Conflict of Interest Interruptus

I tried to write yesterday, really I did.  My day began delightfully, with a rare hour and a half spent talking with my mom on the phone.  She was excited and energized about her business and a new friendship with possibilities of romance, and she has a great idea about how to develop her business this year.  I encouraged her to take a leap of faith and go for it.  I was energized and excited by my newly developed "daily" writing habit which, for my ADD addled brain, is a pretty hard habit to come by.  Of course she was proud of me and encouraged me to keep it up. 

Just a little caffeine helps keep me somewhat focused, but some (many) days it's not enough.  Yesterday was one of those days.  It didn't help that I had a hair appointment I had to rush to get ready for, the gecko needed worms (like, bad!), my son had Taekwondo after school, homework had to be done, dinner wasn't even on the radar yet, so somewhere in there a quick stop at the grocery store was required.  By the time I had a moment to write, I was beyond pooped, and nothing I came up with was worthy of publishing.

And, well, The Bachelor's "The Women Tell All" episode was on and I was distracted by the horrific behavior of those women toward one another, again.  I am still dumbfounded by any of it surrounding this particular bachelor (sorry, Ben).  He has a certain charm to him, but he needs to stop cutting his own hair and the smacking!  He is the smackiest kisser I can recall on any Bachelor or Bachelorette season yet.  I actually found him more appealing in the silliness of the outtakes than during what's been aired all season.   

So why am I still watching?  Why are any of us still watching?  Why do any of the shows that depict people, particularly women, who behave so badly toward one another draw such an audience?  Clearly, the presence of cameras brings out the worst in people who aren't trained or scripted to behave otherwise, and maybe that's the key to and the definition of (anti-)Reality TV.

Perhaps shows like that allow us to become absorbed in someone else's drama momentarily; to fantasize about how we would have liked to respond to that parent at school who yelled at our kid, or the person in front of us at the grocery store with thirty-eight items in the fifteen item or less express lane, or even our husband who "helpfully" removes the package of plastic cups from the refrigerator and stores them above our eye level so we have to search frantically to find them when we need them to go to school with the drink we have to provide for the class Valentine's Day party, which is why they were in the bag in the refrigerator with the drinks that went with them in the first place; so that our ADD brain couldn't possibly leave for school without them!

Sometimes I would love to be the lady who talks to herself like there's someone standing next to her by the grapefruit and then by the peppers and again by the apples (and I never did see her buy anything), or that person who parks their car all askew and makes no attempt to fix it, or the one to leave a package of pork chops on the shelf by the laundry detergent instead of taking it up front to the checkout where a bagger can run it back to refrigeration, but I'm not.  I'm just the girl who sometimes gets distracted a little too easily and forgets what she was doing five minutes ago, who leaves laundry in the washer too long and has to rewash it, who forgets to buy worms for the gecko for two weeks, or who has a little trouble focusing on her writing on a particularly hectic day and just needs to escape reality for a little while...Squirrel!


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My Posse

I've been very fortunate in my life to be enfolded by a large support group of women; the equivalent of a constant hug.  I have been blessed with two wonderful daughters, my mother, grandmothers, mother-in-law, sisters-in-law, nieces, aunts, bosses, employees, roommates, neighbors and exceptional girlfriends.  We’ve leaned on one another in times of struggle, and we’ve celebrated one another’s victories.

Of course there have been other women in my life; women who have been less support system, more saboteur or even assassin.  And in fact today’s blog is inspired by a friend’s Facebook status that was lamenting mean girls in her daughter’s first grade class.  This is about the good, not the ugly, but I regularly see snippets from anti-reality shows like any of the Real Housewives, Jersey Shore or practically anything else on MTV, The Bachelor (a guilty pleasure of mine, as much as I hate myself for not just watching, but downright anticipating such drivel—let’s call it research), and wonder what we’re teaching young girls today about how real women function in the real world.  Reality TV is the farthest thing from reality in most cases, and it certainly doesn’t represent my experience of how the majority of grown up women relate to one another in the real world.

My Posse has taught me to cheer women on, to vote for women, to hold them up and help them succeed.  We forgive the occasional misspoken word, give the benefit of doubt in most cases, and accept apologies when offered.  We hope for only the best in life for our women, and we’re there to help them survive, overcome and learn from the all too common snag. 

I always knew how lucky I was to have so many wonderful women in my life, but moving to California has given me the opportunity to value them even more, and to miss them desperately.  It’s also given me the opportunity to meet some amazing women, and begin to build a posse that spans the U.S., literally coast to coast.  And NaBloPoMo on BogHer is a wonderful reason to provide a whole lot of love to a multitude of really thoughtful, talented women writers.  I’m proud to count myself as one of them.

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