Sunthing Special

go to the Chardon community in the wake of today’s tragedy, especially the parents of the deceased student and the others who are injured. It’s sad and scary on many levels, but one note in an article on msn.com struck me as even more depressing. It says that, according to the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, ”the Ohio shooting is the worst at a U.S. high school in 11 months and the worst in Ohio since late 2007.” The worst in 11 months? The frequency of these attacks in schools across the country, and the world, is chilling.

Yesterday:
1) I heard several people say “Imana” instead of “I’m going to”. It’s not just me!!
2) I heard a fellow artist (a man in his 60s) explain that the way he gets his house ready for a party is to throw all the stuff laying around into a box and put the box(es) in the back room, where they will never be opened again. Someone else admits to sharing my cleaning strategy!
3) The optician fitting my son for glasses mentioned, out of the blue, that her daughters never really fought until they got a Wii for Christmas. Now all they do is fight and she wished they had never gotten it. I told my son, “See, see!” Trust me, my kids bicker enough without having more (and more expensive!) reasons.
I feel vindicated — briefly — for at least a few of my oddities.

I’ve been on the hunt for materials I can paint on (instead of  store-bought canvas). Preferably free. One item I thought would be fun would be discarded hubcaps. Just in the last couple weeks I’ve found three (the one pictured is still in progress). What I wonder is, how do so many hubcaps end up on the side of the road anyway?

I borrowed a National Geographic special on “China’s ‘lost girls’” from the library and watched it last night. I thought the show could have been put together better, and the reporter who hosted the show was pretty bad, but otherwise I thought the information was very interesting. I’m sure you’re aware of the one-child policy China’s had in place since 1979 (and is set to go through at least 2015) to curb population (with exceptions). And because for generations boys have been preferred, (after marriage boys stay around, work and take care of the parents, where girls marry and move away) baby girls are often placed for adoption, aborted, hidden or even killed. Thousands of baby girls are adopted by couples around the world each year, helping to give them a better life. But most aren’t so lucky. And now the country is starting to see the repurcussions of gender imbalance. Boys outnumber girls by the millions, and many will be unable to find wives in their own country. Already girls are being kidnapped from one region and sold as wives to men in other regions, where they are often raped, beaten and treated like animals. The show also points out that boys from one-child families can suffer in another way: as only children with parents who want to give them everything, many are growing up spoiled and overweight. Programs are in place to try to address these issues; we can only hope they work.

There’s a woman I know, let’s call her ”Sue”. ”Sue” is in her mid 30s, divorced (with a young daughter) and has been in a relationship for four years, the last two of which they’ve been living together. Her father died three years ago and her mother, who recently began dating, just announced she was getting married in June. “Sue” is not happy about this at all. For one thing, she is still mourning the loss of her father and can’t believe her mother isn’t. Two, she has only met her mom’s fiance twice and barely knows him. And three, she’s not happy about her mom getting remarried before she does. The whole situation made me think of how rarely it seems (if we’re honest with ourselves) that we’re truly happy when someone announces their engagement. There’s a million reasons why. A good example is shown in the movie “Bridesmaids”. I pretty much detested the movie for its unnecessary “gross out” and over-the-top humor, but it did do a good job of showing the mixed feelings you get when a girlfriend is moving to the next chapter of her life and you’re not. This is the “all about me” reason. Or maybe it’s about them. Maybe the way the couple got together bothers you (i.e. an affair), or the timing (i.e. what you think is “too soon”), or the reasons why they’re getting hitched (i.e. pregnancy), or the way they’re getting married (i.e. elopement), or maybe it’s simply because you can’t stand the person your friend or relative is marrying (which I guess is still “all about me”). Anyhow, this may sound terrible, but I can only think of a handful of couples I really really wanted to see married (my standards are unrealistically high). As for the rest, I got over it, got used to the person, or in most cases, the couple divorced anyway so it was all a moot point.