This week my BFF who runs a weekly recipe blog came to me saying:
"I have a submission for your guest series if you feel so inclined."
And I said YES, thankyouverymuch because I failed to have
anyone signed up for this first Thursday of August!
It's like she knew.
For future reference, you guys can totally hit me up like that.
Her name is also Jennifer and her blog is Mom Rocks Mealtime.
Her post for me, though, has nothing to do with food.
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I Want to be a Monster
The city in which I live, the town in which I was born, the place I have chosen to raise my children has turned into the Thunder Dome.
It all started a year, maybe two, ago when I noticed people no longer returned my smile and wave when I give them the right away to cross the one lane bridge by my house. Soon, that bridge was covered in graffiti.
Now, in just this past month, a woman was kidnapped while putting groceries in her car at 9 AM! A newspaper delivery man was chased by gang members and shot at. Vandalism, robbery, rapes and thievery. And now a girl I know, a girl my daughter's age, a friend of my daughter's, escapes a car jacking in her own driveway!
I just want to vomit. Like the act will some how purge all this knowledge and I can somehow get back to the time where I felt comfortable answering my front door. Or smiling at people.
A man came to my door at 9 o'clock at night selling candy bars and made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. My husband stopped to ask a man on a skate board looking stressed if he needed help. The man chased him on his skate board and my husband watched him attack street signs. A woman was found dead in the creek next to the children's park.
UNCLE!
It is against my very nature, but as I sit here recounting all this evil I can’t help but want to be a monster. I want to growl and snort and swipe at those who may threaten me or my children. I want to answer my door with a shotgun in hand. I want to know how to kill a mother fucker who would dare lay a hand on me or my children.
No! Stop. I can’t kill, its against God’s law. But I can mame. I can beat him to the point of brain dead so it's only my side of the story- no lawyer conjured reasonable doubt B.S.
I’m scared. I’m scared of the hunters out there that have us in their sights. The predators waiting for the perfect opportunity.
I really thought I was safe. I’m a mom, just tossed together and rushing from point A to B. Multitasking, texting while picking up a prescription and not paying any attention to those around me. Predators are not always after the young co-eds; they are after an easy target.
I now know why my dad asked me why I wanted to bring children into this world. It’s a very scary, hate-filled place.
Whatever happened to doing yourself in when you decide you can’t take anymore? Now people feel they need to take out a crowd with them. Suicide by cop.
Are there more people in the world so the percentage of those with violent tendencies has gone up? What is causing some people to no longer be in control of their impulses? A combination of all those things people are blaming perhaps?
An increased per capita of bad guys coupled with mind numbing violence (aka entertainment), easy access to instructions on how to do ANYTHING and chemicals galore! Our food, our water, the air, medications - the list goes on. Is all of it contributing to the breeding of sociopaths?
Is this, in turn, leading those to turn towards hypervigilance? The so called ‘preppers’ and the stockpiling of guns?
Now , back up the crazy train. This is NOT an accelerant to your political fire.
This is a woman. A mom. A human made of flesh and blood, so keenly aware of her own mortality. The fragility of life and the helplessness I feel in the inability to fight back.
If you are looking for me I will be at the shooting range. Then going out for sushi afterwards.
I may as well make every day count.
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So many of the things Jen said here are a big part of why I stopped watching the news regularly after becoming a mom. It's not that I've chosen to bury my head in the sand. It's because all the bad news is so disheartening to me as I try to raise happy, hopeful young people. I know bad things happen. I don't need to saturate my soul with every horrible story.
Because despite all this bad that's been thrown in Jen's face, I know she knows there is plenty of good out there too. But she has every right to be angry. Pretty sure we've all felt like her a time or two.
Jen is in fact responsible for some (yummy) good being put out into the world with her:
**If you would like to contribute YOUR view, contact me or go HERE.**
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