entertainment

Summer Vacation Anxiety

I always find my anxiety ramping up a little right before school lets out for the summer. In years past, it was generally from trying to figure out affordable childcare for three small kiddos. Who was the best caregiver? Who was the best caregiver that was NOT going to charge me a gajillion dollars to keep my kids while I worked? What camps were there? Did I do day only? What about lunch? Snack?

SO. MANY. OPTIONS.

SO. MUCH. ANXIETY.

Now…the anxiety is there. But not for those reasons. All of mine are old enough to stay home without any supervision. My husband has a job where he has some days off during the week, so that is helpful. Now the only thing I have to worry about is making sure I have a good chore schedule set up for them so they can help keep the house clean during the day. The will mean my weekends aren’t spent cleaning up the disaster left by untidy teenagers. Now I have to figure out scheduling. Who wants to stay at whose house on what days and are they at their father’s house this week? Is my mother wanting her “Nana” time with the girls? How can I work in a few fun and affordable trips this summer? Do we want to try camping? A roadtrip?

A WHOLE new set of anxieties set in and my mind is swimming.

I think, this summer, other than making sure they have a chore list to complete, I am going to let them be bored. They can take walks. They can lay out in the backyard. They can read or have movie marathons or sleep in and stay up late (so long as they don’t wake me up!). They can color and write and figure out how to entertain themselves. I am not interested in staying anxious this summer. And I need them to learn to self soothe their boredom. Maybe we will take a trip/ Maybe we won’t. But I am not going to stress over it.

I hope everyone has a bit of repreive from the insanities of school being out. I hope everyone can find their happy medium with summer vacation planning!

Here is to a happy summer vacation!

~The Grey

 

Copper Top and the Grey: It’s Been A Long Time Coming

I have an announcement and a little back story. First, the back story.

When I was 17 years old, I met someone that will ALWAYS be in my life. I spent the summer after my highschool graduation essentially living on her couch. I was so much a part of that particular group of people that I had status at the apartment. The couch was my spot (much like Sheldon) and if I wanted to sit or lay down, others had to move. I slept on that couch, cried on that couch, laughed and sang and acted goofy with my friends on that couch. And I spent the majority of my time with that chic. She and I became fast friends and even though life has taken us in different directions at times, we always come back to our friendship as though no time has passed. She is the inspiration for me starting this blog. She is the inspiration for the name of this blog. And now, she is going to be a PART of this blog! <— That was supposed to be the announcement!

I want to extend an extremely warm welcome to my friend, Coppertop. She will be posting, just like me. There will be posts by us individually (We will sign our names to differentiate who wrote what: Her being the Snarky Coppertop and me being The Grey) and then there will be posts that are collaborative and there will be posts that are simply little transcripts of our conversations. We decided last night that our conversations are too ridiculous not to share, so you shall gain some insight into our little corner of crazy. Hopefully you all will cackle like crazy, as we both do.

So hopefully, in the necxt week or two, posting will become more regular again and there will be more entertaining content to enjoy and share.

Smoochies~

The Grey

Save The Drama For Your Mama

My husband and I have been binge watching a show on Hulu to catch up to recent episodes. The show is ‘Empire’-a story about a recording label started by a rap/R&B artist, built upon the CEO’s musical talent as well as on the back of his wife’s 17 year imprisonment for slinging dope to help make ends meet and to raise capital for the start of said company. It is FULL of drama. ALL the drama. Sex, drugs, mental illness, relationships both hetero and homosexual, deceipt, betrayal, love, honor, loyalty, respect and the lack there of…it’s ALL there. Within the first few episodes, I noticed a pattern. Going on a hunch, I asked the almighty Google and sure enough, Empire is based on Shakespearean drama…King Lear, MacBeth, Antony and Cleopatra, etc…all of the episodes have something that ties it to a particular, if not more than one, Shakespearean drama. Which I find fascinating.

We humans, as a collective whole, thrive on drama, it seems. We have been writing, reading, performing, and watching dramas for centuries as a form of entertainment. It has even leaked over into reality. Look at the state of our politics! The past two presidential debates have been more focused on drama, arguing, mudslinging, and defense than they have on actually debating the issues. Perhaps that is because of who the two candidates are, but at the same time have we, as a collective, really tried to keep the focus on the issues? In my humble opinion: No. Not really. And not whole heartedly if any of us have tried.

It is nice to have some fictionalized drama to fall back upon when one needs to escape into television shows. But why can’t we just leave it at that? Why must we pull that level of contrived drama into reality and MAKE it news and politics and what we deem most important to report upon? Why can’t we let the drama stay on television shows that are supposed to be dramatic and focus our attentions to the reality of what is around us? We have massive student loan debt, millenials that are faced with fixing the economy those before them screwed up all while realizing the very dire possibility it can’t be fixed, extreme poverty, national debt that is in the trillions and growing every day, a Cold War that *never* ended despite the media and all other unreliable sources telling us it did, a growing fanatical power in the Middle East that is threatening the safety of people continents away, a greater focus on the inequalities that people of color face every day that leads to biased policing, biased conviction rates, biased “justified” police shooting deaths of supposed perpetrators of color, more claims of sexual impropriaties towards women by men in power, rampant homophobia, rampant bigotry…the list goes on and on and on… One would think with the amount of drama we have going on in our nation *without* the presidential race going on it would be enough…but no. As stated before…just watch the last two presidential debates (I’m sure they are on YouTube somewhere). FULL of drama.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I will stick to watching fictionalized drama on the television screen instead of watching it play out in our nations politics. My night time soap operas can be played out by paid actors and actresses instead of politicians who are supposed to be working for the good of our country (snort)…
Sorry…the last bit of that sentence made me laugh. I think we all know that politicians are paid actors and actresses, too…the only difference between them and real celebrities are the celebrities KNOW what they do is fiction and is meant for entertainment while politicians believe the drama they bring to the table affects real change.

I wish I had a clever bit to end this rant post with but my brain isn’t caffeinated enough yet. So I will end with this: My opinions are my own. I don’t expect nor care if anyone agrees with my viewpoints. Yes, this is a somewhat political post, but I don’t talk about giving my support to one candidate or the other, nor will I reveal who I really support. But I wish I could have a sit down with them both. Because if I did, I would tell them both this: Save the drama for your mama…and stick to the issues. Care more about this country than you do your own agenda. And if you don’t have anything nice to say, then shut the fuck up.