On a related end-of-year/beginning-of-new-year note, I submit to you my list of Things I'm Over:
Pregnant celebrities. I frigging do not care. And if I hear the term "baby bump" one more time, I am going to hurl my linguine all over the floor. And I find especially tiresome the leering glee of supposedly sophisticated Hollywood entertainment reporters when it comes to the unmarried enciente; for God's sake, grow up.
Slutty little girls. Dear parents of prepubescent female children: Stop dressing your little girls like models for Hos "R" Us. It isn't cute or ironic. It's gross. Start a new trend -- chinos and polo shirts and boat shoes. Parent up. Raise your kids.
Boys raised by wolves. One of the unfortunate trends I see among child-rearing friends of mine is the attitude that boys are inherently socially defective, like rabid monkeys, and as such should not be expected to be polite, capable of being educated, respectful to elders, considerate or even hygenic: "What do you expect? He's a boy." Bull hockey. I grew up in a Prussian-American subculture, and you'd better believe that boys were expected to be civilized. Once again -- parent up. Raise your kids. If you assume that your boy is the behavioral equivalent of a baboon, guess what he'll grow up to be.
"Born-again" anything. Problematic theology, Lutheranwise, aside: I am so over so-called born-again Christians self-identifying as an especially important and meritorious societal subset entitled to admiration or, worse yet, deference on the part of everyone else. I sometimes find myself actually rooting for the ascendant irreligious majority to finally find enough of a public voice to send the Real Christians[tm] back into the sociopolitical backwaters. I wake up in a cold sweat at the thought of President Huckabee; God save us.
Beliefnet. It took me several years, but I think I am finally over my addiction to the Christian-Christian Debate forum. The number of squirrely/fundie/un-fun posters has finally reached a tipping point for me. (And how can I read all my new magazines if I'm online all the time?)
Sweets. Ironically, my marathon cookie-baking over the holidays has made me sweet-averse. Which doesn't mean that I no longer have to watch what I eat -- I loves me that meat and potatoes -- but frankly (and it hurts me to say this) if I were confronted this moment by the choice of a chocolate bar or a bowl of LutheranChik Family Recipe split-pea soup, I'd go for the soup.
A real Christmas tree. I am "over" it in the sense that I no longer find the thought of an imitation Christmas tree a calamitous betrayal of tradition. This year I decided that, since we were moving back and forth between households all holiday season long, it wasn't practical to fuss with the upkeep of a real tree. The fake one went up in about 15 minutes -- the hardest part was aligning the light plugs on my pre-lit model -- looks fine, isn't tippy, doesn't need daily watering and doesn't shed needles. Some year I may go back to a natural tree, but this year the faux fir worked out just fine.
11 comments:
Slutty little girls, yep, and how about slutty looking clothes on 19 year old girls who attend church with their parents. Really, I know that these clothes are so "normal" for this age group that they just don't understand the reaction from the rest of us.
Born again: yep, yep, yep.
Beliefnet: I've sometimes checked in on it because of references on your blog to Beliefnet. My reaction was the same as my pastor's reaction when I told her about feeling hurt when I was reading blogs written by people from your former denomination: Stop reading that stuff!
re: the "born again" thing, we had a great conversation at one of my last bible studies of the season because one woman said, "Oh, I'm not born again." everyone else said, oh yes, you are, don't let the "born agains" steal your identity! or something like that.
I was proud of those dog-gone Lutherans. they're getting pretty good at "what does baptism mean for daily living?"
Good list of things to be over...especially the beliefnet and born againers.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
I always go through a brief period of post holiday-indulgence rich food aversion. Sadly, it does not last.
My tip re: the fake Christmas tree thing: buy a real pine wreath (about $15 at TJs) and hang it in the same room as your fabulous fake. Get the same great pine-y smell, w/o all the mess and hassle of a real tree. After the holidays simply toss.
Slutty girls, obnoxious boys, ANYTHING to do with celebrities: HOLLA!
President Huckabee: could he really be any worse than the Current Occupant? That having been said, the rest of the Born Again stuff? HOLLA!
Can I add two? Thomas the Train & Bob the Builder. After a solid week of watching my nephew throw a fit when anything else is on the television, I'm about ready to go Godzilla on both of these animated brainsuckers. We've declared our new house a "Thomas-free" zone.
I don't know how parents of small children can endure hours of toddler TV...I have enough trouble getting through one episode.
"I grew up in a Prussian-American subculture, and you'd better believe that boys were expected to be civilized."
And how!
I have to laugh at your sweets comments. Today I got a huge (and I mean huge) giftbasket full of different sweet and semi-sweet Italian chocolates from one of our vendors. Now, I am usually a chocoholic but this time looked at it, said "Meh" and put it out for our IT support staff to gobble up. I have had enough sweets for a while.
I wrote in my blog a couple of weeks ago about a family sitting behind me at church. Their kids are always dressed inappropriately (the girls literally wear skirts and shorts so short that they can't bend over), and the kids are always disruptive, but that week, the kids were actually text messaging during the services. They assumed that since they had the phones on silent, no one would know. I could still hear them pressing the buttons on the phone and hear them vibrating when they got responses. The parents did nothing.
I'm soooo over that.
How about walking and driving with cell phones...
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