I f-ing hate taxes

Seriously. I don't get to decide how they're spent; some old, rich white dude up on Capitol Hill does. And mostly, I don't like how they spend it. This is what I imagine goes on behind those mahogany doors our tax dollars paid for:

Let's decide to give billions (yes, billions, as in more money than Joe Public will see in personal income in several lifetimes) to banks who are failing because of bad debt. Let's act shocked when those banks later use that money indiscreetly to pay off their cronies, rather than their bad debts. Let's publicly castrate them for doing what we knew they were going to do anyway with that government money, and hope it saves our ass.

Let's not give some of that to, say, Joe Public to pay off his credit cards and car loans, thereby making it much easier for his family to put money back into the economy by, say, buying food. Let's see what happens when Joe Public doesn't get his share of several hundred billion to pay off his debts; that certainly won't help those outrageous banks.

Then, when we've proven to the public that we haven't learned our lesson from Wall Street, and turned a blind eye to blatant obsequious grafting of people with already inflated wallets, let's instead direct our ire at the blue collar workers of the auto industry for not doing more. More with what? Are they supposed to wring money out of their coveralls to retool the assembly lines into making more fuel-efficient cars that people can't afford right now anyway?

And then, to top it off, let's make some random person, who is doing her mother's taxes out of the goodness of her heart, sit on hold for 45 minutes with the IRS only to be cheerfully transferred to a department that is now closed so she didn't get a chance to get her important tax question answered.

GOD, if women ruled the world, this shit just wouldn't happen! Give a Mom the reigns of the White House, Capitol Hill, and the national budget, and before you know it, every single f-ing American will be given a band-aid, a peanut butter sandwich, $5 for the road, and a kiss for luck. What's your take on this?

Whining with Sour Grapes

So, I have a dilemma. I recently started working full-time, which I LOVE. I love being at work, making a name for myself, being professionally respected. I love that I don't have to watch, save, entertain or punish Jacob all day long, just for being himself. (God, I have GOT to get that boy some help!)

Being away from the kids for 50 hours a week puts me at a disadvantage in the parent blogosphere. I mean, really, how do I write a 900+ word essay every week on being a full-time mom post-military, if I'm not a full-time mom anymore? I'm rapidly running out of material.

So when my other blog gig called me and laid me off due to recession cuts, it came as somewhat of a relief. I mean, I truly love writing, and I love writing about my zany kids and my adorably wacky husband. But between my messy house, my work schedule, and the sleep Jacob is not letting me have, I really haven't had the energy to write. So, I took the news with grace.

Then I log onto the site, and see a new writer. Granted, she has previous posts so she's not NEW-new, but her last post was a year and a half ago! And they let me go because they had to cut someone and my page views aren't high enough to justify keeping me, but hers are? Serious ego drain.

And then my friend Andrea gave me some great advice, which I think I'm going to embrace: "Please don’t let this irk you. You got to XX Website because of your cajones – and you’d never written before? Now you can write to someone new saying you have written for a huge website. That’s BIG." Thanks, Andrea!

So, I guess I'll focus on work, focus on my kids and marriage, and vent and laugh on Chocolate and Whine. Thanks for listening!