They're going down like flies!
Oh no!
So
Class Factotum is on blogging sabbatical for a while.
Garfield Ridge is in his last weeks before heading back to a full life, school, and we're all hoping, marrying The Nurse. So he'll be closing up shop soon, read him while you've got him. After reading his Weekend in Nowhere post, I should have tagged HIM for the saints meme. He may not believe in them, but I'll bet he could still come up with some doozy's. And yes, Dave, you are marrying the nurse, don't fight the inevitable.
Labels: Other Blogs
Bad luck
Hey there friend, you say that you crashed in a bike race...
...and essentially tore your thumb from your socket...
...and had to have surgery...
...and broke the head of your radial bone...
...and you'll have your thumb pinned for 4 weeks and your arm in a cast for 3 months...
...Is that what's bringing you down, Friend?
"Lift your head up high and take a walk in the sun with that dignity and stick-to-it-iveness that you'll show the world, you'll show them where to get off, you'll never give up, never give up, never give up that ship!"
So you say that your wife is going to have to take care of you...
...and you also have a 3 year old to take care of...
...and a 2 week old baby...
...and your mom whom you just coaxed out of town will have to come back to help out....
...oh and you can't work, because you're an ER doc and you NEED that arm?
...Is that what's bringing you down, Friend?
"Lift your head up high and take a walk in the sun with that dignity and stick-to-it-iveness that you'll show the world, you'll show them where to get off, you'll never give up, never give up, never give up that ship!"
(Shameless ripping off of the "
Old Philosopher" done without permission. After 50 years I'm hoping that it's not needed.)
Get well, Henry. Stay sane, Emma!
Labels: cycling
Dangers of Pregnancy
When you're car dancing to a little James Brown, your belly can reach resonance. Eeks!
I feel GOOD!
Labels: pregnancy
My very first meme...
sniff... (wipes tear away)
I've been tagged by
Ambrose for a favorite saints meme. (
Details here) The idea is to list my four favourite saints, one favourite blessed, and one person I think should have been a saint. So I'll give it a whirl!
St Anne - The mother of Mary. First of all she's my patron saint. And she's the patron saint of women in labor, which is something I will need in a few months. Oh yeah, and she's Christ's grandmother, how cool is that?
St Anthony of Padua - first of all, I just have so much respect for those who have everything, and are willing to walk away on principle. Secondly...if you lost things as much as I do, the patron saint of lost articles would be an important person to you too.
St Gerard Majella - Patron Saint of pregnant women - I need him! Although his story is rather sad. He was falsely accused of being a babydaddy, and took a vow of silence until the woman recanted her story.
St Cecilia - The church in which a lot my family's sacraments have taken place. And she's the patron saint of music, something at which I'm hooooorrible, and Chris is really good.
and for my blessed it has to be
Mother Teresa of Calcutta. She sacrificed so much - her whole life - to take care of those no one else had an interest in. And she managed to bring attention to the situation at a time when that was otherwise not at all interesting. In a personal aside, the priest that married Chris and I worked a lot with Mother Teresa, so there's two degrees of separation for you. I tease Chris that a good baptist boy is so very close to a Catholic saint-to-be.
For the one person I think should be a saint, I'm going with
Pope John Paul II. I really think it's just a matter of time. He was such an important figure in the Church at a time when people were losing their faith in holiness.
As to who I tag next, that's actually harder than the meme! I actually don't know that many Catholic bloggers, so I'm going to go with the one blogger that I do know is Catholic (and reads my blog) -
Class Factotum. Flick - I should have picked you and let your wife help, but I know better.
It's a chick thing
Via
Asymmetrical Information and
Cobb, I came across a libertarian blogger who did a
"takedown" of feminism. And in reading the post, while I agreed with some of his points, some were so egregiously wrong that I had to open my yap. Or type, whichever.
I should start, very quickly, with where I come from. I was much more "feminist" in my younger days, when I was in college and fresh into the work world. That was at a time when women didn't get degrees in engineering (6 of us out of 90 in my graduation year), didn't get much respect in the workplace (less than 10 women out of 40 thousand employees were managers in my company when I started), and basically were in phase 2 of the whole "equal rights" thing. I just could not understand why the only barrier to my doing certain things was my being female. Over the years as I see that battle dying down, and gotten a bit of world experience, my relationship with feminism has gotten...uneasy. The focus (to me) seems to have moved from we can do anything to you owe us everything. So I'm not precisely NOW's biggest fan.
However...
In Toddy Seavey's blog post, there are a few things that really stick in my craw.
1. Making A Priori Moral Assertions About Thoroughly Empirical Questions
This one becomes a "men are smarter than women" discussion. Towards the end of the section he says:
Yet the data suggest that there are intelligence differences between males and females, and without going into each sub-category of intelligence (ability to negotiate three-dimensional spaces, ability to read emotions from faces, recall, math, etc.), I will say that there seem to be both more male geniuses than female geniuses and more male idiots than female idiots. For a moment, the reader hoping (for whatever a priori reasons) to find “balance” in evaluations of the two sexes might feel relieved that in some sense the IQ differences appear to “even out” — but a tendency for women to bunch near the norm while males are more likely to rise to the top and to end up in prison is hardly, I think, the sort of simple “equality” that underpins most traditional, idealistic feminist thinking. Those differences have huge implications that we’re still sorting out and may render, for example, the application of affirmative action laws to gender “balance” absurd (and unjust).
How DO you go about comparing a population closely centered around one point, to a population that’s strung out along a wider continuum and declare one more whatever than the other? This doesn’t strike me as the kind of debate in which averaging IQs really covers what is intended to be covered.
I know this is a sore spot with some, but here’s my concern. By saying that women are not as smart as men, it ignores the fact that while there may be less female geniuses, there do exist female geniuses. Just as while there aren’t many women in math and engineering, I would object to not having been allowed to get my engineering degree because I’m a woman. And quite honestly I don't think he's made his point empirically on the intelligence of one gender over another.
Next up:
2. Refusing to Define “Feminism” Clearly Enough to Judge Its Value
I suppose the problem with defining Feminism is that it’s sort of like my trying to define liberalism or conservatism or any other ism. It involves so many nooks and crannies, that it would take a feminist catechism to really capture all of the ground that is covered by the politics and philosophy that is feminism. And over the years definitions and emphasis change.
The next up come as a nice pair. He starts out with generic headings which turn into rants about women choosing...anyone but him.
4. In Any Truly Useful Gendered Analysis, Ineradicable, Natural Inequalities May Well Matter Most.
5. The Feminsts Often Recapitulate Traditional Patterns While Demanding that No One Point This Out.
Maybe I’m being oblivious because I really am one of the weird ones in my lifestyle, but I’m calling BS here. I’m not saying that no women follow the description, but ALL women? Without giving away too much, I can safely say that I don’t fit ANY of the patterns described above, and good lord I like to think that my husband sees me as an equal partner.
I think that throughout he confuses how evolution may drive us with what decisions we make. Do we have a biological urge to procreate? Sure, but we have brains that go with it. That allows us to make decisions, weigh possible results, and decide who we will and will not interact with and sleep with.
I also know, beyond my 1 in a million lifestyle, several co-workers and lots of friends who also are nowhere near the women described above. Of the married women I know, several make more money than their husbands, a few have decided not to have kids, and couldn’t care less about the alpha male. Of the single women I know, not one is blowing the manager partner. Are these all simply anecdotes? Of course, but how would you describe what Todd Seavey uses other than anecdotes with embellishments?
Other than that....there are things that are applicable, that are fair criticisms, and in some cases criticisms that I make myself. But the above areas are weak, and it kills my appreciation for other points that he makes. I know it's supposed to be funny, but alas I have that weak feminist sense of humor....
Too early for this
On the AM drive to work, I tend to flip around the news stations. XM radio carries CNN, Fox, MSNBC, Headline News, and the BBC. This morning was all about the democratic debate. My favorite was listening to CNN poll the various candidates handlers last night. "The NY Times today said that your candidate was obnoxious and dressed funny, do you think they were just terrified out of their minds?" "Well actually, Bob, I thought they were strong, confident, and making a statement..." (No, I don't know who was actually hosting the show, I just know that everyone has to include his name in their response. Just to show they know what program they're on.)
It's just too early to listen to everyone's spin machine. Too early in the day, too early in the campaign season, too early, too early, too early. I switched over to "The Essential Chieftains" for the rest of the drive in. Wake me the month before the election.
The seventh sign
I got home from work last night and Ginger had not destroyed anything.
Make your peace with God, the world's about to end.
Labels: Dogs
Cycling stuff
Oh fer...Look, dudes, this Operacion Puerto thing has gone on long enough. No, really. I'm tired, I'm cranky, and I don't want to hear news stories about various organizations playing "maybe we'll suspend them, maybe we won't" with men's careers. Look, if the riders involved are going to be prosecuted at a cycling level (not a court of law), that's fine. DO IT. But for a year, a ridiculous amount of riders have had to put their lives on hold while the various UCI organizations say "nope can't race....well maybe you can....well maybe that team shouldn't have hired you because you MIGHT have been a doper...." Enough already, make a decision and everyone move on.
Labels: cycling
Flashbacks
We were flipping through channels the other night flip...flip...flip....Purple Rain...flip...
I felt my husband do a full body shudder next to me.
Labels: Movies
Thankful moments
Today was migraine number 8 or 9 since I've been pregnant. This morning's wasn't bad at all, but it left me like a limp dish rag all day. And all I can think is...how do single moms do it? I've had a relatively easy pregnancy, but there have definitely been non functional days/weeks/months when I have no energy. My husband has been a CHAMP through the whole thing. And tonight he comes home with Mexican food.
No, ladies, he is NOT available. Hands off.
Labels: Love of My Life, pregnancy
The Good Shepherd
So we're on night 3 of watching "The Good Shepherd". The question is...do you take the band-aid off slowly or quickly?
It amazes me that a movie about spies, and double crossing, that has Matt Damon and Angelina Jolie manages to be...boring. Even the sex scenes are boring - how could that be? There were so many bad directions that a movie like this can go - it could have been completely vapid, too heavy on the car chases, included Ninja moves in a historical movie. It could have been "The Fast and the Furious" in 40s cars. It could have said things like:
Mr. Furious: Why am I doing this, again?
The Sphinx: When you can balance a tack hammer on your head, you will head off your foes with a balanced attack.
Mr. Furious: And why am I wearing the watermelon on my feet?
The Sphinx: [looks at the watermelon on Mr. Furious' feet] I don't remember telling you to do that.
Only these folks meant it. But instead of all those potential wrong turns, it goes in an unthinkable direction. It strings together like a 4 year old telling his grandma about a trip to the zoo... "And then...And then....And then....And then...And then....." Which sucks because I had sort of high hopes for Robert DeNiro. I really liked the last movie he directed, "A Bronx Tale". But...oi.
Maybe it's just too subtle for me. Maybe it's completely nuanced. To me, it's just muddled. But now we've committed almost 2 hours to this movie, so we have a quest. We're going to finish the darn thing. And then we're moving on to Casino Royale with proper car chases. And Daniel Craig. Mmmmm, Daniel Craig. I think you see the level of the audience we're talking about here.
Labels: Movies
Holy cow....
I just realized that the baby born with the shortest term pregnancy was born at 21 weeks.
I'm at 21 weeks. I feel like covering my baby's eyes and saying "For heaven's sake, whatever you do, stay in there!"
Labels: pregnancy
Things Ginger has found chewie and exciting
2 sterile cups for urine samples
A bag of granola
My dress shoes
The shoelace off of a salomon
A bottle of corn syrup
My coat pocket where the dog treats live (with help from Fred)
Qtips
The new storage thingy for the bathroom which I had not yet even removed from the box
A bottle of Italian dressing (must get doors for the pantry shelves)
Diapers (clean! but makes me anticipate when they're dirty. Ew.)
A long dead rat
A newly dead field mouse
A newly dead chipmunk
Horse poop
We've always said that Fred is a doggy metrosexual. I'm pretty sure that Ginger dips.
Labels: Dogs
unReasonable
Hmmm, so if I read this article from
Reason correctly, we should like illegal immigration because
1. Women apparently have to mow their own lawns, and illegal immigration allows them to get out of doing that. It was usually my dad and my brother who got stuck with lawn mowing in our house, but that was in the midwest at a time when they had to worry about roaming dinosaurs.
2. We can get cheap labor for household chores. By "we", I mean women who can afford to pay someone else to clean their house.
3. Women are no longer the bottom of the ladder for pay. Woohoo! Better them than us.
There are lots of valid considerations in the debate on illegal immigration. But man, this article doesn't contain any of them.
I am the source of global warming....
...because I am SO uncool. I'm sitting here watching the Actor's Studio on Bravo, and today's guest is Will Smith. And all I can think is "I still love this guy." He is really funny.
Paris-Roubaix
Score! I really like
this guy, but I had no idea he even rode in the spring classics. Given my past track record, he's now due to get busted for doping.
Labels: cycling
Time flies
This time last year I was preparing for a relaxing day lounging in a French farmhouse with books and Belgian chocolate. At the same time, Chris was preparing for a day on the cobbles. Hard to believe this year we have an extra dog and a baby on the way. Sometimes life is surreal.
Sigh
Hubby is off to bike camp for the weekend, which leaves me and the dogs to get on each others nerves. Unfortunately the weather where he's headed isn't any better than here. Poor guy. Then again, he'll be waking up without Ginger's front paws on his face. Pawing at Chris is the preferred wake up approach of Ginger-dogs everywhere. And I have to give her a thumbs up for effectiveness, he's not slept through that once. This morning's spate of barking probably also helped speed the wake up process. What can you say, the girl is good!
What do you think?
Interesting post/feedback on
DanielleBean.com (thanks Ambrose!). Did you share a bedroom growing up? Or have your own?
(and for those who are horrified by the idea of large families, you may want to skip this one...)
Having only one little brother, I had my own bedroom. I was always jealous of my cousins with the big family who shared bedrooms. (8 kids, 4 bedroom house...). Looking back, I'm not sure that was really quite the end all and be all I thought it was at the time. The grass is always greener....
Ahhhhh....
Last night was really relaxing, after the initial chaos getting home, walking the dogs, and picking up dry cleaning. On the plus side that's all stuff I can do without driving, so there were no rush hour woes.
Then it was off to get a maternity massage. My parents gave me a gift certificate to a spa I really like. Funny thing, I would have told you before I went in that I really didn't need one. I felt really good. Oh sure, there were still vestiges of the crick in the neck from last week that kept me from turning my head. But no back aches, or anything else. This was just to relax. Then Karen started working on my neck. "Wow, you really needed this. You need to make your next appt on the way out" she said. Since Karen's never said that before, I took that to heart. And when I got up from the table, I was amazed at how much better I felt. It almost felt like I had lost weight, because there was a lot of pressure that just wasn't there at all. Wow. So I did indeed make an appointment for next month. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to get massages after the second trimester, so I want to sneak at least one more in.
Oh and she thinks it's a boy. Which makes exactly 0 people so far who think Chris is going to have to purchase a shotgun after the baby is born.
Then from the massage I walked up to church for the first of the
Catholic Triduum Masses/Services (Good Friday isn't a Mass). These are my favorites of the year, and yet every year I either forget or get distracted, and I don't go. When we walked out of church, it was dark, so all you could see through the open church door were the people exiting and HUGE snowflakes. So horribly wrong for Easter, but still so very beautiful. Iiiii'm dreaming of a white Easter......
But anyway, a nice evening all the way around, and I arrived home before the buffalo chicken pizza from our local crack hou...er....pizza place got too cold.
Silver Lining
While I'm bemoaning the change from 80 degree and sunny weather on Tuesday to sub 30 and snowing today, the dogs are thrilled. Fred, Tuesday night before the temperature drop, was miserably hanging off the edge of the bed and panting. But this morning when we woke up and it was really freakin' cold in the house, he snuggled up and doing the doggy happy pant. (You dog owners know what I'm talking about). The next 2 1/2 months are going to be tough on him especially. He has that thick winter coat, and for some reason he doesn't lose it until June. So instead of being completely bummed about this cold weather, for now I'm going with happy to see him get a little temperature relief.
Labels: Dogs
sunday Sunday SUNDAY!
Woohoo! This Sunday is not only Easter, but also the
Tour de Flanders. This starts one of our favorite weeks of cycling. Wed is Ghent Wevelgem, and the following Sunday is Paris Roubaix. Hard to believe that it was just a year ago that we were in Europe with PeeWee, Hollywood and the gang, careening off through the Belgium countryside with unknown Frenchmen and all of our luggage, sleeping in an
awesome French farmhouse, and eating croissants every morning for breakfast. Oh, and did I forget Brugge? I can never forget Brugge, what an amazing city. Sigh, sniff, wipes away tear. We're toying with the next closest thing...eating at
Point Brugge, where we had horrible service, but they serve authentic frites.
I can't wait to go back to Europe one day! We really have to do a lot of saving so we can get the baby hooked early.
Labels: cycling, Love of My Life
Dilemma
Interesting dilemma in
this story. Do you institute a way for people to leave babies in a safe environment (thus saving lives), while at the same time making eat easier for parents to abandon their babies? Or do you hope that the stigma of abandoning the babies is enough to deter MOST from abandoning their babies?
In general, I tend to be a believer that in a lot of situations, social stigma can actually keep a lot of people from getting in over their head. But...I have a hard time believing there are a lot of mothers thinking "I would abandon Junior in a heartbeat if only it were
easier". There is always a place to dump a baby, but those places are rarely good for the baby. So offering a way to let a baby live while allowing the woman to leave her child, is certainly an option. This is a really
old idea.
Yes, all things baby do tend to catch my eye these days. And yes, linear thinking eludes me some days, so if this doesn't make sense...patience already!
Count us in
Yeah, our dogs are getting different
dog food. We're a little concerned about the chaos surrounding who's got which contaminated wheat. So we went with
Pet Promise, and so far Fred's eating like a champ, and Ginger is eating like her usual self. Actually, since the dogs have been getting sort of shee-shee dry food anyway, I'm not really seeing a price difference. The only negative thing is that it's not super convenient as we can only get it locally at Whole Foods. But at least until all of the bad wheat gluten is tracked down, it would be worth feeding them gluten free food. I originally thought I was getting organic food, but gluten-free covers the main issue we're concerned with for now.
Labels: Dogs
Schizophrenia
Ms Ginger, with the corn syrup, in the dining room
Oh sure, it may appear to be a horrible duck death to you, but it's actually something far, far worse to us. Ginger managed to snag a bottle of corn syrup off of the shelves in the kitchen, and chew some holes in the plastic bottle.
Know anything about cleaning corn syrup off of hardwoor floors? Yeah, me neither.
Labels: Dogs
A puppy and her carrot
What you can't hear in the background of this shot of Ginger protecting her favorite toy du moment is my husband saying "We are an organic family. We only allow our dogs to play with sustainable toys"
Labels: Dogs
My Sweet Jesus
Some artist was supposed to unveil a chocolate sculpture of Jesus in some hotel in Manhattan this week.
Yawn. Must be Easter week. Something of this sort happens every Easter. I remember the "Thornbirds" getting shown Easter week when I was a teenager. Makes the swallows returning to Capistrano look unreliable.
Said artist claims that the Catholic League's objection amounts to a Catholic fatwa because the show got cancelled.
Snort. Giggle.
Dude, you only got
one Catholic group to respond with public cries of outrage? No, really, just one? Do you
know how many Catholic groups are out there, none of which are acting in concert? If your little art show could only get one Catholic group to rise to the bait, it really says far more about the insignificance of your "art" than it does about "fatwas".
At least he'll have plenty of chocolate for Easter.
Ick....
Funny thing about history...things happened that people don't want to own up to. It's messy, it's embarrassing, it's like the crazy, drunken aunt at your wedding. You can either go the oppression/suppression route and tell everyone it never happened (yeah, I'm looking at you, former Soviet Union), or you face up to it, learn from your mistakes, try to avoid repeating those mistakes, and move on.
It appears some schools in the UK have decided to ignore option number 2. Because, you know, the holocaust was done in a studio backlot in Hollywood. Or wait, was that the moon landing?
Yuppie Hell
So what circle of hell do I belong in if I wear my Patagonia pants to yoga class, then swing by Whole Foods afterwards?
