Mother's Little Helper

I just got through watching a very disturbing news clip from ABC. It was a part of a 20/20 focus story on mothers and drinking. While the episode was designed, using face-to-face interviews, to bring this secret habit to light, I found the interview tactics to be appalling. The woman conducting the interview phrased almost every question posed to a recently recovering alcoholic mother in terms of "Did you realize that you were putting your child in danger?" Although that question was only asked directly once during the ten-minute clip that I watched, every other question contained subtexts of this message. What the hell! Of course the mother knew in her heart that she was putting her child in danger. Here we go again, it seems like every issue that is supposed to focus on women is turned inside out in order to display her failures as a caregiver. Quite obviously this poor woman was struggling with leaving a high profile job in order to be a stay-at-home mom. For many women the transition to staying at home comes naturally and easily, for others it can be devasting and the subsequent guilt that they feel for not enjoying it can be overwhelming. So here is this mother admitting on national television that she drove her daughter while drinking and the interviewer asks "So you drove your daughter when you had been drinking, weren't you aware that you were putting her in danger?" I had to hand it to this mother who, after a long pause, said, "The answer to that is kind of obvious don't you think."

Television Series Addiction

Yes, it is true, I am officially addicted to the BBC Dr. Who telly series. THANK YOU MEG! I can blame her all I want, but I am addicted to the story line. I am not typically much of a science fiction fan, but I buy into the fantasy elements of the story lines in Dr. Who so it works for me. Sadly, this duo, David Tennant and Billie Piper will be replaced in this new season (actually Billie Piper has been off the show for a while now). I will miss them, but I have no doubt that I can probably get used to the replacements. It seems somewhat odd to be addicted to a television series again. I used to have my line up of shows and then the screen writers strike came (yes, I know that was a long time ago) and there was nothing new on for a very long time and I just lost interest in my old favorites. This is a fairly common cycle with me and television though, on and off again addictions. Sometimes I just prefer to read or futz around on the computer or talk to my family (what a novel idea!).

At any rate, I was going to post a rant today about how I have been needing to do everyone elses jobs for them all morning. There are some low hanging power lines that cross the PUBLIC street in front of our house. The garbage service is refusing to pick up our trash and after two hours on the phone with a number of different possible power line sources, nobody wanted to take responsibility for the problem. I was actually forced to call the city, which is not something that I ever like to do. Aside from taking the power lines down myself and re-setting them I was really out of options. It felt much better talking about the joys of Dr. Who. I think that I will just reflect on that right now and take three deep breaths.