You Capture: Animals

One of my daily blog reads is I Should Be Folding Laundry, written by Northwest Indiana resident Beth Fletcher. Beth is a gifted photographer, and she hosts a weekly photography challenge called You Capture. There is a weekly subject matter assigned for your photos, and then each Thursday Beth posts her weekly photos and links back to yours.

I have never participated in the You Capture challenge, because ... well, I don't know why. But this week the theme is "Animals," and you all know I have a soft spot in my heart for cats, especially a certain fat, white cat:

Okay, so she's a little bit orange, too. When I got her, a mere six-month-old kitten with greasy fur and a little bit of her own poop stuck to her leg (yeah), I asked Bill what I should name her. I told him she was orange and white, and he said, "How about Leia?" because orange and white are the two colors Princess Leia wears. Now, I'm not a huge Star Wars fan, but I liked the idea of naming a cat after a princess. Because all cats think they are princesses.

And so, Leia got her name. As I said, she was a mere kitten when I got her. Within the next six months, perhaps due to the stress of her mom marrying a new father for her (Bill) and having to ride in a car from Los Angeles to Chicago, Leia ballooned into a much larger cat. Shoot, our whole family got a little fatter when we moved to the Midwest. Here is what Leia looks like today:
\This is one of Leia's favorite positions to sleep in. She also enjoys sleeping in a more standard curled-up position, sleeping on her stomach, sleeping on newspapers, sleeping on beds, sleeping on the couch, sleeping on people's pillows, sleeping on the chair you want to sit on, etc. See, like most cats, sleeping is Leia's main pastime. I seriously don't get it when, at the end of the day, that cat is curled up on the couch, dead to the world, like she has had the world's longest, hardest day of ... sleeping.

But she doesn't sleep all the time! Sometimes she eats! Or meows incessantly because her food dish isn't filled to the brim, and then when you finally give in and fill it, she doesn't even eat any, she just walks away, relieved that she can check off "meow for food" from her to-do list.

She doesn't like to play with any commercialized cat toy. Instead, her favorite toys are: (1) jigsaw puzzle pieces, and (2) those gel clings you put on your windows to decorate for holidays. It has gotten to the point where I decorate my windows with gel clings for every holiday, just to have the pleasure of waking up in the morning and seeing which gel clings have been felled overnight.

But on a more serious note, she is a sweet, sympathetic ear to listen to you. (Lack of comprehension of human speech is an asset when your owner is blubbering about her petty problems.) Her fur has absorbed my tears on more than one occasion. (This sort of sympathy is very selfless on the part of a cat, because you know how they hate to get wet.) She's the sweetest, least complicated member of our family, and I love her for that.


A few more shots:

This is a photo I took of her with the retro camera app on my phone:


And this is the cake Nathan and I made for her recently on her (estimated) birthday:


And here is a pathetic camera phone shot I just tried to take of her, demonstrating how cats are hard to photograph because as soon as they see you coming, they get all squirmy and cat-like and want you to use those gifted photographer's hands to pet them:


I love my little Leia-Loo! And please adopt pets from shelters!

Marathon

I know what you're thinking: Why on earth would Shannon be posting about a marathon? Shannon is too big of a schlub to run in a marathon.

It's true (and I'll forgive you for calling me a schlub). The only marathons I have participated in are the ones where a channel shows several episodes of the same show back-to-back. (You know, like the KTLA Channel 5 Twilight Zone marathon?)

And those are not fit to be called marathons. Marathons are really, really hard. Sitting there watching an episode of the Twilight Zone is only a little hard. It's sort of like how Holocaust survivors (and rightly so) don't like it when the term "Nazi" is used to describe any person who is slightly strict.

I watched a marathon, the running kind, over the weekend. My awesome friend Katie, who is far more dedicated and hard-working than I will ever be, completed the Chicago marathon. Here is a very cool picture I took of her at the starting gate, made all the cooler by the fact that I took it by sticking my hand up over a fence.
So Katie finished, even though she was hurt, and even though it was an unnatural 85 degrees in October. And I enjoyed marathon spectatorship, because it was a really inspirational event. Watching a marathon, you see the full range of human emotion. Triumph, for sure. But also tragedy, in the form of people having to get into ambulances right before the finish line. (I cried for those people.)

And you see people cheering for total strangers like these strangers were their best friends. It's really cool.

Marathon spectatorship also involves a lot of math. You have to figure out when your friend is going to cross a particular mile marker, given how fast she was going and what time she started. You're armed with some data, such as a website that is updated with the person's location and pace, except that website uses the metric system. So you're frantically trying to do metric conversions in your head and calculating distance = rate x time problems, like the ones in math books that start with, "If a train leaves Chicago at 10 a.m. traveling at 50 mph ..."

And even with my superior math skillz (because I did used to be a math textbook editor), I failed to find Katie at 2 out of the 4 points where I tried to find her. It's kind of a Where's Waldo? situation, and I was very bad at Waldo.

But this is not about me. This is about Katie, who finished the race, and I was swelling with pride, even though all I did was stand there (and, at one point, offend a pregnant woman standing next to me).

Getting up at 5 a.m. and riding on the 6:04 train to cheer for Katie, I remembered something she did for me once. When Nathan was first born, she came down and brought me gummi worms and baby lotion. We ordered pizza and watched a boring DVD (Marie Antoinette starring Kirsten Dunst), and I'm sure she was very bored sitting there watching this dumbass movie while sitting next to somebody with a baby attached to her boobs. But it meant a lot to me that she came, and that she brought ME some gummi worms, for ME, because right after you have a baby, you feel kind of invisible.

Also, while I was pregnant, she said to me, "Wow. YOU. LOOK. AWESOME." So you see, she's a good liar, too.

Anyway, Katie is a good friend, and I'm so proud of her! Congratulations, Katie!

This village has a few too many idiots

I'm tired of strangers trying to discipline my child. I know it takes a village to raise a child, but I hope that the village idiots can be excused from their child-raising duties.

Here's the thing. I know my child isn't perfect. I know sometimes he's acting like a little shit. Believe me, I know. I'm very insecure about his behavior. I beat myself up about his behavior. So you, Mr. or Ms. Nosy Stranger who doesn't need to get involved, you're making me feel worse.

Let me just say, the following people are allowed to discipline my child:

• me
• my husband
• anybody who is a friend or relative of mine, who I know is just trying to help me out
• anybody who lives in or works at the area where my child is misbehaving
• anybody in an official child-raising capacity, such as a teacher or babysitter
• anybody who sees my child performing an act that would put his life in danger
• anybody who sees my child performing an act that would put others' lives in danger
  
• law enforcement personnel
  

I think that's a pretty broad list. I think that list encompasses the true spirit of the "it takes a village" adage. All of these people are concerned and involved community members who are doing their part to support me as a parent.

Note that this list does not include meddlesome strangers who just need to mind their own beeswax.

For example:

• Woman at Target who heard me telling Nathan to stop being a "sass mouth" and, despite walking in the other direction, stopped to tell Nathan to quit talking like that. "Sometimes it helps to have a stranger tell them," she commented to me. Yeah, sometimes it doesn't.
  
• Woman at the library who saw Nathan goofing around at the checkout area, where I was just trying to get checked out and get the hell out of Dodge because my kid was goofing around, and heard me telling Nathan to settle down, and added, "Yeah Nathan, cool it."
• Another woman at the library, on a totally separate occasion when I was also trying to hurry and get books checked out because Nathan and his little friend were acting in a manner inappropriate for the library, who got totally worked up and started yelling "Hey, hey, hey, HEY!" at him. I turned around, alarmed, and she said she was concerned because he was picking up the bowl of stickers in a manner that suggested that he might spill them. As though he was carrying a bowl containing a live bomb instead of 15 or so stickers that could easily have been picked up off the floor.
• And the big "winner": This woman on a street corner downtown, who heard Nathan protesting when I was trying to quickly yank him across a busy city street where traffic-enforcement cops were yelling their brains out. She bent over to Nathan's level and said, "Hey, do you know who I am? I am Mrs. Claus. And I know you don't want me to tell Santa that you just talked to your mom like that." Confused, Nathan began reporting what he wanted for Christmas. When the light turned and we could cross the second street, therefore allowing us to walk away from this complete lunatic of a woman, Nathan still had no freakin' clue what she was talking about, and she ended with, "Well, it was a good try." NO, no it wasn't. What if we didn't even celebrate Christmas? Or what if we didn't raise our child to believe in Santa Claus? Or what if we did raise our child to believe in the whimsy of Santa Claus, and didn't want him thinking that Santa's beloved wife was some crazy woman in a hospital volunteer outfit who stands on street corners in downtown Chicago? Or, or ... shut up, that's why.

As I said, I beat myself up over my child's behavior. Some people (okay, a lot of people) have told me I need to lower my expectations because he's only three years old. He gets tired and overwhelmed and doesn't know how to handle his feelings, and he acts in a socially-inappropriate manner. And my job is to redirect this behavior, because he's just learning to be a person. And if I'm doing that, I'm doing my job.

But when total strangers intervene, even if they are well-meaning, all I hear is, "Geez, what an awful child! What's wrong with his mother? Clearly she is a complete failure as a parent, so I, a total stranger who is completely uninvolved with this child's life, am forced to intervene and help this pathetic mother out. I can't possibly go on with my day knowing that I stood by and did nothing while evil children like him go on behaving like that."

I might read a little too much into things.

I know that there are more than a few crazies in the world, and that I can't let the turkeys get me down. I know that I take things too personally. I know I'm hard on myself. And I know that these strangers have good intentions, misguided as they are.

But please, could they butt out?

I'm Kind of a Big Deal

Check me out! I wrote this guest post for the Wee Windy City blog on Chicago Now. It's, like, affiliated with a major newspaper and stuff. No biggie.

What's on the TEE-vee?

Well, the new TV season is upon us, and, with it, my complete inability to finish reading a single book.

Actually, I am not one to try out a lot of new shows. What's the point of devoting time to a show that is likely to get canceled? If the show is a hit, I can just catch up on it via DVD or Hulu. I wonder if a lot of people take this approach to new TV shows, thus causing these shows to have very limited initial viewership, thus causing them to get canceled.

Anyway, each year I end up watching one new TV show. This year's new show is Outsourced. The reasoning behind this choice as my only new show is as follows: It's on before, after, or in-between some other shows I like. Remember when you only watched Caroline in the City because it was on between Friends and Seinfeld? Yeah, it's that principle. Now, of course, in the Caroline days, shows-between-better-shows had a bigger advantage, because people's TV-viewing took place only on TVs, and only in real-time when the shows actually aired. Sure, you could technically tape a show on your VCR, but inevitably you would turn on the tape to realize that your show didn't record due to one of a variety of VCR pitfalls, including, but not limited to: you forgot to rewind the tape before you put it in the machine, somebody taped America's Funniest Home Videos or some other asinine show over the ending of your show, you accidentally set the VCR to tape Channel 7 instead of Channel 4, the beginning didn't record, the ending didn't record, Venus was in Mercury's orbit, etc. So eventually we all gave up on using VCRs in the mid-90s, and we had to actually turn on the TV in real time to watch shows. And since nobody wanted to actually turn off the TV in between two good shows, they ended up sitting there watching crappy shows.

But in the 21st century, we technically have the ability to record a bunch of good shows, then sit down later at our convenience and watch all these good shows back-to-back. Thus we no longer need to watch crappy TV and can focus all our energy on more worthwhile pursuits.

Let me tell you, as a nation, we are failing miserably with these worthwhile, non-TV pursuits. To prove that crap TV is alive and well, I offer two pieces of evidence:

Exhibit A: I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant. While it did give us the memorable quote, "Ma'am, you just had a baby in your pants," this show is proof that people will watch anything. (And let me just note, I am this show's #1 viewer.) We keep tuning into this show, despite the fact that every episode is totally repetitive. It starts out with some woman who is experiencing slight stomach pains. The pains get worse and worse until she has to go to the hospital and thinks she's having some horrible intestinal distress, until the pain hits an all-time high, and (spoiler alert!) she has a baby despite the fact that she didn't know she was pregnant. I gotta hand it to this show's producers, because it seems like it would be impossible to find success with a show where the title of the program gives away the conclusion of every episode. Really, the only unknown in each episode is what sort of horrible, germ-infested surface the unexpected child will begin his or her earthly life on. (Hint: It's almost always a bathroom. Campground bathroom, amusement park bathroom, hospital bathroom in the toilet.) This show is so repetitive, it's like watching laundry in the dryer, with commercials for Kate Plus Eight and 19 Kids and Counting interspersed throughout.

Exhibit B: Hoarders. This show is proof that we enjoy programs that showcase people who are so screwed up that we look normal by comparison. Yeah, my pantry is cluttered and contains baby food that expired two years ago, but at least I don't have several cat carcasses rotting among bags of my own feces. In actuality, we should not be judging and gawking at these poor people, because hoarding is a psychological disorder, no different from the depression or anxiety that so many of us suffer from. But then, these dumbasses actually volunteered to be on a national TV program, so they were kind of asking to be ridiculed. (I think they probably do it for the free cleanup from 1-800-Got-Junk, which has got to be the worst place to work. Let's just say that most jobs do not require you to make the decision as to whether to clean up human poop by hand or using a shovel.) Oh, and when somebody says, "We found a dead possum in a box in your garage," the correct response is not, "Yeah, that doesn't surprise me." The correct response is, "OMG! Just burn it the f**k down already!"

Anyway, what was I saying? Oh yes, TV viewing begets more TV viewing, which is how I ended up watching Outsourced. For those who don't know, Outsourced is a show about a white guy from the Midwest whose job requires him to relocate to India to run the company's call center. I'm sure NBC thought they had a lock with this one because (1) It plays on the same goofy inter-office dynamics that The Office does, (2) It finally brings some diversity to NBC, and (3) It takes a subtle jab at those India-based call centers we're all having to call at one point or another. Most of the jokes on the show center around some sort of cultural misunderstanding, and these kinds of jokes are hard to keep on the right side of offensive. So far I think they have done a pretty good job, but I still don't really like the show.

I think my main problem is that I don't really have a problem with India-based call centers. I know that outsourcing everything to India takes away jobs from Americans, and that is bad for our economy, which affects us all. However, here is why India-based call centers are more enjoyable to call than America-based call centers: Americans are kind of dicks. Not all of us, but the ones on the phone, yeah. Whenever I used to talk to an American on the other end of some sort of tech-support, customer service, or information hotline, that person spoke in an irritated tone that suggested that I was really infringing on his or her time by calling to request tech support, customer service, or information. But the people on the line in India are so friendly. For example, at one point I was on a call to a credit card company when Nathan decided to come over and just rip the credit card statement in half. I gasped, and the woman on the phone inquired as to my welfare. I said I was fine, but my three-year-old just ripped my credit card statement in half. "Oh, my son is four," she said, "They're so active at this age." And I thought, how nice that this woman, all the way across the ocean on the Sub-Continent, could give me a little dose of maternal solidarity while straightening out my credit card problem.

So, Outsourced kind of sucks. The end. I could say more, but I have to wrap this up quickly because I have to go explain to my American child why fruit snacks are not an appropriate breakfast food. I wonder if this is a problem in India. I must ask the next time I have to call tech support.

The Cool People

You guys are so awesome! Thank you all for your help in spreading the word about my blog! In an attempt to pay it back, or pay it forward, or pay it sideways, or whatever, I present to you some of my friends' blogs:

• Ashley is my former college roommate, former co-worker, and current friend. She's a full-time working mom in Northern California who has a cool Martha Stewart vibe.
• Claire was a colleague who I worked with back when I had a paying job. She is a fellow writer who has an interesting project happening on her blog: Ever Sunday, she picks a random word from the dictionary and uses this word as the starting point of a blog entry.
  
• Farrah is my friend from when we wrote for Chicago Moms Blog. She is a mom, nurse, maker/seller of baby slings, and runner. And so many other things. She's fun.
• Katie, a.k.a. G-Money, is my friend and former cubicle neighbor. She is running in the marathon this weekend, so visit her blog and wish her good luck!
• Matt is my friend's boyfriend. He's living my dream of making a go at professional writing. Also they have two adorable tortoiseshell cats, who do not make many appearances on the blog, but should, in my opinion.
  
• Nina, who actually has a different name in real life, is a friend who I met through the comments on another blog and realized we live just blocks apart. She writes about digital scrapbooking and general life.
  

I limited this admittedly short list to people I know in real life. Obviously I read many other blogs written by people I don't know personally, and if you are a writer of one of those, please leave a comment with your link so we can read your blog, too! As I said yesterday, I'm all about bringing the world closer together.

And let me just close by noting that the above list was written in alphabetical order by first name, not in the order in which I like those people, or the order in which I rank their blogs.

The BIG News!

NO. NO, not that big news. If you are 20-40 years old and have a uterus, people just assume that the word news is synonymous with pregnant.

Well, no. But I did give birth, if you will, to a new Internet domain. That's right, sameoldshannon.com is now a real-life domain. No more of this ".blogspot" stuff. I'm legit now.

Apparently before I didn't have ten extra dollars a year.

Anyway, this is all part of my campaign to make my blog a bigger deal. I have always been sort of averse to the all the shameless self-promotion that goes on in the blogosphere. Like, everywhere you go, you're supposed to be promoting your brand, linking to yourself, mentioning your blog. As in, "Hello, random customer at the grocery store. Did you know that you can pick out a cantaloupe based on the smell? Did I mention my blog, sameoldshannon.com? Anyway, are you collecting the little stickers so you can get cookware for a penny? Speaking of which, will you visit my blog, sameoldshannon.com? Your baby is cute. Sameoldshannon.com!"

No, that kind of self-promotion does not come naturally to me. But I realize that I need to push myself a little and advertise myself if I want to have any kind of readership. This revelation came about in the following way: Remember my friend who I sort of simultaneously envied/ridiculed in my last post? She read the post and wrote me the sweetest, most touching, most honest e-mail about it. And I thought, I am doing my part to bring the world closer together. Okay, not the world, per se. More like the ten other moms I know in my community, and members of my own family.

But, I like to write, and that is a way I can make a small difference. And so, I'm going to step out of character and pimp my blog. Buying a domain was the first step. And I'm getting business cards, so if you know me, be prepared for me to shove one in your face.

According to my stats, I had 800 page views last month. I heard awhile back that the going rate for ad space on blogs is $1 per ad for every 1,000 page views you get. So, if I could just increase my readership by 25%, I'd be on my way to earning a dollar!

And that's where you come in! Would you please spread the word about my blog? Like, send an e-mail link to a fellow office drone who has nothing better to do but sit around and read about the details of some stranger's life? Or find a particularly entertaining post of mine and link to it in your Facebook? Or link to me on your own blog?

I feel dirty just asking. But I also know that the truly influential blogs, the ones that lead to book deals and magazine gigs, don't just happen. Those writers had to pimp it up once, too. I know it sounds like a big fat lie, but I really don't care if I never become as famous as those people. That's the honest-to-God truth. I just want to genuinely entertain and inspire people. Though obviously the prospect of getting paid to talk out of my ass on the Internet is appealing.

Okay, so thank you, in advance, for your help.

Shannon