serendipity

Three dresses and some lip gloss

The Big Girl is leaving for France on Tuesday and so far I'm doing a marvelous job of keeping my shit together. After all this was my idea. We promised - when she was old enough - we would send her to visit his family. As two trips as an unaccompanied minor, one exchange trip to France and a recent trip to Arizona without any chaperone at all will attest, she is officially old enough. Even if she is my baby.

We are not going with her. We need to focus on the store and as anyone looking for tickets overseas can attest, It can cost up to $10K to get a family of four out of Dodge and into gay Paris. And that's before hotels and meals and shoe shopping.

Instead she's going with friends to visit family, without her parents. She'll be gone for five weeks.

I took her to a department store to buy a few things for her trip. The girl only had one (suitable) dress and needed a couple more to get her through dinners out. We started shopping in the kids department where she instantly hated everything. Ever since her feet grew big enough to fit in women's sizes she has this idea that everything should come from there. This (wrinkle your nose when you say it) KID'S department was resulting in a bunch of "No thanks. Not that. Ick! Ugh, pink. Ew!"

Suddenly she and her sister picked out the same dress: black and white with a tule-like skirt. It was perfect. Sophisticated and age-appropriate. I bought one for each of them because, at almost exactly five years apart in age, I love it when they dress like twins. No, they don't look a bit alike.

One dress in her hand still only meant two in her suitcase, so we made our way, me dragging my feet, over to the women's department. Predictably, she loved everything. This dress and that dress and this shirt and those shorts! Oh look! We've found Tween Mecca!

Two more dresses were acquired, strapless but pretty and not sexy at all. Even her father approved of them.

The next day we went to Sephora, me in search of my youth and her in search of the opposite. I bought her first bottle of mascara, under the strict agreement it would be worn only for special events - dinners out and school dances - not every day. I also bought her some pretty lip gloss but I'm going to have to take that back because the silly sales girl sold us the kind that makes your lips all poofy. While poofy lips is fine for me - helpful even, my girl's lips are not old enough for that bee-stung look. She'll have chapstick.

Her suitcase is packed with a pair of women's department high-heeled sandals, the new strapless dresses and mascara. It is also packed with Nerds, Pop Rocks, super balls and peace sign t-shirts. She is ready for a summer in France and impatient for it to begin.

And while this was all my big idea, I bought the plane tickets, the dresses, mascara and high-heeled sandals, it turns out that I am the one who is not ready.

I want to say slow down, want to keep her home and under mama's wing. But my foot keeps pushing the accelerator.

Upstairs, the Little One is fast asleep in my bed. Usually that annoys me (the girl steals my pillow, sleeps sideways and could heat a ranch house with her body). Tonight, tomorrow and Travel Day I will be grateful for the little girl cuddle and a not-so-tiny head nestled in the crook of my arm (ow).

 

Mad as Hell

From where I sit, it all comes down to strategy: there's the strategy that says "Stop the oil leak. Period." And then there's the strategy that says "Cap the well - we'll get the oil later."  Which one do you think we're pursuing? My friend John said it best:

We ought to set off a small tactical nuke down the BP hole, and seal off the ocean floor with less fallout, so to speak, than letting the oil flood the Gulf."

Nukes sound so dramatic - and then you look at the pictures.

Welcome to Day 45 of what is now the worst environmental disaster in our nation's history. I don't know about you, but whenever I see the coverage I start to weep. And then I get outraged. And then I weep again. Rinse and repeat repeatedly throughout the day.

Honestly, I'm not sure which is worse: the ineptitude or the lies.

 

Oil rig

The rig wasn't supposed to blow up. Wasn't supposed to be capable of sinking. And if the unthinkable happened, we were supposed to be able to stop the oil. Cap it. Cover it. Kill it. At least contain the flow, prevent it from landing on the marshlands. The beaches. The reefs.

Or not. 

And so here we are, killing, and I do mean killing the Gulf.

Commercial fishing industry? Dead.

Fly fishing industry? Dead.

Tourism? While the eco-tourists will have plenty of opportunities to perform good deeds in the future, the rest of it is dead, and for a good while.

Indigenous people living off the land? Dead, or rather, displaced, in another week or two. Funny that BP won't send any officials to talk to those guys. They sent some boom, but not enough boom. But some nice folks who lived through the Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska drove down to help their brothers and sisters understand the dreadful future ahead.

Birds, fish and wildlife. Dead. Maybe for generations.

Regular folks, those hardy souls cleaning up after BP are falling sick every day, up to their necks in toxic oil that's been treated with toxic dispersant. But there's no need to give them respirators because they've simply come down with food poisoning. I can just smell those mesothelioma lawyers sharpening their pencils for the class action suit to come. 

My vote is that Tony Hayward be stripped to his shorts, given a bowie knife and forced to live off the marshland he's destroyed for the next 5-10 years - by himself. He can go back to his summer estate when the water becomes potable and the wildlife have returned.

Look, I know the oil companies are evil. A necessary evil. But this is more evil than I can swallow. I will never buy BP products ever again even though they used to be my preferred gas provider. I believed a lot of the crap they were spewing on TV about their support for alternative energy. And there's an ever-so-convenient ARCO one mile from my house. I used to say to myself "for an oil company, they seem to be rather environmentally-sensitive." Ha. Five bonus points for pulling one over on the marketing person. Now I would, ironically, rather spend more money driving further for gas than to give BP another dime of my money. They need to take their butts home to the Queen and get back to poisoning their own kin.

If this disaster had taken place off the coast of England do you really think we'd be looking at 45+ days of massive oil pollution? But hey, it's only Louisiana. Florida. Texas. Those daft gits will find some way to survive. 

Mr Hayward checks his watch. Is it time for my eight weeks of vacation yet? I hear Morocco is lovely this time of year.