The Lawsons did Dallas!

The Crisis Unraveled

October 30, 2007

Holy-mother-of-a-bum-licking-cow. I'm overwhelmed by the volume of cyber-lovin' I've received in the last couple of hours. I had no idea!

I've had several Mormon readers offer to break knee-caps and call on their mob connections on my behalf. And to me, that means so much.

One of my long-time readers, Vanilla, has threatened to go on a hunger strike until my next post. Avoiding food goes against everything I believe in, and I certainly don't want him to miss his dinner plans, so here it is, a new post with an explanation of my recent dramatics...

Yesterday I received some correspondence that hit me the wrong way. It hurt my good-old-fashioned feelings, and if you know me personally, then you know that's not so hard to do. For some reason I have an exceptionally difficult time accepting criticism, which, I should note, is the only reason that I'm not a high ranking military official. I never could have made it through those drill saergents in boot camp. I would have been mailing myself home in an army-issued envelope after sixteen minutes of their crazy yelling.

In all seriousness, I took advantage of the free counseling offered through Jared's school before I defended my graduate thesis in May. I had no idea how I could stand in front of a panel of professors, and listen to their critiques without breaking into a shower of tears, running out of the classroom, stuffing myself into the trunk of of a stranger's sedan and proclaiming "DRIVE ME INTO A RAVINE." Fortunately, the counselor gifted me with some wonderful coping skills, and my snappy black business suit remained completely free of snot that day.

Huge accomplishment.

As warped as this is, in my mind, the phrase 'constructive criticism' makes no sense. In AmyMcSeatpantLand, I've re-termed the phrase--I like to call it 'horrible people trying to make me feel like a mound of useless buffalo droppings.' Perhaps that's why I'm not employed--just a thought. That said, even to normal people, this comment was not 'constructive' by any stretch of the imagination, it came across as being really mean spirited.

I used my coping skills to remain calm, and replied to the writer personally. A few minutes later, I wrote the post asking people to cool it with the hate mail. I've been getting a few pieces of critical mail here and there, and I've kind of had enough. Pick on my parenting, my religion, my potty mouth, whatever, but puh-lease, for the love of all things chocolate, don't attack me personally for my baseball preference. Make fun of Red Sox fans if you must--we're obnoxious and we know it--but leave my innocent husband and my strength of character out of it.

Barely twenty minutes after I published that post, I had already received one abrasive comment and several critical emails. Yes I am way too sensitive, but these communications put me over the edge. It's true, I dislike Yankees fans and I really, kind of don't like Rockies fans either (as a group, NOT as individuals--duh), and for some reason, a number of people felt permission to let me know that they dislike me as a writer, not just an overzealous fan. Ouch.

And that's when I said "Enough. I'm not having fun anymore." I put myself on the line every single day to make people laugh, and I felt completely attacked.

But I'm gonna have to take Patty's (one my my very favorite reader's) advice here, and just get over it. The more popular this blog gets, the more criticism I'll receive. Such is life, and with thousands of dollars worth of individual and group therapy, I have no doubt that I'll be able to handle it moderately well. Also, I've sped the healing process along by eating three mini-bags of Doritos and fourteen chocolate chip cookies.

Thank you so much to everyone who left me a nice comment or sent a happy email my way--especially all of the lurkers out there. Each and every one of you will get to see some fabulous Richard Simmons pictures in the morning....and trust me on this, you won't be disappointed.

Wow, I'm sure glad that hiatus is over. I could barely stand it.