I used to think that everything I needed to know, someone else had already figured out and I just needed to go ask them and MAKE them explain it to me.

Then I would know too.

I don’t think that anymore.

Nice man punched my floor button this morning. In the sensory deprivation chamber of this elevator I looked him over. Gray hair, gray suit, and tie. “That’s a very peaceful tie.”

He smiles, so my mouth keeps going. “It’s blue…not scary red. Red says ‘I’m going to cut you.’”

The other woman with us looks at me with horror. But he is laughing. I keep talking “Tie culture is like war paint.”

It’s his floor now so he exits laughing and mutters,  “It’s true.”

Madam Horrified leaves too, but now I am ready to ponder this correlation.

Ties really can be as obvious as a flag, if you want them to be.  The “Power Tie” is a red tie…but what if power is treated with greater subtlety? What if the true power move was to strike like a ninja?

Would that be no tie at all?

Or maybe like jiu jitsu, which is supposed to use the opponent’s strength and arrogance against him, a nebbishy brown tie would lull the person being audited or interrogated into letting something slip.

One might think, “Look at this fool! He has a boring tie…and look, is that a gravy stain? HA! I am so superior to him I have nothing to fear. AHAHA!”

And then he is slapped with a policy violation and a month of working weekends.

HAI YA!

Fear the stealth tie

However, where does that leave us ladies? I was done on my floor, and then took the stairs down one flight. I heard a woman coming up.

Oh. This one. Very central casting—young, beautiful, long blond hair with waves on the end, and always in a pencil skirt. With her two-dimensional figure, I can understand it but I don’t have to like it. She talking on her cell, so I continue to be invisible as we pass.

I notice she is wearing stilettos. More weaponry in business attire.

Except. With women, there is always the sexual side of it. The male gonna-cut-you tie doesn’t have that thrill, it’s pure threat.

This video of Dustin Hoffman talking about how he chose to make the movie Tootsie has bee circulating; he tears up that women are frequently ignored because they do not look beautiful enough. He confesses to ignoring women for that reason, and how hard it must be for women to be so powerless to their appearance.

Oh Dustin. You are a shallow man in a shallow business. You only play deep on TV.

Women are only trapped in their looks if they decide to be. We have so many options to express ourselves, for our own purposes and also to appeal to others If We So Choose.

It is discouraging though, to have such an unsophisticated and unobservant audience that only think about our sexual availability.

Maybe that is why most women dress to impress our girlfriends.

I wonder what my friends would think of a new red tie?

I took v to target and was going to teach the value of money by letting her spend her dimes on something in the dollar bin. But the dollar bin was half off..if there was a blue dot…and one color of glitter glue had the blue dot but the other had a black dot. We went to a price scanner and it turns out they were both 30 cents. I was going to have her go through the checkout and pay with her dimes but then I remembered tax. It is harder than I expected to teach the value of a dollar

The president in the movie gives the speech before the battle. All the world is poised and united to conquer the aliens. He says it: ” today is our Independence Day!”

The words resonate and I don’t care if it IS the sound track that moves me so.

But the battle hadn’t been fought yet, much less won.

My hobbies are letting the whining dog out of the house and then calling the barking dog back in…also loading and unloading the dishwasher…in BETWEEN those major hobbies I blog and write books

Her wide grin shows her gappy baby teeth, but her eyes can’t quite match the carefree childhood picture she is trying to portray. Her eyes are trying but the steel of her willfullness shows through.

“Veronica, put your head on your pillow. It is time for sleeping.”

She straightens her back and widens her self-aware smile. Do I have to do this again?

Yes I do. And I do. Two-Three-Four more times.

“Veronica, I am going to have to take blanky away.” This worked last night. I took blanky away and she lay down.

This time she held her smile.

“Really? I have to go there?” I took all her animals away. This cracks her.

“You’re not listening! You are a bad girl!” Her hands flail out and hit me in the eye.

Ouch.

She’s not done. “You’re a botter beetle!”

I know “bad girl” is a terrible insult in her four year old world. Botter beetle–she made that one up. So it has a slippery definition.

“Veronica, do not hit me! And don’t call me names. You have to lay down. I am your mommy and I know better than you. You need to sleep!”

My eye is throbbing, but her head is on the pillow at last.

Now comes the next campaign: “Mommy I’m thirsty.”

“No you are not.”

“Yes I am! I am THIRSTY!”

There are a set of things in this arsenal. Needing a drink, needing to go to the bathroom, needing a bandaid, being hungry and being scared.

They all sound so reasonable.

But I am being PLAYED.

I know it.

She knows it.

And she knows she is winning.

Remember that thing I told her? “I am your mommy and I know better than you.”

Bullshit.

And in between the mother-daughter standoff, there is the retreat to the locker-room/living-room where I go have a standoff with my husband.

“Why don’t you let me help?”

I WANT NOTHING MORE THAN TO LET HIM HELP…BUT HE DOES IT WRONG

..and we spend all our conversation trying to analyze and strategize the next nights encounter.

“…it’s that she really is scared of the dark..”
“…we need to…”

I am fantasizing about work trips. And how I need to kill my husband.

WE NEED TO GET ON THE SAME PAGE WITH THIS!

I finally get that out there….I dig my heels in and let loose with the it’s-time-to-get-mad-or-we’re-never-going-to-fix-this argument.

It’s all fine and good to talk about the complementary styles of men and women. When we are at a nice restaurant, our clothes smooth and quiet music playing as we swirl our stemware.

“ahhaha! oh, you are so funny and charming with your secondary sexual characteristics.Lean a little closer so I can smell you…”

About the time I can smell myself is the time I don’t want to have to deal with a MALE way of thinking. Just do it my way before I ask, and everything I say is the right way and I am so freaking clever to have thought of it and you should kiss my feet because I am so wonderful and amazing.

Don’t CHANGE THE SUBJECT!! THIS IS ABOUT ME AND WHAT I NEED!!!

I need to sleep. I need to not have an argument with someone.

Because I am losing.

It is ironic that in this femme-on-femme interaction, me and the daughter are very clenched and fierce and stubborn. But Daddy? He’s a marshmallow. Maybe that smile I see through still works on him

That’s what pretty can do I guess.

I say to Chris what he’s taught me “We need escalation dominance! If she keeps having the most powerful action, we can’t win.”

He says ” I am worried that she will be hungry if she doesn’t eat enough dinner.”

Daddy is the nurturing one? That’s not how the textbooks read.

Parenting. You don’t need a license, but there is a fine if you do it wrong.

CODA:

Yesterday we did it. We had the strategy meeting. We came up with a plan. Bribe her.

ten dimes, three rules

1. Keep your head on your pillow

2. Be quiet and still

3. Do what mommy and daddy tell you

If you do that all night, you get to keep those ten dimes (TREASURE!) and put them in your beloved piggy bank

(not mentioned is that we will take away a dime for every infraction. Don’t want to give her ideas. We had a big discussion about what to do if we went past ten and had nothing left to take)

We told her the game. She was excited.

She went to bed.

Not a peep. She has a new game to play other than “make mommy do what I say.”

Chris and I even got to sit on the couch and watch 1/3 of a movie. SIMULTANEOUSLY.

OH GOD, let it work again tomorrow

I think I’ve lost my sense of humor. It used to be really good, quite sharp.

But it’s dulled.

I made a friend laugh really hard last week. But that was a dirty joke, made in the moment, and blue almost always makes people laugh nervously.

Cheap laugh

I wonder why it’s gone? I think maybe it’s because i am in a state of drudgery.

DAMN, can’t there be a little spark already?

…phooey…

I have my flint and steel. All the tinder is wet

welcome to monday. It will be a while before it lights up.