International Guilt Trip Day

It's International Women's Day and I, appropriately, am celebrating it by feeling guilty.

I mean, I should be spending this day doing one of the "Meet me on the bridge" events for Women For Women International, a cause I believe in. And instead I spent it at the dentist, trying like hell not to terrify her with my mouth full of old silver-plated horrors. Luckily she was strong of stomach. Then I spent an hour running around town paying our car registration late, and paying the ticket we got for the late registration, also late, both with added fees. Bill it to my guilty conscience. After that I wasted a good 45 minutes mentally ripping my hair out fretting over what to do for the girls for school next year. I went to a coffee shop to work on my book, where I sat feeling guilty about spending money on coffee, for working on something I enjoy when I also have things I need to do that I don't enjoy clogged up in the queue from here to the moon, and feeling bad about my writing, which seems downright Dickensianly-wordy, and my plot, which seems Interceptionally missing.

I came home where I felt guilty for not keeping my kids' room cleaner, for buying stuff to make sloppy joe's at the store yesterday (what the hell was I thinking? I feel sick just writing about eating sloppy joe's), and for the window and the oven door, both broken by my husband, both seen by the new owner of our rental property today. On a pop-quiz visit. I read an article on the internet that managed to make me feel guilty for feeding my kids apples and salmon. APPLES AND SALMON.

All this when what I should be doing is standing out on a bridge somewhere with my fellow sisters, raising money I guess or hope or attention for a cause that I actually, truly, really do believe in.

Or couldn't I at least muster an angry feminist rant? I muster them daily just overhearing Max and Ruby, yet for IWD I got nothing?

I say it like it's all just Twister and Puppy-Chow, but seriously guys: can you think of a better way to commemorate female-ness than by giving yourself a massive guilt trip? Isn't this the very essence of femaleness? Feeling bad about stuff that isn't our fault? Can we all just blame our mothers? Or can we subvert the gender binary by blaming our fathers? Their paternalistic, disapproving grumblings over late night Budweiser and David Letterman?

I'm just kidding. My dad fell asleep on the couch reading Updike. He also only drank Coors. My mother never makes me feel guilty except when I don't call or when I get tipsy and refer to Martin Luther as "The German Merman". (It doesn't make sense when I'm tipsy either).

Listen: It's International Women's Day and I'm going to celebrate it the only way I have left: by putting the kids to bed early, drinking a cheap boxed Malbec and eating chocolate ice cream and M & M's for dinner, and spending the dark hours with my BFF laptop reading Supernatural fanfiction.

And no I won't tell you who I slash.

Vive la femme.

I am Vesuvius and I feel guilty about this blog.