{"id":262,"date":"2017-12-29T01:17:24","date_gmt":"2017-12-29T01:17:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hayleysmom.com\/?p=262"},"modified":"2017-12-29T01:17:24","modified_gmt":"2017-12-29T01:17:24","slug":"hayleyforpresident","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hayleysmom.com\/index.php\/2017\/12\/29\/hayleyforpresident\/","title":{"rendered":"Hayley for President"},"content":{"rendered":"

I decided to try to write earlier in the day.\u00a0 Most of my posts are late at night when I can’t sleep and I need to put the words in writing to get them out of my head.\u00a0 Does that make sense?\u00a0 This past week I just can’t seem to have a decent day.\u00a0 Each day is filled with tears, screaming and ugly crying.\u00a0 I am set off easily, raw and sensitive.\u00a0 The puppy is still not a great sleeper and last night urinated in his kennel and I swear rolled around in it like cologne to spite me.\u00a0 I think he was very soundly sleeping as he had his shots yesterday.\u00a0 I picked a very cranky 15 year old up from a sleepover and took him with me to Marymoor with the false assumption he would get out of the car and help me give Finn a bath at the dog wash.\u00a0 When he didn’t I decided to first walk over to the Dog Park which is quite extensive I found.\u00a0 I figured more mud was just fine.\u00a0 He loved it, me not so much.\u00a0 I was cold and paranoid that all the other dogs would hurt my puppy or have a disease.\u00a0 A great dane went by that his ears came up to my shoulder.\u00a0 Finn at 40 pounds fit neatly under him and proceeded to sniff out his dick.\u00a0 I scolded “Finn, uh uh, leave him alone”.\u00a0 His owner said “that’s okay, it IS awfully big”.\u00a0 I had to chew my tongue not to respond with “that’s what she said”.\u00a0 Evidently all dog people ARE weird.\u00a0 I was not wearing a coat or shoes for this mucking place.\u00a0 When I went to wash the dog, Henry claimed an upset stomach and stayed in the car.\u00a0 While I juggled his debit card, paying, the dog’s leash, and his need to love everyone I dropped my phone.\u00a0 I had to use Henry’s debit card because I am still missing my wallet and it is looking more likely Finn took it and hid it with his other treasures under the deck.\u00a0 It is Hayley’s Kate Spade thin one that would be so much fun to hide.\u00a0 We don’t have access to under the deck ourselves.\u00a0 The phone landed screen down in it’s Folio Case shattering the screen protector and the small part of the phone screen not covered by the protector.\u00a0 I had just complained to my Verizon guy, yes I have a guy, that the protector didn’t go all the way to the screen’s edges and that the protector makers needed to get their shit together.\u00a0 My first thought was this would not have happened if that boy would have gotten his teen ass out of the car and helped me.\u00a0 So now I am mad at Henry.<\/p>\n

Washing Finn is something you cannot do and be mad.\u00a0 He is so funny and wants to like it but thinks maybe he shouldn’t.\u00a0 When done, he was clean, mostly dry and gorgeous.\u00a0 I get him down and he runs to greet the proprietor and proceeds to roll around in a puddle on the floor.\u00a0 It is clean water but now he is soaking wet.\u00a0 I decide to keep him clean and carry him to the car.\u00a0 He is over 40 pounds and I am weak.\u00a0 I am huffing and puffing with one dog leg over a shoulder, my arm between his back legs and his massive head under my chin walking briskly in the muddy parking lot towards my car, yelling, “Henry open the car door”.\u00a0 Henry does not even get out to open it, opens it from the back seat.\u00a0 So now I have a wet dog and the wet dog smell in the car and it is making Henry queasy, eye roll.\u00a0 Dude, I have not showered since I think Monday, smelling like a wet dog is an improvement for me.\u00a0 I get home with a long list of chores that of course I won’t do.\u00a0 After blow drying Finn I will lay on the couch for the rest of the day occasionally weeping.\u00a0 After his blow out he goes outside and under the deck getting muddy all over again.\u00a0 We are not speaking right now.<\/p>\n

I was scrolling through Facebook even though I know I shouldn’t.\u00a0 I swear it seems the majority of everyone I know has a daughter and then a son.\u00a0 WTF, was it in the water?\u00a0 They all have posted great Christmas photos.\u00a0 Matching PJ’S, fun vacations, and dinners.\u00a0 For the first time I truly feel jealous so I promise Scott I will cut back my social media use.\u00a0 Insert eye-roll.\u00a0 I notice one of my favorite people has posted and he does not do that often.\u00a0 It is David, my best friend from Junior High.\u00a0 He lives in London with his awesome partner and their two boys.\u00a0 It was the second post this week.\u00a0 The other night he took his oldest son sledding at midnight.\u00a0 I was so proud of him.\u00a0 These are the things Hayley and I would do because why not?\u00a0 If you think of it, do it.\u00a0 Don’t wait.\u00a0 Do something out of the ordinary or daring with your kids.\u00a0 Create memories.\u00a0 Okay, lecture done.\u00a0 David had posted a nice remark about Meghan Markle, Harry’s fiance.\u00a0 \u00a0He included a speech she had given at a United Nations Women’s meeting in 2015.\u00a0 I have listen to this speech before.\u00a0 I related to it, and I found the story charming and inspiring.\u00a0 I watched it again.\u00a0 By the time it was done…down the rabbit hole I went, ugly crying along the way.\u00a0 Looks like the evening xanax shall be taken early today.\u00a0 Why am I upset about a story about an 11 year old Meghan Markle.\u00a0 I have never even watched the show Suits.\u00a0 Then it hit me.\u00a0 Just like before I related to the story.\u00a0 I realized that I had worked my ass off to raise a strong, confident, kind, loving young woman and that all of it was a waste.\u00a0 It was gone in a moment.\u00a0 All of that work to make sure she understood despite what she might read, see or hear that women were 100% equal to men.\u00a0 Just like the gorgeous smile it took several years of braces for Dr. Nelson to give her, what a waste of that beautiful smile.\u00a0 I can remember dozens of teaching moments and lessons that Scott and I taught her.\u00a0 I can remember they were not always the easy way to parent, but we did it.\u00a0 When we went to the sex and puberty class at Overlake Hospital in the 4th grade, the pediatrician said the most important indicator of a girl successfully navigating puberty was an involved Father.\u00a0 So Scott joined us for “the talk”.\u00a0 Scott was home when she got her period on black Friday and talked her off the ledge, that she didn’t need to call me two dozen times, it was not rocket science, he could handle this.\u00a0 He stretched the bands of gender roles in parenting when he was a stay at home father.\u00a0 We shared ALL parenting duties except breast feeding.\u00a0 Even in that he was supportive.\u00a0 He was the only man in my Breast Feeding 101 class.\u00a0 We figured I would forget half of it and he needed to be able to give suggestions based in fact and not guessing that if I just held the baby differently it would eat.\u00a0 It seriously did not cross our minds that he didn’t go to that class.\u00a0 We made the baby together, it was our first and we didn’t know what the fuck we were doing so any education was important.\u00a0 She had to eat.\u00a0 He changed 90% of all diapers for both kids.\u00a0 He got up every time they did.\u00a0 Changed the diaper and brought them to the milk wagon.\u00a0 When done he took them back to their crib.\u00a0 He took three months off to care for baby Hayley so she didn’t start daycare until 6 months.\u00a0 I truly believe these decisions are what made Hayley and Scott so close.<\/p>\n

These are just a few of the things we did as parents to show her she was equal, she could do or be anything she wanted.\u00a0 We tried to show her by our own example.\u00a0 Was it always easy?\u00a0 Hell NO!\u00a0 We live in a community dominated by very stereotypical gender roles.\u00a0 We live in an affluent community where the positives outweigh the negatives 10 to 1.\u00a0 In most of the kids classes I would say there was maybe 30% of the Moms that worked outside the home.\u00a0 We lived in a bubble, a safe place, but with not the most diverse example or at least obvious ones of gender role reversal.\u00a0 I can remember more than one Dad “friend” at parties or BBQs crack jokes to Scott about being a kept man or his wife being the boss.\u00a0 I am already the more outgoing and extroverted of the marriage, these comments made him feel less and impacted our marriage negatively.\u00a0 Scott and I worked together but when business was busy we did the roles that we were best at.\u00a0 I sell better, not by much, and he changes diapers way better than me, by a lot.\u00a0 Neither of us can cook though.<\/p>\n

Back to 2017, we had just started to see the results of all of our hard and purposeful parenting.\u00a0 She had wanted to work in law enforcement since 7th grade.\u00a0 She planned to apply for a Quantico internship Junior year.\u00a0 She had done a ride along with the only female officer on the WWU force.\u00a0 She wanted to be like Officer Bianca.\u00a0 It didn’t surprise us she was choosing a male dominated field.\u00a0\"\" In fact she probably didn’t even notice.\u00a0 She had taken classes that had inspired her.\u00a0 I would say she was developing into a conservative liberal like myself.\u00a0 She enjoyed her women’s study classes because they made her think and it pissed her off that women made less money than men.\u00a0 But at the same time she would crack derogatory comments about the radical feminists in her class.\u00a0 They pissed her off daily.\u00a0 We both were so excited for the election.\u00a0 I was confident that my wish for a female president in my daughter’s lifetime was going to come true.\u00a0 Plus how could Donald Trump actually win.\u00a0 I saw Hillary’s flaws but was more of an anti Trump and pro woman in the white house fan.\u00a0 I just felt that what she could accomplish just by having boobs in the white house was going to be extraordinary for my gender.\u00a0 I will try to add the video of Hayley on election night if I can.\u00a0 I really would not have had a problem with a republican but it needed to be more John McCain republican.\u00a0 I am socially liberally all the way left and fiscally conservative more right middle.\u00a0 That candidate didn’t exist in my opinion.<\/p>\n

I said so many times that I wanted to see a female president in my daughter’s lifetime.\u00a0 It kills me to think that is not even possible now.\u00a0 My daughter is gone, it can’t happen.\u00a0 Last night there was a Colbert rerun with Hilary Clinton pushing her book, “What Happen?”.\u00a0 I remember the first time I saw the interview, I liked her still.\u00a0 \u00a0Last night I wanted to reach into the TV and shake her and yell “What the FUCK happen?”.\u00a0 You ruined it.\u00a0 You only had to beat Donald Trump, what the fuck.\u00a0 My daughter is gone and was totally disgusted with our political system when she died.\u00a0 Jaded at 19.\u00a0 All because of what?\u00a0 Is it in your book?\u00a0 Cause I really want to know.\u00a0 You short changed my daughter.\u00a0 All of the parenting work, the women can do anything they want banter of her childhood; all of that was put in a time capsule and either tossed back to 1950 or shoved up Trump’s ass.\u00a0 Your failure made me look like a liar!<\/p>\n

My mom is a feminist, I am a feminist, and Hayley was a feminist.\u00a0 But we all three have different definitions of that word.\u00a0 When Hayley was taking a sociology class we looked it up.\u00a0 Here is the link I thought was the most interesting definition of feminism.\u00a0 There are multiple answers but it is Vivek’s that I found the easiest to understand.\u00a0\u00a0https:\/\/www.quora.com\/What-are-the-different-types-of-feminism<\/p>\n

So here I am, the only female in my house, well me and Zoey.\u00a0 As I watched Meghan Markle talk about her 11 year old self.\u00a0 One that sounded just like my Hayley, I realized it was still Christmas break.\u00a0 Hayley should be sitting on the couch next to me watching one of her shitty reality shoes while I surfed the internet and worked on my job hunt as planned.\u00a0 All I could feel was this deep anger starting to bubble to the surface.\u00a0 MY DAUGHTER SHOULD NOT BE GONE!\u00a0 She should be giving a speech at the United Nations in the next ten years.\u00a0 When I was asked as a child what I wanted to be when I grew up I said every single time “a President”.\u00a0 I would be asked to clarify “President of the United States?”.\u00a0 Possibly I would say or President and CEO of a very large company.\u00a0 Most of the time I was not taken seriously and god help anyone that laughed in my mother’s hearing range.\u00a0 Having gone to a different elementary school each year I would have to reestablish myself as smart for my new teachers, they did not have a previous teacher to ask.\u00a0 My previous year’s teacher was not sending an email about me to my new teacher.\u00a0 (for you younger folks, because we didn’t have email)\u00a0 So not only did I have to work harder than everyone else because I was a girl, but harder because I was the new kid.\u00a0 I remember in the second grade my teacher wanted to speak to my mother.\u00a0 The teacher explained that on a group project I was too bossy and wouldn’t let the other kids help.\u00a0 My mom looked at me and asked me to explain.\u00a0 I said the other kids did not know how to do the assignment and I didn’t want a bad grade because they were stupid.\u00a0 (never had a good filter)\u00a0 My Mom said “I don’t see a problem here” and we left.\u00a0 In the third grade I was at a school where some of the kids were pulled out one or two days a week for the “gifted” program.\u00a0 I wanted it bad.\u00a0 Those kids got to do more math and science!\u00a0 I was geeking out.\u00a0 My competition was Lee.\u00a0 Not only was he smart he was a dick.\u00a0 A mean kid.\u00a0 He laughed when I didn’t know what “humping” meant.\u00a0 I still blame Lee for one of the things that left a scar on my childhood.\u00a0 When I got home I asked my Mom what humping was.\u00a0 She proceeded to send my dad to the store for milk and sit down with a book that had graphic pictures.\u00a0 Some of you seventies and eighties kids might remember it, “When a child is born”.\u00a0 The real trauma came when she thought the book was lacking in detail and drew pictures for me.\u00a0 She is not artistic and sometimes I still have nightmares.\u00a0 Also, I never forgave my Dad for clearly going to milk a cow for that milk.<\/p>\n

Back to Lee the Dick.\u00a0 Lee and I were chosen as boy and girl of the year for the first half of the school year.\u00a0 It was based on grades and test scores.\u00a0 The highest boy and the highest girl.\u00a0 My math and reading scores (see 2nd grade) put me ahead of Lee.\u00a0 But guess who got chosen as the representative for the gifted program?\u00a0 Yep Lee the Dick.\u00a0 I don’t remember the details but I am pretty sure my Mom got involved in this one too.\u00a0 But in the end it didn’t matter because I switched schools again in the 4th grade and found amazing teachers at Bonney Lake Elementary.\u00a0 I loved the 4th grade.\u00a0 We would have long division and multiplication contests weekly.\u00a0 It was kind of like Math Jeopardy.\u00a0 Two sides of the board.\u00a0 Two students.\u00a0 A problem was given and whomever solved it first stayed up there to challenge the next.\u00a0 I was rarely beaten.\u00a0 So my teacher decided to tap into my competitive nature.\u00a0 It was such a fun game.\u00a0 She would send me to the 5th grade class, Mr. Waz (Wazleski) and I would challenge the 5th graders.\u00a0 I was in heaven and I was heart broken to leave those two teachers in the middle of the 5th grade because of my parent’s divorce.<\/p>\n

I was so happy when I had a daughter to raise.\u00a0 I was thrilled when I got a boy and had one of each!\u00a0 I felt like we were rewarded for not peeking at the ultrasounds both times.\u00a0 Hayley didn’t have my take no prisoners personality, probably because she didn’t have to always prove herself.\u00a0 She had the competitiveness and Dance was an amazing outlet for that.\u00a0 She had strong beliefs and not the best filter.\u00a0 She didn’t really care about her grades until she realized it might keep her out of WWU.\u00a0 She was obsessed with doing well in College, she knew this was where the real learning could happen.\u00a0 Both book and life.\u00a0 She was so excited to have her new body and to kick off the sophomore year.\u00a0 She should be sitting with me right now bitching about how half her professors have not entered final grades yet while at the same time watching Housewives of New Jersey.\u00a0 Instead she is sitting in an urn on the mantle while Donald Trump golfs for the 86th time in one year of his presidency.\u00a0 All of that parenting, all of that learning, her potential to do great\u00a0things and change the world.\u00a0 Gone.\u00a0 This royally pisses me off and makes me profoundly sad. She was my partner in crime, my best friend, the female love of my life, the missing piece of my heart.<\/p>\n