Interesting observation today. I was excited to see that Oklahoma has two women running for governor. This is historic and truly, way full-on awesome for Oklahoma. Now, y’all know me, I vote straight-ticket Democrat. I vote that way for a lot of reasons: I am a christian and believe that democratic policies are more in keeping with Christ’s teachings than the other guys’ (especially regarding the poor and children); I come from poor, rural folk, the kind of people only fed platitudes by GOP but actively harmed by GOP policies; I reject hypocrisy (ie-advocating less government “interference” while actively interfering in peoples’ sex lives and reproductive decisions, including birth control); I don’t hate taxes per se, I consider taxes the dues we pay to be members of a civilized, well-functioning society;  I’m immune to knee-jerk propaganda and don’t react/vote out of hate, etc. etc. etc.

These reasons have shuffled about in ranking of importance to me over the years based upon my current life-status and circumstances. But the numero uno, biggest, most important reason or explanation for my political affiliation can be summed up with one word: children. Even before I had children of my own, I realized that every child should be a wanted child. Even before I was old enough to vote, I could see the detrimental effect that republican policies have on schools (good-bye resident artist, hello overcrowded classrooms).  And Nancy, that whole “Just Say No”-thing, what an insult to our intelligence and what a handy way to duck responsibility.

Now that I have children of my own, they are my first personal priority.  But as a parent, and responsible citizen, I can also expand my caring to include every mothers’ children. I can’t go the I-got-mine-screw-you route on anything, but most especially where children are concerned. How awful would it be to care only for one’s own children and not care at all about their friends or all the other children in one’s community. When one child is disadvantaged, we are all the poorer.

We all want to live in an orderly, well-functioning, globally competitive society and the only way to ensure that we do is to make sure that all of Oklahoma’s, all of America’s children are safe, sheltered, healthy, well-fed, and well-educated. We have to make children and their care and education our first priority as a state, as a nation. Our country will fail if we fail to do this. But if we succeed in this, if we put our money where our rhetoric is, if we boost all children, then our nation will point the way to the future for all others to follow.

I wrote to both of the outstanding women running for governor Oklahoma today, well, I commented on each of their websites. On Mary Fallin’s website (the repub.), I had difficulty finding a place to leave a comment and ended up using the contact link in very tiny print at the bottom of the homepage. (I later found the comment area, but didn’t think they’d print my comment anyway.) I congratulated her on her primary victory and told her that I wouldn’t be voting for her. And I told her why: I find her party to be too beholden to multi-national corporations and the most hateful voices on in our community.

I then reminded her that she needs to place the children of Oklahoma first and that closing down our borders wouldn’t do our kids one lick of good. Then I mentioned something about how she would work for all of Oklahoma and not to be too concerned about cuddling up to the old boys’ network.

Worrying about immigrants from Mexico, legal or otherwise, will not benefit our children. What will? Providing for quality public education (which can’t be done on the cheap!), making sure that children have health care even if their parents can’t afford it (as the anti-choicers like to say, it isn’t the baby’s fault!), making sure that no child goes hungry or only has junk food to eat, and helping struggling parents.

About childhood hunger, it’s a cryin-ass shame that any child in this bounteous land of ours goes to bed hungry. And it’s telling that Oklahoma has such pitiful records on obesity and divorce and child abuse. These things don’t happen in a vacuum.

Then I went to Jari Askins’ site and found one of her comments sections at the bottom of “about” page and left a supportive comment. Which was published very quickly.

The fundamental difference between the two parties was immediately apparent. The republican’s site was dense and complicated and secretive with demands to sign petitions against various things and join up and give money. The comments section was very structured and feature what looked like the glowing blurbs you typically find in book jackets. “I couldn’t put it down!” “I laughed, I cried!” “An engaging read!” Republicans like their dealings with the unwashed masses to be carefully filtered and censored. No dissenting views, no questions need ever pierce the ignorance bubble of these neo-cons.

Poor, delicate creatures, can’t handle the slightest disagreement to their worldviews. Makes them uncomfortable and incoherent; makes them stammer a bit and then resort to saying, “I’ll pray for you.” And, seriously, when your argument boils down to “Ah, bible!” and “I’ll pray for you.” you’ve already lost.

The democrat’s site was simple and straightfoward, the comments’ section seems to be mostly positive but I did see a comment saying the commenter didn’t know what she stood for, so it’s probably only being moderated for hate-speech and viagra-spam. My comment to Fallin went into the ether, never to be seen again. But my comment to Askins was published to day I wrote it.

This November Oklahoma will elect its first woman governor. Democrat or republican, let’s hope she stands up for Oklahoma’s children, ALL of Oklahoma’s children.

Look, Spammers, I’m sorry if you just can’t get behind, ahem, my position on Underpants. It’s become obvious that not everyone has my sorts of issue with the dreaded undergarments. Also, it’s not great news that I once got hit by a car. And commenting that I need a fireproof safe on my post about our House-fire? Dude, not cool. Seriously, it’s like you’re not even trying anymore.

There is…something, I don’t know what, hovering just beyond my perceptions. Some impending event or revelation is grasping towards me from an unformed future. I am no prophet or prognosticator, no diviner or fortune-teller, but I feel the shadow of something yet to be. There is not a lot of “woo” that I buy into: I don’t read horoscopes; I don’t think futures can be read with tea leaves or tarot cards or palms; I’d say that I don’t believe in ghosts but there’s a ghost in my kitchen.

The future cannot be reliably foretold because every moment requires decisions that continually alter that future. Multiverse Theory tells us that there are multiple, not just one, and possibly infinite, universes encompassing every possible future. In the present, though, the future is Schrodinger’s Cat, just a fog of possibilities until we open the box.

While I don’t think the future can be foretold, I do tend to fret about it. I’m a planner, a list-maker, I like to plan and enumerate everything. And the other side of that coin means that I am also a worrier. It seems like anxiety has been a constant companion for years. Thankfully I’m experiencing a bit of a reprieve from all of that because I’m on a beta-blocker now. I don’t feel anxious on a daily basis anymore, which is better for all of us.

But for some reason I’m feeling a kind of anticipation, not a foreboding as if something wicked this way comes. It is more a feeling of hopeful presentiment that something good is coming this way. There is a positive development, or new opportunity, or correct decision on the horizon.

Who knows what the future holds, but Schrodinger’s cat and I will let you know as soon as we open the box.

I am short, plump, wear glasses, and have shoulder-length hair that is still mostly brown. If I was wearing an orange shirt and red skirt I’d be a dead-ringer for Velma from the Scooby Doo series of TV shows and movies. I am also geeky, smart, talkative and a general know-it-all. And I’m OK that with that.

While I am now OK with being a nerd, geek, or “brain,” it took me years to get here. Growing up, my peers tried to make me believe that being smart was somehow unseemly. I never could quite get my responses right. When I first discovered that I was smarter than most of the other kids I didn’t bother to conceal my intelligence and my natural pride in it. After all, God gave me a fine, sharp mind, why should I hide it? Of course, in school, anyone who falls outside a narrow range of acceptability is punished by his/her peers and even by some teachers.

After being physically and mentally disciplined by a girl bully in my class, I became more circumspect. While I refused to act like a simpering fool, I dreaded the inevitable narrowed eyes and accusatory question, “You’re a brain, aren’t you?” It’s a no-win situation. Say “no” and I’d look like a fool; say “yes” and I’d look arrogant, full of myself, which is what the bully said.

In high school I was put into Gifted classes and honors classes, where I didn’t have to hide or pretend. And I didn’t have to effectively shut down large swathes of myself to interact with my peers. After high school I began to recognize that not everyone finds me mercurial and charming, so I learned to respond to different people in different ways. But never once have I “played dumb” to make friends. And I learned that plenty of boys like smart girls, including Mr. Prairie.

Even though I learned the difference between confident and arrogant, I never became popular. In fact, I don’t really understand the popularity of being popular. One advice columnist counseled a young girl on how not be a know-it-all in class and then sent her a booklet of instructions to become popular. As you well know, I am all me and I am all out there, come what may. Popularity just seems like too much work to me.

We are never acceptable as we really are, we have to change some aspect(s) of ourselves to make friends, find love, succeed in life. How do I know this, TV and movies tell me so. We will never get a date to the prom, stop being a basket case, snag the right guy, or be happy unless we poor, sad, smart wretches endure The Magic Makeover. A whole genre of “reality” shows now exist to shame us with fat asses, crooked teeth, bad hair, sloppy clothes. Movies prove that “ugly” nerd-girls only find true love with lip gloss and the right accessories.

And if we have to deny the existence of our brains to land a man, is he really worth landing? Or are only pretty girls worthy of love?

We all know that Daphne and Freddy have a thing going on, but poor Velma is always alone. She proves The Magic Makeover trope. She never gets a makeover, so she never finds a man. Luckily, real life is absolutely nothing like cartoons. Nearly every nerd-girl I have ever met has been extraordinarily successful in matters of the heart. Probably because love is not really based in the heart, but in the brain.

We are never going to attract the shallow guys, the insecure guys, the dreadfully conventional guys. The guys/men who like us are attracted to our intellects, our outside interests, and yes, even the way we look. And men do make passes at girls who wear glasses.

So to every awkward but brilliant girl out there, I say forget about trying to be popular. Forget about The Magic Makeover. All the lip gloss in the world won’t change who you are on the inside and if someone only likes you after the makeover, they aren’t worth your precious time or brain cells.

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to mourn the death of a friendship and to pick it apart to find out what killed it.

And that is about all the dark humor I can manage. One of my longest-standing friendships is officially dead and it hurts my heart. It hurts my heart so much that I have been trying, and failing, to write this post since Thanksgiving. And since I need to write this, to get this pain out of my heart and onto the page, I haven’t been able to write anything else.

I should console myself that it wasn’t the best, strongest of friendships, but I can’t be so flip. The thing itself wasn’t built to last but somehow it did for over two decades, off and on. Our friendship was not built on the bedrock of the heart, but on the shifting sands of appearances.

Now, I was loyal as a puppy dog, kind of pathetic really. But if I stepped out of line, even a little, she dropped me like I was make of fire. If I embarrassed her, I could expect a passive-aggressive letter dismissing me from her life. One time I got the dreaded letter for not spending her working hours alone and pining away. I selfishly insisted on leading my own life outside of my working hours and this was not to be tolerated.

I think it’s important to add something here. She could probably tell you all the many things I did wrong, all the many ways I failed her, perceived or actual.  But this is not a tally of who did what to whom nor is it told from her perspective. This is told from mine.

Now I can laugh at the absurdity and out-of-proportion-ness of the ridiculous letters, but they really hurt at the time.

Looking back I can see that we were both young, foolish, selfish. I was not perfect and there were certainly times when I should have been more empathetic, understanding. There were times when I let her down, but there were times when she should have been more forgiving, flexible, accepting of my all-too-human flaws.

Whenever I was so casually discarded, I never approached her, never begged her to take me back; my self-respect wouldn’t let me. But after the first time, I knew that she would eventually soften and want to be friends again. What I didn’t realize at the time was that she only softened her hard-line stance when she needed something from me. The things she needed weren’t really things at all. An antidote to loneliness, someplace to stay, a shoulder to cry on. When tragedy struck, I rushed to her side.

As the years passed, our lives took divergent paths. I married young and stayed that way. It was easy for me to transition from single girl to staid and stable matron. She married some years later and moved away. We kept in only the flimsiest touch; Christmas cards would be exchanged and nothing more.

One year I got the Christmas card back. Worrier that I am, I called her parents and got her new address and phone number. Our friendship re-thawed a bit. She had need of me again–her first marriage hadn’t worked out and I offered a sympathetic ear, commiseration, and no judgement.

When she married again and then had children, I expected our friendship to move into a new, more mature phase. We had all these things in common again and I hoped that we had both grown up a little.

About this time I noticed something troubling- I was the one doing all of the catch-up calling, the one doing the drudge work and general maintenance of a friendship. She would call me only when she needed advice or when she needed to be talked down from the new-mom-ledge. I had been there before, I had the road map, she needed it.

I began to have the sneaking suspicion that she was “slumming” a bit by being my friend. Although I am a loyal, defend-you-to-the-death, got-your-back, grade A friend material, I was chopped liver to her. I was Rhoda to her Mary, Jan to her Marcia, Velma to her Daphne. I was the nerdy, awkward bookworm, she was the head cheerleader.

The friendship certainly didn’t feel healthy, so I decided to do nothing. Stop calling, stop emailing, and see what happens. Then came Facebook.

We became Facebook friends; this seemed like a nice way to transition into a more surface-type friendship. Unfortunately, I don’t do surface very well, which has always been our problem. I am all me, all out there, come what may. Once again I embarrassed her or outraged her, or something.

Anyway, I have been able to pinpoint, if not the moment of actual death, the cause thereof. Politics of all damn things.

I posted a “Why I am the way I am”-type of essay about my personal political viewpoint. We hold rather divergent viewpoints, with me being somewhat to the left of center. It was enough. Apparently the fact that I exercised my first amendment rights and didn’t hide my liberal head in shame, and refused to bow and scrape and apologize for having my own opinions, was beyond the pale.

After a bit of back and forth and general misunderstanding on her part, she stopped communicating with me altogether. I didn’t even get another passive-aggressive letter.

The friendship became totally unresponsive and I have had to face the unpleasant reality that it is truly gone. There is no there there, anymore.

Even if, sometime in the future, she were to decide that I wasn’t so bad after all, I don’t think I could do it. There would always be a nagging doubt. What would it be this time? Which opinion or behavior, which appearance would she find intolerable next time? I don’t have the energy to always be schooling everything I do or say or write just to keep from offending her. But I do have the self-respect to say goodbye.

If you are reading this, which I doubt, I wish you well. We had good times when we had them and survived the bad times. I don’t regret anything. Take care of yourself and your family.

Me

Wow. Has it really been that long since I last posted? I guess it has. Well, I’m still here and Oklahoma’s weather is still weird.

Today I woke to the sound of thunder. Expecting to see heavy rain to accompany that thunder, I was quite surprised to see, not rain, but snow. As a native Oklahoman I have experienced my share of odd weather (and then some), but thunder and snow is a new one for me.

The thunder continued to rumble occasionally while the snow fell thick and fast. It was a rather aggressive snowfall, not some much drifting gracefully to earth as it was throwing itself at the ground. After several hours of relentless falling, the snow was several inches deep and showed no sign of abating. Our plans for grocery shopping and general running-around had to be sacrificed upon the altar of practicality.

So we enjoyed a rare weekend day of not going anywhere. Of course I still had to go to work in the evening, but for most of the day we just took it easy. We did rustle up hats and coats and gloves and mittens for everyone so we could all go play in the snow.

We had a good time throwing snowballs at each other and building the world’s most pathetic snowmen. Really, calling them snowmen is giving them too much credit, they were more like mounds of packed snow with vaguely ball-shaped snow lumps on top. And then the big snowman met a sad fate as he was reclaimed by Monkey to make more snowballs.

Pumpkin made snow angels and I tried to kick the snow out from behind the car. You see, we don’t own a snow shovel, I don’t even know anyone who owns a snow shovel. This is Oklahoma and we don’t usually get these kinds of snowfalls. And the garage of the Burning Prairie is just too small to store a snow shovel that will see action about once every three to five years, if that.

The last time it snowed Monkey and Pumpkin didn’t get to play outside. The snow wasn’t as deep as it is today but it was sitting on a sheet of ice and it was much too cold to venture out. So they were thrilled to play in the snow today. Next time maybe I’ll plan ahead enough to bring a camera so everyone can see my babies playing in the snow. But this time I was having too much fun dodging snowballs and throwing some of my own to take pictures. You’ll just have to wait three to five years for the next big snow to come through.

Oh yeah, it’s supposed to get up to 54 degrees  on Sunday afternoon. Gotta love that wild, weird, and wonderful Oklahoma weather!

Well, runny nose season is in full-swing at the House. At this very moment, I am the only person here who isn’t coughing, sneezing, snorting, dripping, or sniffing. Of course this could change very rapidly and then I could make my own contribution to the nasal cacophony around here.

Spring and fall are usually my noisiest seasons. I am allergic to trees (especially cottonwood, the devil’s tree), grass, ragweed, cats, mold spores, and some flowers. These allergies and their loathsome effects have been my seasonal companions for better than thirty years, so for portions of the year, my nose hates me. I also have a very sensitive sense of smell, I can smell things that no one else can. My nose has saved us from food poisoning several times. Maybe it’s my super-power, Super Schnauze to the rescue! My nose is also generally sensitive, I hate to have it touched, so naturally Mr. Prairie loves to poke at my nose.

One of the worst things I have ever had to do to treat my allergies involved using those nasal inhalers that are so popular now. It feels bad and leaves a funny taste in my mouth. But apparently there are some people who have way more fun with their noses than I. Which reminds me of my sister.

I don’t believe I have ever written extensively about my sister, but I really should, she’s hilarious! I will call her “Sissy” to preserve whatever tattered shreds of her dignity remain after she reads this story. Sissy is younger than me by six years, she’s married to Fireman and has two kids, my 14-year old nephew who I’ll just call Nephew because he’s at that easily embarrassed age, and my 6-year old niece I’ll call Flower.

Since there are six years between us, there were large swathes of our lives during which we were at vastly different stages and had nothing in common except shared ancestry. And to tell the truth, early on I was bitterly resentful of her mere presence in my life. I was happy, content, I had mom and dad to myself, and along comes this loud, smelly interloper who ruint everything! Things have become so much clearer now that I have two children, I understand my son’s feelings towards his sister, because I went through the same thing, which in turn has caused me to finally see and understand some of my own motivations and feelings way back then.

All very nice, Prairie, but what pray-tell is the point, you may ask? What does all this stuff about motivations have to with noses and your sister, you wonder? Wonder no longer. My sister shoved peas and shoe-string potatoes up her nose.

Of course she was four years old at the time, and the peas and shoe-string potatoes were two different nasal incursion incidents. I don’t know which was first, peas or potatoes, but the potatoes were nowhere near as entertaining as the peas so I won’t dwell on them. But I remember the pea-insertion incident like it happened yesterday.

My mom usually made very basic, meat-potatoes-vegetable dinners and she had a particular fondness for La Seur peas. Sissy did not share that fondness, and one evening she came up with a unique solution to the pea problem. Something, anything, had to be done with the accursed peas. Clearly they had to go, but where? Her nose seemed like the obvious hiding place. Because she was only four years old, Sissy didn’t really think through all the possible ramifications of shoving peas up her nose. At ten years old, I just mostly thought it was funny.

There was my little sister, with her big blue eyes and cherubic golden curls, furtively pushing peas up her nose. It was the funniest thing I had ever seen and still reduces me to tear-inducing laughter to this very day. I imagined the peas made a little vacuum sound as they each disappeared into her pert, little nose. Fwoop, there goes a pea, fwoop, and another! About five or six peas into this bizarre little ritual my mother finally noticed what was happening under her nose, or under my sister’s nose, rather.

And because it was her job to do so, my mother freaked out. After her usual operatic “NOOOOO!” mom got right to business. She and Dad held Sissy’s head immobile and used tweezers to remove the offending vegetables from her nose. Luckily they were able to get them all or we would have taken a little trip to the emergency room, which would’ve mortified my mother. Nothing embarrassed my mother more than taking imperfect children out in public, too bad she had human children; and peas up the nose definitely qualified as imperfect.

When they finally got around to questioning me about why I didn’t immediately report such atrocious behavior I was stumped for an answer. I’m sure I just shrugged and uttered the universal answer of busted kids, “I dunno.” I know now. At 10, I didn’t have the sophistication to understand that Sissy couldn’t be held to the standards to which I was held. And I resented her blonde perfection at a desperately awkward stage in my life. For just a little while negative attention was deflected from me and onto her, it was strangely gratifying to see her being scolded instead of “polishing her halo” as I once told my mom. But the overriding reason why I just sat and watched is because it was darn funny! It never occurred to me at the time that my mother might not think it was funny, too.

Today I discovered that the propensity for shoving stuff up one’s nose might possibly have a genetic component. Pumpkin has had a runny nose for about two weeks which developed into another ear infection, number two in as many months. We’ve been to the doctor, gotten her medicine, and indulged most of her whimsies, but she’s still pretty whiny.

We were relaxing together on the couch, I was perusing a blog I frequent and Pumpkin was playing with her “Yo Dabba Dabba” guys. She sprang to her feet, looked at me, flapped her hands and started yelling, “I CAN’T BREATHE!!!! I CAN’T BREATHE!!!!” Thinking she just needed to wipe her nose, I handed her a tissue. She looked at me, took her tissue, then she promptly tore a little piece off and tried to shove it up her nose. Because it is my job to do so, I freaked. After my own operatic “NOOOO!!!”, I pulled her in front of a window and tilted her head back. There were little pieces of tissue shoved up each nostril; she had managed this while sitting literally right under my nose!

So I put her on the couch and pulled the little tissue pieces out of her nose, very carefully. I thought that I had stopped her before she had managed to put much in there. I was wrong. Her nose was like a clown car–I would pull out what I thought was the last piece and there would be another piece right behind it! Finally I got the last, gruesome piece out of her nose. Then I went around and put all the tissue boxes up on tall windowsills and the like.

I’d say what I normally say when faced with the weirder aspects of parenting, “I swear this doesn’t happen to anyone else,” but I’ve seen it happen to someone else with my own two eyes. And right under our noses.

As you may know I have a love/hate relationship with children’s TV programming. My daughter watches the “valuable lesson”-type shows on Sprout, Noggin, and Nick Jr. and she seems to enjoy most of them. And as I think that everyone needs a little harmless, mindless diversion occasionally, I put Boomerang on at least once a day. She likes some of the cartoons I grew up with, like Scooby Doo, Where Are You, Yogi Bear, and Popeye, and Tom and Jerry and Pink Panther are so loved that we bought them on DVD so we can watch them whenever we want. And by we I mean Pumpkin. Just yesterday, during a game of involuntary Ring Around the Rosy instigated by her brother, I heard her yell, “Jane! Get me off this crazy thing!” I’m so proud that my 3-year old can quote the classics!

But before school and in the evenings, we watch some shows that my son prefers. We are a Pokemon family and watch Pokemon: Battle Dimension before school. In the evenings, we watch iCarly which I highly recommend as truly funny and well-written and… I have sat here for several minutes trying to figure how to admit that I watch this show and find it both ridiculous and hilarious, much to my chagrin, so I’ll just quit hemming and hawing and spit it out, I’ll just own up to it, I’ll cop to it, I’ll bite the bullet, I’ll…. Oh for heaven’s sake, it’s Spongebob Squarepants. There, I said it.

We sing the song to each other, do our impressions of the characters, and try to guess who does the various voices. Mermaid Man is voiced by Ernest Borgnine and Barnacle Boy is done by Tim Conway. Patrick Star is voiced by exactly the actor I thought, Bill Fagerbakke from Coach and The Stand. M-O-O-N, that spells Patrick! The one voice that threw me for a loop was that for Mr. Krabs. Mr. Krabs is The Kurgan, from Highlander. Clancy Brown has quite an impressive list of rolls on IMDB, including a lot of voice-over work. But when you think about him, isn’t The Kurgan the first thing that springs to mind? Now, on top of hearing Mr. Krabs say, “I’ll save you, money!” and laugh, “Ack, ack, ack, ack, ack, ack, ack,” I’ll also picture The Kurgan ripping the top off a car and saying, “Mom.”

Now there’s some cognitive dissonance for ya!

The economic stimulus is going into the Senate, and it is a dreary certainty that republican know-nothings will make their usual bleatings about tax cuts. Of course the tax cuts republicans venerate are the ones designed to reward large corporations for exporting our jobs overseas and to make sure that those who can afford to consume the most resources (gas for their Hummers, wasted energy in their McMansions, fat bonuses for driving their companies into the ground) bear the least financial responsibility for the society in which they consume those resources.

And the average conservative on the street marches in lock-step with these ideas even to his or her own detriment! When corporations are rewarded with ridiculously low tax obligations do they take those savings to reinvest in American jobs? Not so far. So excuse me if I don’t trust in the better natures of these companies and those who run them. We have seen companies approach the federal government like some kind of Oliver Twist, “Please, sirs, may we have the tax-payers’ money so we can stay in business and keep employing those tax-payers?” And then we hear that the bailout money has gone to provide fat bonuses to the very people most responsible for their companies’ troubles!

I recently un-friended someone on Facebook for the kind of subtle racism-laden “joke” that he can later claim, “What? It was about my dog. You liberals just can’t take a joke! I hate this PC crap.” Before I un-friended him he repeated the classist, racist, and damnable lie that he makes more money than poor people because he works harder and therefore shouldn’t have to pay a higher percentage of taxes than those poor people. And this person claims to be a christian. I happen to think it isn’t very christian to expect that someone who earns a fraction of what you do should be required to pay the same percentage of taxes as you. What is an inconvenience for someone who makes 100K a year is an unbearable burden for someone who makes 20K or less per year. Your decision to buy a new car or not this year becomes a “choice” between paying for food, medications, or shoes for the children. And a christian is ok with this?!

So, let’s talk about why no one should grouse about paying taxes. Taxes are the dues we pay to live in a civilized society. Taxes are what we pay so we can get from point A to point B without paying usage fees to every property owner we pass. Taxes are the price we pay for the privilege of interacting with the vast majority of US citizens who are literate even though their parents couldn’t afford private schools. Taxes are what make our government function for the greater good of the people, and that is, full stop, a good thing. Some examples of what can happen when government doesn’t function for the people anymore: anarchy, fascism, oppression, violent revolution.

I don’t mind paying the taxes necessary to functioning in the modern world so I’m going to put forth some ideas for those of you who like to whine about taxes, bearing in mind that what we pay for in taxes belongs to each of us.

Get off of my roads. State highway systems, bought and paid for with the help of my tax dollars. Ditto on the Interstate highway system. Hope you don’t have any trouble negotiating on surface streets and toll roads to do all of your traveling .

Take your children out of my schools. Oh, I realize that some of you already have. Incidentally, if your religion can’t survive your children being taught evolution then it isn’t much of a religion. And even if you manage to send your kids to private schools or homeschool them, you and they will still be forced to function in the world with people who went to public schools. Isn’t it in your (and your kids’) best interest to make sure people (like me) coming out of public schools are literate and competent. Don’t you want your surgeon and your pilot and your bus driver to be able to read and think critically?

Hope you are never the victim of a crime, because all of those tax-payer supported police officers and FBI agents? They work for me.

Better invest in a sprinkler system for your house and buy lots of fire extinguishers, because that thoroughly socialist concept known as a fire department? Yep, mine.

Wouldn’t want you patronizing the library, what with all that tax money being “wasted” there.

Are your children prepared to care for you in your dotage? I assume you invested all of your retirement savings in the stock market because of your faith in the free market system. Well, we’ve seen what has happened there, haven’t we? And since you are so opposed to entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, I know you won’t miss that safety net.

And when all the rest of us decide that we are ready for a single-payer healthcare system because we don’t mind getting beneficial things for our taxes, you can just sit that one out.

I hope you are never flooded out, FEMA and the National Guard? You guessed it, they’re mine.

So unless you decide to chuck it all, move to a remote mountain cabin where you can scratch a barely subsistence-level existence out of the soil, and never burden polite society with your anti-tax, anti-government, anti-poor, anti-people, anti-children, anti-elderly, anti-knowledge, anti-safety, anti-health, nutty blatherings then you are politely invited to keep your poorly thought-out opinions to yourself.

But if you enjoy NOT living in a third-world (now politely called “developing”) country, then pony up. You have to pay your share, just like everybody else. And if your share is larger because your income is larger, then consider yourself blessed and dig out your wallet.

As you may know I turned 40 this year, and thus begins my third decade as an official adult. Every decade, every year is uncharted territory at its very beginning. And it is usually only in hindsight that we understand each year, each decade and the lessons we drew from them. It strikes me that there are some people who never recognize those lessons and blithely carry on their lives in a kind of stasis of mind. As if at some point in their lives they reached a level of learning they were comfortable with and froze their development in amber. Never evolving past a certain point, never changing, never becoming more than the simple sum of their parts; their years are simply an enumeration, not a teaching tool.

I do not want to become one of those people.

Mr. Prairie and I married when I was 23, so the majority of my twenties were about learning how to be a married person. Together we learned how to forge a partnership of equals, a team. The two of us against the world.

We began trying to have children when I was 29, so my thirties were consumed with the babies. First with the thought, “Are we ready to do this?” When the answer came back, “Ready as we’ll ever be,” we jumped in, both feet, eyes closed. It was not as easy as it is in the movies. Five years of trying, tests, procedures, drugs, heartbreak, disappointment, giving up, then giving back in, hoping, crying, and miscarrying. Then success, we triumphed, I triumphed over the body that had thus far only betrayed me. I not only struggled with infertility, I wrestled it to the ground and kicked its ass. Then followed eight months and one week of fear and high-risk status.

But the consumption by everything baby did not end with my son’s birth. There was a year of post-partum depression, undiagnosed of course. I had no idea until the fog of hormones lifted and I got to experience “normal” again. And just when I was getting used to being “normal” again, I got pregnant (planned) with my daughter. Another ride on the baby-go-round! Luckily, I did not experience PPD that time around.

Now, facing forward into my 40’s, I wonder what the future lessons will be. But I suspect this decade will be about learning how to be the grown-up version of me. Wunderkind, wild child, young woman, those times have come and gone. It is time to let go of any remaining shred of reticence or timidity. It is time to reach for the things I want. It is time, and long passed, to claim the title Writer for myself.

And I want to triumph over my body once again, this time making it fit my self-image. But I will save that struggle for a future post.