Jupiter is more lion than lamb

“It’s better to live one day as a lion,than a thousand years as a lamb”

-quote in a 1970 photograph by George Rodriguez

This quote is a tattoo in my future.

Participating this week in Weekly Geeks #17:A Quote A Day

Jupiter gets schooled by her 3 year old.

Grown-ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1900 – 1944), “The Little Prince”, 1943

“Spiders turn into dragonflies.And turtles turn into shells. And they have shells,too. Robots don’t turn into anything because they already have their own head.Sometimes they have 3 heads. but not here…that’s in New York City.Right now,we’re here, at home.We’re just going to dig today because we need to find centipedes to turn into grasshoppers”

-My Kid,Age 3

~explaining to me the way it is

Participating this week in Weekly Geeks #17:A Quote A Day

Jupiter tries not to cough up a lung

“When you reach the end of your rope,tie a knot and hang on”

-Thomas Jefferson

Things That Make Me Want To Curl Up In Bed And Stay There

• I’ve been sick for 14 days. Just when it seems I’m coming out from under it, I slide back into it.Yesterday it was 90+ degrees and I was running a fever.I was sweating like a whore in church. I sound like I smoke a pack a day and drink whiskey like it’s water. I’m coughing up some of the nastiest chunks of lung butter I’ve ever seen
• The kids are all starting to come down with colds and have the accompanying whine that seems to go along with it
• We don’t have health insurance
• I haven’t had sex in 15 days
• My Grandmother has a black eye. No…not just a black eye.The entire side of her face is swollen. She doesn’t remember what happened
• Alzheimers sucks big fat hairy donkey balls covered with pus-filled zits.
• The nursing home says they will have a bed for her as early as Thursday,which means we need to clean out her apartment,which also means most of her “stuff” will end up at my house.
• Summer is pretty much over
• My step-son was “missing”,which just turns out to mean he was not easily located
• The 7 year old stepped on a metal …thing…. and ended up with a huge puncture wound on the bottom of her foot and I stressed all night long that she was going to wake up with lockjaw because I’m a horrible mother who didn’t take her to the ER to get a tetanus shot.
• Tetanus can cause seizures so intense they break bones and dislocate joints (!!!) .Thankfully, this is just a random fact thrown in here and no one I know has tetanus.
• I finished reading Memoirs of a Geisha and did not fall head over heels in love with it as promised
• Two weeks of being sick…my house looks like I could apply for FEMA.

The Silver Lining

• I’m not quite dead yet
• There have been no hurricanes in NY
• Soon I will not have to worry so much about my Grandma on a daily basis
• I ate a brownie for breakfast
• I have coffee
• Tina Fey rocks

Participating this week in Weekly Geeks #17:A Quote A Day

Jupiter tells Miss Manners to shut the hell up

“Policing ourselves to be less offensive to the
majority is to be part of our own oppression.”

-Jane Rule

Coming of age, I spoke out loud my beliefs on  war,racism and religion.My Grandfather was furious anytime I expressed any opinion that differed from his own and told me that less than 3% of the entire world population thought like I did. He used that exact figure. 3%. I didn’t need to be a genius to know he was wrong but it was small consolation after being cut down by the only father figure I ever had in my young life.

He  had an infamous temper,excused because it was “just the stubborn Irish in him”. I cannot completely embrace stereotypes of heritage and ancestry but whatever it was that raised his ire so much and made him refuse to back down from what HE felt to be the truth, I thankfully inherited it. There was no way I ever believed that even though my opinion might not be the major consensus, was it any less valuable and significant.

I hit backspace when I’m writing more often  than I care to admit . My tongue might have grooves permanently cut into it from biting it so much. I know…there’s some who might be surprised by this. I’m perceived as being outspoken and opinionated. Those people who see me that way are probably a little  horrified at the thought of what it is I’m holding in and not sharing (or spewing) with the rest of the world.

In motherhood, I’ve settled into this role of being a bit more socially acceptable and polite than the younger version of myself that was very raw,no holds barred and unrelentingly honest.  It doesn’t suit me so much, this self-censorship. .Every time I censor myself, it feels wrong. It feels like I’m denying a part of myself, disregarding who I am for someone else’s integrity and to  remain inoffensive .

I’m really too old for popularity contests. I don’t think I’m teaching my children anything valuable by denying myself freedom of expression.Oppression is exhausting .For these 3 reasons alone, I’m regressing to the younger,less mature and unfinished version of myself. I liked her a lot better.

Participating this week in Weekly Geeks #17:A Quote A Day