Author Archives: Naptimewriting

Thank you, Dr. Timiras

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Thank you, Paola Timiras, for granting breadth and depth to my education. Your presence in lecture and in lab changed the way I viewed medical research, and your work in the field of aging, especially the cell-death theory of aging, informs my every daily choice of how I use my body and treat my family’s bodies. You were the consummate professor—-a wonderful lecturer, generously human lab director, and fascinatingly brilliant researcher. Thanks for all you’ve done for biology, Cal, and physiology.

May your work continue to inspire us to greater understanding of humans, especially as we approach what you warned us in early 90s would be the greatest sea change of our time—the aging of the Baby Boom generation. Thank you for making me think compassionately about the social and personal implications of aging.

And thanks for the letter for med school. It got me to the second round, when I dropped out of consideration to be a writer. I never told you that, in part because I still doubt the decision. But I will think of you each time I read about beta-amyloid plagues, aluminum in Alzheimer’s-affected brains, and strong women who tirelessly work to shine—intellectually, personally, and professionally.

We will miss you.

Peanut’s rage

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Our son has found a voice for his rage. Today he experimented with screaming as though he’d been stabbed each time we said something we didn’t like, and bellowing as loudly as an angry moose when we proposed an activity in which he wanted no part. It was quite lovely to watch, really, even if it drove Spouse to new heights of frustration. Okay, time for bath. “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGG!” Is your boot stuck?  “Yes. YES. YYYYYEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRREEEEEEEEEEEYYYYYYYYYYY!”

The most interesting part of watching our child scream alternately shrilly and soulfully was his own reaction to his voice. A few times he felt quite satisfied for finding the power he always lost when he hit, bit, or went limp while kicking wildly. He even tried the yells again when they felt just right and sounded even better. Other times, though, his anger scared him, and somehow his primal screams scared him even more. And as soon as the yell was over he asked for a cuddle with tears in his eyes. I told him that, of course I would cuddle him. Being angry is okay, and mommy still loves you if you yell. Yelling doesn’t hurt people. It’s scary, but it doesn’t hurt. Did that yell scare you?  Yes.

It’s not uncommon for this two-and-a-half-year-old’s anger to overpower and terrify him. That’s the nature of toddlerhood. As is the inability to come out of that anger by themselves without help. Hence tantrums–things spiral out of control and they don’t know how to transition back into normalcy. And I have often tried to tell him that there are acceptable ways, including yelling, of being angry. Being furious is okay. Hitting is not okay. Biting is not okay. Throwing things is not okay. Stomping is okay, yelling is okay, cuddling is great, deep breaths are wonderful.

Is it too late to amend the approval of yelling? Was it just my way of justifying my own angry behavior to include yelling in the acceptable category? Did I completely f— that one up? Is it okay to be a family of yellers? I don’t like it when Spouse yells. I don’t like it when grandparents yell. I don’t like it when Sibling yells. Peanut doesn’t like it when I yell. So shouldn’t I be teaching a better coping mechanism for anger?

Yup. Working on it. But by the time I really get control and model “breathing away the anger” behavior, Peanut’s going to be yelling at his own kids, other drivers, his bandmates, and his staff.

Ugh, I need another parenting do-over.

Thanks, federal bailout, for a dismal future

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Gee, thanks federal government, for writing blank checks to make things easy for you in the short term. All that does, really, is teach the whole country to keep living on credit, and saddle my kid with even more debt than your bullshit policies and wars have spiraled.

A few words for you: if you’re pro free market, act like it. I’m not, so I say: if you want to save someone, save people not companies. And if you spend like a drunken sailor on shore leave, don’t expect my kid to pay for it. Tighten your belts, ask those who make a lot to put in their share, and start means-testing every damn handout you give both corporate and private citizens.

And by the way, McCain, you were all for deregulating and eliminating financial firewalls for decades. Don’t run to the media with your pro-regulation sheep’s clothing now.

Update 9/28/08:

Nina Easton, of Money magazine reports that many are saying exactly the same thing: don’t preach free markets, then throw our nest eggs at them when they do something way beyond stupid. (The article is three pages; click on the arrow at the bottom of the text for the next page.)
http://money.cnn.com/2008/09/26/news/economy/easton_backlash.fortune/

My third and final DFW post

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[I just can’t leave this post as I originally wrote it. But I can’t delete it entirely because the comments from blueeyedsoul are lovely. Rather than leave this angry, name-calling post as is, I’ll repost here my original reaction at DFW’s death. I feel, first and foremost, for his parents and his wife at the stomach-turning loss. And I feel deeply for the reading community. See also my first post about his death.]

posted sept. 16 here:

In grad school, the professors wouldn’t let me write my thesis on Infinite Jest because none of them had read it, and when they saw that it topped 1300 pages (I don’t have my copy to give you precise numbers, I just moved and don’t have anything in the fridge and need to go shopping and am not in the best mood, so bear with me on estimates) of densely packed text and endnotes sheer rambling genius, they balked at the workload reading both his novel and my thesis would bring to their carefully balanced lives.

I resented their laziness. Then I changed topics and vowed one day to write an erudite lit-crit analysis of the text. Especially because Wallace excelled at but distrusted literary criticism. But shite happened and I haven’t gotten around to it.

I blogged about a month ago that I felt disconnected from the world when I realized Kurt Vonnegut Jr. had been dead for three days before I knew. It was as though my sadness didn’t count any more because I had missed the window.

This time, the world rotated twice before I knew DFW died. The announcement rocked me to the core but didn’t change my day. And that, itself, saddens me because it means my life is so shifted off its base that the shockingly early death of one of my top ten creative inspirations doesn’t even rate a schedule change. The rest of my week, though, shuddered and sputtered as the implications of his death sunk in.

And I don’t know what to say. I’ve known for two days and I don’t know what to say. (Updating this weeks later, I’m still not done processing my grief.) [Updating this almost a year later, I’m still not done processing my grief.) His writing changed me. I saw him speak once (thanks MPB and SBB) and his speaking did not change me. The creepy cult curiously smarmy cadre of followers did not change me. I was rarely tempted to quit my job and run off to Pomona to be his student, because I didn’t feel any need to be connected with him personally. I didn’t want to be taught by him or to talk with him or to write for him.

I wanted to read his work.

And now there won’t be more.

I may be silly to feel his death as a weighty presence in my life. The man himself had no presence in my life. His characters, their actions, their idiosyncrasies, their seismically surreal lives had a transient presence in my life. But all I have to do is recall the cover of his weighty novel and I can again touch the intellectual dance of reading it, tender humanity of the characters, and its mind-bending importance on post-postmodern literature. I can, remembering, feel my hunger for more as I read myself bleary-eyed for the entire summer of 1997 (I was busy in the summer of 1996. I didn’t pick up IJ because of the grant. I picked it up because I wanted a book that would ensure nobody would talk to me on BART, a la The Accidental Tourist. But I loved it intensely then, and would love to reread it now.) [I am rereading it now, thanks to infinite summer.] I can feel my connection and revulsion and confusion at Wallace’s characters every time someone says his name.

And I want more. I’m angry and disappointed that there won’t be more.

I loved his lobster piece for Gourmet magazine. I love that he took the job, puzzled at the pop cultural status that brought him such tangential work, and I loved his rambling thoroughness. I loved that he came to the conclusion that it’s just not okay to boil creatures alive.

I haven’t read the obits. I don’t even know how he died. (I found out later and wrote a horrible post on this blog, of which I am embarrassed but which I will not erase.) I don’t care how he died. This is not a Jeff Buckley story or a Kurt Cobain story or a River Phoenix story. I wish I knew what kind of story this is. All I know is that the woot from Sept. 16 made me feel all too keenly that nobody will take DFW’s place.

And now all I can think is, I hope all you bastard literary canon snobs will read his work, because you missed the boat the first time. When I write my PhD dissertation on his work and one of you lazy self preserving pricks says you haven’t read it, I will produce all the contemporary fiction on the shelves and say, “well, it’s better than and worse than and different than this….And it’s all we have left.”

The Macarthur grant bit always forces the genius label. I don’t know that he was genius. I just know I really love reading his writing. I don’t even know that I love his writing itself. I love the experience of reading it. And that is the ultimate compliment for an author. I may not love your work, man. I just love what it does to my head. Your writing makes me want to work harder and smarter and be a better and more empathetic person.

We’re all going to miss you, and our minds are poorer now that yours is silent. I hope, at least, that the pain is gone.

Gentle David Foster Wallace for college grads

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Because so many of my posts about parenting resonnate with exactly this theme, here’s a bit of David Foster Wallace’s Kenyon commencement address.

“…there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving and display. The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.”  –DFW 2005 Kenyon commencement

(Go read the rest of the speech. It’s really quite compelling as a way of thinking and living as aware and sentient beings rather autopilot automatons).

If you say so, dude. Sacrifice might be the reality and the gift of our nasty, brutish, and short, but the pretense and facade of pretending such things aren’t the reality of our lives makes those sorts of attentive, aware, and disciplined sacrifices feel like chores. Would that I had time to erode the pretense and facade, because being self-aware and present in my day would really rock. But focusing on caring for others in those myriad unsexy ways takes all the time I used to use on self analysis and awareness.

Un-Buddhist of me, i acknowledge. Sorry you’re not here to argue with.

David Foster Wallace

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In grad school, the professors wouldn’t let me write my thesis on Infinite Jest because none of them had read it, and when they saw that it topped 1100 pages (I don’t have my copy to give you precise numbers, I just moved and don’t have anything in the fridge and need to go shopping but can’t get past a long day of running around after a toddler with a heart heavy from the pain of DFW’s death thudding around in my stomach, and am not in the best mood, so bear with me on estimates) of densely packed text and endnotes sheer rambling genius, they balked at the workload reading both his novel and my thesis would bring to their carefully balanced lives.

I resented their laziness. Then I changed topics and vowed one day to write an erudite lit-crit analysis of the text. Especially because Wallace excelled at but distrusted literary criticism. But shite happened and I haven’t gotten around to it.

I blogged about a month ago that I felt disconnected from the world when I realized Kurt Vonnegut Jr. had been dead for three days before I knew. It was as though my sadness didn’t count any more because I had missed the window.

This time, the world rotated twice before I knew DFW died. The announcement rocked me to the core but didn’t change my day. And that, itself, saddens me because it means my life is so shifted off its base that the shockingly early death of one of my top five creative inspirations doesn’t even rate a schedule change. The rest of my week, though, shuddered and sputtered as the implications of his death sunk in.

And I don’t know what to say. I’ve known for two days and I don’t know what to say. (Updating this weeks later, I’m still not done processing my grief.) His writing changed me. I saw him speak once (thanks MPB and SBB) and his speaking did not change me. The creepy cult curiously smarmy cadre of followers did not change me. I was rarely tempted to quit my job and run off to Pomona to be his student, because I didn’t feel any need to be connected with him personally. I didn’t want to be taught by him or to talk with him or to write for him. I wanted to read his work.

And now there won’t be more.

I may be silly to feel his death as a weighty presence in my life. The man himself had no presence in my life. His characters, their actions, their idiosyncrasies, their seismically surreal lives had a transient presence in my life. But all I have to do is recall the cover of his weighty novel and I can again touch the intellectual dance of reading it. I can feel my hunger for more as I read myself bleary-eyed for the entire summer of 1997 (I was busy in the summer of 1996. I didn’t pick up IJ because of the grant. I picked it up because I wanted a book that would ensure nobody would talk to me on BART, a la The Accidental Tourist. But I loved it intensely then, and would love to reread it now.) I can feel my connection and revulsion and confusion at Wallace’s characters every time someone says his name.

And I want more. I’m angry and disappointed that there won’t be more.

I loved his lobster piece for Gourmet magazine. I love that he took the job, puzzled at the pop cultural status that brought him such tangential work, and I loved his rambling thoroughness. I loved that he came to the conclusion that it’s just not okay to boil creatures alive.

I haven’t read the obits. I don’t even know how he died. (I found out later and wrote a horrible post on this blog, of which I am embarrassed but which I will not erase.) I don’t care how he died. This is not a Jeff Buckley story or a Kurt Cobain story or a River Phoenix story. I wish I knew what kind of story this is. All I know is that the woot from Sept. 16 made me feel all too keenly that nobody will take DFW’s place.

And now all I can think is, I hope all you bastard literary canon snobs will read his work, because you missed the boat the first time. When I write my PhD dissertation on his work and one of you lazy self preserving pricks says you haven’t read it, I will produce all the contemporary fiction on the shelves and say, “well, it’s better than and worse than and different than this….And it’s all we have left.”

The Macarthur grant bit always forces the genius label. I don’t know that he was genius. I just know I really love reading his writing. I don’t even know that I love his writing itself. I love the experience of reading it. And that is the ultimate compliment for an author. I don’t even love your work, man. I just love what it does to my head.

We’re all going to miss you, and our minds are poorer now that yours is silent. I hope, at least, that the pain is gone.

War wounds

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Concentrating hard on the plastic spoon she had been given, a ten-month old flailed wildly and poked KD right in the eye tonight after dinner. And I empathized aloud that one of my top ten least favorite bits of motherhood are the daily, painful injuries. Spoon to the eye, elbow to the nose, top of head to soft part under the chin, knee to the innards–these add injury to the insult of not owning any minute of your day. You can’t get mad when an infant wallops you as she flails about, but it still hurts. You can’t get mad when a toddler accidentally slams your solar plexus trying to get to a book. But it still hurts. You can’t get mad when a preschooler bashes your nose trying to climb into your lap. But it really hurts.

And I can’t help but point out to the small people whose elbows seem to have the north pole magnet to my breast’s south pole: I never got hit in any of my other jobs. (Nobody even pushed me, except out of a meeting. Metaphorically.)

Mothering and ambivalence; a book review, sort of

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I wrote a post a few months ago about feeling torn between intense love of my child and hallucination-provoking frustration of full time motherhood. I felt emboldened that my feelings were neither unique nor damning after reading Susan Maushart’s The Mask of Motherhood. But tonight I was reading What Mothers Do by Naomi Standlen and felt temporarily shamed for those feelings. Give me a minute and I’ll explain what made me re-examine my feelings and conclusions about how experiencing both sides of the spectrum is normal and honest, then the reasons I reject Standlen’s conclusions about the inherent selfishness and destructiveness of ambivalence. (Don’t blink…that was the summary. Save yourself some time and re-read that sentence and go on with your life.)

In examining the writings of mothers (Adrienne Rich, Rachel Cusk, Kate Figes, Rozsika Parker, Jane Lazarre, and Susan Johnson) who address their maternal ambivalence by name, Standlen asks, “Are we talking about a group of women who have picked up a sophisticated psychoanalytic concept—ambivalence—to dress up the fact that they are all so self-centered? Are they too selfish to be loving mothers?”( 202-3) Rather harsh, I think, as a description of women who are giving everything they have to mother their children because that’s what they believe the children need.

In her wording, though,  and her background as a psychoanalyst, we can understand Standlen’s tone. Ambivalence for Freudians is very technically a love/hate polarity that revolves around the same source (here, the child). But for the writers she mentions, ambivalence is a much less rigid term, meaning only existing at two levels, two valences. It doesn’t necessarily mean polar opposites. Standlen explores, for several pages (196-98, et al.), statements from writers about how they get frustrated or angry or resentful about their babies. I’ve only read the full text of half the books she quotes, but none of them talk about hate when I read them. They talk about feeling conflicted because they are angry and frustrated and resentful while being in love. While caring so deeply they sacrifice sleep and health and sanity for a small creature. And that feels difficult and awkward and not at all something glorified. But certainly something real and therefore valid.

Further distancing their mothering multivalences from Standlen’s Freudian definition of ambivalence, the authors in question seem to hint that the contradictory feelings arise from difference sources. Maushart explains pretty clearly that love for the child and hate for the job of full time mothering are daily and hourly occurrences, but that distaste for the job doesn’t mean lack of love for the child (nor that true, deep, unflinching love for the child means lack of frustration with the unceasing work of parenting).

Standlen argues that a baby raised by an ambivalent parent with have an adult-sized case of PTSD. (210-12). A mother who loves you and hates you, she asserts, is like a capricious god who terrifies then patronizes then rewards then punishes. Mothers who get angry and yell at their children apologize, she says. Ambivalent mothers, she argues, yell or withdraw because they think it’s an okay way to parent. And happy chldren are obviously loved, while shy children who don’t warm quickly to strangers are clearly experiencing some ambivalence damage at home.

What twisted, monster version of moms do you see in your practice, Ms. Standlen? Sure, unconditional, patient, flawless love (which she calls wholehearted love) is “more straightforward.” My love is wholehearted, madam, and I hate not having one minute of peace to myself.  My love is wholehearted, and I hate the way I feel each day because I choose to sacrifice my sleep to give my child what he needs. And after comforting him gently 12 and 15 times a night when he’s teething or sick or scared, I want to throw him against the wall. I don’t do it and never will, but I’m putting that I writing for the whole world to see because it doesn’t make me any less wholehearted in my love. It means I am human and I get angry and I love a person but loathe a circumstance. (As I write this, Peanut is waking from his fourth nightmare of the evening. He has been writhing and talking in his sleep for several minutes, and just screamed. He might be asleep, he might be waking. I’ll know in a minute. If it is the former, my heart will go out to him as long as he is tormented. If it the latter, my body will go to him, as long as he is tormented. By about 2 am, this will get really, freaking old, and I may get angry—not at him, but at the constant interruptions. I’m not angry with him. I’m angry at whatever keeps his sleep cycles from maturing, angry with whatever demons dare disturb his growth and sweetness. And now I’m even more angry with Naomi Standlen for suggesting that I don’t love the little cacahuete.)

I resent Standlen’s assertion that the women who feel conflicted are bad mothers who are harming their children. She spends a lot of time dancing around her belief that working outside the home when you have small children is not ideal, but won’t really hurt children; and that breastfeeding is ideal, but formula really won’t hurt them. So why can’t she not say that being perfect is ideal, but occasional bouts of self-doubt and frustration and anger and longing for something different really won’t hurt children. As long as we learn to take our ambivalence (not love/hate the child but love the child and hate the intense labor pains of making room for them in your life, when the space they need takes up 99.999999999999% of your existence) and channel it in productive ways, why is she spending a whole chapter calling those of us who haven’t found unfettered bliss, selfish and unloving and confusing and frightening?

Standlen notes that most of these authors who express ambivalence are in a similar position: “These mothers don’t sound easy with their moments of hate. All of them are intellectual women, with careers ahead of them….[Julia Darling] found it difficult to be a mother, but she doesn’t mention hatred or the feeling that her babies were making limitless demands on her.” Did she work outside the home? Did she have a caregiver, either professional or familial to help? Because maybe she didn’t feel limitless demands because she got out of the freaking house and had what Virginia Woolf termed a room of her own. Maybe the women to whom you attribute “chilling” ambivalence are surrounded by yellow wallpaper, the likes of which Charlotte Perkins Gilman knew all too well.

Standlen is horrified by several lines from Maushart, but finds this couplet particularly abhorrent: “We harbour no doubts that mothering our children is infinitely worth doing. It’s only that we’d really rather be doing something else.” I don’t need to defend Maushart’s writing. But it is clear from the rest of the text that she means this about moments of the days and weeks. Not about the entirety of mothering. And certainly not about her children. We’d really rather be enjoying 100% of this job, but that’s simply not possible. (If it was, no mother or father would ever plunk their child down in front of the t.v. to get a moment’s peace.)

When Jon, the father on Jon & Kate Plus Eight expressed frustration at all the damned work of parenting (times eight), he said something along the lines of, “I just want to play with my kids. I don’t like doing all the other crap that goes along with this job.” And full-time parents around the country looked around to see if anyone else heard that. What do you think we do all day, my friend? Sunshine and lollipops and imaginary friends and dancing and games and kisses and stories? Yes, plus tantrums and snot and outbursts and teaching and discipline and meals and cleaning up and redirecting and stalemates and poop and cat vomit and negotiating and avoiding tantrums and planning the next three steps so there aren’t more tantrums and yet more tantrums. There is no “playing with your kids,” unless you’re only home for an hour a day. And even then you’re bound to get in 30 minutes of play and a few minutes of less appetizing stuff. (I’m not knocking Jon. He gets 8 kids dressed each morning before work. I’m just saying there is no time with children that is just fun and games.)

In the end, my anger at Standlen’s book comes from a perceived hurt—this woman who has never met me and has spent eight chapters cheering my every parenting choice now tells me I’m an unfit mother. She says that feeling anything but incessant, unconditional love is just wrong. That there is no room for both frustration and exhaustion and anger and love. You must simply love.

But she isn’t insulting me directly. And her assumptions are flawed. Ambivalence is not simply Freudian love/hate. Women who experience ambivalence are not selfish, and are often staying at home specifically to give their children everything they can afford. The well-balanced mothers she cites are probably working outside the home or addressing their own needs with a care giver or other help, and are therefore a little more, well, balanced. And in the end, these women Standlen criticizes are writers. They intellectualize their every moment of their day, every emotion, high and low. And they need to express what they find. Maybe they don’t need psychoanalysis so much as a community of other mothers to empathize with them. Being the scourge of society and of Naomi Standlen is really quite terrifying.

(We’re on nightmare number five and he’s officially awake. I need to go. But let me say this–my blog will always be a place you can come to feel ambivalent, appreciated, and understood.)

(And no, I didn’t type that while he cried. I typed it after I got back. I’m not a selfish monster. I’m an ambivalent, attachment co-parent. )

Slaughterhouse morsels

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Well, years after Fast Food Nation exposed the rampant practice of misleading and hiring illegal immigrants for slaughterhouse work, the government noticed. And busted several slaughterhouses.

Now it seems the latter group has found this convenient replacement source of abusable labor. Nothing like hiring children to butcher your meat (or win your gymnastics medals).

Please, y’all, reconsider eating the flesh of critters. Each burger includes a healthy helping of fecal matter, it’s bad for your heart, it can give you colon cancer, and the industry producing it abuses its workers, suppliers, and animals. They’re feeding dead cows to chickens, and chicken crap to cows. Why not just save a step and feed us all downer cows and SARS birds?

If you don’t get your antibiotic, hormone, fecal bacteria special burger from a slaughterhouse, and aren’t a particularly good hunter, make sure you have the government gun down animals who don’t have any measured effect on what you want to hunt.

Where’s that absentee ballot when you need it?

Oy, you’re gonna be a great teenager

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So Peanut bangs his head on the toilet paper holder and begins to cry. I make a sad face, kiss the red spot,  and cuddle him. He flips his face up to look at me and says, giggling, “Peanut laughing at Mommy sadness.”

You still call a truck a “doot” but you can say that you’re laughing at Mommy’s sadness?

So glad I taught you about emotions, so you could learn to express your feelings and empathize with others. Lot of good that did.

Geez we’re gonna have a good time when you’re 14.

Moving recipes

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So we’re leaving next week and I have to get rid of a lot of food. Not the bulk, dried, Lassen‘s stuff. That travels well. I’m talking half-eaten stuff in the fridge that I didn’t consider a liability when I bought it, but now fully intend to avoid in the future.

I’m mostly writing this post to mess with the foodies out there who tag surf recipes. Not that I don’t appreciate a good meal; I do. I’ll post a top ten later, but suffice it to say it’s 30% Boston and 70% SF/Berkeley.

Back to the overstock of sandwich fixin’s in my fridge and the realization that I’ve got to empty it and clean it asap. All canned goods go in the earthquake box and get stuffed in the POD, until we actually have a place to live. Yes, I included a can opener. (What is this—my first year in earthquake country?) So, planet and plates and seismic faults, please don’t shift too much before we can unpack the POD.

Here’s what’s on the menu for the rest of the week:

Pickles
That’s right. You will have a pickle with that meal. Having cereal? Fine. Have a pickle, too. Pesto for lunch (it’s much better these days, Lenni, because I went to a finer grate of parmesan. sorry for the schlock you had to eat). That looks like it needs a pickle, too.

Ravioli and hummus
Who needs sauce–there are a variety of goops in the fridge that need eating. So anything smearable goes on hot pasta. Funny thing is, Peanut LOVES this particular garbage disposal combination. I haven’t served up the week’s finale, pasta and jam, yet. I’ll bet he likes it. Hasn’t had jam more than once, but it’s sugar and fruit. How can that be wrong?

Overloaded pizza
Frozen organic pizza, with all the veggies from this week’s farmer’s market crammed on top. And a layer of braised tofu that nobody ate. And a sprinkling of sprouted flax seeds that were supposed to change our lives but never come out of the cupboard. Sure the heat of baking will kill them and make them pointless. Doesn’t stop all those people who buy flaxseed bread.

Veggie burgers a la sodium
Today’s special is double condiments. All veggie burgers will be served with extra mustard, organic ketchup, a full dose of Frank’s hot sauce, enough pickle relish to choke a horse, and some organic barbeque sauce. (I know we didn’t like it the first time, but we’re not throwing it away. There are starving children in the world, and Uncle John can’t mail them his leftovers anymore. Now eat.)

Party mix
Not a cracker and nut deal–this is leftover sodas from various parties with whatever liquor is left in the cabinet (which is a lot because I don’t usually drink). But I’m willing to take one for the team ‘cuz there’s no freaking way I’m throwing out even mediocre booze. So I’ve tried a few recipes…Whole Foods all-natural cola with rum is okay, even though that sorry can has been in the fridge for years because I can’t bear to try an alternative to my huge-brand cr*ck c*caine soda. Jones creme soda with Amaretto is not that good, but I managed to choke it down (I was finishing the caramel sauce, because who wants to pack that, with pretzels, and the Jonesaretto was just too sweet). Rice milk and Kahlua is worse than I expected. Maybe with protein powder next time? Margarita mix and club soda is just bad, probably because mixer-on-mixer actions wants for a certain je ne c’est quoi–of, wait, I do know. It is missing alcohol. Tonic water and vodka is quite yummy…hey, wait, that’s a real drink. I thought I was a genius mixologist for a while there.

All grains muffins
Just because a recipe calls for wheat flour doesn’t mean you can’t use the last of the quinoa flakes. Or that brown sugar can’t be almond simple syrup because that’s what you have. It’s not like baking is a science, or that toddlers are picky. I mean, come on.

We are gonna be HUNGRY when we get to the temporary digs…

Toddlers or Anarchists: the Multiples Addendum

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Oh, what a little “ess” to make a noun plural will do to the whole theory.

Here’s my good faith effort at a multiple-children addendum, for those who posed the question on “Toddler versus Anarchist“.

I’m guessing that, as with children, anarchists in groups can be either more or less work, depending on what “projects” they set their minds to. If the anarchists come together to fight for a similar vision of anarchy, they are considerably less trouble than when they rebel against each other in your living room. I have neither the good fortune nor the bad fortune to be parenting more than one anarchist-in-training, so I’m going to assume that if they band together for good, several children are less trouble than several anarchists. If they join forces for ill, several children are much, much more destructive and annoying than several anarchists. But there are several if:then parameters in my theory. To wit:

calculated disparities in p.i.a.q (pain in the ass quotient), when T=toddler and A=anarchist:
1T>1A
1T>2A if As are focused on same goal
1T<2A if As are focused on different goals)
2T>1A (obviously, since 1T>1A)
2T>2A if As are focused on same goal, even if Ts are harmonious)
2T>2A if As are focused on different goal, if Ts are at disharmonious)

Therefore more than one child is definitely more work than more than one anarchist, with a few caveats. I’ve only calculated for up to two children and two anarchists. I have not created an algorithm for twins. I have yet to answer to the following:

What happens when  As are focused on different goals and Ts are disharmonious. 2T<?>2A?  For example, if the anarchists are arguing about whether to rage against the machine or the status quo, and the kids are screaming and beating each other with blunt objects, how much Calgon do you requite to take you away?

Note on my calculations: I’m going off the adage that one child=one. Two=twenty. And three=another load of laundry. So confusing the calculations are whether your anarchists are also anti-hygiene. I’d rather have smelly anarchists in my living room than share a bathroom with teenagers or have to wash more dirty diapers. Or both.

Second note on my calculations: are you kidding me with this pseudo-science? Why not just call it toddler-anarchism and have it taught in Kansas schools with a big ol’ warning label that mathematics is just a theory? Because then they’d rewrite my genius theorem with antichrist instead of anarchist, that’s why.

btw: did you see the Kansas State Superintendent of Schools win a million on Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? last night? Kudos to her, especially for her gutsiness and random-factiness, but can’t we please say, “it’s a good thing there weren’t any science questions!”?

Please?

Excuse me, Mr. Giuliani, sir?

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About your speech:

Interviewing 101 includes the aphorism that you talk about what makes you good, not what makes the other guy bad. And aren’t you arguing this election is a job interview?

Maybe bitter and spiteful is why nobody voted for you in the primaries. Just a guess, watching the convention keynote speech wherein you were particularly venomous.

I think the American people, in general, figure that the GOP has to prove that they’re not just entitled politicians who have demolished, over the past 14 years, our economy, our international standing, and our Constitution. Maybe bilious speeches make sense for a likeminded audience, but hope for the future just sells better than sniping at people who, like you, want to make this a better place to live, work, and succeed.

I know you’ve done some lovely things in your life. But yesterday you just came off as mean.

And mean is icky.

GOP, if you’re all mean and nasty, keep it up. If you’re not monolithically bilious, please change your tone. This could be a really great opportunity to talk about issues and priorities. Please commence.

We made a weird kid.

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All kids are weird, I know. And I don’t mean all the pejorative baggage that comes with the word especially vis-a-vis a certain person involved in my upbringing. But our kid is just weird. He’s in a licking phase, where he laps your face or arm if you get too close, but I remember my brother doing that at age 3ish. He’s in a plopping phase (peanut, not brother, though you can never be sure) where he thinks plopping on people is hilarious. Peanut’s also in a run-top-speed or creep-slower-than-a-snail phase, but that’s normal, too. His answer is always “no.” Normal. He doesn’t want to share. Normal.

But he announced this morning, appropos of nothing, that if a “baby with drippy nose come to Peanut house,” he won’t share tissues or the bulb syringe.

Um, okay.  ?

Weirdo.

He’s in the living room, wearing gardening gloves and a bright green shirt. (He dresses himself each day, and always chooses the loudest color combinations. Usually orange and green or blue and red. The latter makes me realize that, though I love the ideas this country stands for, I am not at all opposed to revisiting our colors. We just plain ol’ chose poorly in borrowing from the Motherland. Anyway, regardless of clothes choices, by afternoon the pants are ALWAYS gone, and there is often an extraneous accessory added. Yesterday it was T-shirt and witch’s hat, with lizard undies. Most days, as is true today, the undies are apparently optional. And, in 84 degree heat, he needs gloves. Que sera, sera; you know?) He is sitting next to the vacuum, which he insisted, shrieking and crying, I not put away after we used it this morning. Whatever, dude. I’m picking my battles since you were born, and putting away the vacuum has always been optional. He is now pointing the Hoover’s hose at anything that moves and pretend squirting, insisting alternately that the cats like wet, cold; and that someone should call a police officer because Peanut is hurt.

Weirdo.

If I try to go into the room, he pretend squirts me. I get pretend wet, pretend offended, and actually leave. It’s nice to be chased away from a toddler at play. Trust me.

Earlier, I had the audacity to go to the bathroom and pause to brush my hair. (Yes, I actually brush my hair now. Upside to being so lazy that you don’t cut is that you don’t have to do monthly cuts. Downside is that your mother, with a regularity straight out of the hair chapter of Deborah Tannen’s You’re Wearing THAT?: Understanding Conversation between Mothers and Daughters, has mentioned several times that, not only does she like it shorter, but it’s just terrible not brushed. And though I agree, I generally don’t care. But I was in the bathroom, nobody was bleeding, screeching, or sobbing, so I paused for some grooming.)

In the two minutes I was gone, Peanut dragged his bench to the kitchen sink, took all the dishes off the counter and placed them in the sink, filled them to the top, and was dropping walnut halves in each dish, one by one.

When I asked what he was doing, he cheerfully and condescendingly noted that he was “washin’ dishes….And floatin’ wahnits-. See?” As though we do that all the time.

Oh. Yes, I see.

Again, I say, our kid is weird.

Palin and Obama and teen pregnancy

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I think the most relevant piece of Sarah Palin‘s press release about her daughter’s pregnancy is this:

“Bristol and the young man she will marry are going to realize very quickly the difficulties of raising a child, which is why they will have the love and support of our entire family.” Finally, a birth announcement that includes the recognition that this job is damned hard.

Bristol Palin is very lucky to have her family’s support in an unfortunate situation. One benefit, clearly, to having women in policy-making positions, is that they know how hard it is to be a parent. (As usual, I refer you to the very well researched and cited The Mask of Motherhood.)

Barack Obama responded graciously to the pregnancy announcement (the whole affair gives a cadre of nasty bloggers a bad name because they hounded a family into revealing something that’s none of our business). (Note that most media are blaming the ugliness on “liberals,” as though most liberals are amoral jerks who seek only to torment Republicans. Most liberals are downright decent folk. Let’s stop the name-calling. It’s always evidence that you don’t have a good argument if all you can do is call names.) Obama’s response included this empathetic observation:

“You know, my mother had me when she was 18. And how families deal with issues and teenage children — that shouldn’t be the topic of our politics.”

Hopefully, instead of judging the families involved, we can talk about teaching children more than just abstinence, which is 100% effective as a method and abyssmally ineffective as an educational policy. Teen pregnancy is on the rise since Republicans have silenced science in our classrooms. And now, with Bush trying to classify birth control as abortion, we have a whole generation of girls and boys who will wind up young parents and young STD statistics because they don’t know they have options for keeping themselves safe and healthy.

In addition to opening a dialogue about the failures of abstinence only as a policy, this announcement should shift the discussion away from Palin’s family and toward this country’s need to improve quality of life for mothers and infants. We should be talking about exactly that which Sarah Palin will offer her daughter and grandchild: support. Since this country ranks near the bottom of industrialized countries for support for young mothers, working mothers, mothers in school, and breastfeeding mothers, we should all talk more about what we can do to prevent unwanted pregnancies, and to support those who decide to have babies.

*  “Babies born to teen mothers are more likely to receive poor health care and live in poverty,” notes a cnn.com article.

Luckily for Bristol Palin, her baby will probably get good health care and not live in poverty. Let’s make sure that’s true of every child in the United States, and eventually the world, starting now.