I want another one

I would like to wear winter maternity clothes. I think it would be nice to have big baggy sweaters and hoodies that don't meet in the middle, and to not have to worry about whether or not the straps on my tank top will cover my bra. It would be nice to have the thick, shiny, pregnancy hair and be able to wear it down my back instead of up in a ponytail in a vain attempt to not sweat to death through the back of my neck.

Sure, GD during fudge and cookie season would suck, but not gaining five pounds in December would be kind of cool. As would being able to pick out a coming-home-from-the-hospital outfit for a baby that consists of more than just a onesie.

I still really want this baby out of me, but I still also wish I could get another one in there sometime too. Making people is cool (until the last week or so) and it sucks that my pancreas is my people-making enemy. Like kryptonite for Superman, if kryptonite only really affected his ability to eat candy bars unrestricted.

It's not about YOU!

I have gotten used to being the only woman left on the planet to wait until birth to learn the sex of the baby, but am I really the only one who lets the baby decide when to come out?! Does everyone opt for elective induction? All I keep hearing is that it's all about the mother, and it's her day, and the most important thing is to make her comfortable. Gee, you'd almost forget there was a baby involved. I kind of thought it was all about him! Or her.

miserable

This baby had better come out soon. Ten days until Tommy's birthday, and I think it would be cool for them to share a birthday. But, can I make it another ten days?

36 weeks pregnant

Last time I was this far along I went to the doctor on July 14 and then drove into a wall at 60 mph. Today's appointment was much less exciting, thank gods. I'm dilated to 2 cm (more than I've ever gotten to without pitocin) and am 50% effaced, plus the baby's head is so far down that my pelvis is spreading. I wonder what all that pressure on the skull will do to the baby's head? I've known babies who were so low they were born misshapen. Oh well, hats are cute.

Ryan and Mom go to Yellowstone Friday, for a week and a half so either this baby has to come in the next day and a half or it has to wait a couple weeks. I'm still hoping to have it on the fourth but we'll see just how much say I have in it. Wish me luck; I'll keep you all (one?) updated.

Baby Products I absolutely recommend

1. swaddling blankets. I've used the kiddopotamus ones before and loved them, but this time I splurged and bought the woombie and I hope they work as well as I've heard. Either way, the principle is the same: blankets that fasten shut so the baby can't wiggle out as easily.
2. toy links. These help bring hanging toys into baby's reach, hang Mom's purse on the stroller handle, attach handles cups to the stroller so they don't hit the ground, and basically whatever else you can think of. If I had a time machine I'd go back and invent them because they are so simple they make me feel stupid for not thinking of it first.
3. musical crib toy. There are all sorts of these things, and some people just use a white noise machine, but we chose to start with a heartbeat teddy bear and then go to a musical seahorse, which Tommy still uses. When we put him in bed we tuck him in, hand him his stuffed kitty, and then turn on the music. Sometimes we hear him wake up in the middle of the night and turn on the music himself. He's like Pavlov's dog now and starts yawning once he hears it. It's on my list of things to buy before the baby is born, so they can both have their own.
4. blackout curtains. Or at least a heavy blanket over the windows. Frilly, sheer curtains look good in the daytime, but unless you want your baby to wake up at dawn or have trouble napping, you'll want to find a way to keep the room dark. I made curtains for Tommy's room, and just lined them with a thicker black fabric and so far they seem to work well.
5. Baby sunglasses. I've never used the goggles kind with the elastic strap, but any kind would be good as long as they didn't dig into the baby's head. The reason I like these so much is that I see babies all the time squinting against the sun. Either the shade in the car window stopped working after taking that last turn, or the stroller canopy leaves a crack exposed, or it's just a bright day out and they're in a sunny spot. Either way, the odds are about 50/50 that the baby will leave them on if you start young enough (like within 2 days of birth) and it's definitely worth the $5 a pair of sunglasses cost to play those odds. My daughter loved hers and my son hated his. I still don't regret buying them either time.
   

Pointless baby "necessities" that are a waste of money

1. baby mittens. Most newborn outfits come with the little fold-over pocket on the sleeves to keep baby from scratching herself, and if they don't you can use socks, which are cheaper and stay on better than little thumbless mittens anyway.
2. bassinet. I'm not talking about the pack-n-play with a higher level for a newborn to sleep in, but the piece of designer wicker furniture that stands in the corner, all top-heavy, just waiting for the baby to learn to move the slightest bit and topple it over. Cute, but pointless.
3. wipe warmer. If your house is too cold for baby wipes, why is the baby sleeping in it? Otherwise, room temperature wipes are fine and don't bother most babies. Maybe if the alternative were bracingly cold wipes a warmer would make sense, but in that case either the butt in question would already be bracingly cold, or you'd be an idiot for storing your wipes in the fridge.
4. gender specific gear. For one thing, ultrasounds are NOT always right, and buying your high chair, car seat, stroller, and swing in sexist colors could prove to be a mistake. For another thing, what if you have another baby someday and that kid is the opposite sex? Hand me downs are great, but when everything is pink and frilly, and the next baby comes out with a penis, it might be awkward (and expensive) to say the least.
5. Jogging strollers. Unless you actively jog, in straight lines on a roadway rather than a segmented sidewalk, these strollers are kind of pointless. For one thing, they cost WAY more than the regular travel-system stroller, which will work from birth through the toddler years, but they also don't all turn. A lot of the jogging strollers have immobile front wheels, which makes turning corners and maneuvering through doorways incredibly difficult.
6. crib sets. Of course when you're pregnant and setting up the baby's room, you want everything to be as cute as possible. But the $200 crib set is ridiculous. It is possible to buy a sheet (or two) and bumper pads for less than a hundred bucks. For less than fifty, probably. And the comforter and dust ruffle may look nice, but you don't use a blanket in the beginning anyway, and a dust ruffle is pretty pointless as it is. Also, these sets come with one sheep, which is fine until you put an actual baby on it and it gets spit up on, or pooped on, or it just becomes time to do a load of laundry, and then you have to have a second sheet anyway.
7. shoes. Shoes for children and adults are to protect their feet in case they step on something, or to keep them clean. Babies need no such protection. They look good in pictures, but you have no way of knowing how comfortable they are and wearing shoes can actually hamper learning to walk. If you must put shoes on a baby (barring formal occasions like weddings) use the soft ones without soles. And for God's sake, don't spend $50 on Nikes for a kid who will outgrow them within a month and never appreciate it anyway.
8. walkers. They don't teach babies how to walk; they teach them how to propel themselves backward into table legs and cabinets, and occasionally down stairs. If you want something comparable, get an exersaucer. It comes with more toys and less mobility.
   

A Mother's Wisdom

I'm definitely nesting now. I'm doing laundry every day, even if I don't have enough to make a whole load, and packing up my hospital bag and feeling a restless energy that should be put to use cleaning my house but often isn't (nesting does not negate the pointless feeling that comes when you realize your toddler will just grind more cheerios into the floor when you're done cleaning anyway). So now that I've told myself for the third time in fifteen minutes that I am not going to climb in the tub with a bottle of Soft Scrub and a brush, since I just showered and would like to stay clean for a while, I am going to make a list of things I've learned about childbirth, in case anyone actually reads this thing and maybe they've never been through this before and would appreciate my wisdom.

The lists that tell you to bring make up to the hospital for pictures are stupid. Sweaty hair, burst blood vessels, and a tear-streaked face are not going to magically transform into your everyday visage with the addition of lipstick and mascara. And they shouldn't. Your immediately-after-giving-birth photos should look like you just gave birth, not like you just showed up to meet the baby you're adopting.

The books and articles and websites about childbirth that tell you to steal the "handy" mesh panties from the hospital are stupid too. They all say to take the panties so that you can wear them for the first few days after delivery, so that if your pad leaks you won't stain your own underwear. Well, first of all, any underwear you wear within a week of giving birth will be stretched out beyond recognition anyway, stained or not, and you'll have to throw it away. But, second of all, think about it! If your pad leaks and you're wearing mesh fishnet panties (which are so stretchy they don't hold the pad against you anyway) you will ruin whatever is next in line for the blood to get to. This could be your clothes, or your bedding, or even your car if said clothes are thin enough. This is why I NEVER wear the mesh panties. Nope, not even the first day. I do, however, wear disposable underwear, in the form of adult diapers. No, not the diaper looking kind they sell on fetish websites (so I hear), but the padded paper underwear kind (like Pull-Ups but without the Minnie Mouse graphics). That way I can sleep well knowing that there's no way I'm going to ruin my sheets, and I can go out knowing I'm not going to be the last to realize a large red blotch blossoming on the back of my pants, and I can go more than an hour without running to the bathroom with an airline-pillow sized maxi pad in my fist. Now I know what you're thinking. You're thinking there's no way you could possibly wear an adult diaper, because you have dignity. Well. . .

You have no dignity. Once you've had strangers who may be part of the nursing staff but who really knows because you're in no position to be checking IDs checking you for dilation, and peed into an upside down plastic toddler cowboy hat every hour all night just to have your kidney output measured, pushed out a baby with none of the fears of public pooping that you'd previously had, and then asked just about anyone capable of pronouncing "La Leche" about nipple pain and the football hold (or alternately about engorgement and cold cabbage leaves), your dignity is gone. Before this happens, you can't imagine such a thing, but it's true. Kind of the way you swear you'll never let your husband see you less than presentable but then you get the flu and he not only sees you sick but knows what color you vomit after chicken soup. Like that.

Breast feeding hurts. Not as much as childbirth, or even as much as stubbing your toe, should you stub your toe for ten minutes on each side every two hours, but what the experts refer to as "sore nipples" is more like tearful pain. Don't get me wrong; I've done it for a year with each of my kids so far and fully intend to do it for a year with the third. But when they tell you that breast feeding doesn't hurt unless you're doing it wrong, they're bullshitting you. For the first month or two it will hurt. Nipples chap and sometimes crack (like if you suddenly were to start washing your hands a hundred times every day), and babies have stronger suction than squids (I assume; I have no proof), and it hurts. But it gets better, and it gets easier (if it hurts too much, buy a nipple shield; you can get them online or at drug stores), and by the baby's two month check-up most nursing mothers wouldn't trade it for the world. Just, don't listen to experts who will tell you that it shouldn't hurt, or that nipple shields are only for people with inverted nipples. Those people are wrong. Period. End of story. And it only hurts for the first few weeks. After that your nipples toughen up (in pain tolerance, not in texture- don't worry) and you could slam the damn things in a car door without getting hurt.

Men who say they wish they could share your pain are lying. Grab them by the nuts during just one contraction and see for yourself. They will, however, attempt to share your hospital issue pudding cups. Bastards.

Steal from the hospital. Everything except the fishnet underwear. Take the Vaseline and the diapers and the wipes and pads and bottle of hand sanitizer and stupid little leaky bum pads (they call them chucks, can you believe it?!). Take it all, because they will bill you for it anyway and they actually expect it. Leave the onesies and the sheets, but take all the "disposable" stuff. In fact, I never buy diapers before having the baby. I figure if I buy size 1 they'll be too big and if I buy size Newborn I'll pop out a ten pound baby, so I just steal from the hospital and then send my husband to Walmart before I run out.

Hospitals are loud. And bright. And babies have no sense of time. You'll likely either give birth in the middle of the night, or during the day after a long night of labor. An airline sleep mask and a pair of earplugs are wonderful things to pack. You'll still hear it when the baby next to you starts crying but if you're lucky you won't hear it when the baby down the hall starts crying, and then sets off all the others in chorus.

Contractions hurt like a bitch. Some women can breathe their way through them and use focal points and whatnot, but they still hurt. There's no reason to go to the hospital for a tightening feeling, or cramping, or pressure. When you feel like screaming and gutting yourself with a fishing knife, that's when you should go to the hospital. Very very few women don't realize they need to go to the hospital. Even those women on "I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant" usually think their appendix is bursting or something. It's different for every woman, and for every birth, but it does hurt, and those of us who get epidurals don't do it because of a tightening, or cramping, or pressure. And once you've been through it just once, even if you had a relatively painless experience (emphasis on the word relatively), you too will laugh at the women who go to the hospital with indigestion.

Weepy mother post

It has occurred to me that the baby could very well be born this month, and that seems to be what it takes to kick me into gear. Today we bought the baby its first toy (a floppy stuffed Eeyore) and the picture/coming home outfits (one for each sex, since we don't know), and when we got home I vacuumed the bedroom and put together the pack n play. Well, I started putting it together but you need a waist to do that so Tom helped me. Then I ripped the covers off the swing and bouncer and carseat and am now doing a load of delicates to wash all that up. I need to pack my hospital bag (Ryan has the bag somewhere in her room and I try not to go in there because I suspect there are VC tripwires in the clutter) and wipe down the plastic parts of all the baby gear (Damn! I forgot to buy Clorox wipes) and then worry and panic and all the other stuff I've been successfully putting off by telling myself I had the whole rest of the summer left to go.

Tommy held the Eeyore in the cart while we shopped today and he was being so gentle with it. He kissed it and hugged it and rubbed it softly. He is going to be so good with this baby and it makes me tear up to think about. He's already such a big boy and he's not even two yet! He's decided recently that he loves taking showers with us. He took his shower with me last night and stayed in there through all my shampooing and conditioning and everything, and then he didn't want to get out when I did. I let him hang out in there under the water for a while and he looked so grown up. Not afraid of getting water in his eyes or anything, just holding onto the bar of soap and rubbing it on his belly until Tom made him get out. It seems so hard to believe that two years ago I was feeling all the same kicks I feel now, and it was him!

Ryan went to he movies with a friend last night. Her first movie without a parent. She saw Twilight Eclipse and I guess she liked it, although the whole Twilight saga makes me roll my eyes. Too much emotional drama and eternal love pledging by teenagers. But apparently mopey pouty kids are what people want to see these days. I'll wait till November and go see Harry Potter 7 with her, thank you very much. If she hasn't completely outgrown being seen with Mom, by then. I miss my little girl. Just a few years ago she was dressed up as Luna Lovegood at the midnight release of the last Harry Potter book, struggling to stay awake long enough to get it, hyped up on chocolate frogs and smoothies from the Border's coffee shop. Now she only wears black and everything has to have skulls on it and when she stands next to me she's almost as tall as me. Taller, if she's wearing her black platform boots and hipster fedora. I remember when she was the one with the stuffed Eeyore.

Ugh. Hormones! I'm getting all weepy now. I have to go switch the laundry out now, and avoid any more maudlin internet prose. Hopefully my next post won't be that the baby's here. I'm not ready for that just yet.

Sometimes it sucks to be a mom

Brian Jensen was a punk. He worked at the pizza place a lot of my friends worked at and he thought he was the baddest, best looking, most envied guy around. No one liked him, but he couldn't see that. He attended the local community college (and flunked every class) and drove a five year old Grand Am with a $5000 paint job and lived in his parents' basement. When he would return from a delivery an hour late, or twenty dollars short, or when he'd hang up after taking an order with no address or phone number, he'd shrug and say "I have ADD." It was his answer to everything, because it had always worked. He'd been medicated since first grade and had never learned to do so much as tie both of his shoes in a row. He played video games and read comic books and admitted that they were the only things that could hold his attention because the explosions and fights "changed things up every couple of seconds".
When my daughter was 8 and the doctor suggested ADD as a possible cause of her falling grades, Brian Jensen was the face that popped into my mind. I agreed to have her tested, and gave the questionnaires to her teachers, and filled out the parent portion myself, but the whole time I was thinking, "She can read a Harry Potter book in one day! How can she have trouble focusing?" It wasn't until the doctor told me that it was ADD that it was explained to me. Everyone can focus on stuff they like; kids with ADD just can't focus on anything they don't. It's not by choice, just an inability to buckle down. But still, did I want my kid to be Brian Jensen or worse, whatever Brian Jensen would become if unable to get his pills? If Ryan did have ADD, I told myself, it was a mild case and she could learn to focus despite the obstacle. And then if she found herself without insurance, or in a new town with a new doctor unwilling to write the prescription, she wouldn't find herself incapable of keeping or finding a job.
That was 4 years ago. There's a boarding school Ryan wants to go to, an actual goal she has, that depends in large part of grades. And in the past year I've gotten phone calls about forgotten homework assignments (including ones she was looking forward to), papers left on her desk at home over and over again, and even once when she hit a kid without even realizing she was doing it. Classic ADD behavior. So I finally broke down and asked for a prescription, and it costs $150.00.
It sucks to finally come to terms with the fact that your kid needs a crutch, only to find out you can't even give it to them. And Tom tells me that a kid who can read a whole book in one day can't have ADD anyway, and that she needs to just buckle down when she doesn't like something. It feels like there's no one to talk to about this, no one who will understand how hard it is to try to walk the line between denying your kid help she needs and not letting her stand on her own two feet. And every day that I spend wobbling on that tightrope is another day she doesn't have the help.
I can't help but wonder; if the pills were free, would Tom have such an objection to them?

Stupid name trends

1. Sticking y's in names for no reason, just to seem edgy. Robyn, Suzyn, Eryn, Kymberly, Jaymie. It's stupid and unnecessary and dooms your kid to a lifetime of misspellings. It's almost as bad as
2. Sticking i's in names for no reason, just to seem edgy. Kimmi, Candi, Jacki, Jenni. Names are assumed to carry with them some sort of dignity and replacing the Y with an I, or just eliminating half of the IE erases that dignity, and it also makes the name sort of porny.
3. Stripper names. Certain names don't have Ks in them. Crystal, Candy, Carla, all normal with a C. But Krystal, Kandy, and Karla are all stripper names. Stick a Lynn at the end and they go straight from the pole to the screen. (What jobs are there for a Krystal Lynn other than porn actress or Dairy Queen clerk?)
4. Giving kid names to babies who will hopefully survive into adulthood. Don't name your son Billy or Timmy or Danny. Name him William or Timothy or Daniel. Or at least go with Bill, Tim, or Dan. No adult man wants to hear "Do you, Timmy, take Suzyn to be your wife?"
5. Horribly dated names. Don't name your kid Hermione, or Renesmee, or Miley, or Chandler, or any other name that no one ever thought of before the movie/TV show/album came out. How stupid would it be for some 50 year old guy to be walking around named Howdy Doody? About as dumb as the 35 year old soccer moms named Madonna seem. And as much as you love the idea of naming your princess after a half vampire baby who killed her own mother, it's tacky.
6. Adjectives as names. Nothing sounds good after Harry, or Dusty, or Rusty. There are plenty of very good names you can choose for your kid wihtout it sounding like a bad description.
   

more to come....

Americans eat stupid.

I don't understand how most Americans eat. I mean it. We have to have MSG in everything. Or sugar, or salt, or high fructose corn syrup, because we've over-stimulated our taste buds to the point where anything natural is bland and subtle flavors are undetectable. I grew up on pasteurized processed cheese food and the first time I tasted Meunster cheese, it tasted like air to me. It took 3 cubes of cheese before I could detect any flavor at all! And yet, despite that, we seek out the bland in everything! White bread, white rice, pre-steamed rolled oatmeal (which we then add sugar to. Go figure.). A study was published this week detailing the correlation between brown rice consumption and lower diabetes rates. The thing is, all the articles I read were very clear in stating that no one knows why this correlation exists but that there is a very good chance that people who pick brown rice over its bleached counterpart are more likely to lead healthier lives in general. In other words, yoga instructors and vegans eat brown rice, not couch potatoes and the morbidly obese. (A gross generalization but not one without merits.) I try to eat healthy, and simply, but I fail sometimes just like everyone else. But I think my days of white rice are over, in part because of my predisposition to diabetes. Two bouts of genstational diabetes have scared me enough to eat chewier rice.

Totally cool stuff about my son

1. When he spills things he MAKES me get him either a towel or the vacuum hose, and will not abide waiting.
2. He compulsively counts his toys, yet only can remember one number. I hear "two two two!" when he plays with his cars.
3. He sits in his crib and plays by himself for half an hour or more in the morning, giving me time to brush my teeth.
4. He can't function in the morning without his "coffee", an instant breakfast shake. He follows me around chanting "Cah" until he has it.
5. He points at the computer, shaking his sock monkey, until I play the song from the Kia sock monkey commercial for him.

.....to be continued

Totally cool stuff about my daughter

1. She's a geek and would get way more excited about meeting a Mythbuster than a Jonas Brother.
2. She has actually used the phrase "tubas are awesome" in casual conversation.
3. She hates Justin Bieber both in theory and in practice.
4. She still sometimes holds my hand while we shop.
5. Of all the women on TV, Kardashians and Britneys and Gagas, she wants to be Kari Byron.
6. She understands when I call the weeds Hemingway's Cat.

...to be continued

The real facts behind the McDonald's coffee case

While at my obstetric appointment, being told I needed an ultrasound for no reason other than that I'm pregnant, the infamous McDonald's Coffee Case came up. The point was that people will sue for anything and scanning all fetuses regardless of need or cause or even the mother's wishes is just what doctors have to do in this litigious society.
A couple weeks later I had a friend tell me that tort reform is more important to keeping medical costs down than insurance reform because, after all, people sue when their coffee is too hot.
Today a friend of mine posted on facebook a link to an article about a woman who googled directions for a walk, wandered down the middle of a road, got hit by a car, and is now suing google. My friends comment: And coffee is hot, too.

All this crap pisses me off. It's very easy to hear some radio DJ mock a lady for suing McDonald's because her coffee burned her, but do they realize that McDonald's knowingly set their holding temp for coffee to 185`, hot enough to cause third degree burns to the lips, mouth, and throat at the very first sip? Do they know that the woman who sued tried to settle in the beginning but McDonald's told her they had more lawyers and could afford to wait her out? Or that the coffee didn't just burn her lap but actually melted her genital and anal regions, requiring 8 days of skin grafting? Nah, all they know is that some lady spilled her coffee, got burned, and sued McDonald's. After all, what point does fact have in a hyperbolic example anyway?

Clean your plate, or not. No big deal either way.

I was always a picky eater, and I never cleaned my plate. Because of this, I've never made my kid clean her plate. If she dishes the food onto it and she decides how much to get, then I do try to get her to finish it, but if she doesn't then she doesn't. Same with Tommy, although he's too young still for this to really apply to him. But I have seen parents force-feed the last of the baby food jar, or the last couple ounces of a bottle, to a kid so I guess it could.
People say they're opposed to "wasting" food, so they make their kids eat it. I've never understood that concept. Whether you feed it to the dog, the garbage disposal, the trash can, or a crying child, it's still wasted. The money has already been spent on it (it's not like you get a refund or rebate if it all gets eaten) and a certain amount of food has already been prepared. Throwing some down a trash chute or the throat of a kid who isn't hungry makes no difference, either way it cost the same and that money is gone. You can learn from it and not serve your kid as much in the future, or not, but the theory that food uneaten is wasted but food swallowed against someone's will isn't baffles me. I've heard parents use the "some kids don't have food" line to justify this. Do they really think those kids are somehow happier if excess food gets shoveled into someone who is already full than if it got thrown away? Does it make the starving kid less hungry if my kid gets made sick by it? And none of this even touches on the part where teaching kids NOT to stop eating when they get full contributes to obesity later, how linking uneaten food and guilt in a person's mind can lead to food issues later on. I'm just talking about the part where somehow it's wasteful to put food in the trash but not to put food in an unwilling child.

Small town life

Sometimes I wish I lived in a city. I like small towns, and have never in my life lived more than 15 miles from my hometown, but sometimes I wish I lived in a city.

I read about a thing in Seattle where people go and pay maybe $10 and bring books they've read and no longer need, and get to mingle, make friends, drink 2 glasses of "free" wine, and everyone goes home with someone else's old book instead of their own. Imagine such a thing! Meeting people who like to read, drinking wine, and the absolute worst that can happen is that you walk out with no new friends and only a new book to read.

There are places out there with museums, and art galleries, and coffee shops that don't play all Christian music all the time. Places with cooking classes and pottery studios and independent subculture newspapers. Places where adults ride bicycles without DUIs.

I like small town life. I like that my kid can ride her bike to the park and I don't have to worry, that I can send her to the store with my bank card and they know it's okay because they remember that I told them it was. But sometimes I wish she were going to attend a high school with more elective class choices than Spanish and home ec. Sometimes I wish that her probable English teacher next year didn't remember her mom as the one who crushed on the pizza boy in high school. Sometimes I wish she were growing up in a town with museums and art galleries and independent subculture newspapers.

Confessions of a hormonal bitch

1. When I read freecycle, I immediately dismiss out of hand posts written without punctuation, with horrible spelling, or with some trashy sob story. "In need of anythin u mite have for a house. I have 4 dotters and one has a babby boy so we need firniter and kitchin things. Nun of us drive so needs to be dilivired. Also, I have lots of babby rats to give away if enyone needs snake food or pets."
2. I respond to stupidity in the comments sections of online articles. It seems like every Jon or Kate Gosselin article has about 3 dozen "Who even cares about these guys?" or "Why are these people still news? When will they go away?" comments. I don't respond to all of them (I'm only one person) but I do sometimes feel compelled to answer "Some of us do care, including you, who took the time to click on the headline, read the article, and then type out a comment here. People who really don't care don't even click on the article in the first place. You're not fooling anyone; you want to feel superior but nobody's buying it."
3. I have no patience for drama, and it bothers me to no end when my facebook page is full of it. Want your ex to stop calling you? Threaten to call the cops if he keeps it up, and then call them! Wish you could tell your friend what you really think of her new man? Tell her! If you won't tell her, then you obviously don't really want to, so in that case stop filling my facebook page with it.
4. I normally really like reading Dan Savage's advice column but lately it just seems like he's over-the-top in favor of just about every kink or fetish on the planet except heterosexual monogamy. Wanna have a threesome? Do it, and if your partner has a problem with it they're holding you back and being selfish. Want an open marriage? Do it, and if your partner has a problem with it they're holding you back and being selfish. What about the person who wants a normal old-fashioned marriage with ups and downs, but without a constant search for immature instant-gratification from outside sources? Oh yeah, DTMFA.
5. I absolutely hate Nazi comparisons. I detest when Glenn Beck makes everything out to be the work of nazis, or the same as nazis, or equal to nazis. But I can't help but think that after WWI Germany was in such a terrible economic mess that it was fairly easy for someone to show up and say all they needed to do was go back to their roots, to what Germany used to be like, with real Germans and not all these Jewish immigrants. And now that we're in a terrible recession with banks failing and unemployment soaring we have tea-baggers to say that we need to get back to our roots, to what the founding fathers wanted, which was (apparently?) Christianity and a lack of Mexicans.
6. I don't want a baby shower this time, since I already have most of the stuff I'll need and would just end up inviting the same people over for basically the same party anyway, but I do get all misty when I see baby shower decorations.
   

I'm old

A friend asked the other day, via facebook status, "If you didn't know how old you were, how old would you be?" It was obviously intended to remind us all that as long as we stay young at heart we never have to feel old, and to get us thinking about how short life really is and how much of the daily bullshit could be brushed aside if only we'd make the choice to be Toys R Us kids forever. Without hesitation, I answered, "53". In reality, I turn 34 in 2 months.

I don't feel 21, and considering what an immature ass I was at 21 I'm kind of glad for that. But I don't feel young at heart and I resent the implication that I should. The idea of a gray-haired old grandmother out rollerblading through the park because she's young at heart (and most likely being filmed for a Depends commercial) is endearing, but the reality is that the people who think they can stay 21 forever don't become gray-haired old grannies rollerblading int he park. They become Botoxed denial queens who hang out in the bars wearing too much make up and too few clothes, smoking Menthol cigarettes and trying to pick up young guys, all while wearing a cropped off tee shirt with the words "Young at heart" printed on it.

I make a conscious effort not to dress too young. I don't want to be one of those moms who shows up to the parent teacher conference braless in short shorts. When I get chilly, I put on a sweater rather than walk around looking like 2 tanks are preparing to fire through my blouse. I don't giggle if someone asks me if I'm my daughter's sister; I roll my eyes and wonder just who they think they're kidding. I don't wear bikinis or low-rise jeans and I get excited about new flavors of oatmeal (they make a latte one now, can you believe it!). My hobbies, rather than roller blading or jogging, include crocheting and gardening and sewing.

Now that I think of it, maybe I underestimated when I said 53. Maybe 72 is more like it.

No Child Allowed Behind

I try to teach my kid that not doing things has consequences and that you don't always get a second chance. In a nation of no-fault divorces and abortions and probation and expunged records, it's hard to teach that. But if I give her until bedtime to get something done or else, then or else kicks in at bedtime, not the next day.

Ryan didn't do an English assignment. The teacher wants to giver her a detention every day until she turns it in. Now, the thing was supposed to be done today and to my mind, one due date means one detention. But the school says "You WANT your kid to get a zero?!" and says she can turn it in any time before the end of the term. It's not that I want my kid to get a zero,but I want her to get what she earned. In this case, she earned a zero and I think it's counter-productive to keep giving second and third chances just so she doesn't have to actually accept the consequence of not getting the work done on time, all while continuously punishing her with detention every night for 3 weeks.

How many kids go off to college to learn that they can't hack it because "mean" teachers won't grant them extensions on papers or let them take make-up tests? Kids who got good grades in high school because instead of a safety net their parents and teachers provided them with safety harnesses. And what happens when people who have never known any rigidity in rules miss deadlines at work?

Look, I accept that my kid screwed up. I left her to do her homework on her own, sink or swim, and she sunk. Give her a detention for not doing it if you must, and reflect it in her grade as a zero. But don't simultaneously coddle her with endless chances and punish her with endless detentions. And when I explained to the principal that I considered work ethic and responsibility to fall under character development, which is my jurisdiction rather than the school's, he told me that my chance was back when the assignment was handed out and now it was their turn.

Any tutors out there want to homeschool my kid?

Nature? What nature?

If you're going to know the weight, length, sex, birthday, and name of the baby before ever giving birth, what do you have to look forward to except pierced eardrums, sore nipples, and the smell of dirty diapers? How about forgoing the ultrasounds and elective inductions and just wait to have the babies when they're ready to show up?

Ranting & Venting

Pregnancy makes a temper worse; it shortens your fuse. And I have a short enough fuse anyway, so I spend a lot of my time either biting my tongue or apologizing lately. So I think this may be the post where I vent about stupid little things I'm bright enough to leave alone in real life. So here goes:

1. Don't look at my transluscent, glowing legs and shake your head, or tell me I "need" to get some sun. Don't say, imply, or suggest that the color of my skin is inferior or undesirable. I refuse to dye my skin brown or submit myself to cancer-causing tanning beds, or even just waste time lying around in the cancer-causing sun, because people think I was born the wrong color. I am not pasty, or deathly pale, or corpse-like. If I were a paint color, I would be Northern European White, and I think that's just fine.
   
2. Don't tell me that my 2 previous healthy pregnancies, one with gestational diabetes, are irrelevant to this one because "every pregnancy is different" and then tell me every woman needs a third trimester ultrasound. If every pregnancy is different then tests should be administered based on a particular pregnancy, not as a blanket policy.
3. If you have diabetes, and it is not gestational diabetes and didn't start out as gestational diabetes, don't pretend you know anything about gestational diabetes. A diabetic woman who becomes pregnant is at MUCH higher risk than a pregnant woman who develops diabetes. Quite simply, having high blood sugar while a baby is forming can cause horrible birth defects that developing gestational diabetes after the baby is (for the most part) formed does not cause. Running around telling women with GD that the sky will fall and their babies may die if they accidentally mis-measure one meal helps NO ONE.
4. If you bitch about getting dirty looks because you smoke while pregnant, you forfeit the right to blab on about the dangers of vaccinations. You just do. You can't bring back polio because you're such a health freak if you're sucking down Marlboros with your Prenate vitamins. And don't even start about the organic food. Yes, my children eat brussels sprouts that might have been touched by chemical fertilizer, but they eat them in a smoke-free home.
5. Don't tell me how horrible epidurals are. I have had 2 and they are fine. There is a relatively low risk with them, but everything has a risk to it (including birthing children in the first place), and no one I have ever met has had any problems with an epidural. They have never slowed my labor down; on the contrary they have sped it up both times. I like a bit of relief with my pain and who are you to judge me for it?
6. Don't judge me for what my ancestors did. I have one adopted parent and one descended from Amish stock. Now until my mother dies and I (maybe) find out who birthed her, I have no hope on that side, so I would like to be able to go back more than 3 generations on my dad's side. But since someone left the faith a hundred years ago, we're all shunned and no one will tell us anything! I love when people tell me to just go to ancestor.com. Like the Amish upload stuff!

Nursing bras

Twelve years ago I opened up a Hanes catalog, found 2 nursing bras, and ordered the one without underwire. I am still wearing that bra. I bought nursing bras when I was pregnant with Tommy, two of them, and they suck.
One was almost a sports bra style which was fine, but when you unhook one side, the other side shifts and pulls the nursing pad off center. Not great when feeding on one side causes letdown on the other. Also, the stitching at the bottom was decorative and scalloped and when you're wearing the thing 24 hours a day scalloped stitching is like a saw blade digging in.
The second was a sleep bra that I still sometimes wear, but it was the thinnest cotton (like granny panties) so it offered no support. And it was a cross over style so when I lied on my side the top boob all but fell out the middle.
Why is it so hard to find a wire-free nursing bra that isn't sexy (I need comfort, not looks), has support, will hold a nursing pad, and doesn't shift or lose support when you open it? If I'm going to wear this thing to sleep, it has to be comfortable. It can be as sexy and cute as it wants to be; nursing pads and milk stains will kill the effect. I want a bra where the whole cup doesn't come away, just a panel over a cup with a whole. I want a bra with support (no seamless t-shirt bras) but without wire. And I want one that stays put and doesn't dig in. I don't care if it's hideous, I need it for function. Demi bras and sport bras and lace and push up and padded and plunge front and satin dome no good. Cotton/lycra, one hand cup hooks, support, comfort. That's all I ask. WHich is probably why I'm wearing a discontinued 12 year old bra. Ugh.

My personal theory on why the Catholic church keeps having child molestation scandals

It used to be that a man went into the priesthood when he felt a 'calling'. I'm sure for some it was a desire to serve the Lord with lifelong devotion, but I think for others the calling manifested itself as an aversion to marriage, manual labor, or military, which were the only options for men for a long time. But then came more options, like office work and other not-so-manual types of labor, and the priesthood lost it's lazier population. And then about 30 or so years ago, it became okay, in certain areas of the world, to stay unmarried. No, I'm not saying that all priests were gay, only that a job requiring one to never have any romantic or physical contact with woman might attract some self-loathing gays. Especially if one's confessor framed such circumstances not as an attraction to men but rather as a distinct lack of attraction to women, and then declared the lack of attraction to women to be "the calling". But once it became okay to be gay (as is increasingly the case every day), gay men no longer needed so desperately to defend and explain their lack of attraction to women. But there are other let's call them preferences, that do need to be explained away. And to those men who also feel no attraction for adult women, come the desperate need to hear "the calling".
I am making no direct correlation between pedophilia and the Catholic Church. I do not think the Church condones pedophilia. But I do think that simply praying and denying can only work for so long. And even if it works for 40 years, you still have some pedophile molesting a kid every 40 years. And I think that when you have a career path that combines an absolute ban on adult romantic interactions, you are going to attract applicants who feel no need to engage in adult romantic interactions. In a perfect world, this would mean only devout asexual men would ever join the priesthood. But this is not a perfect world. And when you add to that job requirement the fringe benefit that no matter what you ever do to anybody anywhere ever, you can be forgiven entirely, you attract a bad sort.
Two main facets of the priesthood are that 1) you cannot have 'normal' adult reproductive urges*, at least not with normal strength, and 2) you have an unlimited number of get out of hell free cards. That's a bad combination no matter how you spell it.




*I don't consider gay urges or homosexuality to be abnormal, so don't think that's what I meant when I said "normal" reproductive urges. I do, however, like to think that gay Catholics have options other than the priesthood these days. I want to believe that rather than going out to be a priest, they could just go out to be gay. Pedophiles don't have that option, and there is really nowhere to go if you're a pedophile who wants to be good. I mean, what would happen if you just came out and told someone "Hey, I dream about diddling kids and it totally gets me hot, but I'll never do it because I know it's wrong"? How long until you've got a squad car outside your house and a neighborhood mob of pitchfork wielding parents hounding you out of town? If you like kids and you don't want to, and you're a Catholic, I suppose you'd pray a lot, confess your impure thoughts, and jump at the opportunity to believe that it's not a sick perversion but rather a misinterpreted 'calling".

Cougars

I don't understand cougars. Or sugar daddies, or whatever term means middle aged people dating kids (not pedophilia, just the 18-25 crowd). Tell me how on Earth you feel any younger than you are while lying naked, wrinkles, sags, and paunches exposed, next to a tireless and taut example of youth. How does it make you feel younger or sexier or smarter to see yourself in such stark contrast to what you seem to want to be? And cougars especially confound me. Women are supposed to want wisdom, and maturity, and sophistication. I see that a lot more in Richard Gere than in Jared Leto. And I'm sorry, but Madonna is in her 50s and dating men in their 20s and she doesn't look young or hip or hot, just old and laughable. I suppose I can understand middle aged men wanting 22 year old women. Men are dumb and think with the only body part to actually lose wrinkles when aroused. But I expect more from women. I expect taste and intelligence. I expect too much.

My body, minus the fat

I have stretch marks, and a little more skin on my midsection than I used to, and parts of me are dramatically lower (when not artificially elevated) than they used to be. Also, a significant amount of my hair has lost its pigment. So yes, I am gray, saggy, soft, and stretched. And, oddly enough, I like that. (I don't like the fatty deposits on my butt and hips, but that's a different story.)

I'm not so proud of my post-children body that I'd run around in a bikini, but I don't dream of tummy tucks and boob jobs, and if I woke up tomorrow in some 80s movie plot where I was once again a teenager, I think I would miss my more mature body. (Not my figure, but the body it is currently ruining.)

I've never liked my body. My chest was too small or my hips weren't round enough, or my legs were too spindly. But now that my body looks like it's done something, now that it shows all the badges of actually having created people, I respect it. I know that that mark there came from Ryan and those over there came from Tommy (and we'll see what the next one gives me). It's no longer a matter of being genetically cursed by bad luck but of being a mother. I like that. (I just don't like the parts that show I'm lazy and eat too much greasy food.)

naming babies

There are millions of names in the world to choose from, but not really that many after you eliminate:

• Tom's ex-girlfriends' names
• my ex-girlfriends' names
• my ex-boyfriends' names
  
• immediate family's names
• names we associate with some bitch/asshole we went to school with
• names that will give a kid stupid nicknames (Brian Allen Melton would be Bam, or worse BM)
• names that don't go with our last name (Sheldon Melton, Elton Melton, Milton Melton)
• over-used and trendy names, so anything in the top 100 for last year
• ethnic names that don't match our heritage. ( I have nothing against the name Almir, but I can't name my son that, you know?)
• names that are too dated or associated with pop culture (Hermione, Dexter, etc)
• names we just can't bring ourselves to use (I know it sounds picky but everyone has them. Hugo, Millicent, Bertha)

And after you take out all of those names, then you have to actually agree on something that you both like. Together. Twice since we're waiting to learn the sex. And we have 5 months left to do it in. And the best part is, the girl name we had last time, I don't even really like this time around. We were thinking Ivy or Lila before and this just doesn't feel like an Ivy or Lila pregnancy. So we're back to square one.

Nuts

"There oughtta be a law!" Against all sex offenders on facebook, even if the crime was consensual gay sex in states where it was illegal, or an 18 year old senior and his sophomore girlfriend, or even two eightteen year old seniors if one is in special ed classes and the DA's office decides she's too "developmentally" impaired to give consent (it's happened). And against gay couples going to the prom, or adopting, (even if one of them is the sole parent, as is the case with insemination or surrogacy), or marrying each other. And against letting the "God Hates Fags" church protest military funerals (which no one likes but, you know, freedom of speech). And against burning the flag, which is a symbol of America and not actually America, you know.

But the same republicans and conservatives who campaign on those premises swear up and down that they're against "Big Government" telling people what to do. We don't need Big Government forcing small businesses to insure employees. And we don't need Big Government making us hire gays (or, presumably, blacks or Jews or Irish or whoever it's fashionable to hate this year.) And we certainly don't need Big Government ordering us to stop raping the environment, and passing environmental laws that tell us not to run our cars on Middle Eastern hate. That's a violation of our freedoms!

So, to recap, it's not restrictive to tell gays who to marry when it affects no one else at all, but it's prohibitively restrictive to tell corporations to manufacture more ecologically sound cars, which affects everybody. Got it.

Conservatives are nuts.

This is what's wrong with America

Actual facebook update from an actual college student:

Everybody makes misstake and everybody has thougghts day. bye for now i'll be on tomorrow bye have a go noight

Update from the same high school graduate/college student one hour later:

i'm going to bed and will talk to u in the morrwing or later at the night

Do high schools have any standards for graduation at all? Community colleges take just about anyone so that doesn't surprise me, but what do they grade on in high school English?

Just one of those days

I want today to be over, I really do. It started bad and it's just gotten worse, and it isn't even noon yet. I woke up to pee at 5:48 am, and of course I couldn't fall back to sleep. Then Tommy woke up fine at quarter to eight but got cranky and pissy when I changed his diaper. He wouldn't eat breakfast but kept trying to climb over the gate into the kitchen. I finally decided he was teething and force-fed him Tylenol and then gave him a popsicle to numb his gums. He turned the thing upside down in the hallway and poured the melted grape water and ice out of the plastic tube onto the floor, then fell in love with Windex when I cleaned it and had me running around the house spritzing things so he could wipe it up. I decided to wash Kitty, his favorite stuffed animal who was getting pretty dingy, so I grabbed my lingerie bag from the laundry cart, popped Kitty in, and threw in a load of clothes, mostly Ryan's school clothes because she's low on pants.

Meanwhile, Tommy's mad that I stopped spraying Windex on everything, and Tom has hung up on me twice, either because he's touchy or I'm particularly annoying today, neither of which is outside the realm of possibility. But this time he won't pick up when I call him back, so that's fun.

Tommy got hungry early so I gave him a pear while I made mac and cheese, and he ate half the pear, spit the peel out all over the kitchen table, then threw it on the floor and cried when I wouldn't give it back. (It rolled to the edge of the floor, under the cupboards a little, where the dust bunnies hide from the mop. Ewwww. There was no way I was rinsing that off and giving it back.) So then while I was mixing the mac and cheese, and talking to the insurance company since Tom told me today that he won't call for my maternity pre-certification, Tommy climbed up on top of the table and started throwing cans of Mt Dew onto the floor, and one punctured and sprayed sticky all over while I was trying to hear how long they'd cover for me to stay in the hospital after delivery.

Tommy ate very little mac and cheese, then tried to take mine, then got mad when I refused, then ran down the hall to my bedroom. I chased him, of course, and decided to check the dryer to see if Kitty was dry yet or needed more time and . . . the lingerie bag seems to be blood-splattered. Kitty, noooooooo!

Did I mention that I lost my lipstick 3 weeks ago? Apparently, and I can't even fathom how or why, it was inside the lingerie bag. Dryers liquify lipstick, especially discontinued colors of irreplaceable lipstick. I tried to handwash the bag but it didn't work, so now Kitty is back in the washer, in an inside out bag, with a towel load. And thank God Ryan is in a goth phase and most of her school clothes are black now, because lipstick all over her stuff would not be easily forgiven. And of course by the time I got back to the kitchen, my bowl of mac and cheese had congealed into one clump of neon orange candle wax. And now I'm battling the clock to get Kitty washed and dried in time for Tommy to take a nap, because the kid will NOT sleep without him. And he's acting pretty sleepy already so I do not want to have to postpone naptime. And I won't even contemplate the possibility that the lipstick might not wash off of Kitty. As it is, the poor cat looks like he's been hit by a bus.

How porn and National Geographic could help todays women.

From birth on, girls see Cosmo and Glamour in the supermarket checkout lines. We know what grown women look like and what we're going to look like when we're older. But then we grow up and (SURPRISE!) we don't look like that. When we bend at the waist, we get creases in our belly. When we raise one arm, our breasts do not stay level. When we shave, we get bumps and cuts and strips of razor burn. And all we know, is that we don't measure up. It's sad.

Sadder still, guys know it too. I read once an old story about a man who left his bride on their wedding night when he learned that real women, unlike marble statues, had pubic hair. I doubt many modern men would run away from sex, but they do notice the creases and dimples and paunches. I've heard men call beauty pageant contestants fat or ugly. I think it would help if teenage boys went back to sneaking peeks at National Geographic instead of Playboy. If they grew up getting turned on by Amazonian women with nipples at their waistlines, I think real women would be less disappointing than when they see airbrushed models in American magazines. But you know what helped me with my self esteem?

Porn. The women in pron are supposed to be the female ideal, existing only to turn men on, and they, while generally thin and full of fake boobs, actually have flaws. In porn I've seen men slap dimpled asses, grab handfuls of cellulite butt cheeks, and kiss faces with crooked teeth. I've seen nearly flat women, slightly chubby women, women with pimples and razor burn and the occasional bruise. And if these women were hot enough to get cast in a movie with no purpose other than to arouse men, then maybe "flaws" aren't as important as confidence.

Latest disgusting trend:

French manicures on toes. It's just dumb, and here's why. A French manicure on hands is where the nail is painted some neutral beige or pink color and then the overhang, the long part of the nail that isn't attached to the finger and is normally a lighter shade because of it, is painted white. It's a lovely type of manicure to have, designed to look natural but enhanced. But on toes it's stupid because the white stripe is, by necessity, down where the nail is still attached to the toe. So at absolute best, it seems designed to look as though you've shoved something under your toenails to pry them up and away from the toes, and at worst it looks like you just have long nasty toenails that need to be trimmed. And I think some women are actually growing their toenails out for this look. And let me tell you, talons are not attractive. Not unless you have the gift of flight and a need for ocean fish.

Again

I'm pregnant, again. I'm due on Tommy's second birthday. This will be another long, hot, summer.

A sad realization

Why are some Republicans/social conservatives so selfish? And why do they deny it when you call them on it? They say "I don't think it's the government's job to take care of me" when they mean "I don't think the government should be able to help people." They say "I don't think there are really that many uninsured people" when they mean "My friends and family have insurance which is all I care about." "I don't think global warming is caused by people" means "I don't want to change anything I do so I'm going to deflect responsibility." "Gay marriage violates religious freedom" means "I don't want things I don't do to be considered as valid as things that I do do."

I used to believe that most people hadn't had the opportunity to see things from another viewpoint, that healthy debate could help bring people together. But I don't anymore. Some people wouldn't care if everyone but them were dying in the streets, as long as they were left alone and unaffected. It's Dickensian and it ruins just a little bit of my faith in the human race. But hey, at least it's not socialist.

One week and counting

Hanukkah is on the eleventh this year and while I'm not Jewish, I can't wait! Every year I make delicious yummy latkes on the first day of Hanukkah and I am in such a mood for them that it's driving me nuts. I have all the ingredients, but they're not the simplest thing to do so I don't think I'll be making them early. Plus, it's probably not a good idea to cook with hot oil when there's no one here to watch Tommy while I do it. It's just . . . the thought of yummy crispy potatoey oniony latkes with warm melty sour cream on them, it drives me crazy. I fear nothing will taste good today with this craving in my mind. But, for anyone who may want to know what I'm talking about, here is my latke recipe. Enjoy!




2 lg. baking potatoes or 4 med. potatoes, peeled
1/2 sm. onion
2 eggs
2 tbsp. flour
1 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. pepper
Vegetable oil

Grate potatoes into large bowl. Grate onion into bowl. Drain off excess potato liquid. Beat in eggs, then stir in flour, salt and pepper. Heat about 1/4 inch oil in a large skillet. Drop potato mixture by tablespoonfuls into hot oil. Brown just until edges are crisp. Turn and brown other side. Serve hot. Latkes are traditionally served with sour cream or applesauce. Makes about 4 servings.

Best Article Ever

From Dan Savage. In part:

When someone tells me that gay and lesbians are going to hell I concede the point—any attempt to argue with someone about their religious beliefs will be interpreted as an attack—and move on to the obvious followup question: Anybody else going to hell? Any other groups of people? Or is just us? How about the Jews? Are the Jews going to hell? Non-Catholics? Christian Scientists? Are Mormons going to hell? Seventh Day Adventists? How about the Scientologists? Atheists, obviously, but what about agnostics? Wiccans? Buddhists? Muslims? Zoroastrians?

It's the quickest way to make religious conservatives and their heavens and their hells look ridiculous. Because they don't just believe "sinners" are going to hell. They don't just believe that gays and lesbians and adulterers and murderers and other people who have committed discrete sinful acts—they don't believe in gay people, only the sin of gay sex—are going to hell. They also believe that other large groups of people—groups that number in the hundreds of millions—are going to hell too. Here's the dirty little secret that spoils the modern ecumenical anti-gay hate fest: Most "people of faith" believe that people of other faiths—Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, the wrong kinds of Christianity—are going to hell. Evangelicals think Catholics are going to hell, Catholics think everybody who isn't Catholic is going to hell, all conservative Christians think the Jews are going to hell, and on and on.

And yet you don't see conservative Christians out there attacking the civil rights of all the other people they believe are going to hell. They may proselytize, sure, they may try to save the souls lost to the Whore of Babylon (that would be the Catholic Church, according to traditional Lutherans), but they don't attempt to persecute the Jews (anymore), the atheists (anymore), the other-kinds-of-Christians (anymore), the yoga instructors (really). Conservative Christians like the mayor of Vallejo and the cardinal are capable of sharing this world with sinners and apostates and infidels who enjoy full civil equality—atheists can marry! you can't fire someone just for being Jewish! yoga is totally legal in all 50 states!—content in the knowledge that God will punish the sinners and apostates and infidels after death. So, hey, no need to punish them here on earth! Because eternal torment is punishment enough, right? At least conservative Christians regard eternal torment as punishment enough where, say, the Jews and atheists and yoga instructors are concerned—at least they do now—and so they refrain from tormenting or attempting to disenfranchise Jews and atheists and yoga instructors here on earth.

All gay people want is the same deal the Jews and the atheists and the yoga instructors have got: full legal and civil equality, all the same rights and responsibilities as other citizens, equal protections under the law while we're all here on earth together.

just to get it off my chest

• Laptop, not labtop

• Dilated, not dialated

• regardless, not irregardless

• couldn't care less, not could care less. Unless you actually care, in which case I suppose it would be possible for you to care less than you do.

• clitter-us, not clit-TORE-us

• corroded, not creoded.

• lose as in lost, loose as in not tight

• they're/their/there figure them out

• than denotes relation (more this than that), then denotes time (do this, then that). Don't say "I wish I had more then I do," unless you mean that when you wish for more, you then have it.

• there is no A in tomorrow

• 'deaf' means unable to hear. 'death' means unable to hear for a whole other reason.

• The new terrorist prison in Illinois is in Thomson, not Thompson. I don't know why it bugs me, but it's important to the Thomson population that you not butcher their name. And on the same note......

• The city is Joe-lee-ette, not Jolly-ette.

• TMI, but I have a cervix, not a cervex. Unimportant, I know, but it's up there with....

• It's nuclear, not nucular

• They're fringe benefits, not French benefits

• it's definitely (as in finite), not definately.
  

Black Friday

Today was/is Black Friday and this year, for the first time, Ryan was outside of a store in the cold waiting for the doors to be unlocked. We went to Lowe's for a purchase that can't yet be revealed, but she stormed the doors with the rest of the mob and got not only the high ticket item she had her eye on but also a gift for her brother and one for her dad as well. And tomorrow, we're decorating for Christmas.

I love Christmas. The tree, the tinsel, the lights and bells. I love Christmas cartoons and songs and tacky reindeer sweaters. I love all the winter holidays. Hanukkah cookies in blue tins, hot latkes with cold sour cream, Adam Sandler telling people to drink their "gin and tonica". All of it. What I don't like, and what really wrecks the holiday spirit for me, are the people who get militant and bitchy about it.

I hate when people get mad at the term "Happy Holidays" because somehow not excluding everythign but Christmas is detrimental to Christmas. I hate gas station signs declaring that "Jesus is the reason for the season!" (Actually, scholars pretty much agree that Jesus was born in the spring and that the celebration was only moved to winter to make it easier for Romans to convert to Christianity without giving up their winter holidays. So, technically, Saturn [god, not planet] is the reason for the season. But I digress.) It bothers me when people get so superior about their religion that they declare it the only valid reason for celebration. Nativities on courthouse lawns followed by outrage at the thought of a menorah sharing the spotlight. Parents upset because the school performance included Frosty The Snowman and not Silent Night. Christmas is no longer just a vicarious birthday celebration. It is now more representative of what Jesus preached than of the man himself. It's about peace on Earth, generosity of spirit (and yes, of gifts too), and time spent with family, about forgiveness and togetherness. And maybe, just a little, about the look on an eleven year old's face when the guy in the Lowes vast opens the doors ten minutes early.

Gosselins

I used to watch Jon & Kate + Eight, and I liked it. I liked seeing how she managed to get housework done, and cook for a family of ten, and somehow manage to get all the kids dressed and fed breakfast before noon. Sure she got help from a team of volunteers, but I still got organizational tips and stuff. It was a neat little show, like Little People, Big World, which I also enjoy.

Now, I didn't really like how Kate talked to Jon, like he was one of the kids rather than an equal. But he said on many different occasions that it didn't bother him so I figured that was just how they were. I've learned in my life that I don't have to like other peoples' relationships, and that me not liking it doesn't often matter much. My friend's boyfriend does things I wouldn't put up with but hey, my husband does things that bug my friend, and it's all fine.

Then the show got sort of gimmicky. It went from "a day in the life of this family" to "let's put the kids in fake situations and watch them react". In other words, it went being from a weekly documentary to being more of a staged reality show. I wanted to see Kate make treats for a birthday party, not watch the guys from American Chopper come by to play with the kids. I'm not going to get housekeeping tips from watching the family hang out in a rented beach house. I lost interest in the show. But then . . .

Gosselin Mania 2009!!! Jon's a douche! Kate's actually the nice one! He's boffing the nanny, the reporter, and Kate's surgeon's creepily young daughter! Kate's on The View taking the high road. Jon emptied the bank account, but claims it's all his money. A judge declares Jon to be a giant ass and demands he return the money. Jon announces that he's now a Korean Jew. Public opinion shifts from "Jon deserves to be treated better than she treats him" to "WTF did she ever see in him anyway?!"

I don't actually watch the show anyway, which is fine since Jon got kicked off and then stopped production (Korean-Jewish hissy fit), but I do love the articles. I know, it's so trashy. But it's like watching a train wreck, if the train wore sparkly Ed Hardy shirts and constantly tried to defend new crashes to the press. But my absolute favorite thing about online Gosselin news articles is the comments section, because invariably there are about 50 comments like this:

OMG WHY DO YOU PEOPLE KEEP REPORTING ON THESE PEOPLE? NO ONE CARES ANYMORE? EVERYONE JOIN ME IN A BOYCOTT OF THIS SHOW AND ALL NEWS STORIES ABOUT THIS FAMILY. THE POOR CHILDREN ARE BEING EXPLOITED JUST SO THE PARENTS CAN BE RICH. KATE'S BROTHER AND SISTER IN LAW ARE RIGHT. WHY DO YOU READ THIS STUFF??

For one thing, if you're commenting on the tabloid articles, by definition you aren't boycotting them. Also, judging by the number of comments, some people do care about these people and that is why they report on it. But perhaps most strikingly, if you know what Kate's brother and sister in law said then you have been following this whole train wreck and, far from being above it all and better than the rest of us, you are one of us. You are exactly the same as every mouth breathing housecoat clad Kate wannabe with her own spiky reverse mullet haircut, as well as those of us who read it all just to laugh at Jon's idiocy. You aren't trendy or edgy or superior. You follow the stories, you know how Hailey Glassman is, you know who Michael Lohan is.

You're one of us. Accept it.

Mythbusters, for men

1. Going to the zoo while menstruating will not cause apes and monkeys to attempt to escape and gang rape us. If they were that sensitive to the cycles of other species, they'd go batshit every time any other animal in the zoo came into heat. And speaking of heat, it's pheromones released during that time that drive the males of certain species wild. Male dogs don't swarm the yard because Fifi smells like blood, but because Fifi smells like the doggie version of Axe body spray, for at least a couple weeks after bleeding stops.
2. We can swim in the ocean with a tampon without attracting sharks. See, menstruation isn't actually blood, and there isn't really a lot of it; it just looks like it. It's actually (prepare yourself here) liquefied uterine tissue, and only a few ounces a month. The uterus grows a think inner layer every month which then melts/disintegrates and then just sort of leaks out slowly. It's gross, but it's not blood. I suppose if a woman were wearing a full maxi pad and were dropped into an existing circle of hungry sharks, she might attract more attention than usual, but a few drops of vaguely blood-colored tissue isn't likely to bring sharks from miles around right up to the beach. They'll stay out where they are and keep eating sea lions.

Growing old gracefully

When I was little, I always knew that someday I'd be old. I'd have gray hair and wrinkles, and I'd probably drive an old boat of a car, like my grandmother did. I think most little girls know this. When do they stop knowing it?

Botox, hair dye, cosmetic surgery, wrinkly cream, eye serum, light reflecting crease plumping make up. They even sell little pieces of tape you're supposed to use to give yourself a face lift by taping your eyebrows to your hairline. And it's all because people don't want to look 40 when they're 40.

We all know that half the time, the Hollywood stars who try to fight the clock don't look younger, they just look really surprised, or like The Joker, or just freaky. And that really sucks, because actresses are supposed to be able to play real people, and real people don't look like Delta Burke does now. Who is going to play the grandmothers now? Without any Jessica Tandys or Estelle Gettys, who will play old women? It's bad enough that every 40 year old role is played by some unrealistic mannequin, but the grandmothers too? I really don't want to see a remake of Driving Miss Daisy starring Teri Hatcher. And no one would understand why the people in the new Cocoon ever left Earth at all!

I worry about how attractive my husband finds me. And I worry that I look older than 33. But I honestly don't worry about not looking 21 anymore. In fact, I would love to be able to go and have my dyed-red hair dyed back to its natural color and then just let the gray grow in. I have grays, and I'm fine with that. And there's now a truly horizontal reason I need to wear a bra, not just a stabilizing issue. And that's cool too. And as for wrinkles, bring them on. I have buried friends way too young to die and my thought for each of them was "(S)he didn't get to be old." Being old, and gray and wrinkled and all of it, is a gift. It's a privilege not all of us get to enjoy. I have stretch marks, and parts that are lower than they used to be, and hair that's given up on having color. And I'm okay with that. It occasionally occurs to me that I'm "letting myself go", but sometimes it feels so free to let go. Holding on, especially to the past, just wears you out. I'm fine with looking my age - my real age, not what Hollywood tells me my age should look like .

A great quote from a movie: "There is nothing tragic about being 40, unless you try to be 25 instead."

He'll never get a chance to grow up

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned my opinion on high school athletics here before, and if I haven't I will soon. But there's a court case going on now that basically tries a high school coach for murder because he held grueling football practice in 100+ temperatures and denied the players water until one collapsed and died. Coaches across the country are watching this case, upset about it, because of the ramifications if this guy is found guilty. The general feeling seems to be, "If this guy gets convicted, it will severely limit how we can coach."

Yes, if a guy who worked a teenage boy to death, who killed a child with his whole life ahead of him just so he could win a game, gets found guilty of doing exactly that, it could interfere with your ability to kill teenage kids. Wow, what a harsh reality to live with. What a horrible limitation to work within, having to keep conditions conducive to living.

Construction workers, road workers, prisoners in chain gangs, all of these people are legally required to have water breaks and safe work conditions. Apparently high school athletes aren't. Because, it seems, working construction or laying asphalt or doing time doesn't build character, and playing football does.

I guess if you're one of those people who feel that sports are some vital part of adolescence, who value organized game playing in some child-development way, you could possibly entertain the notion that winning is worth personal pain and physical danger. But I think that if my kid wants to run around in tight pants for fun, if he wants to be part of the team and get the letter jacket, he shouldn't have to risk his life to play. Bruises, bumps, exhaustion, and even the occasional broken arm or blown out knee. These are supposed to be the possible consequences of being a team player. A concussion maybe, but not death.

I hope this coach is found guilty and sentenced to prison. I want this man, who seems to see his role in the kid's death as a professional mistake, a job thing, who has detached himself from it and chalked it up to being part of the kid's football career, to actually have to live side by side with career criminals and violent offenders, to have to wear the jumpsuit and eat off a prison tray. Maybe not just because of this one boy who died, but because of all the other boys who will continue to die year after year if this coach is acquitted and a precedent is set that implies that death is a reasonable risk of playing high school sports and that it is in no part the coach's fault for working kids harder than a warden can work a criminal on the side of the road.

We have laws that say a 40 year old man cannot have sex with a 15 year old girl, because he is older and should know better, because it would be too easy for him to take advantage of her and make her do something that might not be in her best interest, and if you violate that law you have to register for the rest of your life. But this adult made a kid do something that was dangerous and ultimately deadly, and he did it by using his position of authority and by taking advantage of the kid's desire to impress and to prove himself. If making the kid give him a blow job to make the team would have followed him for life, making the kid give him his life for it should too.

Coffee

My mother has always drank coffee. When I was a child, coffee makers were expensive, so she drank instant coffee. Bitter 1980s Folgers crystals, mixed much too strong and then nuked in the microwave until burnt, and she drank it black. To this day she is never without her coffee cup, and although she now uses an actual coffee maker, she still drinks bad coffee. She makes her morning pot around 6:30 am and drinks half of it, then turns off the warmer and goes to work. At noon she comes home for lunch, pours herself a cup of old, cold, coffee and nukes it, and drinks a couple cups that way. At 4:00 she does the same thing to the dregs in the bottom of the pot before making herself a new pot. And half the time she forgets the cup in the microwave and has to reheat it all over again. It's oily, bitter, and leaves a film of dust in the mug. It's disgusting.

When I was 15 or so, I decided I was going to become a coffee drinker, to establish myself as an adult. After a couple swallows of my mother's coffee, even fresh brewed, I went back to Mountain Dew as my caffeine source of choice.

When I was 20, in 1997, the coffee shop, Seattle, Starbucks, Central Perk, giant cappuccino mug movement was in full swing and I took a second job, at a coffee shop. This particular coffee shop was a lunch-break haven for yuppies during the day and a beat-poet 20-somethings hangout at night. To this day I equate acoustic guitars and paperback copies of On The Road with mocha lattes made with Hershey syrup. I discovered that in a 2 to 1 ration of steamed milk, I could tolerate coffee. I even learned how to make Turkish coffee, although the grounds always bothered me. But then I got pregnant and, as a single mother, exotic coffee drinks were suddenly out of my price range. Back to the Mountain Dew.

Now I'm 33, and I have to wake up to get my 11 year old daughter off to school and care for my one year old son, and Mountain Dew costs $5.00 a 12 pack. And, the same daughter whose very existence made espresso drinks a thing of the past bought me an espresso machine for Christmas a couple years back. I still use Hershey syrup, and I now microwave the milk rather than steaming it (steaming it took so long the espresso got cold and the tiny tank on the machine ran out of water), but I now start my mornings with a giant insulated mug of coffee. Hell, today I had two. I can't drink it past noon or I'll be up all night; pregnancy plus a year of breast feeding hath robbed me of my Mountain Dew induced caffeine tolerance. And my husband detests the smell or taste of coffee on my breath. But I have finally, finally, achieved the adult coffee-drinker status I wanted in high school, now that I would love to be mistaken for a teenager once again. How ironic.

Actually, it fits pretty well

I saw an article titled, "Gay Christian Network Is A Bit of A Miracle" and it made me think. Why is it such a miracle that gays could be Christian, or that some Christians might be okay with gays? So I thought about it and I realized that Christians today tend to be assholes, at least the loud ones do. I mean, Jesus, what little I know of him, was a pretty cool guy. he was progressive. He said, "Don't worry about all the little rules and all the stuff God said he hated, just be a good person and treat people well and suck it up when life craps on you and you'll be rewarded later for it." He said, "Don't morally judge people. Leave that to God. Don't pull rank you don't have." Of course, I'm paraphrasing, but that's the jist of it. We are the kids in this deal; God is the parent. And just the same way I don't let my daughter hand out punishment to my son, because she's his equal and not in authority, we should not be speaking for God.

God works in mysterious ways. There are more things in Heaven and Earth than you can conceive of. These are both ways of saying that we're not able to get it. We don't have the mental capacity to know what God wants or why he does stuff or what it all means. Just because we can come up with a reason for straight people and not one for gay people doesn't mean there isn't a reason, just that it might take a mind better than ours to grasp it. God made gay people, and cross-dressers, and fetishists, and transsexuals, and flamboyant musical theater costume designers who against all odds actually turn out to be straight. We don't have to know why He made them. We don't even have to know if He had a reason for making them. All we have to do is withhold judgment, try not to stare because that would be rude, and trust that He knows what He's doing and doesn't need us umping up to help all the time. Nobody likes a kissass, and I assume it's the same with the man upstairs. You worry about your work and let the others worry about theirs.

And as long as the gay couple down the street pay their taxes, mow their lawn, keep their stereo turned to a decent volume, and close the curtains before they shower or fight, it has nothing to do with their neighbors. You don't have to approve of everything they do; you're not that important. But if they live a good and honest life and try to bring good to the wold and not bad, then they're following that Jesus told us to do more than a lot of folks are.

"Let he who is without sin cast the first stone" . . . Remember he was actually stopping a whore's criminal sentence from being carried out when he said that.

My father was a slut. Not an indiscriminate slut, and not indiscreet enough that I heard about it at school or anything, but he got around. And, I later found out, he coincidentally broke up with a woman who had a baby 8 months later who (also coincidentally) grew up to look exactly frigging like him. And that guy hates me because, somehow, I am to blame for his dad not being his dad and his entire life being a lie handed to him by his mother. Or more likely I'm just a reminder of it all, but still it sucks to get the blame. And that guy married a girl I went to school with and she went to the high school reunion tonight and they sat at the table right next to mine, with the original long-haired pizza boy. And the first maybe-brother guy worked at the pizza place too, so Oh Boy, didn't Tom have fun teasing me about the pizza boy "restraining order table".

And the people I went there to see, the asshole jocks who never turned out to be anything, didn't show. Jackasses. But I did find out that I may get an address I have wanted for a long time. I am nervous and excited, and I will write more later.

No More Dye For Me!

I've always wanted red hair. And I've dyed it for the last 13 years, not counting while pregnant twice. And, with my HS reunion coming up (I'm completely Romy & Michelle about it too) I had to dye it. SO last weekend I popped open a couple bottles and poured it on. Now, I have super-thick hair so two bottles is not as much as it might sound, and it turned out to not be quite enough. After I finished and rinsed it out and it dried, I had missed spots. Last night I realized that, I can't go to my reunion with spotty color so I took a third bottle and dumped it on just the top, to cover the roots and the brownish spots. I've done this before and been fine. But not this time.

I rinsed it and dried it and . . . I look like someone painted the top of my head Crayola red! So today I had to go uptown in a ball cap and confess my idiocy to my hairdresser. So she re-dyed me. Then she darkened the length of it. Then she lightened the roots. And now I have perfectly even haircolor. Approximately the same shade as a brand new penny. Under orange lighting. Ugh. But it's even, and the Ronald McDonald-ness is gone.

I am choosing to read this as a sign from God. I am going to embrace my gray roots and age gracefully. Hair color is not meant for me. It was a good run, until the end, but no more for me. Mousy brown and gray may just be my fate, and I will have to accept it.

It's about freaking time!

I smoked for almost 20 years and the absolute worst part of it, worse than the coughing or the expense or being told to go outside in sub-zero temperatures, was getting health lectures from tan people. I hate tans now, and for good reason. Tan people who scowl at smokers are all hypocrites.

The tanning industry, that means tanning beds and lotions and even the fake tan guys with their sprays and lotions, is just as bad as the tobacco industry ever was. They promote tanning to kids, they promote tanning as glamorous and beautiful, and they perpetuate the myth of the "healthy" tan. The fake bake guys still promote the idea that pale is ugly and tan is the way to be and if they can take candy cigarettes off the shelf then the bronzers have to go too. They need to be held accountable. And now, it seems, they might be.

A recent study has found tanning beds to be as deadly as arsenic. The radiation they put out is carcinogenic, no two ways about it. And if some clever lawyer can prove that the tanning bed companies knew about this and didn't tell anyone, then there's a class-action suit in the future. I can't wait.

I read somewhere that the movie ratings people were considering giving an automatic R rating to any movie where a person smokes. That means that the old 101 Dalmations cartoon movie, if made today, would be given an R rating because of Cruella's cigarette. I think that eventually the same should be said for tans. If a naturally pale person like Scarlet Johanson has a tan in a movie, there should be, at the least, public outrage. Skin cancers are ridiculously prevalent in our society, precisely because people (women especially) are embarrassed to be seen with a natural skin color. Even me. I'm pale and I don't wear shorts because of how pale my legs are. And I wear spf 85 when I go out!

Say what you will about men in black eyeliner and nail polish, or women with black hair and blond roots, the goth movement at least brought pale back. I too, like Martin Luther King Jr., have a dream where people are no longer judged by their skin color. Especially when the alternative seems to be irradiating teenagers for prom.

I wish I were better at the housewife thing.

I wish I were better than I am. I know what I want to do, but I can't ever seem to remember to do any of it, or find the motivation to. I envy people who wake up with a full to-do list in their head and then just commence doing it. Me, I can't even remember the date, and I keep trying to check my watch for it when I haven't worn a watch that gave the date in almost 20 years. Here are just a few things I want to do, but never seem able to.

I want to plan meals out ahead of time, so that I'll actually have all of the required ingredients, or maybe just have the food thawed. I would love to go to the grocery store and buy all the things, and only the tings, I need to make specific meals for the week. But I just end up buying the things I wrote on the grocery list, which means the things we have run out of during the week. Unfortunately that means that I often don't have enough of an ingredient because I haven't yet run out to buy more. I need a cup of parmesan to make pesto sauce, so as long as I have half a cup left I forget to buy more and can't eat pesto sauce.

I want to vacuume twice a week. I even wrote out a schedule where vacuuming was listed twice. But then Tuesday came around and the floors looked fine, and the baby needed lunch and then Ryan came home and I had to get on her about her homework, and then it was time to figure out what I could make for dinner with nothing thawed out and only half a pantry of stuff, so it got put off. Vacuuming is just so easy to put off!

I want to be the sort of mom who remembers every week to go through the house and empty the various trash cans on garbage day, but I am not. I end up with a waste basket overflowing with multi-colored lint beside the washing machine and a can in the bathroom with empty cardboard tubes sprouting out the top, the day after the trash gets picked up.

And while I'm at it, my potholders are filthy. I want to somehow be able to remember on laundry day to go through the house and collect all the rag rugs and potholders and wash them too, but I never do. I barely ever remember to go get the week's bibs from the kitchen.

How do other people remember to do all these things? Is it that they had more organized mothers themselves? Is it a role model thing? Or is it just some ingrained character flaw that I don't think to dust any higher than I can see or to clean off the tops of my ceiling fan blades? What exactly is wrong with me that I don't know to do these things?

Fertility gods

Years ago, when I was a young rebellious teen with more money that sense, and not much money, I decided that I wanted to have a baby. I specifically wanted to have a baby with the boy I was seeing at the time. I call him a boy because he was not then, nor is he now, nor will he likely ever be, a man in all but the physical sense. And so, to spiritually enhance my fertility, and to rebelliously marr my body, I had an ankh tattooed below my navel, over my womb. I had read that it was a fertility symbol, and i did like the tattoos, but let me tell you, after one pregnancy (let alone two), a tattoo right below the navel looks much like a deflated balloon. It's all dis-proportioned and really just wonky. Don't ever do it. One year later, though, I got pregnant with Ryan.

many less years ago, after a painful and expensive vasectomy reversal, I decided (duh) to get pregnant again. I went on Amazon.com and found, for less than ten dollars, a coral ring I liked, coral being a fertility symbol for the more New Age of us out there. I bought it and wore it and quickly became pregnant with Tommy.


Now, I want to become pregnant again. Logic would dictate that I just put the old coral ring back on, but sadly, I cannot. My finger is now too big for it, and a largely sentimental part of me thinks that someday Tommy and his wife may want to have a child and I can then give them the ring that gave me him. I want a new heirloom (yes, a ten dollar ring from Amazon.com can be an heirloom!) for this baby. I ignore the fact that I'd have to be skinned to give Ryan an heirloom. So, I need a new ring. Or pendant or earrings or whatever. But, despite wanting a specific fertility symbol, I'm picky enough not to want a giant penis statue to set on my nightstand and someday bequeath to my daughter-in-law. So I again look for coral. And guess what. The price
has gone up! A lot!. At least for rings I like, anyway. And the earrings are all dangly, too uncomfortable to wear 24/7 for 9+ months. And the necklaces are either heavy and chunky or elastic and made of tiny chips, and I can too easily imagine those breaking in my bed and filling it with shards of dead sea-life. No, I need something heirloom and daughter-in-law ready (I know my next will be another boy, so I'm probably already pregnant with a girl, knowing my luck), preferably cheap enough that Tom will let me buy it.

But also, what can I give Ryan, since her crazy voodoo symbol was tattoo? I know kids don't need any conception aid from their mothers, but if one kid gets it the rest should too.