I'm Just a Girl

I loved that song when I was sixteen.  I remember having the cassette single when I got my driver's license.  I played it driving to school in my '85 Camaro after I got my DL (on the second try - but that's another story).  I was just a girl.  All pretty and petite.  I guess I still am.  Except I'm not.  I'm a woman these days.  A grown, married, mother of two.  So sometimes it's easy to get caught up in all that grown-ness and not notice everything that is happening around me.  I have been violated the past couple of weeks.  In ways I hope my friends and family never are.  I had my purse picked and my identity stolen.  For real.  Now, that will make a girl angry.  I'll set the scene...We're in Chi-town, all of us.  Let me just mention that we arrived to the big city with a single stroller.  That was supposed to be a double stroller.  That posed quite a challenge.  So, Sunday morning I do my best at being a dutiful wife and mother and strap both of my kids into that single stroller and have them standing on the street corner at 7:30 AM to say "yay, Daddy!" and hold up our beautiful encouraging signs.  Then, I took both squirming youngun's back up to the room to put on suitable clothes (they were in their pj's before) and set out to say the yay Daddy thing again, except we couldn't actually get to that 12-mile mark because that would mean me pushing that over-weighted single stroller across a 4 lane street that the marathoners are still running down...so I silently give up and decide to go get breakfast.  Where I get to eat about half of my breakfast wrap before the short one decides to make a scene in the quiet coffee shop.  I strap them both back in the single stroller again...and head off to find the end of the race.  Now, I know you're thinking there's no way that what I've described can take as long as it would take a person to run a marathon, but when you're married to an elite runner, sadly it is true.So we make our way to the "runner reunite" area where I purchase two $10 balloons "for Daddy." 

Okay, so that was a lot of rambling about not much, but I just wanted to share how the morning went.  It's tiring just reading that, right?  So as most of you know, when we went to lunch a short while later, my wallet was stolen.  I was the typical distracted mother.  More concerned with shoving a few pieces of food in my kids' mouth than anything else, so when that lady sitting right behind me bumped my purse and diaper bag, said she was getting her purse, and left...I didn't think much about it.  So a ruined trip, police report, and drive back home later, I'm still dealing with that.  Because I had to get a new driver's license.  That cost me $18.50.  And it was humid.  So my hair was big.  Really big.  I couldn't apply for a new Social Security card because the government was shutdown.  One of my zulily orders got canceled!  Because when they tried to charge my card, it didn't work anymore.  I've received two credit card rejection letters - I'm just hoping no one actually gave this person (me?) a credit card!  So, the point is, I was violated, and I was angry.  It's going to take me a while to get over it.

And then I was violated again.  In a more intrusive personal way, if possible.  I wish I could give all the gory details here, but I'm a very law-abiding and by-the-books person, so I'm not going to give any details.  I will say that someone was sending me facebook messages that painted a very delusional picture.  One that was very upsetting to me, and has caused me a lot of emotional turmoil.  It involved my workplace, so I'm at the mercy of the processes put in place there.  Once again, I feel like I was a distracted mother...in a hurry to get home to my children and my husband.  I ignored things that I probably shouldn't have ignored.  I smiled and nodded when maybe I should have talked to somebody?  But at the end of the day, I just wanted to get my work done and get out the door, dealing with whatever obstacles were in my way. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be working out for me.  I can't help but feel I'm still a girl in a man's world where I work...So that's why I feel like both quotes at the beginning are appropriate ... because I'm just a girl...and my rights have been largely won, but not completely.