Motherhood's Kicking in!

I was wondering about this for a while now, ever since the moment the other little strip turned a faint shade of pink. Surprise! The idea of pregnancy wasn't something my mind could fully grasp, the consequences being too extensive to even imagine a world beyond ginormous belly.
Sentenced to 9 months to life!

The first 12 weeks of any pregnancy are known to be shaky, a fearful stretch of hit-or-miss, and to be completely honest, I had no reason to believe it would stick this time. It tried to pay as little attention to it as possible plowing through NaNoWriMo. And it stuck. Now that it's past half-time and actual proof is hitting me from within with violent little earthquakes, I'm still having trouble believing it.

Thoughts like is that belly that has long begun to cast a shadow really a baby or did I just let myself go over the winter? Are these strange bursts I'm feeling coming from my intestines after all? Are these kicks telling me that my bowels are in trouble, do I have some kind of abdominal epilepsy?

I don't know whether it'll ever start to feel real in a way that will allow me to fully commit to the idea of having a child before it's factually there.

To go out there and buy stuff for the nursery, because I am certain it's going to happen. No way. I will give birth to a human being. Seriously!? I can tell myself that over and over. I'm two people now, one of them living inside the other. Get that: one of them is not a woman... Still not quite sure if it's me after all?! Him? There's going to be a him? Maybe I'm just fat and schizoid!

I feel motherly towards my cats, and even more so than towards children. I have never been needed by a child. I think we're biologically prone to like whomever we're responsible for. (Or what we've tamed, in the words of The Little Prince)

I'll have a lifetime to make horrible mistakes once it's in the world. I'm sure I'll never feel like I'm doing a good job, or that I'll be making the right choices; living up to some absurd standard of parenting that I don't even know I'll have. That's just how I am in life. Let's hope the mistakes I'll make will be glorious ones, and my shortcomings will make me smile rather than want to make me beat myself up.

Also I'm not sure I'm ready to accept that once I'm a parent, a part of my life will be in freeze mode, the parental stage of preservation. Worrying and caring override any impulse to run for your life and join a cult in search of self-fulfillment. Parents are a different species. Biology forces them to zone in on a tiny piece of life other than themselves  - at least for a little while. Some people go nuts, others blossom in new-found meaningfulness, and others yet again see their children as some kind of investment opportunity.

The only thing I ask is that you, lovely baby, will not make me stupid..at least be kind enough to merely put my brain on ice. Don't eat it. I'm not ready to give it up for good...

June. Not too far away. Still some time to get acquainted. If not with baby, then at least with the concept of change. If that's ever possible before it is thrown upon us. Bloody hell!

Journalism, Morality and other Conundrums

Journalism is important. Journalism is inquisitive, and news analysis provides an indispensable service to the public. What ever would we do without the daily coverage of a wide range of subjects, too complex to understand, or too insignificant to appear worthy of our mental efforts! Thank goodness, all those news we consume are served in neat little packages, rehashed like microwave dinners fit for the attention span, we, the public, are willing to provide. The absurd part is that generally we don't want to know things we don't already know. Per definition - that would be real news.

What we do want to know however are old news, not really new things about people we already know; things we suspected all along: the oft-cited confirmation bias.

With the rise of the tabloid and the public's binge for information about celebrities, one has to question what happened to so-called investigative journalism. The kind of journalism that offers a social service to all of us, the one that puts fear into the eyes of politicians and the government in its place. It's basically degraded to a supplier of daily outrage. What falls under investigative are things hardly suitable for public education, but short-lived indignation, like, if someone we know carts off money to an account somewhere else. Yes, I don't like it when they do that either. For one, because I myself am not in a position to do so.

More importantly though, it's lowly for someone who indulges in the advantages of a country's benevolent legal system not to pay for that privilege (among other things). We all need to contribute to the status quo. And how good we have it here compared to those other countries we don't want to hear anything about!

And although many of us don't have enough coin to cart away towards a Swiss bank account, how does our lack of riches put us in a position to judge those who do have some money?

Law says there is such a thing as voluntary declaration. Legislature decided that it's more important for rich people to pay what they owe, stay in Germany, than be labeled guilty. Them moving away to other countries and taking their money and business with them for good would be a loss worse than allowing people to call them frauds and wave them goodbye. Money comes first. I understand that logic. Voluntary declaration appears to be an extraordinary privilege given to the rich, when in fact, it's in favor of all of us, since we all profit from those rich people's riches, and taxes, if paid. And they will be paid one way or another. A statute of limitation speeds up the practice.

Someone who carts away tax paid money and doesn't declare earned interest needs to pay what he owes. Someone who refuses to pay interest is a criminal and will be penalized. Someone who does everything along the lines of legality, even paying back charges after the fact that he initially didn't, is not. And that's the difference. In fact, in the latter case, the law retroactively rids him of his guilt.

The only problem is, that we, the lecherous harpies, who, self-absorbed as we are, feel as though we're the reason for that person being that rich, need to make sure that he is not rid of his personal guilt, at least not in the public eye, because that's the celebrity's cubicle, and we built it. He apparently relinquishes the right to make any more money with the deceit. And it seems we really are that powerful. The media, being the mouthpieces of stupidity join in on the sad sad song of we make and we break.

And we won't forgive anyone for being that rich, while we're not, and for trying to get away with it, while we can't, although we'd all do the same if we were in that kind of position.

Unfortunately greed is not only a malady of the rich, it's a sickness of the little ape trying to get his grabby little hands on what he doesn't have. That's what we are. Hairy little wannabes. And morality starting from a sense of jealousy is not a good position to judge other people by, or to do any kind of thinking, especially about the principles of our legal system. Sadly it's all we have, and it's all we are. How could we be more, when all we can focus on is the shiny and how much we want it for ourselves.

Weekend Writing Warriors: Into the Dark

Hello everyone and welcome to Weekend Writing Warriors. Wow - it has been one year since we started this nice little Sunday tradition and I'm glad be a part of it and to have met such a talented bunch of writers! Today, I'm diving deeper into my story. Eloise, being haunted by the sight of the white shepherd dog that appears to be stalking her on her daily walks, curiously follows him into a grove...

Eloise plunged into darkness. Like crossing a line, the tree trunks, broad and mighty, swallowed the light of day, and with it all evidence of the outside world. 
It was a strange place, unfamiliar, and foreign to her senses and
without a flashlight, she’d soon be lost. 
Eloise moved forward regardless, and the air lay still and cold against her quickening breaths. 

“Come here, dog, I won’t hurt you.”  

Two small lights lit up between trees like pale blue crystals.




Synopsis

Eloise Walsh is a woman of modest needs - she lives with her husband George and French bull dog Aethelia in a quaint little house in the heart of Southampton, England. When fate strikes and her husband suddenly falls ill, Eloise barely accepts the seriousness of his situation. Desperate to do something, she persuades her husband to go on medicinal walks through the elaborate city park. She notices a white shepherd dog trailing them from a distance.
The dog appears to be cut off from his pack, determined to following them to the point of stalking. Struggling to shake him off, the dog makes himself comfortable in their backyard, and soon Eloise finds herself at a turning point; challenged to take care of her sick husband as well as taking in a stray dog with a strange set of abilities that cause a wild amount of trouble in their household and between the married couple. It doesn't take long before she realizes that there is a reason why the white shepherd Aned is in her hands, an how not only her life but the lives of others will be in danger if she doesn't take on the responsibility of being his guardian.

#8sunday Into the Dark http://t.co/gEU3JgXVxl
— Dana Renelt (@dasdanalein) February 1, 2014