This is not a race

Wow, I wish I had more time to write. I have so much to say. The thoughts in my mind just never stop, it is like a constant stream that I can't shut it off.
Life is good, my grandparents took Aria bowling today and she got two spares and a strike! Grandpa teaches her to "hit the pocket!" and is an excellent bowling coach.
I started feeding Devin cereal about a week ago, mixing it with his milk of course. At first it helped and he slept great, now it seems like he wants to eat more and more. Last night he went to sleep at midnight and woke up at 4. We are beyond exhausted.
But we are happy .  .. we can't wait for a quiet night at home on Thursday night. Now that we are old we just want to stay home with the kids!

Last night Mike and I watched a show on the true story behind the movie "The Blind Side." If you don't know, the movie is a true story about a wealthy couple who took in a teenager who was in dire straights . . . well he could play football, and he played it well, and eventually he was a first round draft pick for the Baltimore Ravens. What a great story!
There was a segment on the show that talked about how some people are saying the movie perpetuates race stereotypes. That really bothered me . . . it made me think how often that happens. A great story is told and the two parties who are involved just happen to be of different races so that fact has to be analyzed over and over. Why? Why does it have to be about what color someone's skin is? Why can't it be just as simple as the fact that a family helped someone in need?
It is important to remember that segregation and racism existed in our history, because we learned from it. But it does us no good to seek out things like the fact that one person in the story was white and one was black and focus on that. So what if their skin was different colors? That is not the point. Isn't that, in a way, continuing the stereoypes?
I read something once that read something to the effect of . . . we will continue to try to get ahead of each other as long as we keep calling each other "races."
Sandra Bullock seems like a caring, intelligent person, and she was also affected by the accusations. So much so that she turned the premier party for the movie into a fundraiser, donating the money to aid a high school in, Memphis I believe.
I gotta say I have a lot of respect for her. . . when she was asked about what she thought of people accusing the movie of pushing race stereotypes she basically replied, "If that is all you get from this story you are missing the point."

Pass it on . . .

(I usually write much better than this, but I am super burnt out tonight. But this story had to be told!)

So after I discovered that my first pay check after coming back to work was $26 and my second pay check was barely over $100, I was pretty upset. I am working full time too ... I had thought that all my back health insurance, etc.was caught up. . . so Mike and I had budgeted my pay check for gas, bills, house payment, etc. Me basically not getting paid really messed us up.
Because Mike is a painter, work is kind of hit and miss this time of year. He has been working when there has been work . . . but he has had some time off.
We had spent all our savings when Mike was out of work before and while I was on maternity leave.There was nothing left there.
I try really hard not to let things that I have no control over get to me, but this time I could not help it. Luckily, we already had bought Christmas for the kids, but we were planning on going to Utah to visit Mike's family, and we still had monthly bills to pay and Christmas presents for our families. And we really, really needed to go grocery shopping. We have had  to let some bills slide, living on one income is hard in this economy, but now the bills were needing to be paid ASAP. It came down to trying to decide if we should  pay bills or buy groceries. I was so worried, literally worried sick. I went home early and wondered what in the hell we were gonna do.
Mike and I talked for awhile and came up with a sort of back up plan. .. then we talked about how thankful we are to have what we have.We have a roof over our heads, we have heat, we have clothes, and we both have jobs. We are doing pretty good, and we are thankful for that. I think about that every day.
Saturday night we were doing some major "spring" cleaning, gathering a bunch of stuff to donate  to the DI, etc. Our house was ungodly hot, so we cracked the front door to let it cool off . . .
I went to the basement to switch out the laundry, and Mike was in another room. When I came upstairs our dog was standing at the door like someone was there. I went to the door to investigate, and when I opened it I had to do a double take.
Sitting on our front step were several wrapped packages. No one around, just the packages. I yelled at Mike to come to the door, and he was just as shocked as me. We brought the boxes inside and opened them . . . one contained a whole frozen turkey, another held two bags of potatoes, then there was a basket with soup and fruit and two bags with some toys for the kids. There was also a card that held several 20$ bills and a note that read, "To Jenny and Mike from people who care."
I think I almost passed out. We both immediately called our families demanding to know who to thank, and both sides swore it was not them. I am still in shock and it is now Tuesday night.
I snuck away for awhile into a dark room and did a lot of thinking and a little crying, not gonna lie.
I thought about all the times recently that I had lost faith in humanity or gotten upset with someone for cutting me off while driving or something like that. I felt so grateful and so guilty at the same time.
I thought about people that maybe I have not been nice to in the past, or things i have said that maybe I should not have.
That night I vowed to be more thankful and to work on making myself a better person. I have already made a concious effort to do that in the last year, but this experience lit the fire even more.
I also thought about all the people who could use what we had. We are going through a hard time, but there are many who are well worse off than us.
There are those commercials that show a person helping someone out, then that person does something nice for someone else, ect. I am so inspired. I have decided that I will do something nice for someone now . .. something that make someone feel as good as I did Saturday night.

I know that know matter how hard things get, there are always people who care, and I know that even more now.

Doing something nice for someone feels great . . . pass it on.

Music as a weapon

Having a lot to say is quite the curse, especially since technology offers me so many ways to get my words "out." I don't know where to start. Which topic should I tackle? Writing has always been therapy for me, and I have kept a journal since I was about 6 years old. It is fascinating to go back and read old entries and see how much I have changed, both for better and worse.

One thing that has always been a constant in my life is music.My mom listened to things like the Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, The Beatles, Three Dog Night, Aerosmith, Kansas, etc.and my dad listened to Black Sabbath, Metallica, Blue Oyster Cult, KISS, The Who, Led Zepplin Iron Maiden, etc. You could say I had a first class musical upbringing. And I soaked it up like a sponge.When we would go camping I could hardly wait to get up in the mountains enough for the radio station to fade out because I knew that is when a CD . . . well, back then it was a tape.

When I was a toddler I would dance every time my dad put a certain KISS record on. I don't knw why it was that one album, I just loved it. And from a young age I was fascinated by female rockers like Pat Benetar. My mom played one of her records one night while she was making dinner, and I remember asking her to put it on again after it was over.

Somehow though, and I don't know how,  I always knew it was "wrong" for girls to like rock and roll. In school whenever someone asked me what kind of music I listened to I always responded, shyly, "country." I thought I would be more accepted, and that it was more appropriate and "normal" for a little red headed freckled girl from po-dunk Blackfoot, Idaho to listen to country than anything else.

What I never admitted to anybody was that secretly when my parents would leave to go to town to run errands (we lived wayyyy out in Riverside outside Blackfoot) I would swipe my dad's cassette of the Metallica "Black" album and go back to my room and listen to songs like The Unforgiven and Nothing Else Matters and hope and pray they would not come home and catch their 11 year-old daughter listening to Metallica and promptly sign me up for counseling.

Then grunge happened. Sigh, you say, grunge was the death of metal. You must remember, in 1992 I was 11 years old . ..  just starting middle school and starting to get into music.The first time I heard "Smells Like Teen Spirit" my mom was driving a friend and I to the Blackfoot swimming pool. I will never know how to explain it, but the first time I heard that songs something changed inside me. Really. That sounds crazy and cliche, but it is true. I never thought of music the same. I felt like it was something that was written for my generation. Hair metal was about drugs, sex, and excess. I was 11, what the hell did I know about that stuff? Nirvana talked about being angry and misunderstood, not knowing where you fit in in the world and seeking your place. I could relate to that. In many ways I still can.

Then there came of course "Jeremy" "Fell On Black Days," "Black Hole Sun," and more . . . and of course there had always been Alice in Chains. They are one of the greatest bands ever, and "Would?" is one of the greatest songs ever written. Beautiful, haunting, meaningful.Gorgeous. And I get it.

Broken, like my master, teach me, young child, love therafter . . .
so I made a big mistake, try to see it once my way . . .

Two of the most beautiful things in this world are music and poetry. And modern music combines both. Jim Morrison of The Doors and Bob Dylan are, in my opinion, two of the greatest poets of the last century. And talented musicians. Have you ever read any of Morrison's poerty? It is AMAZING.

Music and lyric speak to me in a way that nothing else has ever been able to. So many people believe, especially in a world filled with violence, that listening to bands like Metallica and Slipknot will make a person want to kill because they talk about killing and death. Apparently these people have never listened to the song "Midnight in Montgomery" by Alan Jackson. It tells the story of a wife who kills her abusive spouse. But it is country music so it is "Wholesome" and Ok.

Pop songs are so manufactured and fake . . ..  they are written by other people and "assigned" to cute bubble gum pop stars to sing so they can make money. I can't respect that.

Many people believe that all metal songs encourage delinquency, destruction, murder and retaliation. .. in truth most rock songs encourage believing in yourself and not letting people get you down. Many of them also have a political message, telling people to think for themselves. Almost every album has a song of lost love, an "I miss you, wish you were still here" message that many people can relate to.
People listen to the music they do because it speaks to them. The music I listen to calms me. If I am having  bad day I can plug in a CD and say, "ya know, this is not so bad, other people know how I feel." And I take a deep breath and lose myself in the music.

I had a pretty stressfull day today . . . . so while my baby was asleep and my hubby was watching TV I took a hot bubble bath and listened to some tunes. One of those songs was "Would?" It reminded me of a time when I was a teenager and I was so depressed I would sit in my room and cut my arms because I was desperate to see my blood to remind myself I was still alive. Severe depression is not something I would wish on anyone, but that is another blog . . ..

As I listened to the song, I thought about how far I have come and how happy I am now. It was a reminder like no other. Music is therapy. It is real. It is modern poetry. It is a voice for people who don't fit in. It is the "clique" you never had. It is better than drugs, but more addictive. If I did not have music I would probably be addicted to meth or something, seriously. Everyone needs a vice. This is mine. Someday someone will understand.