hey again, kids

Oh, there are so very many things I would like to whine and bitch about, but considering that one of my co-workers who is younger than I am had to have quite serious emergency-ish surgery yesterday, and everyone is losing their jobs and losing their houses, and children are starving in Darfur, it probably behooves me to count my blessings instead. Like the fact that the toilet only *almost* overflowed this morning, meaning that I just had to plunge it out at 6 am, not plunge it out and wash the bathroom floor at 6 am. That's a good thing, right?

And like the fact that when I fell on the ice again today, at just about the same place on the hill I wiped out last time, I did not end up bleeding. That's a good thing also, right?, and my own damn fault because I bought the Yaktrax but they're still in the box, plus I was looking at the ice intently and trying to cross it very gingerly when I ended up on my butt, so that level of clumsiness can't be anyone's responsibility but my own.

And like the fact that when one bus didn't come and the next was twenty minutes late, making me late for work, the patient who was waiting for me is both 23 and someone I've known since he was six months old, so he was just patiently chillaxing in my waiting room, unconcerned and un-upset. So that's all good, too, right? Right!

So we can skip all that and discuss instead a NYT article I saw linked to yesterday about "glam-mas." Glam-mas are grandmothers who, unlike Mrs Obama's apparently wonderful mother, don't want to help care for or even much get to know their grandchildren. The glam-ma tag being, while arguably clever, misleading, because for every one who doesn't want to babysit because she's too busy going to the spa or going on dates, there's another who doesn't want to babysit because she's too busy with her career or because she just isn't interested in anyone else's kids, even if they are her flesh and blood. One of the women interviewed in the article complained that when her mother came to visit after the birth of her baby, she was bored and made no bones about it, and when the new mother was having trouble nursing and thus distressed, sort of rolled her eyes, said something along the lines of "I don't know why you don't just give that child a bottle," and repaired to the patio to smoke. Which, frankly, is kind of hilarious.

Be that as it may, it must have been a slow day at the NYT Style section when they decided to do an article about this and act like it's some kind of new phenomenon. There have always been grandparents who really didn't give a crap. (As one of the comments I saw directed towards this said, "Wait. Doesn't everyone have one Nice Grandma and one Mean Grandma?" Numerous people laughingly agreed, with slight variations like Crazy Grandma and Crazier Grandma.)

But you know what I'm gonna say. I curse the unfairness of the universe when those people get adorable little grandbabies and I do not. I would *so* make time in between going to the spa and dating to rock them to sleep, change them, feed them their parents' nutritionally approved choices, take them to the park, buy them the chicest damn baby clothes you ever saw***, read to them, whatever. Hell, when they're old enough and if of the proper gender, I'd take them to the spa with me and pay for their first pedi. C'mon now.

xoxo

addendum: *** the last time I had lunch with M2, she was showing me the latest picture of her youngest grandchild on her phone and she said, "Can you read what her t-shirt says?" I couldn't. It said Dingo Snack. Hahahaha. I would most definitely buy any future grandchildren or step-grandchildren of mine Dingo Snack t-shirts or the equally snarky equivalent thereof. Promise!