Okay, break over.

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Aside from the fact that I can’t be quiet (like, ever), I found some interesting articles for your consideration while doing my hour of Sunday Internet time. Guess that thought about maybe abandoning the blog was foolish talk. My Internet limit, though, means you’re in for a wild ride this post…

Fascinating article on Trader Joe’s, the highly secretive and mum company that supplies 75% of my family’s food. The LA Magazine piece is quite interesting and revelatory, though the last two paragraphs are almost the lamest conclusion I’ve ever read. And given that I taught freshman level English at a community college, “lamest” is saying a lot.

The controversy swirling about LEGO’s horrific decision to create pink and purple LEGOs for girls in which the characters lounge poolside and drink frothy beverages has me so angry I can barely speak. I’ve already ranted about Melissa and Doug‘s disgusting choice to have career dress up dolls for boys and fashion dress up dolls for girls, the hatefulness and ignorance of which made me stop buying their toys (a decision on which I doubled down when I realized how much of their stuff has PVC in it.)

And, in the interest of public service, a good read on how to affect public policy</a. I found Information Diet searching for a list of which companies support PIPA and SOPA, the terrifying congressional attempts to regulate the Internet that will make American access to information a lot more like so-called access in countries with overt government-sponsored censorship like China and Iran.

So. Learn about Trader Joe’s, debate toy pinkification, and wrangle with your legislative representative about the Internet. These are my contributions to your first day of 2012. What do you think?

New Math

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It’s been soul-searching time around Chez Nap, and I’ve pared down the emotion and the catastrophizing to simple math:

There are seven specific tasks that I want to work on almost every single day of 2012.

I have, at most, four hours to myself each evening. Zero hours during the day belong to me for the tasks that need attention.

There are twelve things in my life that are in desperate need of attention.

There are at least eight specific projects I want to finish in 2012.

So if I need to somehow cram seven activities and eight goals into the four hours I have each night, a lot of stuff is going to get dropped.

And this blog might have to be one.

We’ll see. But right now the odds are stacked against my continued involvement in social media and the blogosphere.

What are you dropping in 2012?

Change is in the air

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Ok, 2012. We’re going do a few things differently around here.

First? The list of resolutions. But for 2012 I’m making resolutions for other people. I’m tired of writing out the same list for myself: write more, read more, exercise more, eat more veggies, be more patient with my kids, drink more water, make progress on all 27 projects, declutter, and make better financial decision. Further, the same items on last year’s FINISH list (must finish editing my novel, must finish reading the insanely high pile of books by my bed, must finish arrangements for my acapella group, must finish donating all the junk we don’t need, must stop buying more junk we don’t need) are back on this year’s list.

Which means my list is already done. The list of resolutions, not the list of things to do. That one seems to never even dwindle. The point, though, is my resolutions are already set and being attacked with ardent fervor. Right now, in advance of the deadline, so way to go, Me.

That, in turn, means I have copious time and energy (and expertise, quite frankly) to make a list for everyone else. Because the slackasses ’round my house don’t know a good to-do list if it walks by and nags them to do things.

So.

Peanut: in 2012 you will continue to make progress in the “use words not hands at home” and “actually use words at school” categories. You will lose the nasty attitude in which you hiss answers to my questions in full Medusa face-writhe. And you will keep the adorable amount of affection you show your dad and your ability to create entire worlds out of tape, sticks, and magic marker.

Butter: in 2012 you will continue to make progress in the “use your words rather than screech” and “give mama a freaking break” categories. You will lose the nasty habits of pulling my hair and biting when you’re mad, and you will ditch the compulsive need you have of throwing to the ground every single thing you see. You will keep the “Mama mama mama” song with which you put yourself to sleep, and the “mama mama mama” song with which you serenade me, tiny hands locked ’round the back of my neck, when you wake in the middle of the night and want to come sleep in my bed.

Spouse: the Interwebs are neither the time nor the place to tell you what to make progress on, ditch, and keep. But I have a list. Stop by and I’ll share it. Know this: there are things on which you should continue to make progress, things you need to abandon, and things you have to keep doing. That is all.

So while we’re on a roll, what do you resolve someone will do or not do in 2012? We all know what we want to fix in ourselves. Let’s fix the rest of the world while we’re here.

Suggestions for any sentient beings welcome below.

Boxing Day

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This year, Boxing Day might be my favorite holiday. (It always creeped me out before, hearing the inaccurate history of the day as based in a tradition of boxing children’s ears so they’d remember the day. Terrible. And, as I said, inaccurate. Sticks with you, though.)

Christmas was delightful. Morning at home in a slow frenzy of buckwheat pancakes, unwrapping, and play. Afternoon with family. And evening with more family, pausing, as we chased after a Tasmanian Devil toddler, to chat with dear people we haven’t seen in longer than we’d like. Kids were wiped and went to sleep easily.

Today, though, was heaven. The kids had enough newness in the living room that they played without tormenting each other. The bigger one was so involved in projects that he didn’t scream when the little one drew near. The little one had so many things to investigate that he didn’t tail the bigger one. And they both left me alone to do my thing: cooking and Internonsense. When they wanted me, it was for play. And it was every 10 minutes instead of every single minute of thirteen straight hours.

I didn’t even care that the toddler didn’t nap.

The day went by at regular pace, a shocking rarity in life with two small, energetic, opinionated, frenetic little destructive forces.

Regular pace. Like, recognizable as an actual day. Not sped up in hyperdrive, nor tortuously slow. No freakish stops and starts, the likes of which dominate my at-the-whims-of-everyone-else life.

I barely knew what to do with myself.

Mmmmmmm. Regular speed. It’s been years, but you feel like home.

‘Twas the day before the night before Christmas

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‘Twas, in fact, also the day that leads into the fourth night of Hanukkah and two days after Solstice.

A day full of things to do and no breathing room to do them in.

A day where client work presses in on one side, giftmaking from the other. A day of school-lessness the likes of which we had plenty in the summer but which I’m not used to.

A day of trips and falls and blood-streaked ice and crying, of errands and tasks best attempted alone, a state exactly the opposite of today’s full stores, jammed parking lots, and backseat teeming with crying, bloody, small children.

A day in which I hoped to post a “before I lapse into gratitude mode tomorrow and for the rest of the year, I’d like a day to bemoan all that I am NOT grateful for” piece. One that covered things like having my name always precede the words “I want”; like feeling as though the clutter created by four people living together actually gets piled atop my head each night so I have to choose amongst sleep, exercise, reading, writing, editing, or removing the catastrophic pile of crap from my head and shoulders. Like balancing the joy of watching my children play, totally absorbed in their awesome worlds or merriment and imagination with the guilt from wanting to be away from my children more with the frustration of being with my children every waking minute of every single day. Like mean people, people who don’t do their fair share, and people who bicker in my living room while I’m trying to stinking cook a stinking healthy breakfast in here!

But I don’t have time to write that post. I don’t have the energy to write that post. And, honestly, considering the fact that I’ve spent the day running around with and after two small people, one of whom needs me 55 seconds of every minute, and still managed to get all the ingredients for our holiday gift-making extravaganza, I’m feeling a little less ungrateful, and a little more “bring on the resolutions, 2012, because I have a head start!”

In fact, since I haven’t yelled all day and I sacrificed my solo time during the little one’s nap to do science projects with the bigger one, I’m finishing the year with a personal-improvement to-do list more crossed off than not.

If I finish my editing, rewrite my novel, exercise, drink more water, and eat more veggies at every meal, I’ll be so far ahead of my own game it’ll be 2013 in a week.

Happy Ungrateful Day! (if you can find the time and energy to be ungrateful, that is; otherwise happy fourth night and happy second day of traveling closer to the sun and happy day before the night before Christmas)

‘Tis the Season

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We’ve been consumed with the giving spirit around here, and Peanut has been making presents and giving to those in need and those he loves. He’s been practicing some holiday greetings, too.

A partial list of today’s favorites:

“I don’t have to if I don’t want to!”

“It’s my body and you can’t make me!”

“I might, but I’m not going to tell you so stop talking!”

“You can’t make that a rule because it’s my body and you don’t know my feelings!”

“Either you let me or I’ll punch your eye!”

“Either you let me or I’ll kick you!”

And the perennial, Jimmy Stewart-esque reminder of all we’re thankful for:

“You can’t have that; it’s mine! Don’t touch anything that’s mine!”

Aaaaaahhhh. So much merriness and brightness.

Happy Not-Quite-a-Holiday-Yet-but-It-Sure-Feels-Like-It-for-All-the-Work to you all!

Bad Lip Reading

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Okay, everyone but me knows about Bad Lip Reading by now. (Eternal Gratitude to Maureen Johnson for initiating me.) But just in case you haven’t seen this genius hilarity, you simply need this post.

Because this is the funniest thing I have seen maybe EVER. I have watched it for days and can’t stop laughing.

Basic premise? Take video (anything from politicians to music videos), and overlay a track of you reading the outrageous things it *looks* like they’re saying. String together as many as possible to comic effect.

Just watch. Just know that you will have to hit pause a few times so you can laugh your face off.

Laugh. Your. Face. Off.

Here you go. Because everybody needs toucan stubs.

GASP! Hackermom Finds the Mothership!

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This is an idea whose time has come. A creative-women-who-are-also-moms hackerspace. A studio where women can explore individual and collective projects, feed their creative side, express themselves among a community of similarly driven women? With childcare? Shut the front door.

And excerpt from their site:
“Life with young kids can be an isolating state and a fractured existence. … Mothership HackerMoms evolved with babysitting as an integral part of our creative process, giving us the time and space to work. Traditional moms groups tend to be about the kids. We are here to first support the mother, her identity as a powerful creator, woman, explorer, entrepreneur, the artist of her life and of family life. We want to model active creative lives for our kids to learn from, so it’s important for them to be present with their projects, too…. If we don’t support this playful creative self, we risk burnout, depression, and 2-yr-old-level temper tantrums. It’s a use it or lose it philosophy to motherhood sanity. All work and no play makes mom a dull mother, lover and friend!”

I have thought many times as I walked past one particular empty office space on my favorite path that it would be cool to open a creative spplace ace for women who just need a proverbial Room of Their Own. Where they can paint and write and build and compute and cogitate and congregate and communicate. Did I mention the childcare? And not in a “pawn your kids off and get them out of your hair” kind of way, but in a “someone to keep them safe near you while you do your art or intellectual thing.”

The simple fact that these women exist makes me happy. These are my peeps, yo. I must go find them and join. And tell you about it so you can do the same thing in your ‘hood.

I must go learn more. I will report back. Because every town should have a hackerspace for artists and especially a hackermom space. If you are a wealthy philanthropist or investor who wants to see the amazing benefits of such a space, send money. To Mothership Hackermoms. Or me. With enough money I’ll open a hackerspace for creatives, too.

But for now, they are it. Huzzah.

Bullying

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I found this on A Magical Childhood‘s pinterest. She found it at The Hermit on a Hill’s Tumblr. I wanted to share.

***
A teacher in New York was teaching her class about bullying and gave them the following exercise to perform.

She had the children take a piece of paper and told them to crumple it up, stamp on it, and really mess it up but to not rip it. Then she had them unfold the paper, smooth it out, and look at how scarred and dirty is was.

She then told them to tell it they’re sorry.

Even though they said they were sorry and tried to fix the paper, she pointed out all the scars they left behind. And that those scars will never go away no matter how hard they tried to fix it. They might fade a bit, but they’re permanent.

That is what happens when a child bullies another child, they may say they’re sorry but the scars are there forever.

The looks on the faces of the children in the classroom told her the message hit home. Pass it on or better yet, if you’re a parent or a teacher, do it with your child/children.

****

Yes. Do. Stick and stones may break my bones, but words leave scars.

Plan B

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Hold the phone.

After promising that science would “inform and guide decisions of my Administration on a wide range of issues, including improvement of public health,” President Obama’s Secretary of Health and Human Services has overriden an FDA recommendation to allow over the counter sales of Plan-B, an emergency contraceptive quick access to which is necessary for efficacy.

Since when did we decide that setting a precedent of overruling the FDA was a good idea? Is that a power you want future Presidents to have, Secretary Sebelius and President Obama? Because believe me, the next Republican President will gladly take your idea and apply it to every FDA recommendation he doesn’t agree with. (Yes, I assume the next Republican President will be male, even if they don’t take the White House for 12 years. That was not a casual lack of gender awareness; that was an intentional choice of gendered pronoun.) Science and math are not something one can disagree with. To paraphrase Ira Flatow today on Talk of the Nation, “Pythagorean Theorum? I don’t believe it. It’s only a theory.”

Since when does politics get to trump science? Didn’t you state as a goal, President Obama, that you wanted:

“To ensure that in this new Administration, we base our public policies on the soundest science; that we appoint scientific advisers based on their credentials and experience, not their politics or ideology; and that we are open and honest with the American people about the science behind our decisions. That is how we will harness the power of science to achieve our goals — to preserve our environment and protect our national security; to create the jobs of the future, and live longer, healthier lives.”

And didn’t you say this:

Science and the scientific process must inform and guide decisions of my Administration on a wide range of issues, including improvement of public health…. The public must be able to trust the science and scientific process informing public policy decisions.

Sir, you are going to pay for this politically. Severely. You just ruined your relationship with liberal voters and women voters. Really, really dumb move.

Since when does the government get to tell women that they have to wait for the right pharmacist at the right pharmacy at the right time, else be forced to have an abortion? 72 hours is a tight window if you live in a small town and have to find a willing pharmacist during pharmacy hours when the people you can’t trust aren’t watching (for instance the husband who will beat you if he finds out, or the parents who will throw you out if they hear about your need for emergency contraception).

Hillary Clinton said that she believes “in the freedom of women to make their own decisions about the most personal and significant matters affecting their lives.” Once the FDA said Plan B should be sold over the counter, Secretary Clinton fought for three years to implement that recommendation.

Well, I hope she’s reading Obama the riot act tonight. I hope Hillary Clinton and Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer and Nancy Pelosi and Michelle Obama are right this minute telling that man how reprehensible it is to let politics dictate science.

Politics, by the way, that the OTHER SIDE hold dear.

Your supporters, President Obama, DO NOT SUPPORT YOU IN THIS.

Holiday Gift Abuses

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I just posted a link to Jonathan Liu’s phenomenal list of the best toys of all time that included a stick, a box, string, and dirt.

Then someone on that Twitter thing showed me this and I was undone.

Seems these days girls don’t have to get their science in the kitchen. Science for girls is now…in the bathroom. Baking is so 1950s. In 2012 we exfoliate.

How long will it take before girls get their science in the lab, like the so-called boys’ science kits offer?

Science kits are great gifts, even though almost all science can be done with regular household ingredients and a grownup who can read. But apparently girls can’t be interested in science unless it’s Barbied. And they can’t forget what’s important: being “pretty.” Ugh. Read Peggy Orenstein’s post on these horrifying “spa science” and mani/pedi appeals to girls that seek to either trick them into doing that abhorrent-and-boyish-activity known as science or dumb it down enough that “even girls” can find it fun.

Yuck. Hope any child in your life interested in science gets the chemistry and physics set, not the one branded for their early objectification.

Holiday Wish Lists

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Fabulous post from Geek Dad on the Five Toys a kid *must* have.

No need to pepper spray other shoppers: these items are easy to find and priced well almost everywhere.

I don’t want to spoil the effort and research that went into this tech-centric dad’s methodology, so please click to read Jonathan Liu’s hilarious post. I’ll give you some hints on the first two necessary holiday toys:

Stick
Box

Okay, those weren’t hints so much as actual items from the list.

Such toys, if you don’t know, even have awesome user manuals written by Antoinette Portis.

Go read the post. The third, fourth, and fifth best toys of all time might surprise you. But they’re guaranteed to thrill every child on your holiday gift list.


End of Rope Found

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Today was a day to go with the flow. I’m down to one client project, Butter has spent so long resisting nap that I just give up, and all the things I need to do are “wait until after bedtime” things. So I vowed to follow Butter and just be with him all day. No timing naps or tasks or emails. I don’t even pull out my phone for most of the day.

After we drop off Peanut at school, Butter asks to go see the construction site. Sure. It’s a block past the coffee I like and the cheese rolls we both like. So we grab a cuppa, a muffin, and a cheese roll and head to…oh, he wants to get down.

Sure.

He then proceeds to walk all over the neighborhood, closely supervised, touching every single rock and leaf and dog and flower and bee. (Yes, bee; he has this uncanny ability to pick them up and have them walk all over his arm and blow them off and they never sting him. Weird.) We traveled every inch of a one block radius several times. We used the bathroom in CheeseBoard Pizza five times. We got water from CheeseBoard seven times. We watched construction for what might have been two million years. He dug in the dirt and put rocks in his cup and carried them ten feet and dumped them out and started over. All unmolested but safe and loved. Awesome sauce.

For three hours. For the record, I started getting a little twitchy at two and a half.

He finally asked to be held and fell instantly asleep on my back. And I knew I couldn’t take him out or he’d refuse a nap. So I took him home and edited with him asleep on my back.

And when he woke just as Peanut got out of school, I willingly followed them both as they giggled off toward home.

It took two hours to travel one mile. I let them do their thing except for safety and kindness issues. For the first 90 minutes. And then I found my limit.

Children, I cannot go slower than 1/3 mile an hour. I can’t do it. I know I hurried you along a bit toward the end, and kept saying, “I know their yard looks fun but we have to go home.” I was cold. And tired. And Type A. Yes, we can sort through all these rocks and choose our favorites and compare them and leave them for the homeowners who paid for them. Yes, we can crunch through leaves. Yes, we can throw them and laugh and play and rake them all back in a pile with a big stick to start all over again. But we have to get moving after 30 minutes because…because…well, because I guess I just don’t love you enough. I know play is important. I know unfettered and undirected and spontaneous is great. I know adult pace isn’t right for kids.

But I will stab myself in the eye if I ever again spend 5 hours moving at tiny scientist pace.

So. Lesson learned. Never, ever, ever, ever spend more than four hours doing what the children want. Ever. Ever.

Never.

Ever.

A few of my favorite things

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Butter loves sitting in Peanut’s lap. Any time the older brother sits on the floor, the little guy wanders over, turns around, and plops down. They read books, eat snacks, and play games this way.

After four months, Butterbean is finally telling us when he needs to pee. Over the past week he has gone from starting to go, then stopping and telling us and holding it on the way to the toilet, to telling us in advance. We hit a major milestone this weekend when he figured out he can sit down by himself, when he wants. Apparently he wants to sit every two minutes.

Holidays this year will include some of my favorite people. It’s nice to be home and have family and friends around us. Thanksgiving was wonderfully nice. I anticipate more of the same for the Apathy Party, Solstice, Hanukkah, and Christmas.

Every pound I gained last week was worth it. And now I really mean the “mindful choices and more water and vegetables” efforts I have been flirting with.

Since the antibiotics, Butter’s ear infection has subsided. Now we need four weeks without illness to clear them.

He has a few more words this week.

Sleep is a bit better.

Client work has dwindled to one nice project.

Commitment to attachment parenting has been renewed and both children seem pleased.

Boot and Cape Weather has arrived.

I dare not hope for more.