Bob's a sponge and Dobson's glue

It bounces off Bob and sticks to guess who?

A hilarious SpongeBob update via Daily Kos.

Perhaps the FOF folks should focus on real-life people (members of their own families, for instance, or perhaps the families of the poor and meek) instead of television characters and commentators. Or perhaps it's best that they stay mesmerized by shiny, flickering images.

Return to the womb

BBC has a slide show of 'fantasy coffins' in Ghana. Look for the giant wooden uterus ordered by a GYN.

Shiny sleeve club

Friday was a runny-nose, drizzly-weather day. I held Hurricanehead while he watched a squirrel trying to figure out our window-mounted bird feeder.

Rocketboy drew cheetahs, including a cheetah riding a monorail and a cheetah vomiting after a roller-coaster ride.

Dogzilla was outside feeling frisky so she ripped a limb off a post oak tree.

It's still drizzling. I want more rain barrels.

Damn sad

Rwanda remembers the liberation of Auschwitz and its own genocide ten years ago.

As a species, what exactly do we mean when we say 'never again'? This?

It's not what they say, it's how they say it

Found this over at There Is No Crisis. Now it's "pejorative" for the media to refer to Bush's Social Security private-account plan as privatization. Why? Because the president isn't using that term anymore. Don't you hate it when descriptions allow you to evaluate something?

I can't handle this shit anymore

After a total of three and a half years of cloth diapering, I'm turning in the diaper pail.

My older son was easy to cloth diaper. Disposables gave him a wicked rash. Case closed. But between Hurricanehead's constant rashes in cloth (despite tweaking every variable of liners, covers, detergents, rinses, and drying methods), the constant laundering, and the fact that I've been hanging nappies to dry for about 40 months of my life (longer, I must note, than I spent getting my B.A.), I give up.

The alternatives for baby doo are few. Cloth, which I've done to death, paper, which I do sometimes already, and early toilet learning, about which the baby seems obtuse. I've set him on his pot a few times, when I can stop him from trying to drink from the bowl, and all he does is get back off. Hombre and I once put him on the big potty while running water and hissing like snakes to get him to go. We quickly ended the experiment because it made us need to go, while Hurricanehead looked pleasantly confused and did nothing. I've tried letting him roam the house naked, thinking I can catch him just before it's time, but I've always been dramatically wrong.

If they didn't give him diaper rash, I'd stick with cloth diapers, even with the laundering. My next-best-thing diapering solution? A combination of disposables and warm-weather nudity (the baby's) in the backyard. I just hope he doesn't soil my salad weeds.

Eat your lawn for freedom

Here I go again. I've already ranted about the role of homegrown produce in reducing our nation's dependence on oil, especially oil of the imported persuasion. Over the last week I put my lower back where my mouth is (no easy task) and planted about 80 onion sets, some blackberry bushes, carrot seeds, two kinds of mint, and strawberries. Plus a grapevine that my older son just had to have. We're about halfway done pruning back our overgrown peach trees for better production.

Now I've decided to browse the lawn in support of our nation's independence. We already had some edibles growing on our property, namely dandelions and roses. I knew vaguely that both were edible but was fuzzy on the details. After some research, we picked new dandelion buds and tossed the petals in our lunch salad. They're nothing I'd want to subsist on -- kind of dry and a little bitter -- but they added some nice color. I'll try some of the other dandelion recipes as time allows.

Roses, it turns out, are good for all kinds of things, from decorating and flavoring ice cream to use as a base in herbal teas. I haven't tucked into the half-dozen or so rose bushes yet because I want to give them time to rid themselves of anything they might have been treated with before we moved in. But now I have an excellent excuse for not digging them up.

What's growing in your yard (or on your patio, or on your windowsill)?

What could be sweeter?

Hurricanehead's new trick is to feed me. He'll be awkwardly feeding himself dried cranberries or hippie-o's or what have you and he reaches out with something for Momma while his eyes shine. And of course I eat what he's offering because it's such a sweet gesture.

Then he ups the ante. He'll feed me a cranberry. Then he puts one in his own mouth, thinks better of it, smiles, retrieves the berry, and holds it out to me. His expression says, "I love you and I know you'd never crush my blossoming soul by rejecting this food I'm offering you."

The good news is baby drool creates a gelatinous coating that enables the berry to slide down my throat before I have to taste it.

Just technical stuff

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog. So now I have trackback, but it ate all the comments.

"I am fine here in Rwanda."

Mail doesn't often excite me, but I got two letters from Rwanda today, the first I've received from my sponsorship sister through Women for Women International (WWI). The woman I'm linked with is a mother just a year older than me, widowed by Rwanda's genocidal civil war a decade ago. WWI offers job training to women in countries hit by war and unrest, and my sister is in their program.

Motherhood, despite its many rewards, is not easy even under ideal circumstances. I'm quietly awed by my single-mom friends here in Texas who keep their families going without losing their poise or their minds. What must it be like to be a single parent in a country that's having to start over, too, where everything needs rebuilding and so many hard memories remain?

(WWI head Zainab Salbi will be on the Oprah Winfrey Show Monday, January 24 to talk about the group's work in the Democratic Republic of Congo.)

Priceless

A two-word inaugural-address critique from Oliver Willis.

First Tinky Winky, Now This

Remember right after the election when pundits were talking about the new-found power of Focus on the Family's James Dobson? He was poised to leverage the muscle of his right wing Bush supporters into all kinds of political hay:

When a thank-you call came from the White House, Dobson issued the staffer a blunt warning that Bush "needs to be more aggressive" about pressing the religious right's pro-life, anti-gay rights agenda, or it would "pay a price in four years."

Here's what aggressive looks like, Dobson-style: attacking a Spongebob music video for promoting "pro-gay" values. Which is crazy. Everyone knows that sponges are hetero code for over-the-counter birth control.

Inauguration Day Festivities

I have my own reasons for being irked about the morrow. Last Inauguration Day my mom called to crow about the return of decency and civility to Washington before calling me a socialist and hanging up. My phone will be on "do not disturb" until Friday.

I'll be watching the events on TV, of course, as part of our home learning experience. But the only reason I'm really watching is to see how the folks at Turn Your Back on Bush make out. Godspeed, nonviolent protestors.

Grandmas get on board

What a great birthday weekend for Hurricanehead. He got a bunch of rolling and squeaking toys and an orange cupcake, and I got my ego stroked by the kids' grandmothers.

Back when big brother Rockethead was 3 and I let slip that we'd be homeschooling, we faced vocal doubt. My mother asked, "Are you sure you want to be around your kids all day?" My MIL worried we were going to raise her grandsons "in a bubble."

Fast forward to Saturday. MIL doted on Rockethead and even helped him draft a letter about homeschooling. My mom just watched him do his thing.

Mom called yesterday to say she thinks he has "something you don't see in too many kids these days. A spirit of adventure. You kids didn't really have it." I refrained from pointing out that we lived in front of the TV when we weren't in a classroom, but she's right. Rockethead isn't afraid to try much of anything if he can think it through and do it his way.

Mom told me about when she and sisters decided, when they were 12, 10 and 8, that they would go look at the sawmills by the river. So off they walked to the cypress forest at the edge of the St. Francis, eight miles from their house, and spent the whole day there. Scared their mother to death. Weren't allowed to leave the yard for months after. Still recall how happy they were on their great adventure.

I'm not advocating that my kids take a secret sixteen-mile hike. But I figure every minute they're not wedged behind a desk or parked in front of a flickering screen is a minute they can live as they see fit. Unless it's bath time.

(John Holt's work was a big influence on our decision to homeschool. A good resource on his work is here.)

Viva piano

Rockethead has decided, after years of insisting that he needs no musical instruction, that he's ready for piano lessons. He asked the music director at our church for instructor recommendations and he has his first lesson, with her, tomorrow morning. This could be the end of my having to listen to random plinking followed by a painful quiz to see if I could tell he was playing the Star Spangled Banner. (No.)

I'm glad I didn't push the lesson issue. It's tempting, when you homeschool, to shove your kids into as many lessons and co-op groups as you can find so the grandparents understand (and you feel) that you're "really doing something." But we had a bad tae kwon do experience a couple years ago. We ponied up many non-refundable bucks to get Rockethead into a program that he quickly grew to hate. Rockethead didn't learn much about martial arts, but Hombre and I learned quite a bit about avoiding long-term commitments to children's activities. So no long-term promises, no stress, and no purchase of a "real" piano to replace his 44-key casio until later on, if ever.

Some musical resources that we've all been enjoying of late:

The Farewell Symphony by Anna Harwell Celenza, picture book with CD, in which Papa Haydn calls the Prince on his behavior with music

Leonard Bernstein's Young People's Concerts: Disc 1 in a series of nine. It's from the '50s, it's in black and white, and it's irresistible. Rockethead made me watch this with him several times. Bernstein had a flair for explaining music to kids in a way that was engaging without being cloying or chummy.

Greensleeves, or at least the first few bars of it as rendered by one of the Plastic Christmas Toys we received: a purple worm with 26 legs that chants the alphabet and plays song snippets. It's really Hurricanehead's toy, but all he ever does with it is try to nurse on the antennae whenever they light up red.

One!

Hurricanehead is one year old today. Got to go help him celebrate the beginning of his next year on the planet.

Does home schooling fly with Continental?

Here I was set to write something nice and light about our great home schooling experiences yesterday, and this lands in my inbox. The gist is that, according to the Texas Home School Coalition, Continental Express fired a new employee because she was home schooled for high school. Read Tim Lambert's letter to find out why this flies in the face of common sense and general practice in Texas.

As Lambert wrote to HR, I thought it would be interesting to contact investor relations and see what their take is. I'll post any response I receive.

Now, I am not a member of THSC and am not a fan of everything they do, but they do a good job of letting Texas bureaucracies know when they've run afoul of the law or common sense in regard to home schooling.

Miscarriage Reporting Bill Update

Maura at Democracy for Virginia has received a response from delegate John Cosgrove about his bill that would require women who suffer a miscarriage without medical care to report it to the police within 12 hours. It looks like the scope of the bill will be narrowed quite a bit. But I'm sure there are a lot of folks and Virginia and elsewhere who'll be watching closely to see what actually happens.

Major, major kudos to Maura for shining light on this bill.

"Let us trim our hair in accordance with Socialist lifestyle."

BBC reports North Korea cracks down on fashion crimes.

More nosing around

I should clarify a couple of items in the last post. First, Cosgrove didn't write in the language about the miscarriage-in-a-moving-vehicle situation. That was already part of the law that Cosgrove is seeking to modify with his you're-bleeding-call-the-cops requirement.

Also, I've seen Republican women responding to Cosgrove's bill with horror so I get a swat on the hand for generalizing. On the other (unswatted) hand, a political party is known by the company it keeps. Cosgrove's bill seems like a bald attempt to extend legal protection or special status to embryos and fetuses, setting the stage for restrictions on abortion rights. Now, as I said, I've had three miscarriages and I've suffered the loss of a beautiful son who was stillborn. And those experiences have strengthened my belief that the state should stay out of people's uteruses.

This meddling is nothing new. In Eve LaPlante's biography of Puritan rabble-rouser Anne Hutchinson, American Jezebel, she notes that Massachusetts court in the 1600s had outlawed the English common-law practice of allowing midwives to bury dead babies privately because the judges wanted to prevent attempted abortions (LaPlante, 88). Hutchinson did, in fact, privately bury a deformed stillborn girl to spare the parents public humiliation at a time when deformity was considered a punishment from God. When the governor later learned of the secret burial, he had the baby's corpse exhumed and shown to more than a hundred onlookers, and used the baby's apparent anencephaly to pursue his personal agenda of tarring the parents and Hutchinson as heretics (LaPlante, 206-7).

But we're so enlightened now that no one would ever manipulate someone's private heartbreak for personal gain. Right?

Sticking his nose where it doesn't belong

When Republicans say they are for "smaller government," perhaps that's code for "a tiny government that will fit inside your uterus."

If you haven't seen this, cup your hand under your jaw before you read it. (Props to dru blood.) Delegate John A. Cosgrove (R) of Chesapeake, Virginia has introduced a bill that would require women there to report any miscarriage to the police within 12 hours of the loss (unless they are under medical care at the time -- then the doc gets to file the report). The text of the bill shows that Cosgrove, besides having a seemingly limited understanding of the right to privacy, has no idea how complicated and varied the human experience of pregnancy and miscarriage can be. Although he does try: There's a provision for where to report any miscarriage that occurs in a moving vehicle traveling between law-enforcement districts.

I don't live in Virginia but I've had three miscarriages and I have a hard time imagining how any of those experiences would have been enhanced by the presence of the police, or even paperwork to be sent to the cops. But I'm willing to try. (If you're squeamish you might want to read this with your eyes closed.)

Miscarriage 1 -- ratting out Aunt Flo: I got a faint positive on a pregnancy test. A couple days later, I tested again and the result was fainter still. Day after, Aunt Flo arrives, new pregnancy test comes up blank. I didn't even call the midwife. Under the proposed Virginia law, a woman in my situation would be required to report her bleeding to the police. "Officer, I may have had a miscarriage. Or maybe it's just a late period." Should she save the pregnancy tests and the tampons? Who would know if she didn't report it? Who let the police into her bathroom?

Fun question: What if this woman decided not to report but was Rh negative, and the miscarried embryo was Rh positive? There's a chance she would develop Rh antibodies which would show up the next time she got medical care for a pregnancy. Busted.

Miscarriage 2 -- the state will examine the contents of your uterus now: I went for an ultrasound at nine weeks' gestation and although I'd had no cramping or bleeding, the fetus was dead. This is called a missed abortion. I got a choice of waiting to miscarry at home, which meant less intervention but no chance for chromosome testing, or having a D&C, which meant anesthesia and surgical risks but we could get testing done to check for ongoing problems. Among the information required on fetal death reports already in Virginia (and which would apparently be included in Cosgrove's bill as well) are the sex of the fetus, weight, and any congenital malformations. My fetus was about 9 millimeters long at the time of death. There's no way, even if I'd miscarried right away, that I could have known any of that at home.

Fun question: Would Virginia then require women with missed abortions to have D&C surgery in order to provide law enforcement with the required information?

Miscarriage 3 -- we'll be watching you: I had a positive pregnancy test and three days later the bleeding began, along with sharp pain that my midwife thought could mean ectopic pregnancy. She sent me to the ER. The doctor there tested my hormone levels and told me I was either earlier in the pregnancy than I thought and having implantation bleeding or I was having another miscarriage. Time would tell -- maybe a few days or a week. He sent me home, sorry he couldn't provide me a better answer. My midwife could only wait. I called a friend's OB and her nurse said my situation was not uncommon.

Fun question: Does Cosgrove have any idea what sort of hell his bill would create for women and law enforcement?

Iraqi women speak. Are their leaders listening?

NGO Women for Women International has posted results of its post-war survey of 1,000 Iraqi women. The upshot is that most women surveyed want more legal and political clout. The downside is that, for starters, women who openly pursue these goals risk being murdered. On top of that, lack of government services and inclusion set the stage for women to seek help from extremist groups as they rebuild their lives and communities. Said WWI’s founder and CEO Zainab Salbi,

“Too often women turn in desperation to extremist religious groups for help despite the long-term sacrifice of personal freedoms. These groups have historically been able to gain support when they can offer basic services normally provided by a government.”

Here is the entire report in PDF.

Little Darlings

A fine example of how I spend my day:

Rocketboy, age 5: "Good God!"
me: "Good grief."
Rocketboy: "Good God."
(sound of gauntlet hitting kitchen floor)
me: "Good GRIEF."
Rocketboy: "Good GOD."
me: "You sound like a little boy who wants a time out."
Rocketboy: "I sound like a little boy who wants to say 'good God' instead of 'good grief.'"
(fade to black)

Victory Garden

I promised I would talk about vegetables and weaning ourselves from foreign oil. And it's not only that spinach tastes better than light sweet crude. I assumed that if you buy organic you're doing your bit for mama earth and you get to walk around with a crunchy, happy buzz. Then I read 'Lily's Chickens' in Barbara Kingsolver's Small Wonder. It never occurred to me that my organic produce is trucked in to my local hippie-mart and therefore burns lots of (you guessed it) fuel.

"We can hardly choose not to eat, but we have to choose how, and our choices can have astounding consequences. Consider this: The average food item set before a U.S. consumer traveled 1,300 miles to get there. If Mr. Average eats ten or so items a day (and most of us eat more), in a year's time his food will have conquered five million miles by land, sea, and air." (123)

Put that way, growing one's own produce seems close to a moral imperative. Hombre and I decided, to the best of our limited agrarian abilities, to go for it. Eggs from a friend's flock, organic meat from area ranchers, and veggies from our own garden.

We'll never be entirely self-sustaining. We can't grow our own coffee and chocolate. But we had a surprisingly good run of lettuce this fall, and our carrots and cilantro are chugging along despite the freeze-or-heat-wave weather. And I get patriot bonus points.

Why? In times of strife, not all presidents have urged the populace mallward. WWII-era families grew victory gardens to stretch their rations and conserve resources. Just about anyone can grow something. So if I were going to evangelize about anything, it would be homegrown produce.

How do I keep Dogzilla out of our victory garden? Victory fence.

Patriot Acts

A couple days after the election Hombre and I decided to be the change we want to see and live as if we had progressive leadership in this country. It's not going to the mall. And it's crazy easy to be a liberal by Texan standards without moving off the center. But it's what we can do for America.

Giving to charities: I go for local groups that help patch holes in the social safety net. With international groups, I look for two things: a focus on increasing self-reliance and giving the end-recipients a good impression of someone in the US. I see it as restorative international PR work. Some of my favorites are over on the right (of the page, that is). What groups light your fire?

Resisting (via mockery and reason) the conservative social agenda: Wait for it. The state lege session begins later this month.

Reducing our reliance on foreign oil: Hard to do, especially if you live in an area with lame-to-nonexistent public transportation and suburbs where the only things within walking distance are (ha ha) gas stations. But I have a plan. It involves vegetables. Stay tuned.

Dogzilla 3

A coffee table. She chewed the fricking corner off a coffee table. And she was only alone with it for about five minutes.

I keep threatening to donate her to some law-enforcement agency. But I just know that once she outgrows this chewing thing she's going to be a great dog. Plus, how can you not love a big, lanky lab pup who drags her 50-pound self into your lap whenever you sit down?

Dogzilla 2

After the last post, I thought of other things Dogzilla has destroyed, a plastic lawn chair and another food dish. We thought we'd finally (with her help) cleared the yard of anything she could but shouldn't ruin. Nope.

See, I bought this 100-foot long contractor-grade water hose when we moved in, which I figured would outlive us all, and she's been tooth-testing it since the day she arrived with absolutely no success. I thought there was no way she could break it. So I was sadly surprised to find the hose in three sections yesterday. Apparently she'd wound part of the hose around a leg of the swingset and gnawed the parts that kinked until they gave way. And last evening I discovered that she's been whittling down the 2" x 2" stretchers on one of our wooden chairs.

And no, she's not a totally outside dog, gnawing out of boredom. And she has a cornucopia of chew toys. God only knows what's next on her list. Lord, give me a sign.

Get the Hook

Anyone who's heard my crackpot theory that wall-to-wall carpet can be a health hazard won't be surprised to learn that I partially blame the carpeting in our new house for our series of illnesses since we moved in. (We had no wall-to-wall in the old house.) Carpet is hard to get completely clean and can harbor dust mites and other fun hunklets of crud.

My evidence? Sinus infection, flu, and now acute bronchitis in myself, colds and ear infections in both kids. Normally we are a hardy people, so this is especially ridiculous.

My caveat: As we all know, correlation does not equal causation. Just because there is carpet in the new place and we've been sick more in the new place does not mean that the carpet is the cause of the illness. That would be like saying that the owls hooting softly in the tree outside my new bedroom window have caused my illness, or that it's our new proximity to the mall (which I avoid) that's made us sickly.

My plan, part 1: Rip out all the carpet. I've done it before, and I can do it again. At least, that's what I first thought. But once you've done a project like that, you never want to do it again. Plus, I'd have to replace the carpet with something that would probably cost a lot of money.

My plan, part 2: See how clean I can get the carpet. For this, I fall back on the great American tradition of buying stuff, which fills me with equal parts enviro-guilt and giddy anticipation. The greatest vacuum ever sold (at least according to the user reviews on a certain e-tail site) will arrive tomorrow.

My conclusion? Stay tuned. (Because who can get enough of someone grousing about carpet and phlegm?) If cleaner carpet coincides with better health, I'll know I was on to something. If not, those hoot owls better watch themselves.

Liquid Gold!

I know the phrase "liquid gold" is overused -- I've seen it describe everything from breast milk to crude oil and molten gold -- but I am just so excited about my new rain barrel. Free, unchlorinated, softer-than-municipal-supply agua is collecting in it at this very moment. Not that I plan to drink it. It collected on our roof, which is doubtless nasty, and we are on the grid so I don't feel the need to go the extra purification mile, although it's feasible. But extra water is good to have around here if you like plants. Even the hardy native greenery likes a drink every now and then.

My rain barrel is a garden geek's dream. It was repurposed after bringing olives into our great nation and has two spigots, an overflow drain, bug screen, super-tough lid to prevent drowning, and a place to connect other rain barrels in case 60 gallons of free water isn't enough. (It isn't.) I want one for every downspout around our casa, and Rockethead wants one for his shed.

It's worth mentioning that my mother (who is retired and has no sneaky, curious kids at home who could fall in and drown) collects the very same liquid gold in an old garbage can and then siphons it out onto her lawn. We all try to beat the system somehow.