Statement of intent!
I intend to do this NaPoBloMo thing, but with a twist of my own: I’m going to try to post every day about something I really enjoy or something gratitude-worthy.
This is a hard time of year for me, and I’m sure there will be other types of posts as well, but that’s my goal: one post, per day, on nice things.
Today is the Hallowe’en rape anniversary for me. Oh right that also is in the d-x archives. No one needs a summary except I will note that it sometimes it is a little shocking what lengths a multiple system will go to to ensure the ’status quo’ is maintained. Even if that includes despositing one’s self/body in the middle of a bunch of drunken university guys.
But today is also a day of quite a lot of good cheer, this year.
When I find the camera cable I will download some Noah pics. He had quite the fancy dinosaur costume that my parents bought last year… that he refused to put on. So I stapled construction paper ears to a hat and drew whiskers on his face: voila! The all-purpose cat costume! He meowed as he left. (ETA: There we go!)
I need to revamp my site and my blog
I just found a comment about where does the “contact” email go and eeek, it goes somewhere I never look. Because of all the exorcism spam.
This brings up the fact that I need to revamp the blog and my website. Also Use the Tags. I keep meaning to have a massive tag-fest and then never leave everything in “ramblings” again. Ha ha.
Anyways, dear readers. Anything you would like to see more of, see addressed in the changes, any wicked cool graphics or templates? Comment at will.
Best of blogs
This expose about chocolate (thanks Sassy!) has to be about the best article I’ve ever read about food and on a blog. It’s made me wish I had the time and intelligence to do that. Definitely worth a read.
Who do you think you are? A personal quirk
Warning: broad generalizations ahead. Yes there are areas/classes in both countries where it is very different! And blogs to prove it! I admit already that this is deeply flawed! :-)
The lovely and gifted J. (hey you) commented a while back:
You often say things like this [I had said not to be overly joyful about something to do with Noah, meaning overly publicly joyful], and I’ve always meant to ask — why on earth would it sound *awful* to be happy about having kids?
I’m going to work this one through literature. I think I heard all this in an interview with Alice Munro herself but I may have picked it up from someone’s great essay and be completely poaching it; I dunno. It’s floating about my head.
In Canada Alice Munro’s Booker Prize-nominated collection of short stories was titled Who Do You Think You Are? And that really summed it up, because in the town where Munro lived -and many Canadians lived - and her characters lived - that was a phrase that was totally recognizable. Being too big for your britches, to use a slightly more Americanized phrase, really is a vital social error in Canada.
(If our Prime Minister ever said “Bring it on!” to some other country or great big organization, as if we were, you know, more powerful or better than them, Canadians would collectively expire in mortification.)
In the US publishers in their wisdom decided no one would be attracted to a title like that and renamed it The Beggar Maid. It just didn’t culturally scan the same way, because in the US having a dream and thinking big are unabashedly good things.
In the US, people have bumper stickers proclaiming that their children are honours students, and grandparents and others carry around “brag books” which are actually labelled - err - “Brag Books.” And my American relatives have generously sent me a slew of baby clothes that say “#1 Boy!” or things of the sort. They are not really available here in the same way. (There are the odd few that come up through Wal-Mart.)
So although this is slowly percolating into Canadian culture, the fact is that if you walk into Hallmark here and look for a little photo album or a frame to give, you will likely not find very many, if any that proclaim “#1 Grandson!” (!!!ELEVENTY ONE!!!) all over it. If so though, they will be cheap and on sale.
People don’t have bumper stickers much anyway - but if they did about their kids they would probably say “we’re so glad our kid is doing all right!”
The vague social more about bragging, you see, sort of is the more important the thing is to you/the greater the accomplishment, the more you have to downplay it. So if you’re Canadian you can brag about finding a great bargain at Winners any day. But not so much about your car or your house - and never about your child prodigy, or your own Nobel Peace Prize.
(I actually love this about Canadian writers because it means that even though they are internally the same as anyone else and really are glad if their books do well and better than someone else’s or win medals or whatever, they have to externally be humble, and so Alistair Macleod (who is really just a very generous soul anyway, I think) has to come and be nice to us beginning writers and write nice things on our manuscripts. When Alice Munro was writing that collection though, it was a social faux pas to BE a Canadian writer because that was being mouthy and arrogant already.)
Of course people find a way to revel in pride and accomplishments anyway. Canadians are just as braggy about not bragging as people who are braggy about glorying in their bragging. These are subtle shades of communication, not some comment on the Canadian soul. And that’s exactly the thing about Alice Munro’s title - Who Do You Think You Are? It passes judgement - but who is the speaker to judge, etc. etc.
It may be the snow that makes Canadians like this, I don’t know.
When I was growing up this social difference between white middle class upstate NY and white middle class Toronto caused many awkward moments, because my American parents had many pictures of their own children around their home and videos of our medal-winning performances and didn’t hesitate to take a bright and loud pride in our academic accomplishments.
Where the Canadian parents certainly got across the same thing, but in more muted tones. And they managed to get across, too, that it was so delightful that my parents took their children’s little accomplishments to heart. I don’t think my parents ever got the irony. They still don’t, in bragging about Noah. (Although grandparent bragging seems slightly more tolerated, since it is at a bit more of a remove.)
So that’s why; I think it’s really just a cultural thing. Of course bi-cultural me, I have a blog full of Noah-y goodness… along with some phrases to ward off the evil eye of the snow queen. :-)
Yegads
Stalking: parking your car across the street from someone’s house to watch them come and go.
Not stalking: parking at the grocery store to get your groceries
Stalking: breaking into someone’s house, stealing their personal letters, and photocopying them
Not stalking: reading your ex’s letter to the editor in the local community paper
Stalking: getting someone to hack into someone else’s email
Not stalking: reading an unlocked publically viewable website which comes up when searching on your own name (your being the reader), or indeed, any phrase typed into a search engine
Moral of the story? If you want something to be private, don’t publish it on the intarweb. *
For other areas:
Good etiquette: don’t read your ex’s webjournal without asking; alternatively, read and leave nice comments or send email inviting your ex for coffee (hi exes, you get points for goodness! Except D for not emailing me back the last time :))
neutral: read, but don’t say anything to anyone
bad etiquette: read your ex’s webjournal and leave snippy comments trying to perpetuate bad feelings from years ago
Good etiquette: post only what you want others to read
neutral: be human and post things without thinking it all through; when people read them, take measures to lock further thoughts -or- be brave and juicy and keep posting anyway. They’re only people
bad etiquette: go bugfuck that people dare read/be curious/etc. (Welcome to the curiosity of the human race.)
Good etiquette: stay out of these discussions entirely
neutral: clarify where it might be helpful
Just plain silly: this post!
Hope this clarification helps.
[* Of course most of us journal whores do this regardless. This is where the cunning use of initials or pseudonyms can cut down a bit on the searchability of one's journal. And remember boys and girls: you can always get Dooced! But you may get a book deal out of it. Well no, probably not: that's so... 1999.]
Mommy blog talk
Two things going on in the blogosphere (DRINK! < -- the internet jargon drinking game) that have been making me think.
One is this post here on women’s weight gain in marriage.
I it saw via Tertia’s blog but really like Moxie’s take on, in part because she avoids the whole “how DARE he” bit to get down to talking about why, exactly, it can be hard for a mother of young kids to meet this societal expectation even if she chooses to.
I personally think the original post is depressing, mostly because of the title - “False advertising.” Advertising is what you do when you want to sell a particular product, likely one that people don’t really need specifically. (When was the last time you saw an ad for plain rice or dried beans? They don’t have huge lobby organizations (like dairy farmers) or reasons to purchase beyond being a necessity (like flavoured quick-cook rice)).
Advertising is not what you do to get married. It may be what you do to date, I suppose, but marriage is not a consumer purchasing a product or even two consumers purchasing products. It is a partnership. (Which is why I like Moxie’s response a lot, because she says “if the partnership wants this, how can it be achieved.) If someone has to advertise to get married, I think they should walk. away. Because you never know when a pan of hot grease is going to upend over you and you will forever look scarred, or any number of things.
But also, I think men need to get the fuck over themselves if they’re concerned with their partner’s weight. (Although I agree that there is, in fact, a small societal cost to men if their wives are unattractive because society is fucked up still like that, treating the wives as a status symbol on a par with a car. However. That does not mean that men cannot just shrug and say “I like my wife more than I like racking up every possible point to increase my status” and Move On.)
The other thing that’s going around is this experiment with housework, over at Half-Changed World which is one of my feminist blog site heroes. I’ll be joining in as of today, posting my and Carl’s housework hours at the end of the day and going for a week or so.
I did find the comment about FlyLady funny (the “it’s not 15 minutes a day!”) comment to that post. God knows FlyLady is a feminist nightmare in some respects except… she values the women’s work quite a bit by saying ‘okay, you’re doing this as your powerful gift to your family, here’s one way, go.’ So maybe not as nightmarish as the fluffiness seems on the surface.
BUT regardless, the whole thing with FlyLady is not that she’s got the answer to how to do hours of work in minutes, but that she reframes the work so that it’s not a source of resentment. I think everyone figures out pretty fast that it’s not really 15 minutes but… it’s not 15 hours either, and you can get it over with and move on.
Well that’s the soapboxing for now.
Topic: Abuse-proofing
Tertia recently posted in her blog about letting her one-ish year old twins run naked among family members. When it’s hot and not a formal event.
It didn’t exactly surprise me, but it disheartened me how many people were quick to talk about this as “a risk.” As in, suppose a pedophile were present and saw these children naked. They might be moved to abuse them. What’s more, the children might be learning bad boundaries by going naked, at one and a bit years of age, and this might set them up to be easily preyed upon.
I commented in the thread but I have been meaning to write more here. I am speaking only out of my own experience and obsessions with finding out about the nature of abuse, so of course this is all opinion.
I was disturbed at the idea that any behaviour a toddler could exhibit, or refrain from, would be seen as part of the abuse equation. Like if only toddlers would keep their clothes on, pedophiles would keep their pants on. I think this is coming from a desire on the part of the parent to be right, and to be able to protect their children: if I just teach them to keep their clothes on, they’ll not attract attention from the wrong person, and will also absorb the idea that people shouldn’t look at them naked and touch them in inappropriate ways.
But what I think is this is misplacing the responsibility on the child.
(I really think that decisions about nudity are up to the parents; I’m not saying taking your clothes -off- prevents abuse either. But a shameful attitude about bodies certainly contributed in our family.)
In my experience few pedophiles who are good at what they do (and therefore don’t get caught) are going to pull a kid into a room and say: strip! Oh no. They take it little step by little step. They find out what the parents’ rules are and twist them. They leave the underwear on in some nominal way. Or get the kid to touch them.
They certainly don’t spy a naked child, get an idea to abuse them that they never had before, and go and do it because, after all, they were naked!
No no. They’re smart. They say things like “this doesn’t hurt you or make you uncomfortable, does it?” Which, by the way, will work a lot: once the child says no, and they will because of how it’s said, the abuser will remind them over and over. Probably until the child is confused enough to be quiet. Think this won’t work? Have you ever tried to socialize your three year old by saying: “you’re sorry you hurt Ted when you threw that car at him, aren’t you? Sure you are. Now go tell him you’re sorry.”
Mnn hmm.
The vast majority of young kids are not a match for that, not even with all the good touch/bad touch training in the world (not that I think that should stop; I just think in the child under 5, it is not much of a safeguard). They’re not meant to be a match for it: they’re developmentally wired to be little sponges and learn how the world works from everyone around them.
You cannot abuse proof a child. You as the parent have the responsibility.
So what’s a parent to do? Well, fucked if I really know. But here’s some thinking about it.
1. Stop thinking that if you decide to be careful around someone with your child that you are “judging” them or being “unfair.” As long as you don’t go around bad-mouthing someone or calling the police, you are merely making a decision about your comfort. This should take the pressure off that you have to be fair. You don’t. You are not the arbitrator of All Things and not letting your child stay over at someone’s house is not burning someone at the stake.
2. Don’t leave your kid with anyone because they are blood relatives, or “good people.” You don’t want good, church going, charity-supporting people watching your child unless you have personally evaluated their behaviour towards your child. Because guess what pedophiles do? They make damn sure that they are, on the surface, extremely good. Sorry for the truly good people, but they will understand.
2. a. If you want your child to “bond” with people, like family members, arrange your life inconveniently so that you can be present for the bonding.
2. b Don’t assume lack of goodness (sometimes called “honesty” even though it isn’t, always) is somehow a sure bet.
3. If you have decided someone can babysit, it might be best to leave your child in your home,where you will notice if there are extra towels in the laundry, etc. Come back early and without warning often, and do not knock. If you ever get a creepy feeling, even if it makes you the crazy lady/man, pick a new sitter.
4. If they’re old enough, ask your child what they did, what games they played, what they ate, and listen listen listen.
5. Watch for physical signs of abuse.
And finally:
6. Accept that you can only control what you can control. This is important not just to lead a sane life, but because if, god forbid, your child is abused, one of the things that will make it possible for him or her to both reveal and deal with it will be the understanding that they didn’t cause this by doing anything wrong, or forgetting to do something. And they can only really learn that from your attitude. We do so much, and then cope with the rest.
The grumpy spouse movement
Why do I always charge to answer the negativish comments and often colour in silence at the nice ones? It really is a facet of my personality I should look at sometime. But while it’s firmly entrenched…
btw comments:
and carl? do you have any clue how he feels? surely i hope you talk to him about these things. i’d say any man who has to work that hard deserves more than a grumpy wife
To be reassuring: I have some clue how Carl feels because of course I talk to him about them. He also reads this blog from time to time, and we have a long-standing agreement that he doesn’t get blindsided by reading something on the Internet for the first time.
However, as to what Carl “deserves”…
I read the pertinent part of that entry along with your comment to Carl just now. It’s Saturday, by the way, at 2 pm, and he’s been working here at home since 8:30 am. His answer was this: Oh god. Because Carl and I are the same page, and because I could hear his tone of voice, I’ll interpret that for you here: our relationship allows each of us to be grumpy, if that’s what we really are that day.
And wanting more time as a family and with each other - and being stressed when that isn’t happening - is actually not a burden on the other person but an invitation. Maybe Carl’s can’t change things easily right now, but he sure needs to know how they actually are to make an informed decision.
Sometimes that kind of information is a necessity, which is the broader part of this post.
We need more grumpy spouses.
Because, you see the thing is that Carl works for a large corporation that will cheerfully chew him up and spit him out and then hire the next guy. His industry, in fact, tends to operate that way. Everyone bids on a contract and whoever can provide a thinggummy faster/cheaper wins, and then all the people behind the sales deal kill themselves to get it done.
Not for the greater good; for the greater profit. And that’s all right: that’s what corporations do.
The bad thing in Carl’s industry is it’s white collar. People are paid reasonably well (in the mid to high 5 figures, for 10+ yrs experience) for real expertise right now, although that’s changing. But there’s no union. There’s no competing interest protecting the worker. There are a lot of fields like that: law in particular comes to mind, although that’s not Carl’s area.
And Carl is the kind of guy you want on your team - the guy that cares whether the thinggummy actually works and whether the customer is actually happy, both to make money and because he just is that kind of guy. He also was drawn to this kind of job because he likes to fix things. He likes to be the superhero that pulls the project out of the dirt at the 11th hour and saves the day!
And no one understands that better than me, because I have the same tendencies. I too have loved the drama & excitement of a work crisis saved by none other than Yours Truly. And because of that understanding I, more or less alone, fluffed and sold my house and packed up everything, travelled to Ottawa to support him on this particular project. And I have also taken over the household chores, and taken on all the holiday shopping and cards and the work of keeping in touch with family, etc.
And companies depend on people like Carl and I to make their priorities our priorities. For money, yes. But paying someone doesn’t mean you own them.
(Even if he were saving Africa from AIDS his schedule would be crazy. But I might, in that case, feel a little differently about it. I might not. It would depend. When we were both being insane workers in a good cause it was kind of worse, because it was never enough, there were always more needy people.)
The thing is though, and I’ll bold it here for you: I’m Carl’s wife. I support him in his career goals as a part of loving him as a person, but I’m not a career coach: I’m a life partner. And life, my commenting friend, is not only about the gold stars that one receives in the corporate world, but it’s also about family and friends and recreation and creative stuff that one does on one’s own time. And sitting on the grass breathing in the fresh air. Or the snow, as today would have it.
It serves the corporate interest to define my role as a life partner as someone who “sees the necessity” for insane work hours, mostly uncompensated. Let’s define insane. Here is Carl’s work week this week:
Sunday, while his dad was here: got up at 7 am to work until 10 am. Worked Sunday night 8 pm ish to midnight.
Monday: started work at 5 am, due to not working more hours on Sunday. Took two ten minute breaks; ate lunch at his desk. Took a half hour break for dinner at 7:30 pm. Worked until sometime after 11 pm.
Tuesday: started work at the late hour of 8:30 am. Took an hour break at 4 pm to renew car license and get coffee at Tim Horton’s. Worked until 6:30 pm. Worked again at 8 pm until 11:30 pm.
Wednesday: started with a call at 8 am. Worked through ’til 7:30. Ate dinner in front of movie with me, while checking on work things at his computer every 20 minutes or so (is this work or a break? We don’t know anymore). Came to bed around 11 pm, but may have been playing World of Warcraft for all I know, as it was quiet.
Thursday: paged at 4:30 am with a problem. Worked until 6:30 am. Break for shower & breakfast. Took an hour and a half lunch to sit with Noah while I went to the doctor; however he was on his cell phone - again is this work or not? Worked until 7 pm - bathed Noah, ate dinner in front of computer so about 7:45 pm went back to work until 12:30 am Fri.
Friday: checked on things at 5 am. Took an hour’s break before 8 am to clean cat boxes and put out garbage ’cause I hadn’t done those things being on the mastitis bedrest thing. Worked through until 12:30 am (ate dinner at desk).
Today: as I said, started working at 8:30 am and he’s still going.
(It’s now 4:45, as I have been typing this on and off between Noah play sessions and dishes and things.)
I’m not kidding or exaggerating. That was his week. It’s slightly worse than many, but not completely atypical - and it’s been that way since a month after Emily died.
So now that you have specifics, here’s the thing. It may serve the corporate interests for me to be a quiet helpful career-supporting spouse no matter how insane things get. But it doesn’t help Carl. And that’s whose partner I am.
The Corporation does not give a shit about how that kind of schedule impacts on Carl or his health. It does not care that the impact on our family may currently be that I’m sick and Noah and I are on nystatin again and that he has an in-pain mum. It would not care if this led to divorce in ten years, or our son on drugs in 15 years.
That is why other workers at other times in history have fought - bitterly - for things like the 6 day, and then 5 day, and then 40-hr workweek. Because unchallenged - either directly or by social pressure like “attrition rates” etc. - The Corporation really does not give a fuck.
The counterbalance often is grumpy spouses and upset children: people who say hey, there is more to life than work and are you aware you haven’t been home for dinner for 2 weeks?
So yeah. I’m not a big fan of nagging or whinging on a daily basis. But to say: hey, I’m stressed. I think I’m so stressed that my body is having problems. And this is part of it. What can we do? Is a good thing.
I sort of feel sorry for any partnership that doesn’t work that way.
Links
I’m still fussing over what to do with the links category down the side; for now it only has links where I’m reasonably sure no one minds. I don’t know yet how I feel about emailing everyone I read & seeing if they mind a link, etc. So for now - if you want to be linked or have a cool link please comment here & I’ll add away.