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This morning, for the 2nd time this school year, my alarm didn’t go off and I woke up 50 minutes late. As someone who is  very efficient in the morning, this means I already sleep in as much as humanly possible and am typically getting into the car at this time. After the initial freak out, I I threw on some clothes, got in the car, slapped on mascara at a stoplight, hoped my sad hair would be forgiven as an inevitability on this insanely humid day, and got there on time – though I had sleep creases on my arm until midway through first period. I think it’s safe to say I have misjudged my alarm time as I have clearly proven that I can leave the house  of waking up.

After my 7-year-old daughter’s most recent visit to the orthodontist, I’m not sure this is a good thing. Six months ago, when our family dentist told us that he was going to refer my then 6-year-old daughter to an orthodontist, I thought that maybe there was a nitrous tank leaking in his office. I’d like to think that if I’d had straight teeth in high school that I’d have the personality of a wet blanket. In my meeting with the orthodontist, I should have been focusing on words like, “prevent having to pull teeth” or “super easy process at 12.

If your house is anything like mine, you can walk into any room and find a used juice box straw, or, worse yet, the wrapper of one. I recently may or may not have threatened to take juice boxes away for two weeks if I saw any evidence of juice box consumption on the couch. No, they are taking their straws and cutting them into beads and storing them in an old lunch box. Either way, Mama’s going to drink some wine and consider which is worse – the wrath of my children if I throw this crap out, or the pain of cleaning these out from every crevice in my home for the next few months.

When we blame many sides, we equate the behavior of hate-filled groups who stand for the oppression of others to the behavior of those who are willing to risk their own safety to stand up against hate. President Trump is equating men marching through streets spewing hate to the men and women who filled the city center of their community to show that hate does not have a place there. When we refuse to condemn white nationalists for Saturday’s despicable riots because “other groups” were also marching, we give people a free pass to align themselves with hate while skirting blame. When our president makes vague remarks about placing blame on “many sides” and refuses to condemn hate groups, he is sending a clear message to our children.