad things anyways. Why check out good guys?” I would have argued back “do you really need a gun that exact second you go into the store that you can’t wait until they make sure you’re not a psychopath?” I agree, if people want guns enough they are going to get them. But people are still going to get their hands on bombs, so should we legalize that? (That line came from something I watched, don’t ask what because I forgot. Point is, that wasn’t an original idea.) Now, follow me for a minute. In the immigration bill coming out, they are asking for people to have background checks before entering into this country. Because people won’t just come here anyways without people knowing because that’s never happened before. Right? So… why background check immigrants and not people with guns? Are you trying to tell me that an immigrant needs a background check to come here, but can get a gun no problem?

Logically, it doesn’t make sense to me. To me, if you background check one maybe you should check the other. That makes sense to me. I don’t think you can take guns off the street, I also don’t think you can keep people from illegally coming here. People are going to get guns and murder other people. People are going to still do drugs, so shouldn’t we just legalize them too? Actually, if you tax them maybe that wouldn’t be a bad idea. The point is simple though, what makes background checks amazingly intelligent in one scenario, but an incredibly stupid one in another. Maybe registries aren’t a bad idea in both cases. Maybe you can think about this topic and let me know.

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Hate

Normally I try to come up with as witty of a title as possible, but there’s no place for wit today. When the marathon bombing happened, I saw the best of humanity. I saw people running to help others though they knew another bomb could explode and kill them. That didn’t matter; they wanted to save lives and help. We stuck together and caught the guilty parties. We saluted and applauded our men and women of the law for their hard work in keeping us safe as if they were celebrities. They were not celebrities, all these heroes for their courage in such a dark time in our state. Did I mention we caught the guilty parties? This distinction comes into play later on, I promise.

After all this, I realized that soon I’d see the end of this amazing humanity. I’d start to see the worst in it, and it made me lose all that faith in people that I had gained. I was naïve, I admit. I should have known better. I saw in the news about a Muslim woman getting harassed and smacked around and yelled at “You caused the bombings! Terrorist!”, all because she was Muslim. A friend, that though I haven’t spoken to in years but still have great respect for, had her work’s windows smashed in because her and her family are Muslim. All because humans are hateful creatures. This hate against them is no different than the hate radicals have against us. I’ll probably get hate mail for saying this, but really who has the right to make that distinction that one version of hate is any better than the other? Both “haters” cause violence on innocent people. It’s sickening.

The people who did this to our state were caught. They were radical terrorists that happened to be Muslim. All Muslims are not terrorists. Are all white people terrorists because we have a few bad seeds that bomb innocent people? Then why do we consider all Muslim people terrorists because they have bad seeds too? Muslims probably look at terrorists the same way Christians look at the Westboro Baptist Church, they acknowledge the evil they preach under the guise of religious purity but refuse to be associated with them.

Hate is a terrible thing. Hate is just a cycle, one bad deed followed by a dozen more. The way to prove you are truly better than those who cause harm is to get the bad guys and leave the innocent ones alone. We can’t keep generalizing everyone in one group of “bad guys”, because every group has bad guys in it and I refuse to believe everyone on this planet is a bad guy.

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Modern Technology and Other Friday Craziness

The blog is late, I know. A power outage and a late night last night are my reasons for tardiness. So like a responsibly bad parent, I’m making use of my husband’s netbook and his work’s “mifi”, and posting while attending my son’s baseball practice. Hopefully, the rain holds off until I’m done, I’m sure he’ll be pissed if I ruin his work netbook for the selfish purpose of sharing my thoughts with you.

That’s the benefit of modern technology. I was unable to post earlier as a result of having any internet to function my blogging needs, and my phone’s app for posting is currently non-functioning. But thanks to a mobile hotspot, I can compensate for that instead of suffering through 9 and 10-year-olds whining about “is it my turn to bat yet?”. Except for my son, he just loves to play. Bless that angel of a boy.

Technology is amazing. My husband came across a Boston police scanner last night on his phone. He was determined to be able to here them “catch that S.O.B”, and used his wireless headset his awesome wife bought him for our anniversary to listen to it from his phone while doing the dishes. I laughed at him, asking if anything interesting happened. “No, they were just making fun of a Spanish-speaking person.”, he said. I went into the bedroom, and soon he bursts in. “An officer at MIT was shot.” 20 minutes later it was all over the news. I decided to try and go back to sleep, this week was stressful on all Americans and I didn’t think this had anything to do with the bombings. I soon learned that I was wrong.

While my husband sat up listening to the scanner, he burst in the room again as I was about to fall asleep in my denial. “Poop just hit the fan. There are machine guns and grenades. Poop just got real!” (Obviously, poop isn’t the word he used, but I try and to keep it as clean as possible here.) I didn’t believe him, but sure enough the news was 20 minutes behind again. I couldn’t sleep, and my husband stayed up all night obsessively waiting to hear that the suspects were caught and this was over.

One suspect was shot and killed. One suspect is doing what terrorists do, causing terror while we wait to see if he can get caught. The whole city is in lockdown, and the area surrounding it. Our sports teams were shut down, and people are stuck in their homes hoping the guy gets caught before he bangs on their doors. I have every faith he will be caught, in some form or another and will end up suffering for what he did in the end.

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At A Loss

I’ve dedicated this post to current events, but I’m at a loss here. I have 2 different commentaries on this topic, but neither felt right to write about today. One is a topic about racial profiling, and I felt strongly about it but this isn’t the right platform or time to discuss that. Maybe Friday, maybe next week. Maybe a year from now. The other is just a blanketed commentary about terrorism on our home ground, which to me felt wrong because it is so soon and I never ever wanted to exploit a tragedy for my own purposes. Exploit might be a bad word, I have no ill will in posting about the tragedy but it feels wrong to write about something like this for your own personal profit. I struggled with this idea all day, but when it comes down to it I felt I needed to say something and will say it.

I remember watching 9/11, which obviously is no comparison to the true horror that event caused in our nation as nearly 3,000 people died. But I remember watching it, terrified about what happened. That was a war happening in our country, a place where we’ve always felt safe from outside horrors. It was a wake up call that the war can happen in our land, and that was unacceptable to us. We were shocked, our disbelief ruled us for several days even weeks after the event. I felt terror, I felt empathy for the victims, you’d be un-American if you didn’t. We were spectators to this.

Monday, we had news alerts on our phones telling us that there were bombs exploding in Boston after the marathon. My heart sank so low, I wondered where it went. I saw the hotel, a hotel I’ve stayed at and loved on the news. I remembered walking down that street to my first ever geek convention. I remember that Dunkin’ Donuts we got our morning breakfast at, and the chocolate store I drooled at as we passed by it. I remember hanging out in Copley Square. This was different from 9/11 to me, because I had an emotional connection and memory at the places I was watching on the television. This wasn’t just “our” backyard, this was “my” backyard.

Then my mind went to an even more horrifying place. My husband was working out East someplace, I couldn’t think of where. Was he in Boston? No, he said he wasn’t. I remembered a few weeks prior calling him, asking him if he wanted tickets to the Patriots Day game for the Red Sox, because we might have gotten our hands on them for him and our oldest son. No, he had to work and the people gave the tickets to someone else anyways. I sat biting my nails, my family on my father’s side lived there, my cousin on my mother’s side attends school there. I saw on Facebook that I knew people at the marathon there. A child died, a child not much younger than my own. It was horrific and disgusting and a dozen other words that I probably can’t write here.

We like to think of ourselves as safe; we’re really not. The catch is what we do with that knowledge: do we cower and hide or do we continue living our lives? The answer is we live. They say it all the time, and it’s true: the terrorists win if they cause us to fear every day. We learn from this, that we’re resilient and unafraid. We saw people more concerned about helping others than hiding in case something happened to them. We learned that American’s can’t be knocked down, and if we get knocked down, we stand right up and do what needs to be done. The terrorists won’t win because we’re not quitters, we’re not afraid, and we won’t let them control our lives.

Also related: My discussion about this topic and parenting. http://t.co/rSu4nUHYq4

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Sleeping Makes Dreaming Look So Easy

I happened across something called “Hubpages”. It’s similar to blogging, only not quite. I signed up, as another way to put myself out there and try and make my dreams of writing come true. Every little bit of publicity helps this goal. I have no misconceptions that blogging or Hubpages will make me a fortune. I have no false hope that overnight I’ll be some undiscovered genius that bursts into the spotlight and make a fortune. I know it’s a slow process, and I’m willing to crawl with it.

With that said, the format here will become a little different. My original intention here was a blog about whatever I felt like writing about, mostly on something that happened in the news or in my life that I felt the need to make note of and rant about. It soon melded into a discussion on my beliefs on parenting and pregnancy, which made sense because that’s what goes on in my daily life. From now on, I’ll use my Hubpage to discuss this. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, it’ll be a commentary of parenting, pregnancy, and things of that nature. Here, I’ll go back to my original intention of my blog: current events and whatever else I feel like.

When I get my Hubpage up and running to my standards, I’ll link it here to share with you. I can only cross my fingers and hope that some day I can proudly say I did it. Until then, I can proudly state I’m trying. It takes a scared person to give up before they try, assuming the worst or just too afraid of failing or putting in the hard work to follow your dreams. It takes a special kind of stupidly brave person to say “screw it” and throw caution to the wind to try anyways. People judge you for silly dreams as much as they judge you for laziness. I don’t think it’s silly to have a dream, as long as that dream isn’t to sit around in your pajamas all day watching television and eating crap that will make you into a star on “My 600 lb. Life”. Spoiler alert: you get a 50/50 chance of not dying on that show.

Sometimes you just need to go for it, no matter how silly it seems. And I intend to.

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Things I’ve Learned: Pediatric Surgeons, Surgery and the Like.

These are my favorite of the “themed” posts I write. It never amazes me the things I learn when I’m out and how it annoys me or makes me laugh. I understand, I might be the only one who laughs. But if you can’t laugh at yourself, what can you laugh at? There’s really no real introduction I can write about this, so I’ll just dive right in.

1) Residents are young and possibly lack any sense. In waiting for our son’s surgeon, a resident and a high school student interested in medicine appears telling us he was a resident and our surgeon would be right with us but he wanted to come in and check our son. He seemed very new to this, and I wouldn’t have cared so much if he didn’t enter the room saying what he said. As he appeared, smug smirk and all he greets us by saying “So is this George? Is he still peeing downwards?”. I looked at my husband, non-verbally asking permission to make a snide comment back or to actually punch him. Note to doctors: it’s generally not a great idea to mock a 7-month-old baby about his birth defect in front of parents who are nervous about the whole thing. Humor is appreciated; unintended mockery is generally neither appreciated or acceptable in any situation. I have a great sense of humor, I enjoy a good joke. That wasn’t funny; it was mildly insulting. It wasn’t just the comment, obviously we wouldn’t be there if the problem magically fixed itself. Don’t be an idiot resident, and I think you’ll go far. Also, developing a personality and better bedside manner would probably help further your career.

2) Compound Centers. I live in Massachusetts, home of the New England Compounding Center. In case you don’t watch the news, that’s the pharmacy that dispensed Meningitis to almost thousands of people becoming sick and several of them dying. Our baby needed a prescription and I nodded and waited for the paper to head to my pharmacy to fill it. No, you can’t do that. It needed to be filled at a compounding facility, which thankfully was right next to my husband’s work. However, the minute that I heard the words “Compound Facility”, I looked at the nurse as if she was trying to kill my child. Though I’m not entirely sure the difference between a regular pharmacy and a compounding one, aside from the meningitis and obscene cost of prescriptions without being covered by insurance.

3) My maturity level is shaky. I learned a hard lesson yesterday, that my brain sometimes has not left high school. Maybe it’s a result of my love of Penny Arcade, and finding their “doodle” contest very hilarious. Phallic jokes are hilarious, and I laugh every time. I also apparently laugh when there are pictures drawn of them in a hilarious manner. Maybe it was the nerves, I’m definitely a person who laughs at things instead of the proper emotion as a result of a defense mechanism. So when the doctor proceeded to draw diagrams of the surgery, something inside my head reminded me not to laugh, though I can’t promise I didn’t snicker a little. It’s not funny, but I probably could have done without the diagrams.

The most important lesson I learned yesterday was that I can do this. I have it in me to find the positives and ignore the negatives and I know I’ll need help, but I have an awesome husband to go through this with me and we have an amazing family that will stand by us and support us. People are social beings, and we need people to stand by us during our difficult times.

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Suite 220

I get the phone call for the appointment for tomorrow, reminding me the baby has an appointment with the surgeon. This pain in the muscles around my neck seems to have tightened more. I didn’t think it was possible, but still 2 weeks later it’s now worse. Teething and lack of sleep started it, the looming surgery hanging over my head probably helped keep this pain. I know logically, this isn’t anything serious. I know that I can choose not to, but I’m not willing to say no because the downside is much worse than the surgery itself. I keep telling myself that anyways.

I’m not normally a” worry-er”, I usually leave that to my husband since he’s much better at it than I am. I over-think situations but I rarely actually worry. I go in with the worst case scenario in mind, always. Because I know that if I’m prepared for the worst, I’ll have accepted it as a possibility. Ignoring the worst blindsides you, and I hate being blindsided. I like to know exactly every scenario that would possibly happen so I can have a proper and calm reaction no matter what. It works, but usually the middle of the road or best scenario happens and that makes it a little easier.

Still, I keep researching every chance I get. I know my options. (Really, the only options are do the surgery or be responsible for my son feeling awkward or embarrassed the rest of his life.) I still don’t know if I can see him off into the OR, with all those wires and tubing attached to him while he cries because he’s terrified. I’m a strong person, but I’m not entirely sure I’m that strong. We’ll see; I tend to excel when tossed into a situation and end up being a fierce version of myself. That’s what I’m counting on anyways, because I need to be for my family and mostly for my baby.

No sense overreacting about it now. Tomorrow we’ll probably get a surgery date that I’ll circle on my calendar and look at every day obsessively. I’ll try to forget, but I won’t be able to not look and remind myself. I know I need to mentally prepare and I know I’m good at that. I’m good at shutting down to prevent any sort of negative emotion and it keeps me unhealthily strong and sane. I’ll pretend the pain in my neck and head are just a result of working out too much, though I’ve been too tired for exercise. Most importantly, I’ll remember to hug my boys a little bit tighter every day because you never really know what can happen because anything can.

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It’s Opening Day

Today is opening day at Fenway Park. And as a fan of Boston teams, I can honestly say that I don’t care. Baseball is, in my opinion, one of the most boring sports to spectate. I don’t mind playing, in fact I rather enjoy playing the sport. But it is incredibly boring to sit and watch, it really is. Two of my brothers are attending the game, and I hope that they actually win because one of them has never been to a winning Sox game. In fact, I tried to convince him not to go, because opening day would be a terrible day to curse the team. I’m not a fan of the sport, but it doesn’t mean I don’t root for them when I do watch or want to see them lose.

This also means the start of little league season. I find little league much more tolerable, probably because I’m a biased proud mother of an awesome short stop. (No jokes here, he really does play short stop.) I think it’s more than that. Little leaguers are silly, unfocused, and you really have to laugh watching the games sometimes. However, they play with a lot more heart and grit than you see the pros and that makes it a fantastic thing to see. I can’t wait until practices start, so I can pretend to fit in with the other “baseball moms” and watch our little team hopefully kick the crap out of that snot-nosed team. You know that team, that one in all the television shows that bully the others. Yes, I will cross my fingers and hope they overpower them again, and every other time they face them. Because I like underdogs, and I hate arrogance.

So go on and cheer for your teams. I only hope for a dismal season like last year so maybe my boys can see a game this year for a cheap price with decent seats. Otherwise, I hope they make it into the playoffs and World Series because my son loves them and deserves not to wait 20 years for it. Or 80 like everyone else. And don’t be a pink hatter. If there’s anything I hate more than arrogance, general a-holery, and manipulative people, I hate ones that only stick around for the good. Liking a team doesn’t make you cool, sticking by your losing team does. And for the others like me that loathe this sport: that’s why they serve alcohol at the games. That, and to forget your team sucks.

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It’s Easier to Ask for Forgiveness Than It Is To Get Permission

Every time I see friends of mine with their partners, I always give one bit of advice: It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to get permission. I don’t do it to be serious, but because I find it hilarious. It’s not real advice they should listen to, it’s the rationale you give yourself when you do something you wanted that your partner disapproved of. What kind of relationship is that, when people do whatever they want without any regard to their partner? I sat around considering this idea of relationships when a few of my friends “put a ring on it”, and are embarking on a fantastic part of their life I’m glad I can watch and say I’ve been through successfully.

The real key to success is not letting the other forget the person they really are and allow them to forget who they are. I used to think that my husband changed me, that he calmed me down but allowed me to still be the quirky and neurotic me who still regains a bit of free spirit. I thought about that, and I realized he didn’t change anything about me. The “calm” that I have now has nothing to do with my husband at all; it’s a result of the natural maturity that occurs as we age. Maturity doesn’t mean you because some boring older version of yourself, it just means that you outgrew everything that differentiates an adult and an adolescent. I wonder if that means that getting drunk on wine and not vodka is a part of this maturity.

In this growth, I wonder if that’s what the difference between a “relationship” and a relationship. A “relationship” is where two people come together under the façade of an actual relationship, but really is an ownership or superficial version that most of us go through in high school. A relationship is where two people grow together, where compromise and common ground is the key and you push each other to follow dreams and allow each other to be the person you fell in love with. It’s easy to be with another person, it’s not easy to be a part of another person’s life. As  I near 30, I’m glad I found this person that follows my idea of what a relationship should be. I hate dating, and I’m definitely glad not to have to be a part of the crowd every again. But what better way to go into the “age of actual adulthood”, than with a partner and not an owner or alone.

People will probably disagree with me, that’s perfectly fine. I’m probably narrow-minded to believe that a relationship equals a partnership. I firmly believe that though, and if you’re constantly bending or miserable then that’s really your problem and I don’t feel guilty that I’m not. I should, but I don’t. It’s not easy to walk away; it’s easier to allow yourself to get lost. Some people like the easy way out. I don’t. I don’t like to settle, I don’t like to bend and I certainly don’t like the idea of not being myself. I wish everyone else the happiness I’ve found and I urge everyone to find a partner too. Notice I said partner.