Friday, October 31, 2008

love me, love me not

It’s the morning and I am sitting with my steaming cup of coffee and doing what I do, reading celebrity gossip, my very secret shameful indulgence…

I am struck by the stories regarding parents of adoptive children that then happen to have birth children. Specifically today a story on Nicole Kidman. Okay being out from under the hold of shorty Tom and his couch jumping ideology must be a huge relief, worthy of a mighty Hallelujah!!! And finding a hotty singer from down under to be your best mate, must have her aglow with the “Soulmates are real” wisdom ( I question that by the way). To top that there is the birth of Sunday Rose, apparently a miracle, although though there are plenty of 41 year olds having babies… The blessed event apparently has given Nicole a new lease of life. She is now whole and complete.

To that I say bullshit. I don’t know if these are her words or those of the media, although I suspect the media for being so closed minded. The story makes it sound like she is a mother for the first time. Hello?!! She has two teenage adopted children. Tell me why would someone adopt a child only to make a point of showing them that they will never be the same as s birth child. Truthfully I blame Nicole too. She been gushing over the new baby and really not talking much about her other kids. Maybe they are too under the control of Tom and they have grown apart.

I don’t know, but it just bothers the heck out of me. Even Brangelina that I highly respect for having the kind of multicoloured brood I’d aspire to have someday, even with them the media is relentless. Now y’all know Angie loves her Maddox,afterall it he completely transformed the woman, but every since the birth of Shiloh, the media has a made a point of focusing on her, because she is the true fruit of the loins of Brangelina whereas Zahara, Pax and Maddox must be a rental deals.

Or take Madonna with her son David. Oh but he’s never just David. He little David Banda, lets make it clear in case you are colour blind, that he does NOT have the same last name as Madonna, because, wait for it,wait for it, .... he is not really her child.... Wow!!!

Get real folks, and grow up. A child is a child and if you love children it should not matter if they are your own or adopted. I love my friends children just as much as my own nieces. Blood is not thicker than water. This is simply a condition of society that say somehow what you make yourself has a special ingredient that somehow an adoptive child cannot have. And science doesn’t help. What with the stories of bonding between mother and child, baby knowing its mothers scent, how mothers milk is the secret sauce to have smart healthy kids.

What I do know is that babies are very smart. What they do bond to is attention. Give them love and give them attention and they are yours. And there are alot of those little ones out there looking for your love, looking for someone to bond to. So open your arms and bring them into your lives and love them because all you need is love.... and your life will never be the same.... Ask Angie…

Saturday, October 11, 2008

The Lunch Bunch....

Every once in a while the gals from my office get together for lunch or happy hour, usually around a birthday. These get together are guaranteed to be fun filled with lost of laughs and plenty of interesting discussion. You see, we all work at an engineering company, so first off it’s great to be doing something away from the boys, but also because we are such a diverse group of women. In one meeting we had an animated discussion regarding raising teens about the subject of sex, and drugs. And the incredible thing is the insight everyone had on the topic, each seeing it from their point of view, regardless of whether they had children or not. I think we all learned something that night.

Anyways today’s get together was much more lighthearted. We were celebrating the birthday of a couple of the girls and conversation steered towards who is the youngest in the crowd (31) and who’s married and who is not. Actually it started by me mis-hearing some saying “I’m buried” , referring to work, and hearing it as “I’m married”. So I joked that I guess congratulations were in order. Her response was that marriage was never something on her agenda, and being a single Mom was fine by her. In turn she asked the our single birthday girl if she had ever been married or would like to be. Her response with a big wistful smile was that it’s something that would make her very happy and something she has on her vision board. I have heard people say that… That somehow marriage, not the big party and all that, completes you… She then said “I have a goal… for my next birthday I want to be on the hottest date of my life… I just have to find the guy...”

Now this here young lady happens to be a project manager in my company. Well getting things done and getting them done on time is her job. So we joked that she should set up a committee to investigate this project. We would need research, we would need regular meeting preferably over wine. We would need test subjects, prototypes and a products requirement document. After much laughter, we thought, why not?

From this was born “The Pathi Dev Project” (I’ll let you figure out what the Sanskrit term means). Although the original conversation starting with our dear girl landing a hot date, that became more and more of a minor goal, and the bigger goal the objective of having fun with the idea of finding the perfect date. After all this would require research, observing the subject in it’s natural habitat, and figuring out the best way to lay the trap and snare the prize LOL!!! Ultimately this would lead to spending time with the sisterhood, sharing laughs and swapping stories and ultimately having plenty of fun filled get togethers to track our “progress”. Like I said ours is a diverse group, there are single parents, divorced chicks, happily married wives, mothers and single gals. We’ve all had our own experiences in love arena and now we have a forum to share those experiences. That is what I love about being a woman. We are fiercely supportive of one another, and no one has as much fun as a bunch of gals on the town. Like Cindi says, Girls just wanna have fun!!!

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

What if ...?

Ever look back at your choices in life and wonder what if I had taken a different path. Stupid question, every one does, right? You often have these soul searching moments when you find yourself at a crossroads so to speak. Not sure how to move forward, so you go backwards in your mind. Maybe you are trying to validate that you did the right things. Maybe it’s to torture yourself by thinking of the alternate routes you could have taken and how sweet everything would be now if you had…

Truth is none of us knows what the future holds and no one can tell what other things could have happened had your path diverged from the one you are on now. Yet we still do this. This reflection on the past. This “what if” scenario that we ponder over and over again.

Happiness is a pretty elusive thing. It’s really more of an art form. To be happy in life you have to perfect the skill of contentment, be able to accept things for what they are, be able to see the glass half full at all times. It’s a state of mind. One that requires a lot of work and focus and definitely does not come naturally. Our every present darkside is always at work, stealthy chipping away at our happy facade. It’s why depression never happens over night but sneakily works it way into your mind day by day till it takes you down,knocked youoff your feet and eaving you wondering how you never saw it coming. There is reason, sorry Tom Cruise, you need the pills to get out a hole like that…

I have alot of what-ifs that my always awake brain likes to roll around in my mind. Did I pick the right career? Spend more time on my relationships? tried to have kids? live closer to family ....

The fact is in almost every major decision I have made in life I chose be non-conformist. Which is really weird considering I hate breaking the law. I guess I saw the popular choices in life , doing just what everyone else was doing as boring. That is not to say I am THAT unique of a person. I am not. The are plenty of folks that made the same kind of choices that I have. But I think the motivation for all of us was to do something different. Be different…

I knew, when I was 11 that I wanted to be an engineer. Not because my Dad, or my cousins were engineers. But because I read an article in Scientific American, about the designer of Audi fox. She was on the cover and hailed as a revolutionary engineer. And I knew right then, I wanted to be just like her. Not just an engineer, but kick ass one. It’s not often you have such clarity of thought, but it never occurred to me to question myself then.

I do now.

I know I am a pretty kick ass engineer. Check there. But having accomplished that I don’t really sense satisfaction. The reality of life as an engineer, the long hours, the working with fellow geeks and nerds, the logical thinking that makes us socially retarded creatures, never considered how that would effect my everyday life. Not to mention, who cares that I designed the fastest networking chip. Great! Some pervert can download porn faster now...How does that help me make my mark on the world?

My point is I wonder how things could have been different if I had not had that epiphany at age 11… What would I be today… Would life be infinitely more interesting than it is now?

I can’t change the past but I certainly can change the present. Work on that glass half full attitude. Anything can be interesting if you show an interest and engage with it. Life is no exception. So lets go forth and be happy and live interesting lives…