Category Archives: The Man is bringing me down

Come on Barbie, let’s go party!

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We at Naptime are doing our best to raise two feminists. Our boys know that grownups do dishes, laundry, sewing, construction, parenting, policing, fire fighting, paying, cooking, driving, and fixing. Both know men with ponytails, boys who wear pink, girls who like mud and bugs…any gender stereotype our society fosters, we fight. Hard.

And one pervasive social pressure I’ve been working to eliminate since I was pregnant with Peanut (honestly, because I thought he was a girl and didn’t want her buying into “should”s) is the oppressive body image issues that American women, especially, are saddled with. I don’t talk about body size or dissatisfaction.

Peanut pointed to my belly about a month ago and proclaimed that I was probably going to have another baby because my uterus was making my tummy pretty big. I shuttered slightly, then smiled and explained casually that after a baby sometimes it takes a while for tummies to get small again, and that sometimes they never do.

He also came home from year two of preschool and asked what “fat” meant because they heard a story at school where fat didn’t seem to mean part of the fat/protein/carbohydrate triad.

I think it’s important that my boys grow up to be men who see people for who they are and what they do, not what they look like or how they can be labeled.

Well, my chickens came home to roost on a run today. I was pushing ButterBaby in a jogging stroller, and Spouse was behind me, pushing Peanut. Halfway up a moderate hill I hear, “Mommy, it looks like two monsters bonking each other. But it’s just your bottom.”

I laughed. Hard. For about half a mile. He seemed pleased.

Look, I have at least double the rear end I did before gestating two kids. But I don’t know what it looks like from behind. Running. And my self worth is not wrapped up in how my almost-five-year-old describes my ass. Maybe it does look like monsters. I asked him later how the monsters were bonking each other. On the head? Side to side? “Of course not,” he answered. “They were bonking each other on the mouth.”

Honestly, that baffled me a bit. But I went with it. It’s his story, not mine.

Because what I realized pretty quickly, is: this is not about me. This is about Peanut’s storytelling skills. He often spins interesting yarns and interrupts himself halfway through to say, “This is only in my imagination.” He gets the distinction between fiction and non-fiction. And is his version, my bottom is two monsters. I can’t wait to hear what they have to say when he gives them voices.

Miracle on Fourth Street

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Funny things happened this week; adorable things spilled from the lips of my precocious preschooler. Definitely blog-worthy material. But I can’t remember any of it. All I can think about are the baby’s ears.

Our tiny Butter Curl had a string of ear infections really young. Each cold Peanut brought home from school meant congested ears then infected ears, then a tough decision between antibiotics and a ruptured ear drum. We tried everything to give him relief with each bulging tympanic membrane: warmed olive oil, mullein oil, a pillow elevating his mattress, massaging his ears and neck, bulb syringe to clear as much as possible from his nasal passages, avoiding the bulb syringe to keep nature handling the buildup in his sinuses. During every cold I monitored Butter’s ears with an otoscope and every time I watched the eardrum fill, then redden, then yellow and swell.

So after a ruptured eardrum in September I did lots of research into natural remedies, trying desperately to spare him the probable choices of prophylactic antibiotics or surgery for tubes.

I found anecdotal evidence that lengthy labors, posterior-facing babies, and vacuum extraction often means much higher rates of ear infections. (Butter was a 48-hour labor, posterior at the end, five hours of pushing, and an eventual vacuum extraction. Horrors for me, but potential lingering horrors for him if that process really did jack him up enough to block his ear drainage.) My online searches led me to the idea that chiropractors, craniosacral massage therapists, and osteopaths have gentle, simple treatments to release whatever damage the birth trauma exacted on wee heads and necks.

I didn’t believe it for a minute, but I had to try. A tiny baby in persistent pain and facing icky options and future hearing loss needed me to try.

So I found the practitioner most heralded by local moms for fixing ear infections: an osteopath trained in Britain and forced in the States to practice as a massage therapist. Insurance doesn’t cover her work. Of course. I’m going to pay a premium for voodoo while we’re pinching pennies. Figures.

After one visit the osteopath told me it should take a few visits but she could fix the tension that was blocking Butter’s ears. After three trips she said he was done; come back if he gets a cold and she’ll double check, but he should be fine.

He got a cold last week. His ears filled quickly, eardrum going from dark and reflective to grey and dull in a day. We went in and she said the illness brought out a lot of trauma under his right scapula (directly below the ear that was causing him so much trouble, though she didn’t know that). She massaged him and stretched him; then claimed his ears would now drain fine and we would probably never need to come back.

That night his ears looked worse. The next morning they were the same. By the next night they were back to normal. His ear drum was reflecting light again even though his nose was still congested.

Why has there been no large-scale study on the efficacy of chiropractic or osteopathic treatments on ear infections, especially ear infections that have no food allergy component and could be tied to birth trauma? Why are pediatricians not tracking the results even without a formal study? Ear infections are the most common reason for pediatric visits, aren’t they?

Can someone get on that? I’m going to write to the insurance company and the pediatrician and the ENT to whom she referred us. I want them to know, and you to know, that there might be a way around the awful choices of repeated rupture or medication or surgery for chronic ear infections in little people. I have nothing to sell, no way to profit from this information. But my little guy has avoided one course of antibiotics, another ruptured eardrum, and a talk about surgically implanting tubes in his ear. And I want other parents to have that.

I know Peanut said funny things this week, but surely a complete resolution of what would have been ear infection number four in four months, a complete reversal of a condition with a couple of noninvasive sessions…isn’t that better than cuteness?

They come in threes?

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News within about a week:

family friend’s son died (second brain tumor)
family friend’s son died (suicide)
friend’s son died (accident)

friend’s husband being horrible, in crisis about marriage
friend’s husband chronically horrible, in crisis about marriage

friend treated horribly by colleagues

friend disappointed by partner
friend disappointed by boss
friend disappointed by parent

friend diagnosed with cancer
friend diagnosed with different cancer
friend waiting for diagnosis of type of cancer

so, clearly, one more marriage crisis or two more psychotic colleagues and I have a royal flush.

then what do I win?

Lead alert: juice and fruit

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NPR featured a story today on high levels of lead found in fruit and juice for children…

Story is available http://www.kqed.org/epArchive/R201006101730and an FAQ page here.

The long list of products (including some from Whole Foods, Safeway, Kroeger and big, national brands you know and might buy, like Dole, Del Monte, and Earth’s Best) is available here or beginning on page nine of the legal notice to companies that they’re in violation.

Isn’t it good to know that we can’t trust one stinking company with our food, nor our government to protect us? Good, good times, Corporate America.

1950s rap

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Toyota has a viral youtube campaign for their minivan that they think is ever so clever.

I think it’s painfully backward.

In the lengthy ads, a very white middle class heterosexual family expounds on how cool they are in their minivan, which Dad has dubbed the Swagger Wagon. In the most recent ad, the family sings a rap about said vehicle.

How delightful, no?

No.

In the song, Dad boasts how he participates and subverts gender stereotypes by having tea parties with his daughter and her dolls. Mom sings about how facile she is with jello and cupcakes, how she tends the kids’ wounds. While Dad mugs and poses in the van, Mom handles the lunch, the school play, and the song’s bridge—a potty break for their eldest.

Is this rap written for a 1950s audience? (The black and white images are a clue.) Why is Dad helping only with the tea party and nothing else? Why is Mom defined by her baking skills, her cheerleading costume, and her self definition as a former “college chick”?

One of the most difficult transitions for progressive couples who become parents is the reality of how even 50/50 marriages become 90/10 marriages when kids are thrown into the mix. The sheer volume of work mothers do, and the fact that it tends to be time sensitive, repetitive work (meals, tidying, errands, school) contrasts with the paucity of work inside the home most fathers do (and the fact that it tends to be ‘get to it when you can’ weekend, one-time, big project work). And the new division of labor causes marital strife.

Is that what you celebrate in your silly minivan ads? That families can fight in the front seat while the wee ones sit with headphones and DVD players in the back, oblivious to the real work of being a family…the day to day bickering over details, like the fact that I’ll be damned if I’m ever defined by how my baked goods perform at the school bake sale or refer to any of the years I busted my ass in higher ed as the days when I was a college chick.

Thanks for the stereotypes, Toyota. Sure makes me think less about your cars driving unintentionally into oncoming traffic.

Nice move, Massachusetts.

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Look, all I’m saying is that if the Democrats are so incompetent they can’t mount a successful campaign in Mass, or get anything useful passed in the almost two years they had a supermajority in Congress and the White House, why then, I’d like to see a new party come up to challenge the conservatives. A party that thinks very differently about how we treat our citizens, how we regulate our businesses and markets, how we educate our kids, and how we prioritize safe food, water, air, and citizenry.

Anyone for a party with actual progressive values? One that can sway independent voters with, say solid policy and the guts to sell it?

Sheesh. It’s Taxachusetts for heaven’s sake. How do you throw that one?

You’re right. 2000s were worthless.

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Op-ed piece crossed my ‘pooter just as I was thinking this, too…what a crappy decade.

[My semi-unrelated two cents? Please, in this week’s retrospectives, let’s all try to behave responsibly toward apostrophes in decade references. They were the 2000s. Or the ’00s. This is 2009’s final hour. For advanced punctuators, the ’00s’ last hurrah. No apostrophe for plurals, yes apostrophes for possessive. Please.]

Massive computer fail

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Netbook and laptop both took a huge dive. After several days during which any click of the mouse takes, no joke, 8 minutes to register I think I’ve figured out that Microsoft auto-updated my Windows XP to a new and Internet-outraging service pack. Or some other geek talk I don’t get. Neither computer can perform basic functions and I’m left hanging for days after asking for a virus scan or a return to backup.

What I do understand is that both my computers are useless and I’m a mess. Can’t pay bills, can’t check our plane reservations, can’t send email, can’t handle the huge address book that has all the info for our holiday cards.

I need Kipper. Any chance he and Jake could come over and fix both computers, since it seems I have to download and reinstall something onto computer that is completely unable to even copy or delete a file?

Microsoft, if this is your fault, I’m totally and completely going Linux on my PCs and am using my Mac for EVERYTHING from now on. Jerks. Losers. Monolithic asswipe computer ruiners. (I usually reserve my “The Man is bringing me down” category for politics, but Microsoft is *The Man* and The Man is so thoroughly bringing me down, man.)

I’ll be back when I can actually access the Internet.

Quick 2009 primer

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Fascinating.

Top 10 Stories You Missed in 2009 this year, as rated by Foreign Policy. Seriously, read it.  It’s relatively short and absolutely worth your time.

A rare even-handed look at the conundrum in Afghanistan.

And, finally, a look at how pink ribbons have completely dumbed down our knowledge of women’s health issues in an article by Barbara Ehrenreich.  Politicians and corporations are still railroading science in this country, alas.

SIGG toxic b.s.

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I am so angry it’s taking all my energy not to scream obscenities and cry. Sigg, the maker of stainless steel bottles I’ve used for YEARS to escape exposure from the scary hormone-disrupting chemicals found in plastic (especially BPA), actually contain BPA. Or did, until last year when they changed their liner without telling anyone about the toxins.

Should I have known when they touted their bottles as an eco-alternative that “does not leach BPA” to read between the lines and see that doesn’t mean “does not contain BPA?” Sure. But I wasn’t the only one fooled. Consumer advocates have been trying to prove for years what we all suspected: Sigg is too good to be true.

Now Sigg is willing to replace their old bottles with their new, BPA-free bottles. I refuse to link to their website because I am angry I could spit BPA tainted water. Several retailers are exchanging the bottles for the new version or for an alternative.

I’m not getting new Sigg bottles. I’m going to put on hold my boycott of Whole Foods, whose dolt of a CEO wrote an editorial opposed to health care reform and basic human services (hello, do you know your customers at all?) because Whole Foods is taking back Sigg bottles for a credit. And with that credit I will buy the bottles I thought I could never afford but am now KICKING myself for not buying earlier, distraught with what I may have done to my body, my children’s bodies, and my Spouse’s body by relying on Sigg for so many years.

I’m scared and mad and feel so f—ing misled. What is the point of reading and researching and trying my absolute best if goddamned companies goddamned lie as a way of doing business?

No aluminum. No Gaiam bottles (I knew that because they taste like plastic). No Sigg bottles.

Yes to stainless steel. Yes to Kleen Kanteen. Maybe to whatever other alternatives you’d like to suggest, if you can prove they’re not taking our money and lying like certain other companies. Like all of them.

I heart Maine

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How  about a shout out to the Senators from Maine, both of whom are Republicans and both of whom are showing the kind of logic and leadership I wish all leaders had. Nobody likes compromising. But these Senators have studied the health care issue, know what they want, and are willing to fight for a solution that suits  their philosophical leanings AND the needs of Americans.

They don’t like the Democrats’ plan as is, and they’re changing what they don’t like. I’m not arguing they should get everything they want, or even anything they want, but I am a big fan of leaders who listen and think, and who don’t feel the need to protect their original opinions to the death.  I’m not so ignorant that I think we’re going to convince the Maine Senators on a pure public option, though it’s what I’ve lobbied my Senators and Representatives for.  I’m also not a fan of forced bipartisanship, three of each bickering until they water things down enough. I like a couple of passionate people from each side choosing to come together with good intentions to make compromises that really work for Americans, not just for politics.

Though that’s not the situation here, I’m still bumping Maine further up our list. I was always a Masshole-New Hampster type, but if *this* is what being conservative in Maine means, I can actually abide a conservative-leaning home.

Plus, Maine seems to be doing fine work on the way to equality for all. You’ll move up further if you pass gay marriage. (You know you want to. Hubby Hubby is the best B&J flavor.)

Idealogues are pains in the ass. Those GOPers who genuinely prefer health insurer profits to a healthy nation, stick to your guns. Those who are terrified of change: take a deep breath and move slowly. Republicans who want to fix the system but can’t stand what it will cost: do the math on what we lose keeping things the way they are.  Sometimes you have to spend money to make money.  Those Republicans who want to help people but just can’t swallow the fact that Barack Obama is President: get new jobs. Because the fact that you put your fingers in your ears and vote “whatever is the opposite of Obama” are not leaders. You’re followers. Contrarian follwers, but followers nevertheless. Liberals who still want Universal health care or a single-payer system, keep fighting. But at a certain point, we’re all going to have to accept that the other side, whoever they are, have a point. We’re not getting single-payer, and we need to compromise on public option. So push all you want, but make sure it’s not counter-productive, or you, too, can get new jobs with the GOP ideologues.

Slow food or real life?

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Compelling article in the East Bay Express this week: Back to the Microwave by Sierra Filucci.
The author talks about how she was torn between doing what is right for her family and the planet…and doing what’s actually right for her family. She even argues that, though slow, local food movement is outstanding for young urbanites and energetic retirees, it may actually be pushing already overwhelmed women back into the kitchen for a full 1950s three-hour meal prep.

Great read. Glad her family did the one month of microwave and one month of Pollan eating to show how it really affects a family. Mostly grateful so I didn’t have to do the experiment. Interesting results.

During the convenience month, Filucci feels “pressed into an unworkable space. The space between a smashed keyboard and preservatives—between time and health.” Everything was easy, not always fast, and universally tasted the same.

During the grow it and cook it yourself month, she remembers “that the pleasure of cooking is soon overwhelmed by the reality of eating with two small children.” But once they hit their stride, the food “was polyphonic, with the volume cranked up high.”

Filucci notes the silence about gender within the slow food movement, ignoring that in the typical family, women handle 63% of the food prep and cleanup. The men and women are exhausted after a long day and sometimes, even though cooking is faster, takeout is more tempting. She wants the sustainable food movement to realize “that what they ask of communities and households—while worthy and noble—falls unequally at women’s feet.”

I believe we all need to talk more about the costs, too, not just to families and time and the environment, but to families’ wallets. Eating locally and fresh, in dismissing the terrifically unbalanced and outrageous food policy in the U.S. (all GMO, poison-ridden corn. potatoes, and soy all the time), is designed to be unbearably expensive for most families. It costs too much for us to buy everything at the farmer’s market and through local farm delivery programs. That’s because of where we live, where people pay a premium for local and fresh. Damn them.

Back to the Microwave

Marketing 101

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Dear Mr. Axelrod,
When you have an important message on a key policy issue from the leader of your political party, the email should not be titled “Got a few minutes?”

Aside from being grammatically incorrect (it should be “Have a few minutes?”) you almost guarantee having your email deleted before it’s been read. The answer to “got a few minutes” is always “no.” The answer to “To Whom It May Concern” is a universal, “not me; check for someone else while you’re in the trash can.”

If you’re sending out a short, compelling video about health care reform, maybe use the subject lines:
Four Minutes to Health Care Reform
Health Care Reform in Just Four Minutes
Health Care Reform in a Few Minutes
A Few Minutes to Health Care Reform.

This is just Advertising 101, people. Your only chance to be read is the headline. You have one second. “Got a minute?” doesn’t cut it. (Have vs. Got is Grammar 1A.)

(You can see the video on the White House site, but I’m not linking because I don’t reward poor grammar.)

The lone uninsured Congressperson

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One congressional Representative has no insurance—a physician who says that as soon as Congress goes without insurance for a while there will be real change.

Check out the story of why a Wisconsin Representative declined coverage, and how his grown children, who can’t afford their own coverage, have a different perspective without health care than the politicians who take good insurance for granted.

You know, the current talk in health care reform is to leave everybody’s insurance the way it is, but to add an extra choice for people who want something different…a competitive option for people who don’t have insurance, who don’t like what they have, or who can’t afford their choices? How much easier would life be for employers if they didn’t *have* to provide insurance? Doesn’t seem fair that you make far less than you would if your employer were free to just pay you for your work instead of paying you, plus your health benefits…

In the past 40 years we’ve gone from health *care* to health *insurance*. And we now have a huge industry that makes tons of money denying us the care we need. Why can’t we cut out that middle man?

Representative Kagen did.

Huzzah for Ben & Jerry’s

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Really, this is a huzzah for Vermont, but I love this symbolic show of support for yet another state making civil rights a reality not just a talking point.

In celebration of Vermont’s new marriage equality, Ben and Jerry’s is renaming (just for Sept. and just in VT) their awesome Chubby Hubby ice cream and relabeling it Hubby Hubby.

I met Chubby Hubby in the mid-90s at Boston’s phenomenal Scooper Bowl (debuts of all the new ice cream flavors by every ice cream company on the planet, filling the Commons with free ice cream and insane amounts of goodwill). I love the flavor, for peanut butter and chocolate and pretzels are my idea of heaven, even though Cherry Garcia often spends more time in my house.

I’m so proud of companies that put their neck on the line for what they believe in. B&J is already doing awesome work for livable wages, poison-free farming and dairy ranching, the planet, and other causes near and dear to me. But it’s just lovely that they are rolling out a line of happy celebration for this new law. What goes on in other people’s houses is their business, and the number of cartons of B&Js now in my freezer, as of today, is my business.