Unless you have been living under a rock the last 5 days (or are Ashton Kutcher), you have undoubtedly been following the horror that is unfolding in State College, PA. If you have indeed been living under a rock (or are Ashton Kutcher), take a moment and catch up.

There is so much, so very much, that can be said about the Penn State RAPE scandal (read on for clarification on the CAPS), but there are a handful of things that I, personally, need to say. You can agree, or you can disagree. But, in all honesty, if you disagree, I don’t think I want to know you.

–First of all, we, collectively as a people, need to stop referring to this whole mess as a “sex scandal”. There was no sex involved. What occurred here was the rape, sexual abuse, and molestation of at least 20 boys and young men. “Sex” implies consent. Something tells me that the 10 year old boy who was raped in the showers at Penn State didn’t consent to that.
–Doing “all that is legally required” of you, especially as it applies to the discovery and reporting of illegal sexual activity involving children, IS NOT ENOUGH. Imagine if we lived in a world where all anyone did was the absolute bare minimum required of them by law? What an awful place that would be.
–If you witness a child being RAPED and do not step in to stop it or immediately call the police, YOU ARE CULPABLE. If you are told about a child being raped, and do not step in to stop it or immediately call the police, YOU ARE CULPABLE. If you are told about a child being raped, and do not step in to stop it or immediately call the police, and instead do everything in your power to not only insure that the crime remains a secret, but that the rapist and everyone who was party to knowledge of the abuse is protected, YOU ARE NOT ONLY CULPABLE, BUT SHOULD ROT IN PRISON WITH THE RAPIST.
–There is NO gray area where the welfare and protection of children is concerned. It is black and white, right and wrong. The only middle ground that exists between those two sides is the one created by the heartless cowards who allowed a child rapist to continue his abuse, who are now scrambling to find their footing. It is not there, they will fall.
–It is a sad, sad day in this country, when hundreds, THOUSANDS, of our best and brightest take to the streets to protest NOT the cover up and complacency of sexual abuse by their school, but the firing of the very people who were instrumental in that cover up.
–Joe Paterno is not a victim here. Graham Spanier is not a victim. Mike McQueary is not a victim. Tim Curley and Gary Schultz are not victims. They are (in my opinion) perpetrators of the abuse, because they did nothing to stop it when they found out it was happening. Jerry Sandusky will rot in hell (preferably after being raped repeatedly in prison). He acted alone when he abused those boys, but please don’t be so naive as to believe that he did so without help from those who covered it up.

My heart goes out to the REAL victims of this horrible crime: the children who were abused and their families. Who not only had to endure unspeakable horror at the hands of a monster, but who then bore witness to that monster being shielded, who had to watch as their rights, their welfare, their safety and protection, were cast aside, over and over and over again. They’ve suffered for years, watching the very people who abused them and hid the abuse not only go on with their lives, but enjoy many successes and be showered in praise, while I’m sure they struggled to make sense of their own broken souls. Please, don’t feel sorry for Joe Paterno or Mike McQueary or any of the other spineless cowards who have finally been taken to task for what they’ve done. Feel sorry for those boys. For their mothers and fathers, for their families, for their future families, for their future children. Because believe me, long after we’ve moved and forgotten what happened, they will remember. They will bear the scars of this for years and years to come, and they will never forget.

And to the students who rioted on campus to show support for their beloved JoPa, I have this to say to you: one day, you’ll have children of your own, and hopefully when you do, you will look back on your actions that day, your chants of “We Want Joe!” and “One More Game!”, and you will feel shame. Shame for supporting a man who knew about the rape of a child, and did nothing to stop it; shame for not showing empathy or sympathy for the children whose lives were destroyed by a monster, and then destroyed again by the establishment who protected him; shame for believing, in your youthful ignorant bliss, that a football game or season or coach or team held more value and deserved your support more than a child, even ONE child, who was the victim of sexual abuse at the hands of an adult. Shame on you, students of Penn State. You embarrassed us all last night, but only you will one day have to face the shame of what your actions meant.

Sometimes, I don’t think I require enough of the people in my life. Meaning, I don’t always get out what I put into a relationship. And I don’t know why I do this, because I’ve told people on numerous occasions that allowing that to happen is not acceptable. And I don’t make it easy on people, I get that. But, I don’t know, I just want people to leave a penny every once in a while. I’m running out of pennies.

On a lighter note, my nipple started bleeding today, which is AWESOME. 15 months into our breastfeeding relationship, and my nipple flips me off. PLUS, Dylan ate hardly any dinner tonight, and was fussy/clingy all evening, which probably means that I will be woken up at some point tonight with a sick baby. Yay.

Today is almost over.

Tomorrow will be better.

So, I was all set to write an uppity, happy happy joy joy post about my trip to the Dr. Drew show last week, and all the fun that I had, and all the cool shit I got for free just for sitting in the audience on a really stupid talk show. I was all set to write that post, and hit publish, and pat myself on the back for another post up. And then, my sister sent me this link:

And I couldn’t write that post anymore. Frankly, after watching that video, I couldn’t do much of anything for a while, besides try not to burst into tears and hug Dylan until she begged me to stop. If you haven’t seen it yet, this link is to the video currently viraling its way across the world wide webs. It shows a little girl, a toddler, 2 YEARS OLD, being hit by a van that then drives away. And then, AND THEN, being left on the street, bleeding, ignored by no less than 18 people. 18 people who walked right by her, some stopping to look at her bleeding, mangled body, before going on their way. Then, inconceivably, she’s hit by another car, that also drives away without stopping. I have to warn you, the video is VERY GRAPHIC and so heartbreaking it’s hard to put into words. I watched it, then I watched it again, and I just couldn’t write about being happy. Not today.

18 people walked by a little girl, a baby, as she lay injured in the street. Finally, mercifully, a woman drags her off the road and apparently screams for the child’s mother, who then rushes to her. The little girl is taken to a hospital. The little lay in a coma for 4 days. The little girl died today, of injuries that would have been treatable had any, ANY, of the 18 people who walked by, or the driver of the van that ran her over in the first fucking place, had bothered to stop. Or call emergency services on their phone (it happened in China, I don’t know what their 911 is). Or yelled for someone else to do so. 18 people and 2 drivers. I just, can’t. Wrap. My head around this.

And I can’t stop thinking about that little girl. I wonder if she was conscious. She appeared to be moving at first, but stops. I wonder if she screamed, or cried, or whimpered. I wonder if she saw those people walk by her, if she called out to them. I wonder if she called out for her mommy. I wonder if she was in pain. I hope not. A million times over, I hope not. And I wonder about those people, the people who happened upon a bleeding child in the middle of the street, and DID NOTHING. I wonder what their reasons were, if they even matter. I wonder how they are able to sleep at night, or get up in the morning. How they can look in the mirror. If they have kids, I wonder how they are able to kiss them and hug them, after letting that little girl die. I wonder.

Watch the video. As hard as it is, watch the video. Because, and I say this as a parent, but more as a human being, I don’t want to live in a world where not only does this horror occur, but one where people halfway around the world can choose to ignore it simply by not clicking a link. I’ve been agonizing over this, for a couple of reasons: one, I have a baby, and so help me God, if there were ever an instance where someone did not help her when she needed it, I would hunt them down and it would not be pretty. And I just keep thinking of that baby, and her parents, and my heart hurts. For them, for her. For us all.

Watch the video. For us all.

We lost an amazing man today. He was an innovator, a visionary, a kind and caring man. I’m typing this on one of his many, many contributions to our tech world. Steve Jobs was a God among men, in the eyes of many. He was also a husband, a son, a brother, a father. And he was 56.

A lot of people will have a hard time wrapping their heads around that. He was 56. And cancer took him from us. From his loving wife, his children (oh my, his poor children), from the millions of us around the world who never, ever met him, but let him into our lives and homes and hearts and minds on a daily basis. I, unfortunately, am not shocked. I am saddened, and angry, and empathetic to the pain his family will endure in the coming days and weeks and months and years. But I am not shocked. If anything, I’m surprised it took as long as it did. He got 3 years and 50 weeks longer than my father.

On February 2, 2010, my father, my sweet, loving, hilarious and brilliant and tough and special father, died at home. He had just come home, having been released from the hospice that cared for him in his final days, into the loving and terrified arms of us, his children. He came home the afternoon of February 1st. He died in the early morning hours of the 2nd, less than 12 hours later. This probably sounds like the end of a long, brutal, drawn out battle with a horrible disease that just wouldn’t give up. The sad fact is, my father, who never went to a doctor because guys like him didn’t go to the doctor, was diagnosed with end stage metastatic pancreatic cancer on January 16, 2010. He died 16 days later. Fuck cancer.

16 days. 16 days from our forcing him to go to the hospital (we could see he was sick, we just didn’t see it in time) to bringing him back home to die where he wanted, surrounded by his family and animals and facing the sunrise. 16 days. We didn’t even know he had cancer until he was dying of cancer. Fuck cancer.

Pancreatic cancer is a monster. Seriously. It is almost always diagnosed in the metastatic stage (meaning after it’s already spread its poison to surrounding tissue and organs and bones), so treatment is limited and rarely as effective at treating it as other cancers. While there are some factors that put some people at a higher risk for PC, the real bitch of it is that it can strike anyone, any time. It’s almost always asymptomatic until it’s too late. And it has one of the lowest survival rates outside of 5 years of all cancers. I hate it. I hate all cancer, but mostly pancreatic cancer. I hate anything that doesn’t fight fair, and pancreatic cancer is the very definition of not fighting fair. Fuck cancer.

I hope to one day write about those two weeks, and the month or so leading up to it, and the months after. But to be honest, even 1.5 yrs later, it’s just too hard. Too raw. Too sad. And I’m still too angry. I want to write it for my daughter to read one day. I want her to know her grandpa as I did. I want her to know that he knew she was coming, and he tried to hold on until she got here, but he unfortunately brought a knife to a gun fight, and he was quickly overwhelmed. I want her to know all this, so I will wait to write it, until the pain and anger has taken it’s permanent place in the pit of my heart, and is not so fresh and real. When I stop wanting to scream “fuck cancer” from the top of my lungs. Fuck cancer.

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. But I think it should just be CANCER Awareness Month. Wear a pink ribbon or no ribbon, run walk in someone’s honor, make a donation to research. Just be AWARE. Because let me tell you, there is no worse time to become aware of a disease than when it’s killing your father.

FUCK CANCER.

So, I had originally planned on writing about how I’m no longer the new momma on the block, and was going to include some of the knowledge I’ve managed to hold on to over the last 14 months. Even had notes and EVERYTHING (still organized!). But then today, I had kind of a shitty day. And it got me thinking about something else entirely, and whether or not other moms have felt the same way at some point. So I’m going to write about that instead. Because it’s my blog and I can do what I want.

Today was one of those days. You know the ones: where it starts off with a terrible nights sleep, and then just gets progressively worse for NO APPARENT REASON WHATSOEVER. Nothing bad happened. No one was sick (save for a sore throat that hasn’t decided if it’s staying or going). Had no plans, didn’t need to be anywhere, just a nice, lazy day at home, me and the kid. But she didn’t sleep well. Which means I didn’t sleep well. And then she refused to take a nap. RE-FUSED. All day. Now, if you have a baby or have ever had a baby, you’ll understand me when I say, that nap? Vital to my sanity. I need The Nap Not necessarily so I can nap too, but just that 2 hours of quiet, no baby, no toddler time. That’s mommy time. And I need mommy time sometimes.

But I especially need mommy time when mommy doesn’t feel good. And when mommy hasn’t slept so good. The Nap would have saved my life today. So she decided today, of all days, to say, “Meh. I’m going balls to the wall today, I don’t need no stinkin’ nap”. It was a long day. And in addition to this day testing my patience, and making me cry, and giving me a headache, this day made me feel something else: this day made me feel alone.

I’m a stay at home mom (by choice, 100%, I LOVE what I do). And I have no help. So from the moment Dylan stirs in the morning till the blessed moment she drifts off to sleep at night, it is her and I. Husband works all day, and the only family I have in the area are 2 sisters with kids and lives of their own. My friends are fucking amazing, but again, they have lives of their own, with work or school or babies or what have you. And we certainly did not make the decision for me to quit working to stay home so we could pay someone else to come around once in a while and watch the kid. And normally, this is awesome. 99.99999% of the time, smooth solo sailing. But occasionally, I’ll have a day like this. A day that makes me question what the fuck I’m doing, a day that does it’s damnedest to convince me that I’m no good, that I can’t even get my kid to take a nap, a day that just makes me want to sit in a dark, quiet room so I can just breathe. And when I have a day like this, man, the loneliness? It’s palpable. I can’t pick up the phone and ask my mom or mother-in-law or sister or whatever to come over because I need a MINUTE to unclench. There’s no one to call. At least, no one who would be able to help. And sometimes, that’s all I need. Someone to help. Not often, not a lot. Like I said, 99.99999% of the time, I captain the shit out of this ship, and enjoy every millisecond. But that 0.00001% can be brutal. And really lonely. Everyone should have a 0.00001% lifeline. Everyone needs a little help, even if it is only 0.00001% of the time.

Ok, I’m done now. I’ve vented, I’ve complained, and truth be told, I’ve kind of pissed myself off for feeling like this when I have so much to be thankful for. But I’m still going to publish this. Because I can’t be the only person out there who feels this way sometimes. And maybe someone who reads this can relate, and also needs a 0.00001% lifeline, and we can be that for each other.

I am a terrible blogger. Really. Not in the writing sense (if I do say so mahself), but in the this-is-a-blog-that-needs-more-than-a-once-a-month-update-and-I-sometimes-don’t-do-that kind of way. And believe me, it’s not for lack of WANTING to post. I happen to find my daily life and all the going’s on quite fascinating, and I’m sure you guys would too. Plus, I find writing to be pretty therapeutic and cathartic, a way for me to purge. The writing and the wanting to write, not at all my problem.

My problem is, I just can’t seem to fit it into my life in a regular, continuous way. For some reason, I am flummoxed on a daily basis by the fact that there are only 24 hours in a day, and I seem to have a plate full of shit that requires a minimum of 27 hours a day. And I’m no Asian, but even I can see that math don’t add up. The crazy thing is, at the end of most days, I couldn’t tell you where the time went. Honestly. I’m a stay at home mom, so my job is the kid and my home. I guess I just didn’t realize how much of my time would be monopolized by those 2 things. Turns out, babies? A giant time suck. Who knew.

So anyway, I’ve been swirling around in a seemingly endless vortex of Disney Junior and pacifiers and toddler wrangling, and I’ve been missing something. THIS. I’ve been missing this. The conversation, however one-sided, with people other than my glorious little child who says the same 8 words over and over and over (albeit ridiculously adorably). So I’ve decided that this needs to happen, if only for the preservation of my already dwindling sanity. From now on, I WILL carve out time 3 days a week to sit down, at a table like an actual grown-up, and put my thoughts and words and ramblings and meanderings out into the internets, for someone or no one to read. I even have a little calendar app, and I’ve got it all penciled in and everything. I need this. So it’s important.

Ok, tis all for now. I’ll be back on Wednesday (yippee!), wherein I will quit with the boring me, me, me shit and regale you with tales from Toddlerdom, where Dylan is dictator and I am mere hired hand. If you’re reading, I thank you, sincerely. And ask that you maybe, idk, pass it along? Help me infect the internets. I need it.

In about 12 hours, my baby girl will be a year old.  A whole year.  She won’t be a baby anymore, she’ll be an actual KID.  Sweet Jeebus, I am freaking out.  But, as her mother and an adult (allegedly), I will attempt to pull myself together long enough to write this, a letter to my love on her first birthday.

To My Sweet Baby Girl,

One year ago, the doctor placed you on my chest, and I was changed.  You were crying and wiggling and clearly not enjoying the act of being born, but when I touched you, you stopped, and you looked around, and you closed your eyes, and breathed the sweetest baby breath on me.  That moment, like so many of the past year, killed me and brought me to life all at once.  In that moment, I knew I was destined not to be a mom, but to be your mom.  And for every one of the last 365 days, I have been honored to try to live up to the title.

The last year has been the very best year of my life, bar none.  To be completely honest, I barely remember the hard days.  There were very few.  You were an absolute GEM of a baby, from day 1 till now.  You smiled at 4 weeks (and it wasn’t gas, that’s a load of crap, pun intended).  You laughed for the first time, oh my God that glorious laugh, on Halloween.  Before I subjected you to what I think was an adorable first Halloween costume, but that will undoubtedly come back to bite me on the ass one day.  You sat up at 4 months, rolled over shortly after that, and started babbling almost at birth.  You said your first word on April 15, 2011.  Care to guess what it was?  Let me put it this way, when you turn 16 and want your dad to buy you a car, this is what he’s gonna throw in your face (it was mama!).  Now, you say lots of words, like mama, dada, hat, baby, pop, up, moo.  You’re not what I would call a quiet kid.  You got your first tooth the day you turned 7 months, and they came in like gangbusters after that.  In fact, your Aunt Erin calls you Chompers, because you have 7 teeth, and Lola, your cousin who is only a week younger, just got her first 2.  Clearly, you excel in teeth.  You also just recently started walking!  Which, and you’ll understand what I’m about to say once you have kids of your own, has me simultaneously thrilled and terrified and heartbroken.  Thrilled because HELLO!?! You just got like 10 times more fun.  Terrified because you aren’t the steadiest on your feet just yet, but you don’t seem to realize that.  Or care.  And heartbroken because, well, NOT walking was the one thing keeping you a baby, my baby.  Now, you can run from me when I want to snuggle.

There’s so much that you learned in the past year, it’s amazing to watch.  Everyday you do something new, something different.  A new sound, or a new word, or something new that you’ve mimicked from us.  I am in awe, everyday, of you.  For what you’ve learned, but also, for what you’ve taught me.  Being your mom has completely changed my life, my heart, my philosophy, my soul.  You have taught me to let go of the little things that I cannot control or change.  You’ve taught me that laughing in the face of tears is the best time to laugh.  You’ve taught me that patience, while not easy to come by, is indeed a virtue.  I’ve learned to slow down, and let life just be what it’s supposed to be.  From you, I’ve learned not to judge, to accept that I’m not perfect and should not expect perfection from anyone else.  I’ve learned that it’s ok to make mistakes, because there are people who will not only love me in spite of them, but in some cases, because of them.  Most importantly, you’ve taught me not to be afraid to love with abandon, wildly and blindly and passionately and deeply.  I’ve learned, from you, my tiny little baby girl, that the greatest thing I can do is love someone more than I love myself; it’s the only thing that will set you free.

Thank you, sweet Dylan Rose, for picking me.  For trusting me.  For teaching me. For loving me.  Happy, happy, the happiest of birthdays to you, my heart.  I love you, I love you, a million times over, I love you.

I don’t normally use my blog as a platform to discuss pop culture or politics or world events, mostly because I’d much rather talk about my kid and my life, and I don’t want to risk saying the wrong thing about the wrong person and getting my shit litigated (not that enough people even read my blog for anything I say to have a particularly large reach, but still, you can never be too careful in these sue happy days we live in).  But I’ve got a bug up my butt about something, and since this is MY blog on MY website (and subsequently, all thoughts and ideas are MINE), than I thought I’d go outside the norm for a sec and try to excise the bug.

See, someone died this weekend.  A very talented, very troubled soul singer by the name of Amy Winehouse.  And she was amazing, and famous, and had legions of fans.  But instead of the outpouring of grief or sorrow or mourning we normally see when a celebrity dies, Amy’s death seemed to elicit a much different, much more callous response.  Cruising the internets after news of her passing hit, I encountered A LOT of backlash from people celebrating her death, bidding her good riddance, calling in “death bets”, and just being all around douchey (not a word, I KNOW, but it’s my blog).  A few snippets: “Why is this news, she was a junkie, she deserved it”, “It’s about time, moving on”, “Who Cares?”, and one that made me particularly angry, “Good, one less crack whore to worry about”.  Not exactly tombstone worthy eulogies, ya know?  And it got me thinking about why, and then it got me angry about why, and then I started writing this in my head, and well, here we are.

For some reason, we as a people have an incredibly difficult time acknowledging that addiction is NOT A CHOICE.  Addiction is a disease.  It is a difficult, and many times deadly, disease to beat.  It is a disease that, even if you are one of the very fortunate ones who happen to win one of the battles, will mercilessly and ceaselessly pull you back into the war for the rest of your life.  That’s why we see so many addicts relapse; it is an ongoing, never ending fight for sobriety.  Telling an addict to just stop drinking/smoking/doing drugs/gambling is like telling a manic depressive to just be happy.  You know when you’re feeling kinda shitty, and some asshole has the nerve to tell you it’s not that bad, just get over it?  It’s like that, only a million times harder, because no matter how much an addict WANTS to stop, or knows they should stop, or has people telling them they need to stop, they just can’t stop.

I grew up in a family of addicts.  My father was an alcoholic who had been clean for 25 years when he died.  And most of his family is/was/are alcoholics.  There are a few, ahem, problems on my mom’s side as well.  I don’t have a problem with substance abuse, but I can say with almost terrifying certainty that it isn’t because I’m above it, it is because I am conscious of the fact that for me, there is a very thin line between using and abusing, and I have worked very hard to not cross that line.  I come from addicts, and I have a VERY healthy respect for the disease and how quickly it can and will destroy you.

Amy Winehouse was an addict, I don’t think there is any dispute there.  And many, many people don’t understand or sympathize with someone who has a substance abuse problem, I totally get that.  I don’t necessarily feel sorry for addicts either.  But how can we mourn some deaths and mock others?  Why was Heath Ledger’s death so much more sad, or Michael Jackson’s?  Both, if you recall, were drug related, both overdoses.  But when they died, I don’t remember the horrible jokes, or dismissive remarks.  I don’t remember people writing it off as expected, just another junkie who refused to get help.  So why was THIS death so much less sad or tragic or unfortunate?

I don’t know the answer to that, I wish I did.  Maybe it’s because we saw her hit (our perceived) bottom time and time again and still not “get better”.  Maybe it’s because Amy made no apologies for fact that she was a “junkie”, even had a massive hit about refusing treatment (although, if you listen to the song, it’s CLEARLY about not wanting to leave her man, not about wanting to stay a drunk).  Maybe it’s because after you turn someone so sick into late night fodder on a regular basis, you tend to dehumanize them and their disease.  Who knows.  What I do know is that she was an amazing talent, a soulful artist who’s pain (because think about it people, she was medicating SOMETHING, addicts don’t stay addicts for the fun of it) made her music haunting and mesmerizing and special.  She was a person, who none of us actually knew, but felt like we did, at least a little, because she sang to us about our lives, our pain.  She was a friend. She was a DAUGHTER. And yes, she was a junkie.  But the latter shouldn’t make the former any less true.  And her illness shouldn’t make her death any less sad or tragic or unfortunate.

Ok, I’m done.  Thanks for allowing me to veer off the topic of my little loveball.  I promise, loveball posts will resume immediately.  Bug successfully excised.