women

Image: David Castillo Dominici / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I didn’t go to the last day of Comic Con to spend the day with my daughter. As no good deed goes unpunished, something had to come along and try to ruin it.

I took her to the local McDonald’s because while I loath the food (I feel my arteries being lined with evil) the nostalgia of the Halloween buckets was too much to resist. My husband dropped us off and got himself a coffee to take with him so we girls could hang out. While I sat with Penny waiting for the food, the cashier hit on my husband. No big deal, really. I’m not the jealous type and he certainly loved the ego boost. But he tells me the cashier’s response to “I’m married. That’s my wife and kid over there.” was “Her? But she looks older than you. And you’re so cuuuttee.”

The blow to my self-esteem aside, THIS is what I can’t fucking stand about women. This chick only said I looked old to make herself seem better in the eyes of a man she was obviously not going to get. Putting down the woman he loves is a sure fire way to make YOU look like a bitch, and rightly so.

Why can’t women play to their own strengths rather than put down another woman to make themselves feel better? I don’t want my daughter to feel like she’s going to burst into tears in public, never want to eat again, and want to buy diet pills she KNOWS don’t work just because someone who’s just as insecure as she is felt the need to open her yap.

Ma always said you should try to bring people UP, not put them down. I hope I can instill the same lesson to my daughter. I don’t want her to be on either side of this catastrophe.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some wrinkle cream to apply. >_<

Who indeed!

I plan to watch that documentary tonight and reading the promos and looking at books along the same lines and it’s got me thinking: I don’t see much on women who have kids, work full time, and THEN try to cram their creative outlets in any spare few seconds they can find. Not that I’m the type to go scraping at new frontiers or look down on stay at home moms who try and fit their art in around their kids, but working full time with kids AND striving to keep your creative fire is an entirely different kettle of fish.

Who who the hell do I think I am? Ballz out, I want to say, "Whoever the fuck I want, bitchez!" Ahhh, if only life were that simple. First off, I LOVE my job. I don’t want to quit. In fact, the thought of quitting my job to pursue my dream is shooting myself in the foot. Librarianship is PART of my dream. It helps me be who I am as much as writing and drawing so why the heck would I give it up? And d00d, all the books I can get my grubby little hands on for FREE! I’d be stupid to give this up. Second, I don’t DO stay at home mom. I practically went batshit crazy on maternity leave and that was even with the hope of going back to work. You think the Lenni is crazy NOW, she’d be Yellow Wallpaper crazy under the yoke of housewifery. Other women can do it, I can’t. I like having a career. It makes me feel independent and useful.

I get a LOT of questions from other women in my life asking me how I was able to complete a novel, start another one, write a bevy of short stories, keep a full time job, have a side business, draw, and all the while being around the kid enough for her to still remember what I look like. And I have no idea. To try and figure that out (and as a cheap gimmick to pry more blog posts out of me) I’m starting Mommy Monday. The lovely trials and tribulations of how the bloody hell I manage all this with out being on mood elevators or booze.

There are many times in my life where I really just sit and wonder if there are any other women like me who not only have a Third Shift; but a fourth or quite possibly a fifth. If you find any, point them the way here. I’d certainly love to know who they are.