Wicked Awesome Parenting

I think that I may be sending my self into a deep depression on purpose. I am not sure why I feel the need to do this, since this winter in Maine could achieve this quite sufficiently on its own.

In the past couple weeks I have finished both the Kite Runner, and A Thousand Splendid Suns, as well as watched God Grew Tired of Us, and Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion. Which was sort of like standing there and asking someone to punch me in the stomach repeatedly.

As some of you may have read in my profile, guilt is one of my hobbies...I don't know if it is a hobby per-say, it certainly comes to me through the veins. I choose to think of my Italian heritage as supplying most of it, and being a mother finishing off my ample supply. This is neither here nor there, except to say that a person who possesses my high threshold of unidentified guilt along with my incredibly wimpy limitations for seeing pain in the world, coupled with my need to control the Universe, should really not try to endure such books and movies, and much less all at the same time. As anxiety and depression run in my family, I think I am tempting fate a bit here!


But I did it, so now, as these things typically do, I am feeling all hot and bothered to go and save Sudan, or free Tibet, or befriend a woman in a burkah who needs some saving. Which clearly, at some point I will have to admit, I cannot do because somewhere along the line I got fired as General Manager of the Universe.

We are so blessed to have been born here. And while I still shush my mother if she mentions Alkeida** in a conversation for fear that W will send in the troops after hearing it on my tapped phones...I really don't live in a whole lot of fear. A little fear of taking Henry to swimming lessons now. (Yes, I do understand how menial my life is becoming!)


So I sit on my couch in a lake of tears and admiration for all the real people and characters of these movies and books, yelling a the books and TV, because somewhere in my screwed up psyche, I think they really can hear me. Feeling guilty about having taken longer than I should have for lunch to finish my book, Because surely I should have been doing something more useful with my time, like, I don't know, writing to my senator, collecting signatures, setting up peace rallies, building an arc...something...

But in the end, I will put it all on my to-do list...after I tackle the mounds of laundry that are scheduling their own coup d'etat and will march down the stairs and smother me in their smelliness at any moment. See? This is why all the guilt...

**Just to note, I do know that it is Al Qaeda, but I was trying to stick with the theme of W...