The Three Little Masks

Once upon a time, a little girl (a teenager, really) was really into cos-playing. This little girl asked her mom if she could make her a mask like one of her favorite characters on her favorite show. The mask was supposed to look like a cat, with a star over one eye because this character is a rock star. She sings in a band call The Kitty Section. The little girl gave her mom a lot more crafting credit that her mom deserved.

The mom, not being a very adept crafter (see above paragraph, last sentence) tried to make the mast out of construction paper.

The first mask looked okay but when the mom and girl tried to put elastic on it so the girl could wear it on her face, well, the tape wouldn’t hold the elastic to the paper. The paper and tape didn’t stand up to the pulling and tugging that went into putting the mask on.

So the mom gave it a little thought and tried again, this time with fabric. She sewed the elastic to the fabric and lo, it held up even tugged and pulled over the girl’s head. Alas, the construction paper the mom had glued to the fabric ears to give it color and dimension were too heavy for the flimsy fabric. It just didn’t hold it’s shape.

Finally, the mom went to her local Hobby Lobby and bought a $.99 foam mask, elastic already attached. She took this mask home and made construction paper ears which she glued to the mask. She added purple marker to the mask’s eye holes to look like eyeliner. She glued a pink and blue star over the right eye to match the mask worn by the girl’s favorite character and voila, the mask help up to the tugging and pulling, the huffing and puffing. It held its shape, the elastic did not pull off, it did not fall in and in the eyes of the little girl, the mom was hero, even if it did take three tries.

This is what she wanted:

This is what she got:

Week In Review

The second half of January is tough. I know this is true for most of us in the northern hemisphere. It's cold, Chrismtmas is over, winter will last at least two more months...it just sucks.

Monday: fine. I stay busy at work now that I process payroll. Did I mention that at any point? My job, at which I've been for over three years, moved me into payroll (I still work the front desk too, this is an addition to my responsibilities, not an exchange of responsibilities...yes, I've been monetarily compensated for this addition.) I'm actually flattered that my boss and coworkers trust me with this job. I mean, payroll is not something to just be handed off willy nilly to anyone off the street. So there's that.

Ohhh, I almost forgot that we had a little antibody party in the front office on Monday. The owner of our company had some spare antibody tests and so about six of us poked our fingers and tested our blood for Covid antibodies. Guess whose vaccines have given her antibodies. Yep, me!! Whee! But guess who will still wear a mask and keep others safe? Yes, still me. Because I care for my fellow man even if they don't necessarily care about me. Hmmm.

Tuesday I was mostly bored, thought I did move some files from one one cabinet to another. That at least got me off my butt for much of the day.

Wednesday, I was as cranky as a toddler that had missed her nap. I can usually tamp down my emotions at work but when our shipping department brought me a 35 pound package to be taken to the post office, it just kind of pushed me over the edge of cranky to pissed off. It didn't help that this stupid package wasn't packed well. I could feel the hydrolic cylinder in there rolling around. There was no way this thing was going to make to Ukraine boxed the way it was. And let's not forget to mention that it cost around $275 to mail it. Not that it was MY $275 I was spending on postage, but it was my arms and hands carrying that stupid package into the post office.

Thankfully, I had to stuff checks that day, so I was able to go into a conference room and be alone, away from the front desk (my desk) and the phone (not that I serve as the operator for the company. A lovely older (older than me, ahem) woman does that job and she's very good at it, and get this, she enjoys it. I'm glad she does because I know I would not so there's a positive in the week.) and just be with the stuffer, sorting and organizing all the payroll checks I'd printed on Monday.

Thursday and Friday were just regular days. It all kind of blends into a sort of innocuous monotony. Which is fine except in the middle of January it makes you start to wonder what the hell you're doing with your life. I mean, I'm 51 years old. Is this it?

I come home each evening and we do homework, I make dinner, I clean up after dinner. Some nights Liv takes a bath and I help her wash her hair. Other nights, I just collapse into my chair at 8 and sit there like a giant lump of frustration.

Alas, we all know January won't last forever. It can't, February has to push her ugly head into existance. But behind February is March, with all the green that is promised and finally April and the gray skies and so on and so on. The earth keeps spinning, Covid keeps spreading, and we keep waking up and doing it all again. The alternative is unacceptable.

Stay tuned, next week I might write about how our idiotic high school is sending their choir and band to Virginia instead of D.C. because they had to make their trip 'unvaccinated friendly.' Yeah, it's as stupid as it sounds.

19

Lyss turned 19 this week. This isn't really a birthday post, though. I mean, she's amasing and totally deserves a birthday post but this is more about me and how the older I get the more pissed off I get at the entire world at large.

See, her birthday was on a Friday. The Wednesday night before her birthday she sent me a Snap asking if I was working all day on Friday. I was asleep when the snap cam in so I responded the next morning, Thursday.

I casually mentioned to Tom that she'd asked and he, well, he got annoyed. Not with me, more with her for even suggesting that I take a partial day off to celebrate her birthday.

Do I even need to mention that his annoyance annoyed me? Why would he even care if I took half a day off? I work over 40 hours a week. I have excused time off, both paid and unpaid. We pay our bills, I pull my substantial weight around here. What difference does it make to him if I take time off?

I was so annoyed by the time I got to work that I had to take some Excederin for the headache that had formed from my irritation.

Because that amount of frustration is hard to sustain I was fine by the end of the day. But I'd also decided that if Lyss wanted to come home that Friday and spend the afternoon with me, I'd totally take the time off to be with her.

I don't mind bending for her but I'm so tired of bending for the rest of the world. When I was nineteen, I was just at the point where I was starting to bend for others. At 16, I was tough, I was sure of myself, I KNEW I was right in my convictions and I stood up to everyone and anyone about them. Sometime between 16 and 19, my spine softened and I started giving in to the will of others and these days, damn it, I'm as spineless as a jellyfish.

And that pissed me off.

And I do not want that for her or for Olivia. I want them to be strong and self-assured and to always believe in their right to have an opinion.

When Tom was going on about how it was selfish of her to want me to take time off for her birthday I wanted to say, "So what? If you can't be selfish with your own mother, who can you be selfish with?"

Instead, I stood there and let him rant but I also had a look that I know said, "Go ahead, have your say but I'm going to do what I want to do anyway." See, my spine is trying to reassert itself.

I don't have any resolutions for this year but if I did, one of them would be to be stronger, to speak up more often, to maybe stop letting people walk all over me. I want to be the one to make the decisions that affect me. I WANTED to take time of to be with Lyss. She wasn't asking me to do anything I didn't want to do. That's the difference in this situation.

I don't want Alyssa's spine to soften. I don't want her bend herself in half trying to please everyone else and put all her own desires and dreams on hold. I want he to be kind, and strong and sure of herself. Which, right now...she is and I'm so, so proud of her and the life she's living.