Perspective

Alright. This has not been a good week. Matti turned two on Wednesday and all the pictures show that his two front teeth are missing. Why are they missing? Because he had such bad "bottle teeth" that they had to be extracted. In the hospital. Under anaesthesia.

Okay, so right there I'm down several points on my scoreboard. You know the scoreboard. We all have it. It's that mental scoreboard where we tack up points on the everpopular game, Who's the best mother?. Last time I checked I was down several points. The opposing team this week - Moms whose children have perfect teeth - have an unfair genetic advantage.

Anyway, that was the beginning of the week. Friday brought with it an invitation to my 25th high school reunion. Just what I needed, another game to tack on to the scoreboard. Now not only would I have to compare myself to other moms in the here and now, but I would have to see how I stacked up against people I haven't seen in a quarter of a century. Who was fat; who was thin; who had the hottest looking guy/girl on their arm - it would be high school all over again, except this time with wrinkles. Now, I'm sorry, but that is just cruel .

So, as you can see, I have been feeling a bit sorry for myself. It's not that I don't have a life. I do, it's just not the life that I'd expected. And I'm not jealous when I see other friends - even friends with children - continuing to succeed in their careers while I feel mired in a sea of pablum. A dear friend that I went to university with came out with a children's bestseller a few months back. I am okay with that. Really, I am. I am truly, truly happy for her. Truly. Stuart hid the steak knives when he read the email, but I honestly feel that he was overreacting. A bit.

Okay, so I 've been looking for some perspective on my life. And I found it, right here in my own house: my cats. We bought two purebred siberian kittens a few months ago because they were the only furry creatures that my older son's allergies could tolerate. I brought them home from the breeder, two warm, expensive puffballs of fur, a little frightened in their carrier but still curious. They were leaving a warm, cossetted environment expecting more of the same whereever they were going. I brought them inside, opened the cat carrier door and they jumped out into what was to become their own personal seventh circle of Hell.

Oh yes. If I think Matti is a hellion, just imagine it from the perspective of a three pound kitten. I thought his screaming at the top of his lungs and running after them was just temporary. The grabbing, the chasing, they hysterical laughter as he hunts them from room to room - surely this must be a phase, right? He'll outgrow it, surely.

Oh no. When I saw a kitten being dragged by the tail across the kitchen floor I knew I had to do something. We now have "No Matti Zones" throughout the house, rooms which are gated off so that the kittens can squeeze through the bars to safety and he cannot. Their own personal kitty prison, complete with bars and a small two year old screaming in frustration at them.

Oh yes, my life is tough, but I've got it a helluva lot better than my cats. Although I've just realized a problem. There's another game that I should have added to the mental scoreboard: Who's the Best Pet Owner?

Oh shit.

I heart Oprah

Alright. I admit it. I like Oprah. Yes, I know. I can hear the gasps of outrage from friends and readers out there in the cyberspace. Oprah? She likes Oprah? But Oprah is so ... so ... suburban!

News flash, folks. I am suburban! But that's not why I like her. Although from what I've been reading, I seem to be in a shrinking demographic these days. I sensed the tide beginning to turn against Oprah about the same time that Martha went into the big house. You see, Martha fit the niche of the rich, powerful, strong woman - read bitch - that we all love to hate. Especially women. Why is it that we cannibalize our own gender with such relish, greedily noshing down on every dirty detail in the pages of tabloid newspapers or on talk radio? We - meaning us women - built the Martha Inc. empire up and we happily watched as it tumbled down. But Martha came back with an unexpected right hook, didn't she? We all expected her to be dragged into prison, screaming like the shrew she must be, ripping at her cashmere pashmina and renting holes in her Donna Karan suit. But she didn't. She stepped forward, waived any appeal for extra time and walked right into Camp Cupcake. When she came out six months later, she was thinner, fitter, and altogether a happier person. Leave it to Martha to find a good thing in the jailhouse.

You had to have a grudging respect for her. But if that meant Martha Stewart was no longer the spoiled bitch we loved to hate, then who was? Let's see - who else in America is a rich, powerful woman, who, like Martha, has the ability to reach a large percentage of the population?

I know. The answer is obvious. The big O. It was only a matter of time. The anti-Oprah movement really seemed to hit its stride this past spring with the "Hermes incident". The part of the story that seems to be agreed upon by both sides is that Oprah attempted to enter the Hermes store in Paris a few minutes after closing time. She was refused entry even though there were other customers still inside the store. Hermes insists that the store was closed and no exception was going to be made for Ms. Winfrey. Oprah's people seem to be saying that the issue is not that she was refused entry, but that she was rebuffed because she was a black woman - apparently she was sans makeup - and they did not realize who she was. It has been rumored that comments were made about "problems with North Africans at this store."

Who knows which version is correct? What I find sad is the glee with which people leapt on this story. See, I knew she must be a bitch! Hah! Told you so! Donald Trump is on his third marriage and umpteenth financial turnaround, and yet you never hear anyone shouting as he swans his way from the Trump tower to the Trump helicopter: Wow, look at him! What a bastard!

The old double standard. And sadly, we women are doing it to ourselves. I googled the term "Oprah sucks". There were 120,000 hits.

Yeah, I like Oprah. I respect the fact that she is a powerful, self-made, black woman. She makes thoughtful, sometimes insightful, television, and as a writer and author I have to respect the attention she has brought to reading quality literature. She may be rich as Croseus, but she doesn't spend her days reclining on a velvet sofa, eating grapes and being fanned by nubile, naked young men.

If you were in her position, could you say the same thing?

Message for London

Message for London, originally uploaded by kimhs.

This photo is more telling than anything I could write this week. It will be posted sometime soon on the website listed below. We are not afraid.com is a grassroots effort based in London showcasing messages from people all over the globe. It is a way of giving the stiff middle finger to not only the terrorists in the UK, but operatives of Al Qaeda the world over.

FDR said that the only thing to fear is fear itself. Yes, the terrorists can kill some of us and maim and wound others, but they cannot kill us all. The only true power they have over us is the ability to sow the seeds of panic and fear and force us to change our world in order to accomodate them. We can - unlike those unfortunate people riding the tube or the bus in London last week - choose not to do this.

We are not afraid. Damn right.

Kim

werenotafraid234x60

werenotafraid234x60, originally uploaded by kimhs.

Go to this web address to see photos of support. The only power the terrorists have over us is not the loss of life but the power of mass fear. We Are Not Afraid!

London

I know that this is a place in which I usually describe the humourous aspects of my life in the Suburbs, but today is not a day for funny stories.

London. I have such conflicting memories of this city. It always appeared so much more real in my imagination than it could ever truly be in life. In my mind it was the city of Shakespeare and the Globe Theatre, Dickens and Virginia Woolf - a pastoral world of Mayfair townhouses, civilized conversations and soothing cups of tea. Hyde Park, the Serpentine, Buckingham Palace and Green Park. Royalty and big black cabs. Harrods and "the tube".

My first visit was a terrible shock. Like hitting an emotional brick wall. I wanted to love it. I must love it! But I didn't. 18 years old, feeling very alone in a cheap hotel in Earl's Court, overwhelmed by the sheer strangeness of being on the other side of the world. It was horrible. I came home, crushed. I had been cheated!

I did not return for several years. Even then, the sting of that initial heartache tainted my feelings for the city. It took me several trips before London began to grow on me. It was as if I had to accept that my initial crush was just that: a fancified attachment to a place that never truly existed outside of BBC television serials and my imagination.

It seems strange to think now how many important moments in my life are linked with London. That initial trip - no matter how difficult at the time - was a big step in my life, a real attempt to be on my own. Ten years after that initial trip, I ended up using London as a hub when I worked as a travel columnist. It was a city that I grew to know quite well - to appreciate it's quirky strengths and accept it's inevitable failings. I even fell in love with my now husband while he was working as a professor in London.

It is a great city. Not a perfect one - if there is such a thing - but a great one.

Tonight, I grieve for it.


BBC News, July 7, 2005 : A series of bomb attacks on London's transport network has killed more than 30 people and injured about 700 others. Three explosions on the Underground left 35 dead and two died in a blast on a double decker bus. Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said the bombings had "the hallmarks of an al-Qaeda-related attack".

An Open Letter to President Bush

Dear Mr. President,

I suppose you're rather surprised to be hearing from me. After all, we're not, shall we say .... close. Alright, I don't like you and you probably - if you knew me - wouldn't like me much either. After all, I am a birkenstock wearing, granola eating, tree hugging foreign liberal whose Save the Whales sticker has blistered off the back of her van. You, on the other hand, are a son of priviledge who lacks the intellectual smarts to grasp the term morally conflicted. What is morally conflicted, you ask? That is how you should feel when you send poor inner city kids off to be killed in Iraq after you were too cowardly to dirty your flight suit with any South Asian soil.

But perhaps we're getting off on the wrong foot here. I am not here to complain, Mr. President. Well, not much anyway. I am here to help you. Really, I am. It's been a week of nothing but bad news about Iraq. First off, Rumsfeld estimates that it's going to be another 12 years before American troops can leave Iraq. 12 years! That's the average life span of a golden retriever, for crying out loud. And then Cheney tries to back peddle his way out of that mess, but with little success. Even you, Mr. President, couldn't really come up with anything better than saying that setting a timetable for leaving Iraq "would be a serious mistake" that would embolden the enemy and demoralize American military morale. Excuse my french, Mr. President, but what the fuck do you think 12 more years of deployment is going to do!

But it's going to be okay. Really, it is. I have a plan. Why should you listen to the plan of a communist lily-livered peacenik who isn't even an American? I'll tell you why - 'cause you don't have any better options right now. So just sit back and ponder this for a moment.

Here's the plan: I have in my possession a weapon of such deadly force that not even the Iraqi insurgents could survive it. We're talking about something so destructive, so fearful, that twenty four hours in its presence and you would have Osama Bin Laden waving down American tanks in the streets and begging to be taken into captivity. Al Zarqawi would fling down his arms and start spouting Al Qaeda secrets. There would be a mass exodus from the site of it's deployment, right into the arms of any waiting troops. Hell, you might even get people willing to convert to fundamentalist Christianity! How does that sound to you, Mr. President?

And what could be so fearful, so traumatic, as to cause people to run screaming from it's presence?

I'll tell you what. Or rather, who. My two year old son. Oh yes. This child can empty a shopping mall with a single well timed scream. He can tantrum for days with a ferocity that could shake anyone's faith in a higher power. He can even demolish fire resistant, anti-shatter glass with four lego blocks and a plastic set of pliers. Yes, Mr. President, he is an awesome, dangerous weapon - and one not to be used lightly. But I would be willing to part with him for a brief period of time - for the greater good, of course. You see, Mr. President, this could be a win-win situation for both of us. You could bring peace and stability to Iraq, and I could get a little shut-eye.

And Matti, well, he could learn a new language and get some interesting stamps on his passport. We could call it an "educational experience".

I will be waiting for your reply, Mr. President.

Sincerely,
Kim