I am a Grown Up, but I am Not a Mother

I know it sounds silly, but I am totally offended by all the email I get assuming I am a mother. I know I am a woman of a certain age and there are a plethora of sites out there giving my demographic information to others. I also know that by the nature of some of the things I buy for other people's children it could be deduced by a computer that I am a mother, but it just isn't so. Does that make me a lesser person? Even worse, this has suddenly happened since I have been married. Just because I got married I have to have kids!? Why isn't my husband getting this addressed to "Dad?"

Parents work hard and I respect their choice, but why jump that very wide gap to assume everyone procreates? I love celebrating the many moms in my life. They have shaped my life and they make it wonderful everyday. This includes my friends who are mothers, my real mothers and even my aunts. There are so many mothers I respect out there, I feel like a cheat being called something I am not. I don't "deserve a day" or want to be sent accolades for things I don't do. And it isn't just this time of year, I constantly get things that ask me if I need a break from my kids. If you mean my husband, maybe....kidding.

It seems that in the world of social media it isn't that difficult to find out who is really a mom and who isn't. What if I wanted to have kids and simply could not? Then every time I open my email I am accosted by being called mother, reminding me I am not one? It seems that it would behoove these companies to be a little more careful with what they send out. Truth is 90% of the women who are my age and are married are probably parents, but not everyone is. This isn't a PC thing, I am not into "titles" this is just a fact. I am a woman, not a mother and that doesn't make me any less important. I can tell you, I have never seen anything in my husband's email box that assumes he's a Dad.

I am not trying to make a mountain out of a molehill, but when you have jackasses like the CEO of Abercrombie and Fitch (I refuse to use his name, jackass is more than he deserves) is telling women what is attractive after his face has been distorted by what I can only assume was a bargain basement plastic surgeon, I feel like the assumptions of the world are more dangerous than the facts. More than ever before the world of big business is trying to target their marketing and they seem to be doing a worse and worse job. As women we get pigeonholed into what we are supposed to be: thin, married, mother, chef, party girl, shopping guru, why not just ask me? Why try and grab my attention in a way that could backfire? Just tell me the facts and let me decide for me.

Let's not forget that this comes on the heels of me just resenting things being sent to my email in the first place. I took the time to finally get rid of all the crap in my box. 32000 emails later and an attempt to "unsubscribe" to everything I am bitter that my name and information is passed around. Even worse, Tookie Clothespin is apparently a mother too. A made up name I gave one time to one store that now appears constantly in my inbox. Sure you don't sell my data, because Tookie is totally what my license says.

It Happened, We Knew it Would and It Did

I could make up some elaborate lie here as to why everything in my life was so monumentally important that I abandoned my blog and while it was important and I was busy, there is simply no excuse. Instead I am going to use this time to reflect on why I have NEVER been successful with keeping a journal (sans a limited period of time in Europe) and the fact the mere notion sets me up for failure. It's that grand idea of "forever." Now before everyone hits the roof, and by everyone I mean my whopping six readers, and shouts..."YOU JUST GOT MARRIED!" I am not talking about forever like that. Commitment to people, to friends, that I can do. Commitment to a task, a weekly, daily, even monthly task feels so utterly constricting I yank against the chains like you were strapping me in the electric chair/gas chamber contraption/guillotine...you get my drift.

I know there are plenty of people who will point out this is just the mental manifestation of my incredible lack of discipline. Okay, fair. I can work on that. I have worked on that and will likely continue to work on it for the rest of my life. It's not really the activity or even a lack of wanting to do that activity it is the feeling of being ordered to do said activity. I admit to being a rebel without a cause, no good reason to rebel. Great life, great friends, great parents, no significant, unrecoverable trauma. I even like my family...so I don't even have that!? But from a very young age I have been the "why" girl. I got the case of the three-year-old whys that just never went away. My aunt likes to tell the story of how I asked so many "why" questions she finally told me to shut up and stop asking why, to which my ridiculously large, pig tailed head replied, "how come?" With a story like that, I think it is fair to say it is just in my DNA. And without some sort of why instant gratification, you are hard pressed to get me to do anything I don't want to do.

Then comes the liking people thing. My Dad refers to me as the "social butterfly" and consistently questions my liking of so many people. He does not believe there are that many interesting folks on the planet, well not worth spending time on anyway. He's just not that social so I have always been an enigma. In general journaling, blogging, jogging, reading, biking, hiking, swimming...the list goes on, unless it is driven by need and/or a social atmosphere, gets put on the back burner. I LOVE all of these things. I love pontificating about life. I love writing. I love reading things other people write and I definitely love frolicking in the water. But if I don't have a good friend to do it with or some pressing drive, it seems to get put on the list of, maybe in an hour I will do it. Now work is a need, I can rise to the occasion and get things done. Of course, being the driver of my own deadlines has been a learning curve I have had to catch up to. Film project wise I am good, constantly working, but the writing for a living thing, that can be tough. Needless to say I have had my share of 3 am wake-up calls in order to make rent. This is another hurdle in the blogging/journaling world.

Finally it's the "no end it sight" problem. With work, projects and plans you have an end date. A time when that project will be over and you get to move onto something new. If you plan to journal it's FOREVER. So when you put it off one night or week and you try to pick it back up you feel like you "owe" it something. That's why I was successful in Europe, six weeks, definitive end date, just suck it up and write for 15 minutes before you go to bed. So, as I started to feel that way all through June with my blog I am going to test my "game theory" with my blog. I will be back to my Monday reporting for the summer. Until the end date of September 30th. At which time I may or may not take a break, hiatus, or just change my publishing day. Whatever it ends up being that's the goal as of this July 5th. If it works maybe I can make it work with roller blading, heck maybe I should run the experiments concurrently. But why?

The Move...

Married life has been blissfully serene so far. While we didn't get to go on our honeymoon right away, I formed a sort of peace with the idea as it meant I got to begin playing house right away and what could be bad about that? Unfortunately the reality of what could be bad about that came crashing in pretty quickly...MOVING.

My new husband has a job not close to my/our current neighborhood. The commute was beginning to wear thin and with all the warnings of "make things simple" during the beginning of your marriage, this seemed like a bad combination. For example, the day we were leaving town to head up to our wedding (we live in the city, were married in the mountains) he worked his first 7pm to 7am shift. Not only did it take him 2 1/2 hours to get to work, it took him 3 hours to get home. To say he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown a few days before our wedding is an understatement. It was at that moment I decided apartment hunting was of top priority upon our return.

Begin apartment hunting for the first time in seven years and enter all the emotions of moving. I love my place, I don't want to leave, but close quarters leads to many things such as me thinking, if my husband talks to me one more time when I am writing I am going to rip his head off. Literally tripping over each other every time we head to the kitchen is not a fun way to spend a day. The pile of presents stacked in corner of our one bedroom apartment is pressed up against the heater, so we should move before it gets cold or we are the definition of a fire hazard.

Apartment hunting in the greater Los Angeles area is not a fun time. Let's not mention how far apart everything is in this city, let's just add that technically my husband would love for us to move to Orange County. While to many this might not sound like a big problem, I will liken it to him telling me we are moving to Oklahoma or a Manhattan girl being told she's going to Long Island. No matter how you cut it, I am a city girl. While I love the mountains, if we are moving to somewhere it should either be far out of civilization like Mammoth or Yellowstone or a city, NOT a suburb, I HATE the uniformity of suburbs, they just aren't for me. I love to visit them. I love my friends who live in them. But I don't choose to live in there. Full country or full city, no middle ground, make a choice.

So after the torturous task of narrowing down the options, we get to go search together on Thursday. I bring reinforcements in the form of our good friend Craig as he brings a guy perspective but also doesn't want to see me move to Orange County. Two guys performing a task they aren't fond of...I really didn't think this through. After the first apartment not only being rather blah I must endure the guys continually talking about how they have no idea if there is really enough room for our pet monkey in the place and what is the pet deposit policy anyway? Ugh!

We do go check out the one place in the OC that was, even I have to admit, nicer than the rest. Lucky for me there were multiple screaming babies on this particular day. So while the townhouse was mere minutes from Chris's job, the sheer thought of children was enough to force us back up to Long Beach.

This is the moment. This is the come to Jesus moment where you gave in and said...Long Beach is a pit, why would we go look there...only to arrive and find a sort of middle ground heaven you never knew existed. It is not perfect, it is not as close to the LA as I would like BUT it is new and pretty and feels like a city and has everything a girl could want. Am I giving up my principles? Not really, we're technically still in Los Angeles COUNTY. Do I love the area? Yeah, gotta admit I do. Am I happy that my new brother-in-law's only complaint about the area is that it was a bit too seedy late at night? Hell yeah! It's perfect! I think Brett would think West Hollywood is seedy, scary and strange too. Sounds like a perfect mix and a better commute. All in all I learned compromise isn't that bad and even if a place sounds horrible you won't know until you go. I can't wait to watch football at Hooters, walk to the movie theater, and sip fruity beverages by the pool. Did I mention I love the new apartment?