I am not a waitress trying to kick a habit

So every day I try to do the crossword (it depends on how busy I am) and right across from the crossword is an advice column. I think it's Ask Amy but I apparently don't pay enough attention to the byline. Anyhow the other morning there was a lady complaining that other women call her "sweetheart" or "darling" or the like and how that really annoys her because she is a strong independent woman and somehow this belittles her in her eyes. I'm not trying to devalue her opinion but I do disagree with her. Or maybe it's not her so much as the advice columnist (who is entitled to her own opinion too) who agreed with the reader and likened people that use these terms to a waitress she know who picked up the habit of calling complete strangers she waits on these terms. And apparently the waitress is trying to stop because she knows it's a crappy thing to do and it devalues people. (I'm so inserting my own opinions there)

I mainly disagree because I am a person that calls people 'love" and "sweetheart" and "darling" and it's done as an endearment. First off though certainly I don't call you those terms if I don't know you (or at least have talked to you enough to know you even if we've never met). And secondly you're taking terms of endearment (let's just go with from people you know) and putting a meaning into them that isn't meant. You're letting those words take your feelings of a strong independent woman and turning them into what? A codependent? Simply by taking a very nice term (we're also assuming it's not being said sarcastically for this study) and giving it the power to make you feel like less. You are a strong independent woman because you are. No one can take that away from you unless you let them.

And also because I love whimsy I love to give people nicknames.This is how you know I like you. You get a nickname. I try to meet people's preferences and so a few are just known by me. But dude, I like you, you get a nickname.

Also as a total random side note Isaac loves to tease me about saying dude all the time. I know, it's incongruous (apparently) to have a preppy white girl just throwing around the word.

And another side note, word I like to really use lately.
Apparently
I know
dude

A Field To Watch The Stars

I've realized lately that I've never explained why I named my blog what I've named it. It's really obvious to me but I realize that it probably isn't to you.

I started this blog so my siblings and I can still keep in contact even if we don't talk every day. Because when you do talk on the phone with anyone that you haven't talked to in a while you only talk about the most current happenings. I wanted to give the story in between. I wanted my family to know me more in depth along with all the minutiae. And over the years it's turned into so much more than that and it's included more than just my family.

I chose the title because I love the outdoors and nothing leaves me happier or more awe inspired than laying in a field on a clear night looking up at the stars and picking out the constellations.

Valentine

If you know me you know how I feel about today. And if you don't then you should know I personally don't really care for it. When I was single people would tell me I was just bitter that I wasn't in a relationship but I would never be able to get across to them that that's not it at all.

I love love. I love the idea of love and how it makes us do really incredible things that no sane person would do otherwise. We learn to give more than we thought possible and to self sacrifice for the betterment of someone we love. We learn to be selfless, and kinder. Love in its best reincarnation is rather awe inspiring.

What I don't love (no pun intended) is that I am told on a specific day that I have to feel love and show love. I guess I don't like Valentine's Day because I feel like it's somewhat of an act and that you are forced to perform. I feel like it kind of negates any other act of love that you do throughout the year because this is the penultimate day for love. And if I don't show you love today then the love I do show you throughout the year is rather small. I don't like the competition it turns love into. I don't think love should be flashy and about what I have to do for you (you remember the self sacrificing part right?). It's love because I choose to do so. I choose to declare and do silly little fun things for you. I give you a shoulder to cry on, and a hand to hold. I'm present because every fiber of my being wants it to be so. I don't think love should be an expectation waiting to be met but a surprise gift freely given.

And now I'm going to contradict myself, wholly. I know that when I have kids (nope, not yet) I will probably make a big deal out of this holiday and I don't know why I think it will change. I do know I want to make every holiday a big deal and very magical. And I want to do that because as an adult the magic has kind of gone out of it. It's very different when you're setting up the surprises and buying the gifts, etc.

I know not everyone shares my views about Valentine's Day and if you love Valentine's Day then Happy Valentine's Day. I'm the one in green.

Crazy

For the most part I was raised in Crazy. I grew up thinking Crazy was normal because it was my normal.

When I graduated high school and went on to college I only had to live in Crazy from time to time. And when I graduated from college I only made self appointed field trips to Crazy.

By the time I was 26 I knew what Crazy looked like but still couldn't stop the field trips because I had hope.

By the time I was 28 I was able to extricate myself from Crazy and pretty much never look back. This doesn't mean that I don't talk about Crazy and how f***ed up it is.

What it means is I figured out how to stop being torn to pieces by Crazy. I stopped letting Crazy rule my self worth and what I supposedly could contribute to the world and how good/bad of a person I am.

I will always miss Crazy but only because I will always wish it was Sane. It will never make me go back.

So I'm cutting the counterpart to Crazy out of my life and while this one is harder I can't live in Crazy again.

MLK Day

I meant to write this earlier but oh well. It's a few days late but I think still close enough that it's relevant.

What MLK Jr. did for our country and its racial politics is still profound to this day. He should always have a day of remembrance so we will talk about it each year and hopefully never forget. We all need to remember to treat people equally no matter race, color, creed, etc.

With that said I do have one bone to pick. I was listening to NPR that morning and they talked about a really great program where blacks and Jews go through a course together of literally following in the steps of Martin Luther King Jr. and the last day of the course they end up where he was fatally shot. I don't have an issue with any of this and I can't find a link to the news story. What really bothers me is that I felt like the language that they used in the piece was that since Jews have also been an oppressed people that they share a common understanding with the oppression that blacks have gone through.

While I obviously don't claim to be either black or Jewish I don't like the singling out. I know I will never experience a day through the eyes of someone that is black or Jewish but how does that make me less? How does it come to mean that I can't understand oppression? I have always worked so hard in my life to treat everyone equally and give everyone a fair shake. I do this (I'm sure I don't always succeed) because it's exactly what I want.

I almost kind of feel that this story goes against what MLK Jr. was fighting for. He wanted equality for everyone and for everyone to have a shared common understanding. I just think when you  gear the message toward specific sects of people you lose the integrity of that. It's also how I hate when people automatically jump to an -ism (racism, sexism, ageism, etc.) card. I personally feel like MLK Jr. wanted us to to do the best to understand where people are/were coming from instead of jumping to the defense mechanism of our worst thoughts.

I guess another recent example was when Green Bay Packer Aaron Rodgers supposedly snubbed Jan Cavanaugh when he was at the airport on the way to his plane. Instead of understanding the circumstances it was automatically leapt to that he was such an a**hole to a cancer patient. No matter that he had already a few days before spent quite a bit of time talking to her and signing her memorabilia.

I believe that you get back what you put out and this is also why I believe in reincarnation. My main feeling (and I try every day) is that we should all find out someone's motivations before we assume the worst. People, over all have the best intentions because they want the best to come back to them too.