Preacher Amy

I tend to preach more than I should. I preach to readers, I preach to family, I preach to friends, I preach to my kiddos (that one’s allowed, preaching to your kids is like part of the job).

Here’s a quick gem I preached from this week’s column:

I believe that our thoughts are all powerful and affect the entire world around us. In my world, our thoughts ignite our emotions and turn into actions which create our reality. If the majority of what we are told on television, in newspapers, and online is steeped in gloom and doom, our collective consciousness will be dominated by sadness, fear, and anger. The deep and unfortunate irony is that mainstream media’s business model (bad news generates more money) perpetuates a reality based on this negative thought process.

You can read the full column here.

Is Anyone Else Listening to this Guy

Jason Stinson, the former PRP football coach, was acquitted this week after being charged with the tragic death of one his players who died following an intense practice session last season.

I have no argument with the trial or the verdict.

My concern is with his running commentary since. The guy showed up in NYC to be interviewed by Diane Sawyer. Here’s a quick gem he let drop:

Said Stinson of the player who lost his life, “The one thing I know about Max is that Max is in heaven with Jesus and that’s an awesome thought for me.”

Not that you–Mr. Stinson–would ever in a million years be reading this, but if you have ended up here after googling your name, please note: had I been the mother who had lost her child after one of your football practices, I would make it perfectly clear that you do not have the right to make any assumptions about my child or his afterlife…NO MATTER HOW “AWESOME” YOU MAY THINK IT IS.

I get that Stinson is simply trying to make peace with a horrific incident that he did not directly cause.  From my viewpoint, Stinson’s comment sounds as if he is using his spirituality as a veil to shroud his thinly earned innocence in.

I don’t believe Stinson should go to prison; but, a child’s life was put in the most severe jeopardy while on his watch. And no matter what his religious affiliations are or the measure of his devoutness, his only comment should be how very sorry he is that a child died.

Stinson says that he has no reason to apologize because he was not responsible for the child’s death. Wrong, again. Saying you’re sorry doesn’t mean you killed anyone. It means that you are a humane and compassionate man and father who is sorry that another parent must endure the worst imaginable scenario ever–the loss of a child.

There is a lack of reverence in Stinson’s attitude. He is literally unapologetic about the death of one of his players. And since he can’t say he’s sorry, it’s probably best that he just shuts-up all together.

Thank Goodness I Blog

Coming up with a column every week can be a tad bit difficult.

As luck would have it, I track a considerable amount of my stream of conscious thinking right here. So if the well runs dry some Sundays (my column deadline is Monday morning), I’ll revisit what I’ve rambled on about during the previous week to see if there’s anything in here worth using.

Sometimes I find a pearl I can polish and sometimes I just find a bunch of rambling. This week my blog worked in my favor. If you read regularly, you saw where I bitched and moaned about HuffPo.com running a series on why women are getting sadder. It’s just a few days back if you want to revisit it…or you can read the column it became: Exhaustion Blues, by me.

It’s pretty much the same content, except for this little gem of a paragraph that added a little more pomp to my circumstance:

What my generation didn’t know is that 33 percent of us who became wives would out-earn our spouses. And while our spouses are much more likely to contribute to domestic duties than their fathers, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics cites that the division of household labor is still lopsided: 65 percent of women are cooking versus 38 percent of the men; 50 percent of women are doing the housework versus 20 percent of men; and in homes with children under the age of six, women are spending 1.2 hours a day providing physical care to their kiddos whereas men are giving less than half an hour worth of their time.

Let’s Talk about Boys

And I don’t mean boys, like my son, who is obviously a boy at 11-months old. I am talking about grown men who have yet to endure any real struggles. The ones who have married women to play the role of a smothering-mother in their lifelong unconscious commitment to avoid becoming adult men.

The following snippet came across my radar today and brought this entire topic to mind (even though the story is so June 2009, it’s a good example of what I’m about to tackle atop my soapbox). Jenny Sanford, wife of Mark Sanford, is writing a memoir about keeping integrity when living through difficult times. Mark is the Governor of South Carolina and soul mate to the hottie Argentine woman. Here’s what I read:

She [Jenny Sanford] said her husband repeatedly asked to see his mistress in the time between her discovery [of his affair] and when news of the relationship became public.

“He was told in no uncertain terms not to see her,” she told the AP. “It’s one thing to forgive adultery; it’s another thing to condone it.”

Ummmmmmmmmmmm…he asked repeatedly? And then was told no?

You know what that sounds like to me?

Kid: “Mom, can I have a snack? Mom, can I have a snack? Mom, can I have a snack? Mom, can I have a snack?”

Mom: “No you may not have a snack. Under no uncertain terms am I going to allow you a snack before dinner.”

This man was the GOVERNOR of a state and was pleading with his wife to see his mistress. Really? Be a man and either go see the other woman or be a good man and recognize that you have let your ego get caught up in some bullshit affair of the heart best played out by Cary Grant and Rita Moreno.

“Can I please go see my mistress, mom? Please?”

Really, it’s just so pathetic.

My husband is not a boy by any stretch of the plot I’m building here. I don’t know if it was his own father and how he was raised, his four-years in the marine corp, or something within the core of him. Whatever it is, not once through our thirteen years of marriage (as of last Sunday) have I felt as if he was acting like a child. It is his own children who come first in his life. He is responsible. He is loving. I know I rank right after the kiddos. He cleans up after himself (and his kids, and often, after me). He does stuff around the house and if anyone is being asked to help out, it’s usually him asking me. He does not ask me for permission. He is a grown man…a good man…and that is why I love him.

I would say that I’m fortunate to have such a man, but that would imply that it’s a matter left to chance…that I got lucky my husband doesn’t act like a fourteen year old boy. The truth is that I wouldn’t be in a marriage where I had to play mom to an inconsiderate and juvenile-minded man, just as my husband would not be married to a woman who he had to ask for permission before stepping outside of his house.

As my college roommate from Jersey would say, “TAKE YOUR SKIRT OFF!!!”

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/22/jenny-sanford-memoir-due-_n_294760.html

the life of a princess

me: do you want your burger on a bun or not on a bun?

my daughter: i want it on a bun and i want the bun shaped like a heart.

for real. this conversation just happened. even better, this is not the first time i’ve received this specific request. i’d write more, but i’ve got to shape a hamburger bun into a heart.

And While I’m on the Subject of Strong Women…

HuffingtonPost.com is running a series of articles by life-coach-slash-author, Marcus Buckingham, who happens to be a male writing about women and their lack of happiness. According to several cited studies, the trend is that our happiness over the last three decades makes for a downward sloping bar graph.

First, let me just go ahead and let the lefty-liberal in me have at the fact that HuffPo is running an article that fuels the most right-winged conservative theorists that claim our world was a lot better off when women were without shoes and in the process of creating life. (Please don’t give these radio show hosts more fat to chew on.)

Second, even after reading the entire article twice, I’m still not buying how they are defining happiness.

My initial thought was that we’re not less happy, but simply more aware of all that is available to us on an emotional, mental, and physical level. It’s easier to be less satisfied when there are more options to choose from…right?  (And, just so you know, from here on out, when I refer to “we” I’m talking about all women-folk, me included.)

But then I thought, wait, it’s not that we have too many options that render us blue; it’s that our definition of happiness is always evolving.

Maybe sometime in the early sixties, women were happy with a husband who had a good job and house with a couple household appliances. Then the seventies came along and happiness included a college degree with a macrame (mack-ra-may) chair (with or without the husband).

And then the 80s happened and there was all that cocaine and big hair and shoulder pads and no one was happy about that.

Finally the 90s showed up and we were intent on having it all. (And now when I say we, I’m talking about me and my peers…all of us girls who fell hard for Duran Duran and wore Tretorns to school.)

Now, at this very moment, we are just figuring out that having it all is hard. It leaves us without sleep, with unused gym memberships, with guilt about not feeding our kids enough fruit (and not just fruit, but locally grown fruit from a farmers market where we have to rise early on a Saturday morning–the only day we have to sleep in–so that we get there in time to choose from whatever hand-picked peaches are still available.)

Maybe our lack of happiness is simple, hardcore exhaustion.

Maybe, just maybe, all we need is a good, long, uninterrupted nap right smack in the middle of a Tuesday.

And Here We Go

I figured I would turn into my grandmother eventually, I just didn’t figure it would happen this early.

Tonight at approximately 7:23, I decided that my best bet was to fix a pot of coffee…and not because I was sleepy and needed to be awake and alert for at least another 2-1/2 hours, but because…wait for it…I simply had an urge for a cup of coffee.

I’m one JC Penney catalogue and stand alone ashtray away from becoming Juanita Baker Elmore the second.

(She had this great ashtray that stood beside her lazy boy. It was a wooden post that held a metal ashtray in place on top with a tiny lever you pushed to empty out the ashes in a hidden bottom of the metal piece. It was it’s own, functional piece of early eighties furniture; and although I don’t smoke, I would totally keep one around here if I had it. Maybe put it out on the deck should a visitor want to have a smoke. I could set it by my bed and fill it with hershey kisses…or M&Ms.)

So I figure I should go ahead and get it over with. I’ll replace all my black kitchen appliances with avocado green ones. Put some wood paneling up in my living room. Buy a new (but not brand new) Buick that I will trade in on a newer model each year. I’ll also need to subscribe to Catholic Digest and Reader’s Digest.

The more I write about it, the more I like the way it sounds. I had a bunch of rockin’ grandmothers. Strong like lumberjacks in both spirit and mind, my grandmothers are (were) unbreakable women who made (and are still making) huge marks on my feminine soul. Tailors, chefs, professionals, entrepreuneurs, musicians, spiritualists…there is nothing that these women couldn’t accomplish during their lifetime.

So in my hope of all hopes, if I could end up with half the gusto as just one of them I’d be set. Tonight, I’m enjoying a hot mug of coffee and thinking about hanging out with one particular grandmother most Friday and Saturday nights during my more formative years. Dallas and Falcon Crest or Love Boat and Fantasy Island…all played from an oversized console that was too macho for a remote. (Kids, you wouldn’t believe it…we used to have to WALK to the TV to change the channel…thank God there were only four channels.)

So there it is…I’ve skipped a few decades and am making myself comfy in my Grandmother’s Isotoner house slippers.

Miracles Abound

I’ve had two friends give birth to beautiful, healthy, 10-fingered, 10-toed babies in the last three weeks.

I don’t care that it’s the one thing we’ve been doing since the beginning of whatever timeline you live by, it’s still a miracle. The fact that nothing has changed about the way we give birth during these eons makes it a miracle in itself. There are natural, non-induced, non-drugged births going on today that are the same that happened when the pharaohs were being conceived. (of course, i wasn’t one of those non-drugged, non induced birthing moms but I’m giving props to those who are…my two friends included).

I’ve been listening to and now reading some Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyers–specifically the Power of Myth interview series.

It’s the kind of writing (and listening) that you have to do over and over again to grasp fully, or at least, I do.

I’ve encountered many many pieces that make me rethink, reread, and relearn what he’s saying (not that I need convincing–his primary philosophy is one I buy by the handful).

Here’s a little gem for today:

Moyers asks: do you ever have this sense when you are following your bliss, as I have at moments, of being helped by hidden hands?

Campbell: All the time. It is miraculous. I even have a superstition that has grown on me as the result of invisible hands coming all the time–namely, that if you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in the field of your bliss, and they open the doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be.

…um, you’re welcome!!

Heard any good jokes lately?

I have and they were delivered on stage at comedy caravan by my friend who I now believe to be one of the most courageous people I have the pleasure of getting to hang out with…read all about her here:

Scary Territory

By Amy Gesenhues, published in the September 17, 2009 issue of The Tribune

A dear friend of mine scared the bejeezus out of her friends and family last Tuesday night. Her husband was wracked with nerves. Her closest buddies from high school were on the edge of their seat in nail-biting position. I, who was really more excited than scared, felt butterflies.

What caused all the commotion?

My friend — a mother of two, a wife, a professional in the academic world who has the word Director on her business cards — walked onto the stage at Comedy Caravan to perform her very first stand-up routine.

Who Wants to Watch an R-Movie?

There’s a feeling I get whenever both kiddos are in bed on a weekend night before 9:30 that’s reminiscent of being left home alone as a teenager. It’s mixed with overwhelming emotions of parental-accomplishment (I got BOTH my kids asleep and I don’t even feel tired at all) with a little bit of what-do-I-do-now lurking just beneath all the satisfaction.

There’s also the bargain that comes with getting to spend some alone time with my husband without paying babysitter fees.

So what will we do? I’m thinking about fixing a soft drink…and drinking it in the living room–on the carpeted area (totally off limits during normal daytime hours) and maybe even watching a movie that could have violence, possibly harsh language, maybe even nudity.

Who knows! The kids are asleep. We may just go completely crazy and eat some chips and dip right here in the living room in front of the TV.