Playground Politics

As a mom of three young kids in this era of hyper parenting, I've recognized two categories of parents at public playgrounds/play places.

1) There are the parents who believe that UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES should ANYONE, ANYWHERE dare to EVER, E-V-E-R go up a slide, slides are ONLY for going DOWN on.

2) Then there's everyone else, who fit somewhere on a sliding scale of reasonability.

Our rules on this matter are that we only allow slide-going-upping if no one else is on it, waiting to go down. We understand that slide-going-downers have priority. It's happened in a few instances where my children are happily climbing UP a slide, as that first category of parents loudly proclaim to their children, with voices aimed in our direction, that slides are ONLY FOR GOING DOWN ON. Then they have given us the hairy eyeballs; for not following their rules, and for demonstrating to their over-controlled children that SOMETIMES their parent's rules are not absolutes.

Thankfully it seems that in most places we frequent, we encounter the second category of parents, and it's simply a matter of finding our mutually reasonable solution if we need to step in and help the kids to play safely and kindly.

I was inspired to write this by Dani's "Parents That I Can't Stand Series". Hers is a hoot because I figure most of us fit in there somewhere, I found myself in there as the Burnout Mom. Don't go in there if you're feeling easily offended, but otherwise, she has 6 KIDS and a great sense of snarky humor.

Any of you get the hairy eyeball at the playgrounds for anything like this? Or, are you a firm believer that no one should ever EVER go UP a slide?

You make me feel like a natural woman

Before I had kids, I was a real man's woman.

Meaning that my friends were mostly men. I was comfortable with men: I swore, spit, played pretty good pool, drank bourbon, and I liked a lot of aggressive music.
I have a crappy fashion sense; if I spend money on myself it's on books and bad habits. Unlike many women I knew back then, I didn't generally wear shoes that were worth noticing. These differences often made me feel apart from the rest of my gender who often seemed to me to be a completely separate species. That was before I became, well, a woman's woman.

I easily developed good, comfortable platonic friendships with men. My friendships with women were tumultuous, competitive, and melodramatic. I loved my female friends when I hung out with them individually, but I would escape groups of women to hang out with more comfortable groups of men, or mixed groups; I was some sort of alien in a strange land when left to awkwardly flounder in the exclusive company of women.

All that changed after my first miscarriage. As my body painfully expelled a tiny embryo that I was hopelessly in love with, I realized that I was experiencing something very womanly. My suffering was a story going back to the beginning of human time, more specifically, women's time. When I began looking for answers, I lucked upon an online support forum where women who were suffering grief from losses and/or difficulties trying to conceive shared their struggles and knowledge. I found myself in the company of women, and for once, I felt that I shared something major with them, that I was even one of them.

My male friends were for the most part, well, useless in these times (exceptions being Scott, the night my world really fell apart, and George, an inspiration I will never forget, RIP). As that bloody nightmare of a year went on to feature two more miscarriages, my male friends retreated, unable to relate to me any more in my world of baby obsession and loss. It was my girlfriends who got me through. Most of them online, but a community of them nonetheless. We were a loyal, funny and loving bunch on the former boards at women.com and at lifecycle, which became ovusoft.com. I lost touch with many of my first, bestest online friends from those times, but I'll never forget those women who supported me in my bluest hours, who welcomed me into the folds of their communities, who welcomed me into the world of women as if I belonged there.

I've not left the company of women since; three miscarriages, three full term pregnancies, three births, child rearing, play dates, homeschooling groups online, homeschooling gatherings offline. For the most part, all of these communities  are run and populated by mothers and their children. A few men enter those worlds sometimes, and when they're there it's wonderful, but it is primarily women who I interact with in my life as a mother.

Thank you, women of the internet, and mothers in my offline community, who let this macho freaky lady with bad shoes and sometimes an abrasive personality into your world. Thank you for taking me in.