Let Us Pray

On my family-style blog (the "other" blog) where I refrain from cussing and being crass (http://www.risdonnews.blogspot.com/), I gave the following account of a conversation in our house today:

Sam (bouncing while he's talking): "Mom can I play some Playstation?"
Me: "Maybe after breakfast. But STOP bouncing."
Sam: "I only bounce when I'm asking a question and I want the answer to be yes."
Emma: "Oh, like when you ask 'am I a poop?'"
Sam: "What I meant is when I want the answer to be good. OK fartface?"

I wrote at the end: "Is fartface a bad word?"

Immediately the grandparents wrote back and said that, yes, fartface was in fact a bad word and that perhaps it was time for the kids to start going to Sunday School.

As if Sunday School is the answer to everything. Admittedly, we don't go to church and never have as a family. I grew up Unitarian with ultra liberal parents. We celebrated Christmas and Hanukkah. My parents taught a sex ed class in our living room to my brother and his 7th grade friends. I came down one night to see a slide of a big, hairy penis covering the entire living room wall. My friends and I stuffed the question box with queries like, "what is a fetish?" My brother and I travelled to Israel alone with a priest named Father Paul when I was 15 so we could do a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and learn about the three big religions that have created such unrest in that part of the world.

My point is - my parents were all about openness and deciding for yourself. I think that's wonderful. I also think that it can be confusing. When you are left up to your own devices to figure out the world because you are basically told it's yours to figure out without any guidebook (i.e., Bible) it can be overwhelming.

I've tried many churches - Catholic, Unity, Unitarian, Methodist, United Church of Christ to name a few. I've never taken communion. One time I went to the UC of Christ and was the only one there not taking communion. Someone actually came up to me and asked if I was physically unable to walk and needed help. I never went back.

I have tried for so long to figure it all out. That is, where I fit, what I believe. Every time I decide, I can do this, I can just be Christian because then I will know what to believe and I will belong somewhere, I just can't fully do it. Maybe I am trying too hard to want to believe every little part instead of just taking the ideas as a whole.

Don't get me wrong. I would consider myself a spiritual person. I believe in God in a less traditional way that might be a subject for a future blog. I meditate, I pray sometimes. I see goodness in the world and have gratitude for the gifts and blessings in my life.

So it's not like we want our kids to grow up immoral and messed up. Hopefully saying "fartface" isn't an indication that they'll go to hell. In fact, Emma said to me the other day that if she had three wishes, one of them would be that people would not start wars because they believe different things about God. Rock on sister!

Back to the idea that Sunday School/church is a panacea. Don't we all know many the messed up person who went to Sunday School? Certainly this may be a place to learn and to grow spiritually. But to say that without church you can't be a good person, cannot have the proper guidance, cannot live a solid life in which you are doing the right thing and espousing values of compassion, gratitude, civility, and kindness is just untrue.

Fartface, fartface, fartface, fartface, fartface, fartface.

Karma

I'm not sure how I feel about karma - does it really come back to bite you in the butt if you do something less than stoic?





Karma bit me in the butt - literally - while we were in Boston. Remember a couple of posts ago when I talked about the perky woman at the pool with the tampon string hanging out? And remember how I said I don't wear tampons? Well, maybe I should start wearing them and risk getting toxic shock again.





Here's the story. So we go to Boston. I get my period the day before. Our first day in Boston is spent touring the city. I wear white shorts. What in God's name was I thinking. We traipse all over the city, come back to my aunt's house, have cocktails, eat some take-out, stay up late talking. It is not until the next day when I going to get more clothes from my suitcase that I spot my white shorts. And they look like this:

No shit. So I fear I walked the city, rode the subway, and hung out with the relatives for a good 12 hours in these shorts. Who knew the pad wasn't holding up? I find myself asking how I could have missed this? It's not as if I'm in tenth grade again (yes, I was a late bloomer) getting it for the first time. It's also not as if I am an extremely heavy bleeder who soaks through pads by the hour. This was preventable, yet there it is. And it must have happened when I was sitting down because it is on the very obvious back of the shorts, not so much in the crotch.

Other than blood soaked shorts, the trip was great.

Our family is heading to Boston tomorrow to visit relatives. I have a prediction that I just might return with some blog material. You never know who you'll meet on the plane or what freaky sites you might see on the streets of a big city. I will NEVER forget visiting Boston several years ago. My brother and I were in Harvard square. I looked across the street just in time to see a bum with a humongous beer belly projectile vomit all over the stairs leading down to the subway.

Another recent travel escapade was when Erika and I visited Las Vegas last month. We decided to get a substantial drink at the Mirage hotel bar before starting our gambling for the evening. While I downed a dirty martini the size of a fish bowl, Erika kept calling over "Jose" the bartender to give her more shots of tequila. We began talking to some hoodlum from L.A., Chris, and his gangster friend, "Six." We finished our drinks and in my martini-haze I gave out Erika's phone number to Chris. At the time, this seemed completely hilarious to me.

You have to understand, Erika and I travel to Vegas one or two times a year together. We are very protective of each other and always stick together. For me to give our her number was a complete change in character for me and a no-no in the friendship department. On our way to the casino I was rolling with laughter telling Erika that I gave out her number. She kept staring at me silently, as if to say "how could you?" I take it back - she wasn't silent. She yelled, "How could you???"

I failed to mention a little detail. In my drunken stupor I had asked Chris, "So, have you ever done a threesome?". I threw this into the conversation not because I wanted to do a threesome with Chris and Erika (Egads! I love Erika, but the combination of doing my best friend and some gangsta doesn't appeal). I like to be provocative especially when I am drunk. I get a thrill from shocking people. So you can only imagine that when I gave Chris Erika's number he thought FOR SURE he was going to get a little menage-a-trois action later that night. So he kept a-callin' and callin'. BTW, Chris had done a threesome before. Big shocker. He called at 11:30 p.m., 1:30 a.m., 3:30 a.m.....

So skipping ahead twelve hours after a long night of losing at playing blackjack - I am sick as a dog. Hanging with the porcelain. I had a raging headache. I reached in my toiletry bag for some Advil. It made me sicker. Later on when I was actually able to walk I saw the Advil wrapper on the table. I had taken Advil PM. Jesus. Just what my early morning hangover needed. And, no, we never saw Chris again.

So let's hope I can return with some material. No threesomes, I promise.