Media

It's naptime and the dogs are barking, so let's hope this lasts.

Apparently it was the contractor picking up the last little bit of retribution that I had against him. It was a ladder. We had someone pick up the rest of the "garbage" that he left. He also left unfinished cabinets, and sinks, and whatever else, so I thought I would keep the ladder, oh well. He drove off fast.

So the contractor has his ladder, the dogs've had their bark, and now the baby's got her boob.
Where was I?

Oh yes, so, I'm not very good at this blogging thing. I can't even remember my own username. I typed it as "mediamom". Which is somewhat Freudian in that that's what I do. I design media.
In the last post I wrote that I was "retouching a photo..." in my rant about Twitter. It dawned on me that possibly someone might think that I was one of those "super moms" that retouches photos of her kids to create superhuman well designed scrapbooks to hand to her kids upon High School graduation.
No. I create Vlasic Pickle ads.

I retouch anti-bush propaganda into them. Not really, but I wish that I did. I don't have the guts. Naomi Wolf, now she has the guts. She's not afraid to be "on the list". Then again, she's a writer, and I am not. Her children are obviously old enough that she's gotten out of the brain fog of mommy-dom. I am sure she doesn't start a sentence and stop in search for the perfect adjective, and finally after a good 20 second red-faced pause decide that she'll settle on "cool".

She's got a head start on me I guess. My father is not a poet, he had an automotive shop. My mother had a beauty salon. I AM middle America--here's to fast cars and beautiful women. Or, bring it down a notch, we've got a running car, and there's no dirt under our nails, and every darn sent is going to send you to art school (so you can get dirt under your nails).

It does seem like there's a certain disconnect there, doesn't it? My parents lived under a certain rule: you know how to do something, so you work at doing it, make money, give your kids what they need, until you retire, all the while stockpiling canned good from Costco to save a buck.
So, I guess I convinced them that I needed to go to, not just any art school, but a very expensive private art school. I went to RISD, where learned how to draw, and paint, and how to drop an egg off a 10 story building without it breaking. I learned to be an art-snob, to be trendy and cool. All the working class values seemed not to apply to me. I am arteest! watch me paint.

I towed that line for a pretty long time. I married a mathematician, writer, and musician, a "brilliant man" (albeit that he can't find the hamper, or thinks that a multi-vitamin will satisfy a hungry child). We named our first child "Nico", from the Velvet Underground. I printed out a bullseye with the word "Terrorist" across it and ironed it onto her onesie when she was three weeks old. We waited in line for 3 hours so that Michael Moore could hold her and I could get a picture. I'd have her in "the sling" and slip behind a Hummers with "terrorist" stickers, slapping them on.

Then something changed, my husband lost his job as an Associate Professor (no fault of his own, and that story is for another post), but suddenly he found himself stuck and snoring in my office during the day. It was my job to step up to the plate, making the mortgage, the bills.

I leaned on what I knew how to do--design. Things were tight for a while there. I spent many a night on five hours sleep, tapping away at one project or another. I remember sitting on the ground under the swing, pushing it with one hand while working on the laptop with the other grateful that we were the only ones there. This just goes beyond the catty world of the "good mom/bad mom" wars, and the ringing in my ears may have deafened me.

I worked so Nico could eat, I worked so we could have a house, I worked so we could pay the contractor to finish the addition so that Nico wouldn't have to sleep on a crib mattress next to our bed.

Things are straightened out now in regards to his job. My job is still the same. I'm still tapping away with one hand, holding a baby to the boob with the other. I got through the madness, it changed me deeply. My rebellion and arteest-ness is more mild now. I am not willing to risk too much, or risk it as loudly as I once did and I've learned one valuable lesson through it all:
you know how to do something, so you work at doing it, make money, give your kids what they need, and you support the people that make a difference (like buying Naomi Wolf's book), until you get out of the fog...
then the Hummers are fair game.