"Feeling Sad" post

This will be a long rambler. The morning started off with Luciano Pavarotti's inhumanly beautiful tenor on the radio, signalling his death. I spent part of the morning on You Tube, looking up clips. Hearing him sort of took me back to college, actually--during and perhaps slightly after his artistic heyday but in the height of his rock star-level fame. Voice majors at Oberlin would sometimes argue about whether they preferred Pavarotti or Domingo.

Then I read Glenn Greenwald's column this morning. He's writing a book about how right-wing opinion-makers and mouthpieces so often use words full of faux macho swagger to pump themselves up while simultaneously denigrating left-leaners, and yet they themselves very often do not embody even stereotypical ideals of masculinity. He quoted noted right-wing nutcase Jonah Goldberg, who when writing in the National Review of his support for going to war in Iraq in late August 2002, simultaneously made these two points. First, if you're tired of the schoolyard bully "pantsing" you at recess every day, the best thing you can do is punch him square in the nose and then stand your ground. Second (in part II of the same series), he stated that "every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business." In other words, we should be a schoolyard bully, pantsing "small crappy little countries" at recess. By Goldberg's own logic, explain to me again why someone should not punch us in the nose, and then stand their ground? Jesus H. Christ on a pogo stick. Is he both evil AND stupid, or just evil??

Then I just started getting personally melancholy. It bears repeating that I am not particularly good at being a stay at home mom. I don't have 15 enriching things for my kids to do every day. And I miss Abra more than I expected to. Back when I was a single mom, I dropped the kids off at day care every day at 8 a.m., didn't pick them up until 5 or later, and was emotionally fine. But now, I worry. I worry that she's sad during the day. I worry that she'll get bullied and won't know how to deal with it. I worry that THE TEACHER WON'T SEE THE OBVIOUS TRUTH THAT SHE'S CLEARLY THE SMARTEST KID IN THE CLASS!!! (Heh--but kind of seriously). And I worry that I won't find a job I love like what I had back in Wisconsin, and that I'll have come all this way just to take a job--stay-at-home-mom--which is a noble job but which is one for which I'm ill-suited and one which neither my husband nor I envisioned me having.

Plus, I've been to the hairdresser exactly ONCE since my wedding day, and I've gained about 10 or 15 of my weight watchers pounds back, and I look like shit.

PITY PARTY FOR BRENNA!!!!