The Negligent Mommy

An Open Letter to Bristol-Myers-Squibb

Dear BMS:

I recently saw a commercial for your company in which Lynn Redgrave, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2002, stated that she "refuses to die of breast cancer."  How lovely for her, and what an utter crock of shit.

The fact is, Ms. Redgrave's "refusal" has nothing to do with her survival.  She is simply lucky.  Lucky to have gotten breast cancer in the 21st century rather than fifty or a hundred years ago.  Lucky that she is white.  Lucky that she is wealthy.  Lucky to have the knowledge and wherewithal to seek treatment.  Above all, Ms. Redgrave is lucky that her cancer was treatable.

But your ad doesn't say any of that, does it?  Your ad suggests--hell, out-and-out states--that she survived because she refused to die of breast cancer.  Which is to say surviving breast cancer is a matter of moral fortitude, and if you want it enough, you will live through breast cancer.  Ipso facto, those who die of breast cancer die because they are weak, because they didn't fight hard enough.

Your ad is deeply offensive to anyone who has lost someone to breast cancer.  My mom didn't die because she was weak.  My mom didn't die because she failed to take care of herself.  She found the cancer early, she treated it aggressively, and she did everything she could to live.  And she died anyway.  It wasn't because she wasn't a fighter.  It wasn't because she didn't go around saying "I refuse to die of breast cancer."  She died because she had the horrible bad luck to have a form of the disease that is very difficult to treat.

In short, BMS, fuck you, your ad, your ad agency, and the horse you all rode in on.

With all sincerity,

Kirsten Small

P.S. to Ms. Redgrave:  I am really, truly pleased that you survived, and I mean you no ill will.  But next time you do an ad, you might consider really thinking about what they are asking you to say.

I'm going in.

Lord have mercy upon me, I have to go to the DMV this morning and get my license renewed.  Seriously, I have been dreading  this since the last time I got my license renewed 5 years ago. The DMV is hell on a good day, but of course there are never any *good* days at the DMV.

Update, 9:45 a.m.:  I left my office at 9:15 to go to the DMV, and I have been back for five minutes.  God bless them, everyone.

The worst part will be telling them my driver's license weight (that's the weight you fully intend to be within a couple of months, and you have the driver's license for years at a time, and you don't want it to be inaccurate, so you'll just tell them that's what you weigh now.  You seriously cannot tell me that I'm the only one who does that.) 

I seem to recall promising myself to lose weight at the beginning of the year.  And now that it is After The Bar (tm), it's time to make good.  Which, you know, is fine.  I'm good with the eating less and all that.  What's going to kill me is the exercise.  I *like* to exercise.  I like running, especially.  The problem is the when.  Middle of the day is no good--I'm either having lunch with someone, or I have errands to run, or I just generally don't like being all post-workout in the afternoon, because even though I take a shower, I can't take the time to wash my hair and so I feel yucky, and quite frankly I look a little yucky, too.

After work?  Nope again--there are kids, a husband, dinner, baths, homework and bedtime to contend with.

So, that leaves early morning (5:30 a.m.-ish) or late evening (8:30 pm-ish).  Both of which are certainly possible, and I definitely have to choose one or the other.  I just don't really like either option.  At 5:30 a.m., if I am going to be awake I would far rather be drinking coffee and reading.  At 8:30 p.m., I would far rather be doing any of the following: spending time with hubby, reading, knitting, watching TV, or doing any number of other things.

If I could, I would just let the exercise thing go.  But there are all those articles in the news about how you are going to die RIGHT NOW if you don't exercise at least 45 minutes five times a day, or something.  And, you know, there's the whole stress relief and weight loss thing.  And I'm *still* pissed off at the boyfriend in college who told me he liked me better when I was muscley.  A**hole.  I'll show you muscles.

So anyway, that's my rant for the day, all thanks to the DMV. 

SOTU Summary

Just in case you missed it last night, here's what I heard....

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, remember that speech a week or two ago, where I kind of said I was thinking about turning Iran into a parking lot?  I'm totally going to do it.  Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, Really, I mean it, I'm going to turn Iran into a parking lot.  Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, PARKING LOT.

Lovely.

Holy Crap.

I completely cannot believe what just happened.

I was in the process of writing a long post about all the generally crappy things that happened last week.  And I had gotten to the part about how this week is looking up, when I accidentally deleted the entire thing.

So here's the quick and dirty summary--my computer is FUBARed and I've lost pictures of the kids, the Saturn sucks (all the money out of our bank account), I am a bad driver (ask the side-view mirror of my car), and a worse coffee brewer (ask my friend who works at Starbucks and who threatened to revoke my license to brew coffee when she found out how I'd been doing it for 20 or so years.  My deepest apologies to anyone and everyone who has drunk my coffee during that time.)

But hey--I'm working on a really pretty scarf for a friend of mine (in Noro Silk Garden which I lovelovelove).  Owen came to our bed to snuggle last night and started laughing in his sleep--I'm not sure there is a better sound in all the world.  I am done with Christmas prep--gifts purchased/wrapped/sent, cards written & mailed, menus planned.  No baking yet, but that's because of the fast--I'll bake during the week between Christmas and New Years.  I'm going to my knitting group tonight for the first time in a long time.

So overall, life is good.

A question for Friday.

Query:  Why do people think that computers make our lives easier?  They're not here to do that.  They're here to make us completely batshit insane by refusing--in the form of crashing Wordperfect--every freaking time you try to delete that one freaking paragraph so you can finish the stupid project and go home and take a nap.

Sheesh.

Regrets, I've had a few...

   I regret getting up at 5 in the freaking a.m. on the day after Thanksgiving to go to Wal-Mart.  It seemed like such a good idea at the time.  Our old DVD player, which has been in the process of giving up the ghost for a while, decided that it would not play more than an hour of Owen's brand-new Cars DVD.  Since we had already decided that a new player would be our family Christmas present, it seemed like a good idea to stop off at Wal-Mart on the way to the 6:00 a.m. sale at my yarn store.

While the rudeness quotient at Wal-Mart was lower than usual (for which I thank lingering food comas), there was still little to enjoy about the trip.  But I got the DVD player and got to my LYS by 6:30, only to find it closed because they decided no one was insane enough to show up that early.  Clearly they don't know me well.  Fine.  I go home to set up the DVD player so the kids can watch the complete movie while I sleep.  Except, no remote.  Damn.

Back to Wal-Mart later that morning, with hubby and kids in tow.  Exchange remoteless DVD player for new box, checking to be sure remote is in place.  Swing by LYS and buy out their stock of white Cascade 220 (and get a bushel of free yarn for having been there at 6:30).  Get home, set up DVD player.  Discover that the remote that was in the box was the wrong freaking remote.  I hate Wal-Mart.

Sent hubby back to Wal-Mart to return the stupid DVD player.  Got one from another store instead.  We are happy--it works.

The moral of the story:  Wal-Mart sucks.  (But you knew that already.)

And thus endeth today's completely random post about nothing.  Except, one more thing:  Link here.  Then ping here.  Why? Because Norma said so, that's why.  You don't want to piss her off.

Dude, back off.

There are many things about the South that I love.  The incurable nosiness of Southerners is not one of them, however.  I vividly remember, during my sojourn in Orangeburg, having every item in my grocery cart carefully inspected by the check out lady at the Food Lion because (a) I was the new girl in town (yes, O'burg really is that small), and (b) because I was buying really exotic things, like Gouda.

Today, however, takes the cake.  We are in the midst of a runoff election for two state offices.  As I was preparing to make my choice between the asshat and the doofus who thinks he's qualified because of who his Daddy was, I realized that the older man who had plugged in the electronic voting thingy was standing right there--as in, within inches of my left shoulder, totally staring at the voting screen.

As politely as I could (considering it was 7:45 and I was working with an inadequate caffeine load), I asked him to back away.  Which he did, for like a nanosecond.  Then he was right back, telling me that he didn't care who I voted for.  To which I responded (somewhat less politely, but with a sweet smile on my face), that that wasn't the point--I wanted to vote in privacy.

He stepped back and allowed me to vote, but then--and this is the really unbelievable part--stepped right up before I could actually *send* my vote, so that he saw who I voted for.

Now, I know he was just curious--he's probably trying to fill a dull day by keeping rough track of who's getting the votes.  He meant absolutely no harm, which is why I didn't say something like, "Bless your heart, you're so nosy I'm surprised I can even see your face.  Try that during the general election and I will lay you out, old man."

But I was totally thinking it.

One of these things is not like the other, part one

Two tales of customer service I have recently experienced.

Tale #1:  Recently, our year-old dishwasher quit working, out of the blue.  Just kaput.  Press the button, nothing happened.  So we called the repair people and they sent a guy out.  As it turns out, a power surge we had during a recent storm had fried the wires underneath the thing.  So the guy fixes it, and as I'm signing the bill, he points to a small pile of singed wires on the counter.  "I left those there for your husband to take a look at, so he'll know what I did.  Tell him to call if he has any questions."

Wow.  The casual sexism of that remark takes my breath away.  I mean, really.  I know my description of the problem was not a model of eloquence (I believe my exact words were, "It doesn't go when we push the button"), but when he told me his diagnosis I managed, despite the hindrance of that extra X cromosome, to ask a reasonably intelligent follow-up question.  It pisses me off that the guy not only assumed that I could know nothing about wiring (hmm, guess who's installing a new light fixture this weekend?), but also that my husband would know something about it (I love him dearly, but he doesn't even program the VCR).

Ugh.

Tale #2:  I went to a new hairstylist last week.  I adore Jodi, whom I've been seeing for years, but she is so popular now that I was having to book *at least* 12 weeks in advance, and her fee seemed to go up by $5 every time I saw her.  Plus, her salon is 30 minutes away, which makes a lunchtime appointment tricky.  So, I called over to a new, cool looking place for an appointment when I had a free lunch.  They had nothing that day, but they called the next day to say that an opening had come up, and did I want it.  I didn't, but I finally made it in last week.   Lovely experience at the salon, great haircut. 

On Monday, there was a thank you card in the mail from the owners of the salon.  Hand written.  Very nice.  And then today, Janet (the owner's wife) called to ask how I was liking my haircut, and were there any problems they could fix.  Dude.  *That* is looking after your customers.