Card-carrying mommies

The Accidental Housewife mentioned Mommy Cards last week. I only discovered them last night because I'm slow like that. But Rocketboy's lion costume is done now so I have time to ponder the implications of "business" cards that identify a woman as "So-and-So's Mommy" in cutesy script.

Cards seem like an affectation in the cell age, when you can just key in the information, but I can see using one in a pinch. I just can't think of any circumstance under which I would hand someone a card describing myself as "Mommy."* What would such a card really say about me?

That I'd lost my sense of self?

Or that I never had one?

You may glance at my blog banner and hear your hypocrite meter pinging. Maybe you're onto something, but I see a difference between using "mother" in the title of a blog about mothering and defining yourself exclusively as someone's "mommy" when you meet people. For one thing, basing your identity on your child is fraught with peril. If you're Maxwellison's mommy, then what are you if young Max turns out to be a biter or an arsonist? Then you're in the same boat with corporations whose celebrity endorsers drink the wrong soda, attack people or die. Parenting is hard enough without magnifying the identity issues.

Also, what would it say to my kids if I went around defining myself through them? What kind of pressure would it put on them? How would that prepare my sons for relationships with women later on? How would my entirely hypothetical daughters see themselves? How would that self-image affect me over the years?

I didn't get a chance to find out, although I started down that road when Rocketboy was born. The fatigue, the fascination with my new little person, and the impractical secret desire to be the first person to raise a child without making any mistakes all weighed on me those first few months. I got my reality check when I went to an old friend's wedding in LA. I was exhausted, out of shape, rocking a nursing dress and a dowdy-but-practical "mom" hairstyle and carrying a five-month old baby who wore the most expensive (handmade!) shoes I'd ever bought for anyone.

My friend's elegant and savvy mom, Janis, and I talked about raising children and I mentioned how awkward I felt when people asked, "What do you do?" Without a job, I said, I was now "just a mom." I figured she could relate, having raised three children herself, and I thought I said it with a touch of defiant pride, but Janis knew better.

"You are not," she said, "just a mom." It turned out I still got to be myself, to take care of myself, to pursue my own interests and define myself however I wanted to. Thank god, because while I love my children, there's a limit to how much I can hear about Sonic, Shadow and pirates. And because I don't want to stifle them with my need for an identity. I'm supposed to be secure enough to help them figure out who they are, not the other way around.

"You are not just a mom." That would look good on a card.




*Wait, I can, but it would involve a second career catering to the likes of Senator David Vitter, and I am just. not. going. there.

When it's all put together like that, I sound kind of cranky

I'm on deadline with a fleece lion costume and trying to get ready for bellydance class while recovering from a (delightful) house guest, tile contractors, and illness all descending upon my abode over the past three days.

So. Meme time. I got this one from Binky and had some fun with it. The idea is to come up with five phrases for which your blog is number one in a Google search. Here are mine in no particular order:

1. not a baby-machine
2. smaller government uterus-sized
3. Congressional misrepresentative
4. chronic lactactor
and
5. "gibberish is the new tongues"

What about you?

Can your chicken do this?

Hurricanehead and Rocketboy just watched Chicken Run again. Normally I can't countenance repeat viewings of children's films, but Chicken Run I can deal with. As claymation hens go, Ginger is pretty cool.

Now that I have daily chicken contact, though, the film's premise seems a little strained. Maybe those chickens can't get out of their pen, but my chickens are made of craftier stuff. I've already written about Wanda's flying escapades, which have mercifully ceased. Neutron hasn't got the hang of flight but she's compensating nicely.

She's discovered this great little out-of-the-way place for lunch.

Compost bugs are the best nosh ever, and nothing stands between Neutron and her snacks. Unfortunately, this also means the garden gate no longer stands between Neutron and the new bed of tender broccoli seedlings. Time for row covers.

Living with Cher

That's what my cousin calls the stage of childhood when a kid changes clothes all the freaking time. Hurricanehead is there, courtesy of the first "real" cold front of the season. As I took his fall clothes down from the closet shelves this morning, I could see him imagining himself in each and every turtleneck and fleece pullover.

He spent the rest of the day turning those dreams into reality, which means he spent half the day bonking into things with a shirt over his head. The longest time he wore any one top was the two hours we spent going to the doctor. Even though he wasn't the patient and there was plenty for him to do, he was at his crankiest then. I blame the lack of wardrobe options.

It's supposed to be cool tomorrow, too, but most of his warm clothes are in the hamper already. Time to introduce the concept of grunge chic.

I have here on my blog a list

My blogroll is back in the sidebar, months after I pulled it for a thorough updating that I expected would take a few days. You probably know how that goes. I'll add more links as time allows. Honest.

Caption time

It's been a long week, hasn't it? As a mental palate-cleanser I offer this tree which lives beside the path to the Dzibilchaltun museum. If you can identify this cuddly sucker or have a caption inspiration, by all means share.

SCHIP Redux: Cue the immigrant menace!

I called John Carter's office this afternoon and asked an aide how my Republican rep plans to vote on SCHIP tomorrow. She told me, after some stalling and doublespeak, that Carter plans to vote against SCHIP.

Why?

"Healthcare for immigrants."

"Sorry?" I said. That was the first I'd heard of SCHIP providing immigrant children coverage. Given all the flap about American-born kids daring to get care, I was surprised I hadn't heard the right screaming non-stop about "foreigners" taking our money. Perhaps I was missing something.

"Do you mean legal or illegal immigrants?"

"Illegal."

"So he's voting against care for all these American-born children because illegal immigrants' kids would get care, too?"

"Yes."

So that's how it's gonna be: playing the "brown menace" card to deny health care to children.

"I thought," I said sorrowfully, "that Mr. Carter was a Christian."

"Yes."

"Well," I clucked, "then isn't he ashamed of himself?"

"I don't know, ma'am."

What's even more shameful than Carter's putative reason for voting 'no?' It's not true. I looked up the bill (HR976) and found this:

SEC. 605. NO FEDERAL FUNDING FOR ILLEGAL ALIENS.

Nothing in this Act allows Federal payment for individuals who are not legal residents.

Did Carter read the bill? Did he fail to process what's probably the clearest statement in the entire document? Or did he know perfectly well what it said but hoped nobody else would read that far?

This leaves him with nothing, oppositionally speaking. Worse than nothing, in fact. SCHIP Section 621 amends the Family and Medical Leave Act to provide extra support for injured military personnel. Section 622 prevents job discrimination against family members caring for wounded service members, an issue that affects about 20% of families of injured personnel, according to the nonpartisan group Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

Pro-military, Christian John Carter is using nonexistent benefits to the illegal-immigrant bogeyman* as a reason to deny real benefits to millions of children and who knows how many wounded soldiers and their families.

Isn't he ashamed of himself?



*While we're on the subject, I think we should extend benefits to those children. Why? Because we have a screwed up system that encourages people to risk their lives to come here so they can bust their ass for crappy wages because it props up the economy of the richest nation on earth. Oh, and because they're children. Gah.

Whine or deal?

Commenter Linda came by in the night and regurgitated a bunch of stale Malkin talking points about the very SCHIP families I mentioned in my last post. Perhaps she was so dazzled by the tiny photo of Ponch that she failed to realize that her comment illustrated my point exactly:

Me: Trashing the parents of brain-injured pre-teens and a toddler with a heart defect is a new low, even for the professional bloviating class. Just goes to show how completely out of useful ideas they are.

Linda brings nary a practical idea or original thought to the thread. It's early, I haven't had my coffee yet, and I grew up listening to this brand of talk-show parroting masquerading as thoughtful discourse. The longer I live, the less patience I have for it. Think I'm being unfair? Let's take a look:

While I certainly can't agree with giving a child a hard time, the point must be made. The families of these children made their choices:

Already we're in trouble. Linda "can't agree with giving children a hard time." Were this a genuine moral stance on her part, that would be the end of her comment. BUT there are extenuating circumstances.

a) The first young man, Graeme, has parents who have resources, they just don't choose to deplete them by providing insurance for their kids. Read the descriptions of their assets - a home (which was recently remodeled), several cars, a business - that's just a few of the listed assets.

They could afford to send their kids to a pricy private school - they jsut didn't want to spend their cash on health insurance. Now, after the accident, they will find insurers don't want their business. Well, that's common - to pass on insuring someone after they've developed health problems. That's why prudent people insure BEFORE they need it.

All that stuff about the family's assets was debunked last week. If Linda needs new, accurate commenting material she can always try this information:

Soon after the radio address, right-wing bloggers began insisting that the Frosts must be affluent because Graeme and his sister attend private schools (they’re on scholarship), because they have a house in a neighborhood where some houses are now expensive (the Frosts bought their house for $55,000 in 1990 when the neighborhood was rundown and considered dangerous) and because Mr. Frost owns a business (it was dissolved in 1999).

Knowing that, knowing that some people cannot afford insurance (the Frosts were quoted $1200 per month) or cannot get it at any price due to pre-existing conditions, knowing that some insurance companies drop policies as soon as a person gets sick or injured, it seems like Linda could just go back to not giving children a hard time.

b) The girl with the heart defect; her mother had a job with health insurance. She chose to leave it, and take another job without benefits.

Before she had her child. I know Linda must be getting close to offering her plan. Because without that operation, Bethany Wilkerson would be dead.

Life is about choices. I don't feel I have an obligation to protect people against stupid decisions.

Maybe Linda's implying we should just let these folks suffer and die. No, I know. NASA could build a time machine so the uninsured parents of sick kids can go back in time and choose not to have them. Because that would be so much cheaper than paying the medical bills.

Further, the problem with this bill is that it drastically expands the scope of insured to more those earning more than $80k year.

Wow, $80,000 all across the country? Hot damn, we can all board the gravy train. Oh, wait:

[D]espite the president’s statement that “certain states” make children in families with $83,000 incomes eligible, New York is the only state that has expressed a desire to raise its income limit above $80,000.

You know, New York. The state with most of its population in some big, expensive city. And they're still only just talking about raising the limit.

Nevermind. We're getting to the heart of the matter now:

Nobody likes paying for the premiums. I don't.

Interesting. I would think she would, not only because they offer at least the hope of coverage but because they purchase a little spot on the moral high ground from which one can cast aspersions on those less fortunate.

But, I earn less than the Frost family, and I pay for my health insurance. It isn't great insurance. I pay a lot out-of-pocket. But, I don't expect others to pay for me. I pull my own weight.

Good for Linda. I'm glad at least one among us has the moral fiber not to use any service funded by public money: not health insurance, food stamps, roads, public schools, Fannie Mae mortgage loans, Social Security, PBS, the court system, city buses, fire, police, EMS, libraries nor parks. She doesn't need the National Weather Service to know which way the wind is blowing.

Still no alternative solution for families like the Frosts and Wilkersons, but it's not really about them. It's all about what hardy pioneers Linda and her compatriots are.

But something troubles me. Linda says hers is not great insurance. Prudent people buy great insurance before they need it so the out-of-pocket expenses don't bankrupt them case of major illness or injury. God forbid, in all seriousness, that she or any of you should ever find yourself in a medical crisis. But if so, why should people like me, who made the not-stupid decision to be lucky enough to afford great insurance, to pick up the tab for people who decided not to be well-off enough or healthy enough to get the good stuff?

Because it's the right thing to do. Not because I'm made of money or because I think life has to be perfectly fair, but because that's the way it is. Sick people need medical care. Medical care costs money. As a society, we can whine about it and try to wish it away, or we can suck it up and deal.

I choose to deal, even if it costs me a little money. I consider it a mark of character.

S-CHIP? That was the show with cute cops, right?

Let's see some Congressional action, baby.

While Bush covers his pampered tush and Gov. Bill Richardson prepares to sue him on behalf of a group of states to preserve their S-CHIP funding, some point-missing pundits on the right have been smearing families who talk publicly about how S-CHIP coverage has helped them. Trashing the parents of brain-injured pre-teens and a toddler with a heart defect is a new low, even for the professional bloviating class. Just goes to show how completely out of useful ideas they are. (I do wonder, among the people attacking the Frost and Wilkerson families for taking public money to keep their kids alive, how many send their own kids to public schools?)

And what about my Misrepresentative, John Carter? Surely he's all over the important moral and political issue of children's health coverage, right? Let's zip over to his homepage and see what he offers his constituents:

There's this "TOP NEWS":

10.9.2007
ARCHITECT OF THE CAPITOL OMITS “GOD” FROM CONSTITUENT FLAG REQUESTS
U.S. Congressman John Carter (TX-31) condemned the decision of the Architect of the Capitol (AOC) to censor citizens who request the word “God...
• Read More

Hey, the Big Guy always trumps the little guy, and rightly so: While sick American children are free to die already get tough and pull themselves up by their bootstraps, Carter's deity is apparently so touchy that the omission of his name from freebie mailings could set off a cataclysm that would make Iraq look like New Orleans.

Never mind, surely S-CHIP is top of Carter's blog. Whoops, the top blog post is from last month:

The Need for Earmark Reform is Now
In 1938, Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered one of America’s first nation-wide radio addresses. In that historic address he said, “The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain ...

Not to worry, S-CHIP must be the subject of Carter's online poll. Hey, phew! Do you smell a straw issue?

Current Poll
Do you think the government should socialize health care?

Yes 53.33 % (32)

No 46.67 % (28)

(You can vote here. I did.)

I'll just have to give Rep. Carter a ringy-dingy and find out how he plans to vote on Thursday, when Congress goes over all this again. You should give your guy or gal a call, too, and remind them how important this is: 800-828-0498, 800-614-2803 or 866-340-9281. Don't know who your Rep is? Give yourself a slap upside the head from me, then go here and use the blue box on the right. You can also send an email or a fax here. (I would fax for more impact.)

Help me out here

BlogHer is running a survey on us network members, and I'd be grateful if you took a few minutes to click the sidebar button (when it appears) and 'fess up to your demographic proclivities. In return I offer you this random token of my affection:

This is the backdrop of the Arneson River Theater stage in San Antonio. The audience sits across the river from the performers, and boats like the one I shot this from pass through every so often. See those round holes on the tower at the left? My dad, Mr. Texas History Man, says those were included as dove nests so that crafty colonists could collect the eggs.

1977

When's the last time you thought about Love's Baby Soft?

On a need-to-know basis

Adam Koford knows the score.

Rocketboy mocked me yesterday for showing him how to tell if a bunch of grapes is worth buying.

"Lesson two," he intoned in his Smartass Narrator Voice, "my mother taught me how to find fruit in the produce section."

I asked him which he thought he would do more often over the course of his lifetime -- use the quadratic equation or buy food? His grumbling response was cut short by an outburst:

"Aaagh, my god! Fingers! Mom!"

It was a bunch of white asparagus. I rested my highly practical case.

It put me in mind of the many young grocery cashiers I've met who don't recognize common items like squash or collard greens or different types of lettuce. And it reminded me of Adam Koford's cartoon, sent along by Tim, about the absurdity of teaching cursive anymore and what knowledge might be more useful. (I'd add to Koford's suggestions a short course on BDSM safety to prevent needless deaths. I'm looking at you, Liberty University.)

Why are children "supposed" to learn cursive but not how to identify the plants that -- ideally at least -- sustain them? It doesn't have to be one or the other but if it did I'd much rather have my children learn about food (as opposed to "food products"). They'll get a hell of a lot more benefit over time from knowing how to choose fresh, healthy food than they will from writing in cursive.

Also yesterday a very nice mother of two public-school students asked me how I plan my lessons, homework and school-day schedule with my kids. I was flummoxed. It was like asking a Slow Foodie how he runs his Arby's. There's something to do with food there, but the content and form are so different that comparison really isn't useful. I don't have a body of random academic knowledge that I want to stuff into my kids' heads; I'm too busy running down resources for the things they want to learn. This week it's dinosaurs and the various geologic periods in which they lived. Last week it was the Big Bang.

Next week, who knows? Maybe more Spanish. You never know when that will come in handy:

(Thanks, Moxy Jane.)

Chicken flap

Neutron finds a shiny thing

Hombre learned an important parenting lesson this evening: Never foster competition between your children. You'd think this would've sunk in earlier, maybe when he heard about Cain and Abel back in Sunday school. But it's never too late to learn that even seemingly trivial competition for a parent's favor breeds depravity and annoys chickens.

Every evening the hens must be herded, lured or carried into their roofed pen, and they're getting wilier and more evasive as they age. I'm sure Hombre -- who was cooking dinner and preparing to leave for a meeting -- thought it was a clever time-saving gambit when he wondered aloud, "Which of you guys is the best chicken-catcher?"

Now, you parents who haven't cut corners may cast the first stone. I myself once told my younger son that a bowl full of chocolate chips was actually animal crap. You do the best you can at the time. But even to me, the chicken catch-off seemed like a bad idea.

My protest was drowned out by scuffling and grunting as Rocketboy and Hurricanehead made for the back door. By the time they cleared the porch there was screaming, and the chickens headed for cover. Next time I looked out the window, Rocketboy was committing a blatant foul, holding his little brother by the shirt to keep him just out of reach of one of the hens.

I yelled out the window for them to cut it out and work together. A few minutes later I saw Rocketboy striding toward the pen with Neutron tucked firmly under his arm, Hurricanehead waiting by the pen door. Except that Hurricanehead locked the pen, blocked it with his body and repeatedly karate-chopped his big brother. Rocketboy never let go of the bird while blocking the blows and unlocking the pen with his free hand. Turns out he can multi-task if he's motivated.

Once he had both birds penned, Hurricanehead sneaked out and liberated them, causing Rocketboy to scream to the heavens and seek revenge. Except that he couldn't, because Hurricanehead had braced himself outside the back door so that the rest of us were trapped inside while he scowled through the glass.

Hombre calmed everyone down to the growling point and tried to get the boys to eat dinner already. Any mention of the chickens sent both boys lunging for the door. All this over a chore we usually can't pay them to do. Their competitive fury took him by surprise.

Not me. I'm with these kids a lot more than he is and I know that while they love to build pillow forts together and snuggle like puppies to watch TV, they'd cut each other if it meant a little extra love or approval from Mom and Dad. The chicken catcher episode reminded both of us that while a lot of parenting is silly, boring or inconsequential, the important stuff is really important.

I also think it put me a little ahead of Hombre in the Best Parent competition.

Roundup: Let's get this third partay started

I'm in a festive mood today for reasons including but not limited to:

Beth Skwarecki's prosh knitted bacteria pattern. Beth is the designer who brought the world Nautie the knitted fossil.

The hard-right's movement threat to run a third-party candidate if the GOP presidential nominee ends up being pro-choice-ish. Should such a splinter movement occur (and you can nudge it along here, should you be so inclined) it would be a soothing balm on the part of my ass that's still chapped about Nader. Not that I'm thrilled about, say, Rudy vs. Hillary. But Rudy vs. Hillary minus a chunk of the GOP might be interesting.

My friend Rosemarie sent along this tutorial on how to "knit" marzipan from VeganYumYum. It's a great concept with an adorable end result, although I couldn't do it because I lack willpower with respect to almond paste.

The icing on today's cake was reading Chris Kelly talking smack about Mitt Romney's "strength" theme while poking holes in the Romney campaign's weak assertions:

How strongly does Romney hate taxes? Last week, he not only signed a pledge to oppose all tax increases, he also snapped the pen in half, shattered the desk with a single blow, and made powerful animal love to Grover Norquist on the shards.

The candy flowers on today's icing? I found a long-missing mix CD with one of Hurricanehead and Rocketboy's all-time favorite songs (when they're not listening to The Cure or Superchunk): Gertie's Birdseed Diner by Tom Chapin.

What's making your day?

Eating crow: healthier than eating plastic

I used to mock Hombre for his bag collection. The man has always been a bag magnet, and for years our closet was full of duffels and totes from conferences and team-building folderol. In fact, he had one enormous bag which held all the other bags. Yes, a bag bag. Cue spousal eye roll and, after much discussion, a Goodwill purge.

I didn't realize Hombre was a visionary. After learning about the Eastern Garbage Patch full of toxic plastic chunks in the Pacific and reading about the horrifying durability of plastic in The World Without Us (click on the "Hundreds of Thousands of Years" box), I realized that cloth bags are about more than cutting down on litter. They are a way to reduce the amount of plastic in the food web. Jellyfish and other sea animals eat tiny pieces of floating plastic, larger predators eat them and you can see where this is going.

I'm no in rush to dine on pollutant-laden nurdles, directly or indirectly, so I've restocked on cloth bags. Some I made by recycling an old canvas shower curtain and leftover upholstery fabric. Others we bought from Maquiladora Dignidad y Justicia, a worker-owned sewing cooperative in Piedras Negras, Mexico, as part of a church fund-raiser. Now that we carry shopping bags in both cars and have some around the house for library books and trips to the park, I've come to a changriny realization: You can never have too many sturdy cloth bags.

I've got convert zeal. I've even considered using up my scrap fabric to make bags and giving them away to random strangers. For now I'll point you to a couple of good patterns should you wish to make your own. This is an easy tote pattern -- I make my bags on these general lines with either French or serged seams, but I'm too cheap to buy webbing so I make the handles myself. This plastic-bag-patterned tote is a little more fussy but it's so damned cute that I'm going to make time to try it.

For those of you who don't sew but want to cut down on plastic bag use and support working seamstresses, check out Dignidad y Justicia's order page. For other alternatives, look here. Or you can be like Kate in The Mysterious Benedict Society and carry your gear in a bucket, preferably one made of metal.

Failure, indeed

"In the quiet of American conscience, we know that deep, persistent poverty is unworthy of our nation's promise. And whatever our views of its cause, we can agree that children at risk are not at fault. Abandonment and abuse are not acts of God, they are failures of love."

George W. Bush, January 20, 2001

Whatever. The SCHIP expansion for poor kids' healthcare that Bush vetoed today had bipartisan support and could run for five years on the money we pour into Iraq every three months. Like Jim Wallis, who cited the quote above, I wonder what the heck Bush was thinking. The veto seems like a reactionary snit, a petty power trip at the expense of millions of children.

I hope public opinion will spur Congress to override the veto. In Austin, there will be a pro-SCHIP rally tomorrow outside Sen. Cornyn's office on 6th St. at 6 p.m. Maybe there's one near you, too.


Matt Glazer at Stop Cornyn has a solid roundup of Texas political blogger reaction to the veto.

Halfway to the ideal bathroom

It's a start.

The fancy new tub is here. If I wanted to surround myself with soothing bubbles, construction dust and exposed insulation I'd be in it right now. The rest of the bathroom remains gutted while we wait for an unexpected situation to be resolved (and yes, I did expect the unexpected). Turns out that a linen cabinet I want pared down is harboring not one but two HVAC ducts that must be moved in order to implement my devious plan. That's tomorrow, which can't come quickly enough. The sooner I can quit sharing a loo with this child, the better.