My Own Women's Day Acknowledgement

My mom is cool. Not in the way that celebrity moms like Madonna or Teri Hatcher are cool, but in the more normal—“I don’t need millions of dollars to make me cool”—cool. So cool that my teenage daughter actually wants to go to her house for the weekend just to hang out.

My daughter thinks my mom is cool because they watch TV, shop and go to the beach together, and they both giggle at the silliest things. I also think my mom is cool, but for an entirely different reason.

She loves me unconditionally, and I know it. I ended up going to business school, entering the corporate world and eventually starting a company. I know that she would love me just the same if I had gone to beauty school and worked in a salon, or if I had decided to pursue an acting career.

If you ask her, she’ll tell you that she was a terrible mother. From the time I was in grade school, she was a single parent of three kids. We were alone after school because she had to work full time. We didn’t go on vacations; we didn’t have a lot of new clothes and other stuff; we didn’t get our own cars when we turned 16. If we wanted to go to college, we had to pay for it ourselves. When we turned 18, we had to move out of the house. Of course when we were teenagers, we thought she was the Queen of All Evil.

But she loved us unconditionally, and we knew it. We may not have wanted to admit it, but we knew it. And it’s made all the difference, at least for me. I’ve learned to trust my own instincts, and to believe that I can handle anything. I know that no matter what I do, there’s at least one person who’ll tell me I did a great job.

I’m lucky I had such a terrible mother. If you didn’t have a mom like mine, you’ll have to learn to give yourself unconditional love. Easy for me to say, right? Try it:

1. Set up your start-up screens (computer, mobile phone, etc.) to give you some love. When I turn on my phone, I see, “Greetings, O Great and Powerful Queen!”
2. Go to Hallmark.com and send yourself some love. You can pick the card, create a message, and set it to be sent on whatever date in the future you want. Why not send a “You’re So Great” card to yourself every month?
3. Recruit a friend to be your fountain of unconditional love. Set up a daily, weekly, or monthly date to get together and pat each other on the back.

So thanks, Mom, for being so cool. I hope that I’ll be as terrible a mother as you are. However, I’m not sure I can carry off a birthday cake hat as well as you can.

It's International Women's Day

Thank a woman in your life who is important to you, and visit the official International Women's Day site.

Feel free to acknowledge her by adding a comment to this post!

An Inspiring "Women In Sports" Story.

Guess who is the all-time leading basketball point scorer for Massachusetts high school students?

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/writers/selena_roberts/03/05/clothesminded/index.html

Women's History Month: Word of the Day

OK, so there really is not a connection between Women's History Month and a word of the day. But I came across the following while I was cleaning out some old writings.

Word of the day: virago. One definition is "noisy, scolding or domineering woman"; another is "large, strong, courageous woman". Guess which one's my fave?

It is Women's History Month...please go out and celebrate. Go, viragos!

Yet Even More Evidence of the Wage Gap

In The New York Times today, there is a really interesting chart, outlining the fact that women make less than men in nearly every single job. Why? And what can we do about it?

See for yourself...

Voting: You Should Do It, and Tell Your Friends

This is the 30th year I am eligible to vote. In all that time, I have not missed an opportunity to cast a ballot. I remember in my 12th grade government class, Mr. Baldwin (yes, father of those Baldwins) gave a speech about voting as more than a right, it's a duty. He's right.

We cannot complain if we don't vote.

We cannot profess that democracy is the best system if we don't vote.

We cannot presume to tell other nations that they should have elections if we are not participating in our own.

We cannot call ourselves patriots if we do not respect our country enough to cast our ballots.

Whatever your political persuasion, get out there and do it. Vote early if you can. Vote by mail. Or vote tomorrow. I heard on the news this morning that the odds of your vote being the deciding vote in the presidential election is 1 in 60,000,000. Those odds are twice as good as the odds of winning the California lottery.

To find your polling place, click here.

And here's a virtual "I Voted" sticker for you:

To Privatize? Or Not...

Lately I've been toying with the idea of adopting a pseudonym for this blog. Will it free me up to write whatever and about whomever I want? Or will it stifle me because I'll have to remove all identifying marks?