Welcome to the Misadventures of Widowhood blog!

Welcome to my World---Woman, widow, senior citizen seeking to live out my days with a sense of whimsy as I search for inner peace and friendships. Jeez, that sounds like a profile on a dating app and I have zero interest in them, having lost my soul mate of 42 years. Life was good until it wasn't when my husband had a massive stroke and I spent the next 12 1/2 years as his caregiver. This blog has documented the pain and heartache of loss, my dark humor, my sweetest memories and, yes, even my pity parties and finally, moving past it all. And now I’m ready for a new start, in a new location---a continuum care campus in West Michigan, U.S.A. Some people say I have a quirky sense of humor that shows up from time to time in this blog. Others say I make some keen observations about life and growing older. Stick around, read a while. I'm sure we'll have things in common. Your comments are welcome and encouraged. Jean

Sunday, August 31, 2014

Sex, Bullets and Baby Bliss



 

Sometimes I have the strangest dreams then spend too much time in the morning trying to figure out where they came from and what they mean. Today I had an opportunity to sleep in for the first time all week but at 7:00 a dream pushed me awake. It involved a young woman in a skirt so short you could see her pubic hair and bare bottom as she flitted around with a bound to her steps that made her pleaded miniskirt flair up in front of Don and myself. (No Brazilian wax job for that girl. Apparently I dream in the grooming styles of decades gone by when the only one who would see your pubic area was your future husband.) I tried to will myself back to sleep so I could figure out what the little trollop was up to, but I couldn’t.

Just before going to bed last night I was watching a rerun of Saturday Night Live with Lady GaGa singing, “Do what you want, what you want with my body.” She was covered with a silver jumpsuit and blouse--- nothing sexy about it---but as she sang she was feeling herself up and by the time the repetitive and boring lyrics quit coming out of her mouth her backup dancer was also feeling her up. Then she laid down on the floor and they simulated sex as she sang the final line---you guessed it, another, “Do what you want with my body.”

I fell asleep trying to figure out when (and if) I’ve become a prude over the years and if I have why has society come to accept violence in movies and the nightly news but sex in the media is still trying to push the shock value envelope. The pundits on cable news talk so freely about how we should bomb this place, and challenge that country’s leader and “kill them before they kill us.” They talk and we listen as if what they're talking about all happens in a movie where the blood isn’t real and the bullets don’t hurt. Guess they've never read General William T. Sherman words: “War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it…War is Hell.” Now, war is on little and big screens everywhere---fact, fiction and in games---and we don’t seem to care. Yet we see a singer not only pushing the sex-in-music envelope but trying to set it on fire and we get all indigent and worry about the future of the world.  

Where are the mother’s marches against war? Wouldn’t that be a better cause than trying to keep sex education out of the schools? Maybe what we need is more (not less) sex in the media, in video games and on the nightly news---less time to prompt aggression. Brad and Angelina had sex on the balcony of their New Orleans home last night. It was too dark to get a video but here's the audio. I worry that we’ve programed a whole generation of people who have no empathy for the suffering of others. I must add a disclaimer here: I do know that a Society can walk and chew gum at the same time. We can simultaneously care about baby seals, violence and sex in the media and whether or not the lids on our canning jars have sealed properly. Heck, we can even worry about that stuff in our sleep in the form of girls without panties trying to tempt our husbands.

Sex and violence in the world are such heavy things to cover on a Sunday morning. You would never guess that yesterday I spent the afternoon getting to know and hold the newest member of my family…a great-great nephew born a week ago. His great-grandmother and great aunt were present, too, and the concept of from the cradle to the grave was flitting through my head. What will the future be like for that little boy in the world we're making up as we go? But on that idyllic afternoon all I saw was a young mother completely relaxed and surrounded by a family totally emerged in baby bliss mode. I saw a little boy who already knows love. I saw him get introduced to his four-legged sister who is full grown but smaller than him. I laughed as his newly minted grandmother, assisted by his great aunt (my two nieces), learned how to change a diaper for the first time in decades. It was a matriarchal gathering that probably hasn't changed much since time began.

I can’t control my nighttime dreams but I can control my day-dreams. And yesterday was a special day that deserves a Sunday day-dream of a world with cotton candy rainbows, Snoopy-dog happy dances, and family love that will continue growing in size and depth. Day-dream along with me.... what do you wish for? I'm going to sound like Sandra Bullock in Miss. Congeniality when I say: "I really do want world peace." ©


10 comments:

  1. Jean, you have totally floored me with your writing. I'm hanging up my pen, now, today. Making this dream your catalyst for rewiring our brains for love not war - juxtaposing Lady Gaga and General Sherman? OMG Brilliant. I guess the personal IS political. Empathy starts at home. Babies prove that optimism outweighs pessimism. I don't know. What do I wish for? Something simple like Lady Gaga? That cuddling babies begets hope for babies everywhere, stranded by terrorists or addicted parents? To be honest, Jean, my day dreams are for making the most of NOW. This is ultra simplistic, as in K.I.S.S. Keep it simple, stupid.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I really was all over the map when I wrote this, wasn't I. LOL I think your day dreams is brilliant in its simplicity and if we all tried to make the most of NOW, we wouldn't have time for hatred, jealously and the others things that cause trouble between individuals and countries. So glad you shared your thoughts!

      Delete
  2. What is wrong with me? I RARELY remember my dreams. Dreaming is supposed to be really good for you. Maybe I just day dream ... living out the love that I feel for the baby boys. Even when I step on an "army guy" or a Lego. I smile!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You do dreams. We all dream. You just don't remember them long enough in those first few seconds when you wake up to have them transfer to the conscious part of your brain so you can recall them later in the day.

      Dreaming is a product of our brains transferring our daytime activities and what we've read, seen, felt, thought and heard to a long-term memory place. That info. gets placed broken up and mixed in with old memories like a computer would store data on a hard drive. Thus the sometimes weird nature of our dreams is us seeing that 'storage process" at work as it whips past old feeling, events, etc. to find a dumping ground for the new---blending them together like a salad. At least this is my understanding from things I've read.

      Delete
  3. took a bit too much fish oil did ya? bwahahaha too funny!

    smiles, bee
    oxxoxoxo

    ReplyDelete
  4. All over the map and making perfect sense. Love your blog, Jean!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh, thank you! Sometimes I worry that when I write about heavy topic it's going to drive people away but then I come back to who am I writing for me, or them? ...and it comes down to I have to write for me, to park what's in my brain some place else so I can quit thinking about things. LOL.

      Delete
  5. OMG That dream had me laughing so hard. That dream is one of the reasons I love blogging. When I can't sleep, I can come in here and fire up the old Mac and find something fantastic to take my mind off my insomnia, or whatever caused my insomnia.

    I, too, wonder what the world will be like for your sweet nephew and my grands. It's all so unpredictable. I get up every morning and turn on the news, never knowing what may have happened while I slept. We have to believe that the generations to follow will do better than we did or at least find some solutions.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Dreams sure can keep can get you thinking in the morning! And sometimes you just have to laugh and wonder how you subconscious brain came up with that.

    I know so many younger people who don't follow ANY news and therefore don't have a clue about the dangers going on in the world. On one hand that gives them the ability to raise babies in their own little peaceful bubble but on the other hand, if something bad happens here in the States they won't have clue what lead up to it and that's when we could get another president who'd have their total backing to invade countries that had nothing to do with the destruction. We're damned if we do and damned if we don't keep up with the news.

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for taking the time to comment. If you are using ANONYMOUS please identify yourself by your first name as you might not be the only one. Comments containing links from spammers will not be published. All comments are moderated which means I might not see yours right away to publish through for public viewing as I don't sit at my computer 24/7.